Your weight is not a spiritual problem or condition, in the sense of an ailment or affliction that needs a rubdown or heavy dose of a wonder drug. Rather, it is spiritual warfare in which you are a soldier. If anything is a problem, it is that bombs are dropping and bullets are flying all around you, but you are not aware of them. You may not even know that you are at war. If you are in this category, no wonder you are getting more and more out of control. You cannot be winning battles if you do not know that a war has been declared.
Knowing and loving God are going to require your strength. Paul described it many times as a “race,” and you are straining to get to the finish line. Sometimes what is happening to you is just another pop quiz. But approaching food today without understanding the dynamics of what we are talking about is like taking a college class and spending your time daydreaming or taking naps. The next thing you know, all the students around you are turning in their exam papers, while you did not even know there was an exam! Failing the test is inevitable.
It would be so much simpler, we think, if God could just warn us: “My dear children, you are going to be tested today by Satan, and lured and enticed by your own flesh at 1:15 this afternoon with chocolate cheesecake—and I want you to stop when you are full and wrap up the rest of it. Now get yourself ready for 1:15 today.” Too bad it does not work that way. I would have passed many more college pop quizzes if I had known exactly what the test was about and when it would be given. As it was, I had to stay awake. I had to stay alert so as to be ready when the professor decided to give me an exam.
I feel sure I could win many more spiritual wars if I knew when to put on my battle armor, where the battle was, who the opponent was, and how to defeat him or it. I would be ready for all those pop quizzes. However, God does not work this way because God wants us always to be battle-ready. He wants us to be focused on Him at all times. If I had to say there was one purpose for the Weigh Down Workshop^ and this battle that you are going through with weight, it is that He wants you to keep your eyes fixed on Him at all times. If He calls you in the middle of the night, you must answer your General. He will have unannounced pop quizzes to keep your eyes turned upward.
Since we do not know who, what, when, where, and how, the only effective plan is to stay on guard at all times. I have often thought that it is the battle-ready believers who are the most “with it,” the most alert, “on top of it” kind of people.
*51\237\2*

LIFE WITH HYPERTENSIONThe untreated person with persistent hypertension faces complications involving his heart, brain, and kidneys. The time necessary for hypertension to produce these complications is variable. Some may have hypertension for years without any serious complications, while others may develop an accelerated phase of the hypertension and have serious problems within a matter of months. Actually, any untreated hypertensive is susceptible to a sudden acceleration in the severity of his disease. This accelerated phase is called malignant hypertension. There is no relationship to cancer; the term malignant merely signifies that the process is virulent and getting worse.The cardiac response to hypertension is usually an enlargement of the heart, especially the left ventricle, the main pumping chamber. There is usually an accelerated development of atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries, and a heart attack or angina pectoris may occur. Eventually the heart may weaken, and the person will then develop heart failure, with shortness of breath and swelling of the body.In a person with hypertension, the blood vessels that supply the brain may intermittently narrow (vasospasm) with the resultant lack of adequate blood flow to parts of the brain. This may produce periods of confusion, actual unconsciousness, or intermittent periods of paralysis of one side of the body. The arteries usually also develop increased degrees of atherosclerosis, and this process may lead to the permanent occlusion of one of the vessels or to its rupture with bleeding into the brain. These events produce strokes, with paralysis or death.The small blood vessels that lie inside the kidneys can be affected by prolonged or severe hypertension. The response in these blood vessels is to deposit a coating on the inside of the vessel, which results in the vessels becoming narrower than normal. The kidneys then suffer from a lack of blood flow. This eventually produces gradual death of parts of the kidney, with ensuing kidney failure or uremia. As uremia develops in the hypertensive person, we frequently see that they lose weight and their appetite. They often become anemic, and edema or swelling of the lower parts of the body develops.With proper treatment, a hypertensive patient may have a near normal life span. This is particularly true if his problem is detected before any complications occur.Prior to 1950 there were very few effective techniques for treating hypertension. Sedatives were used to help lower the pressure in mild cases, but those people with malignant hypertension had an inauspicious future. The death rate in malignant hypertension took 80 percent of those so affected in the first year. Severe salt restriction helped some people. This was the era of the rice diet, or low salt diet.Then the Rauwolfia serpentina, or Indian snake root, entered the scene. Derivatives of this plant are still some of the principal agents used today to control blood pressure. A short time later the first of the modern diuretic drugs appeared. A variety of different diuretic drugs is now available. They act primarily by removing excess salt from the body. As a result, salt restriction is usually not necessary in the hypertensive patient. Additional drugs have been developed that block the blood pressure mechanism at different levels in the body. Agents may work primarily on the brain, the sympathetic nervous system, the small arteries of the body, or the kidneys. The stronger agents have side effects that may hinder their use in certain persons, but such a wide range of effective drugs are in existence today that the vast majority of hypertensive patients can now be adequately managed by one or more drugs.*60/309/5*

UNDERSTANDING TESTS FOR HIV: WHO SHOULD GET TESTED-CONDITIONS THAT ARE ASSOCIATED WITH HIV INFECTIONSometimes a physician requests the test because a person has certain conditions that suggest or are associated with HIV infection. Such sexually transmitted diseases as gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis are associated with higher rates of HIV infection. Tuberculosis is also associated with higher rates of HIV infection. The Centers for Disease Control advocates HIV tests for anyone with a sexually transmitted disease or with tuberculosis.     Specific conditions that suggest HIV infection. Some conditions specifically suggest HIV infection, such as Pneumocystis pneumonia, Kaposi’s sarcoma, cryptococcal meningitis, and toxoplasmic encephalitis. These conditions are the so-called opportunistic infections that occur in a weakened immune system and, if accompanied by a positive HIV blood test, are diagnostic of AIDS. Other conditions suggest HIV infection more vaguely: unexplained weight loss, unexplained fever lasting for a month, or diarrhea lasting at least a month. Low blood counts—including low red blood cell counts (anemia), low white blood cell counts (neutropenia), and low platelets (thrombocytopenia)—also suggest HIV infection.     People with these latter conditions are also likely to have any number of other diagnoses. The physician of anyone with any of these conditions will recommend that the person be tested for HIV.*257\191\2*

Women
The 1500- and 1800-calorie menus are perfect for women as you build up to your maintenance intake after the Rotation Diet. Try them to ensure that you do not regain any weight. You can alternate these menus, or substitute them, for the 1500- and 1800-calorie-per-day menus. If you wish to follow your own inclinations on your way to maintenance, be sure to increase by only 300 calories per day, and stick with 1500 for several days before going up to 1800.

Men
On entering maintenance, men should also remember to increase from 1800 calories per day, up to your maintenance levels, in amounts of about 300 calories per day. Be sure to stay with 2100 calories per day for several days, checking your weight, before moving up to 2400. It is best to increase your calories with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats, but you can try a serving of a dessert or alcoholic beverage if you like.

Everyone
Remember that free vegetables and your safe fruit are available at all times, and that a substitution of fruit of any kind for junk-food snacks will go a long way toward preventing weight gain after you have used the Rotation Diet to reach your goal.
*51/235/5*

HIV: ON DYING-EMOTIONAL RESPONSES TO DEATHElizabeth Kubler-Ross is a psychiatrist who wrote the standard book on how all people, regardless of the causes of their death, respond emotionally to the fact that they are dying. After interviewing people who were dying, she found they have several responses in common. One is disbelief and denial that death could happen to them: as Dean Lombard said, “You feel it’s not going to happen, though you know it is. You feel emotionless because it can’t be real.” Another is anger at having been singled out. Another is an impulse to bargain, to push back the inevitable and gain a little time: “I don’t think we ever feel as though it’s all complete,” Steven said, “as though the world owes us nothing else.” The next is depression: the loss, pain, and sorrow that come from recognition that death is inescapable. The last is acceptance, coming to terms with death: “The meaning of the diagnosis finally hit me,” said Dean. “I won’t be here forever. I have to make my preparations for death.”     Kubler-Ross said the responses to death occurred in stages: first denial, then anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. Later, she and subsequent researchers amended the idea, saying that perhaps the word stages is misleading. Not everyone has all these responses, or has them in this order. Some have several at once. For others, the responses alternate: anger, then depression, then anger again. And not only the people who are facing death, but also their caregivers, have these responses. Caregivers share the same feelings of denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance, both on behalf of the people they are taking care of and for themselves.     To anyone who has learned to live with a diagnosis of HIV infection, these responses come as no surprise. They are nearly the same emotions people experience when they learn of their diagnosis of HIV infection. These emotions are also the same as the normal responses to living with HIV infection. Perhaps this means that people with HIV infection have been facing death since the moment of their diagnosis; perhaps it means only that these are the responses people have when faced with any catastrophe.     In any case, the responses to the diagnosis serve as a rehearsal for the thought of death. People who have had these responses before are a little used to them, and know a little about how to handle them. The same strategies—strategies for refusing to fret about what will not change, for finding harmless or even helpful ways of discharging anger, for turning despair into some sort of hope for something or someone, for facing down fears, for distracting yourself with pleasure, for accepting yourself with fondness and your condition without self-hatred, guilt, or blame—still work, even against death.     People have other natural responses to the thought of death. One is fear. People are afraid of dying in pain. They fear the moment when life stops. The truth is that dying—the process that leads to the moment of death—sometimes does hurt, but doctors have medications to block the pain.     Death itself seems not to hurt. The body, either quietly or quickly, stops working. No one knows much about the moment of death, but it does seem that a built-in mechanism protects people from physical and psychological pain. As a rule, death comes peacefully.     Most of our fears about death are actually about what will happen before death. This is a universal fear; the sixteenth-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote about it in his Essays: “It is not against death that we prepare ourselves…. To tell the truth, we prepare ourselves against the preparations for death…. It is certain that to most people preparation for death has given more torment than the dying.” Montaigne goes on to offer a sort of rough comfort: “If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.”     Specifically, people are afraid that while they are dying they will be abandoned. They are afraid of being alone at such a difficult time. They fear they will lose control. They worry that they have been bad and deserve death. They fear physical pain and disfigurement. They worry about the people they will leave, about the relationships left unresolved and business left unfinished.     Another natural reaction to death is confusion. The thought of life ending is new territory, and people are unsure how to think about it or what to do about it. “I don’t know how to just let life go on until death comes,” Helen Parks said. “I’m between this pole and that pole.”     It is also natural to feel a sense of loss. Through sickness, people lose the bodies they were accustomed to. They lose their abilities to do what they were good at, their competencies. They lose the healthy, active lives they shared with their friends, and to that extent, they lose a commonality with their friends. And because they are aware of dying, they lose their sense of a future, the feeling that limitless time is available to them. Accepting these losses brings anguish.     Some of the anguish in accepting losses comes from knowing that smaller losses are tokens of greater ones, of the loss of life and the entire world. Some is because losing the future also means losing the idealistic, hopeful part of you, your potential, the person you might have become. And some of the anguish is because people want so much to live. “The will to live is so great, you can’t even think about it,” said Dean. “You feel as though you could beat anything just by wanting to live.” The anguish people feel over losing life is in proportion to the intensity with which they want to live.     People facing death also want to settle existential questions about life: What is being human all about? Do I believe in God? What will happen to the world after I die? What will happen to me after I die? They turn to religion or spirituality or philosophy, and they think about the same questions people have been asking for centuries. Lisa’s husband was not unusual in becoming religious before he died, reading the Bible and writing his thoughts in a journal.     For all the feelings and worries that dying people have in common, their progress through these feelings and worries is individual. People experience these emotions in fits and starts and at their own paces. Sometimes they want to face death, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they want to make plans and see people, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they want to take control and make decisions, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they want to talk about their feelings, sometimes they do not: Lisa’s husband said, “I don’t always want to talk about dying. Sometimes I want to have days when I’m just living.”*221\191\2*

By definition, a person is overweight when their BMI falls between the levels of 25 and 30. BMI is calculated by dividing a persons weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared. Unlike obesity, overweight people don’t suffer a dramatic increase in their propensity to suffer from disease. Nor is diet necessarily the be all and end all. Exercise alone is sufficient to return the overweight to the healthy bodily range.

Home Remedies
Lack of regular exercise is often responsible for the appearance of excess weight. It follows that a reorganization of priorities and the provision of time for regular exercise will halt the slide into obesity. For most people this is not an attractive proposition because most forms of regular exercise are just plain boring.
The modern gym goes part way to overcoming this objection to regular exercise. Most facilities will have a variety of activities. Aerobics come in a multiplicity of guises and levels of activities. Most gyms have static exercise machines and circuits around which to train. Circuits are a particularly enjoyable form of exercise as they can stimulate almost every muscle in the body.
Cost is a feature with many gyms, and an element of boredom can still arise. The fact that so many members of Australian society fall into the overweight category is testament to the fact that there are many habits in life more satisfying than regular exercise at the gym.

*2/131/5*

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