All of you commenters have done your job.  You’ve brought up several issues that I neglected to address in my last post.  Let me address them now.

First and foremost is the question about peri- and post-menopausal hormonal balance.  From long experience I can tell you that it is difficult for many women to lose weight in the peri- and post-menopausal years, especially the peri-menopausal years, without some hormonal balancing. It can be done, but it is more difficult.  MD keeps promising to post on the subject in detail, but right now she’s up to her eyes in another couple of projects that are consuming most of her time.  That time not consumed by her projects is consumed by little ole me, who needs his fair share.

There is a book on balancing hormones that I feel is the best one of the bunch out there right now.  It is by an acquaintance of mine, whom I run into at medical meetings all over the place.  His name is Uzzi Reiss, M.D, and he is the gyn doc to the stars.  I’m not kidding.  He probably takes care of half the peri- and post-menopausal Hollywood crowd.  He has an enormously busy practice.  I pushed him to write a book early on, but he deferred saying that he couldn’t afford the time away from his practice.  But he finally did come out with one.  It was published about 7 or 8 years ago, and so isn’t completely up to date, but, as I said, I think it’s the best of the bunch out there, written by someone who certainly knows what he’s doing.

At the time he wrote this book, he was using Tri-Est, which is a blend of all three forms of estrogen found in the normal female.  MD prefers more estradiol than found in Tri-Est for weight loss purposes; in fact, she, herself, uses only estradiol.  At the time Dr. Reiss’s book was written compounding pharmacies weren’t as common as they are today, so it wasn’t as easy to get estrogen compounded so specifically.  I think for those of you interested, Dr. Reiss’s book will give you a lot of information to get you started on your own quest.  Many women – MD included – started out on Tri-Est and starting fiddling from there.  The most important thing is to work with a physician who knows what he/she is doing to get your hormones working for you instead of against you.

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As I was flying back from France a few days ago I had one of those experiences touchy, feely types call synchronicity. I was reading the International Herald Tribune and came upon an article entitled “The ethical calculus of foie gras” about the ongoing battle between animal rights activists and foie gras producers, and how they were both, strangely enough, working together. Legislators with the help of foie gras producers are drafting a bill that would basically put these same producers out of business in 2016. The activists are signing on, figuring that 2016 will ultimately arrive and the producers will be finis. The producers are signing on because such a bill will give them breathing room to move their business somewhere more simpatico without a lot of hassle in the intervening years.

I have never seen ducks force fed, and had always imagined it to be pretty brutal, so I was interested to read the following:

To animal welfare groups, the obscenity of force-feeding, known by the French word “gavage,” is self-evident. But Ginor and his partner Izzy Yanay, who runs the farm, accuse their critics of anthropomorphism and ignorance of duck anatomy and behavior. They say the practice is as benign as it is ancient, since waterfowl lack a gag reflex and have sturdy throats that easily tolerate grains, grit, stones and inflexible gavage tubes. To understand gavage, they say, is to accept it – as they insist poultry researchers have, after examining birds for signs of undue suffering during gavage and finding none.

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