I don't understand my body, I just don't. I'm not complaining, but I don't understand how I can have a loss like this during a week that I ate like 1300 calories a day, and not lose anything at all during a week I ate 1000 calories a day AND did more exercise. But, as I look back at my archives and my weight-record that I keep on paper, I can see that this is nothing new. To wit:
3/1/07 -- 355
3/7/07 -- 348
3/14/07 -- 349.5
3/17/07 -- 344.6
3/24/07 -- 342.6
3/30/07 -- 334.6 (!!!! -- What the hell? Why???)
4/4/07 -- 333.4
4/10/07 -- 335.0
4/13/07 -- 331.6
4/20/07 -- 327.6
4/27/06 -- 325.2
5/4/07 -- 321.2
5/11/07 -- 321.2
5/18/07 -- 319.2
So at least if I freak out next week, I can look at this and see that it's not something I'm doing wrong now versus last week -- it's just been the freaking unpredictable pattern.
Happy Weekend!
Friday, May 25, 2007
Friday, May 18, 2007
Week 11 Weigh In -- 321.2/319.2
If I lose 2 lbs a week for 80 weeks, I'll be at my goal weight. ;)
Happy weekend!
Happy weekend!
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Week 10 Weigh In -- 321.2/321.2
I weighed in on Friday, but had such a crazy busy weekend I couldn't post. So I will weigh-in again this Friday, May 18.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Obesity "Gene"?
My early morning surf usually takes me to the New York Times Online, and today was no different. On the front page, I found this article on whether or not obesity is a 'natural' condition for some people's bodies, based on their genetic code. I read the article with an open mind, though my instinct is to discount such theories because 1) I want to feel as though I am master of my domain, so to speak, and NEED to believe that if I work hard enough, I can control my weight and my health and 2) I've seen the power of environment on my parents, who were thin throughout my entire childhood, and who gained weight upon becoming sedentary -- they stopped playing recreational sports and working out in their 30s, and started gaining weight, though neither has reached the heights of obesity that I can lay claim to. Anyway, because I am aware of this personal bias, I made every attempt to read the article with a positive, friendly mindset. Yet several things about the studies stood out as unscientific to me, and I wondered how the author of the article could have overlooked these important issues.
One of the major points used to justify the hypothesis of the article is that in the few studies cited, formerly obese people's metabolisms were in starvation mode compared with "naturally thin" people's metabolisms who gained and then lost weight. Forgive me for being trite, but, duh. The individuals in one study cited were given 600 calories per day on a liquid diet. They lost more than 100 pounds in a very short amount of time due to severe calorie restriction. There was absolutely no mention of exercise in their program, which leads me to believe that there wasn't any. Of course their metabolisms appeared to be starving -- they were! Other studies seemed to follow the same pattern -- they focused on calorie restriction as means to weight loss, rather than the combination of healthy eating and exercise. The final evidence used to support the hypothesis is that in studies of adoptive children and twins, those with biological parents who are obese tended to be obese themselves. I have a couple of beefs with this. First of all, what's the standard deviation compared to the rate of obesity in the population at large? Secondly, if 80 percent of children have the obesity gene from at least one parent, why aren't 80 percent of us obese? The article closes with an ominous comparison of a formerly obese person's drive to eat to a normal person's need to breathe, which the scientist urges the formerly obese person to resist. Snort. Either that's a horribly inaccurate analogy and the drives are not on a similar level of intensity, or you are telling people who have this horrible genetic tendency that they should not do something that is as essential to their bodies as breathing. So which one is it, doc?
Reading articles like this always piss me off. I'm a social scientist, not a 'hard' scientist, but even I, with my piddling, bumbling introduction to the scientific method know that any study that does not take into account the effect of exercise on metabolism is not strictly scientific -- it does not look at all causal variables, and makes a conclusion that purports to explain a phenomenon with multiple causal variables. There is an argument to be made, equally as compelling as the genetics argument, that our modern sedentary lifestyles contribute to the obesity epidemic as least as significantly as genetics. I'm certainly not saying that genetics doesn't play a large part, but correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
For my part at least... I've been obese since childhood. I've lost and gained a whole person. My metabolism is pretty dang slow. Yet I can say with complete honesty that since I started eating properly (getting in my five fruits and veggies per day, I can say that I regularly eat 1000 calories a day without feeling deprived) and exercising, I have not been hungry or had cravings, not one single time in two and some months. I guess I must have a genetic anomaly.
One of the major points used to justify the hypothesis of the article is that in the few studies cited, formerly obese people's metabolisms were in starvation mode compared with "naturally thin" people's metabolisms who gained and then lost weight. Forgive me for being trite, but, duh. The individuals in one study cited were given 600 calories per day on a liquid diet. They lost more than 100 pounds in a very short amount of time due to severe calorie restriction. There was absolutely no mention of exercise in their program, which leads me to believe that there wasn't any. Of course their metabolisms appeared to be starving -- they were! Other studies seemed to follow the same pattern -- they focused on calorie restriction as means to weight loss, rather than the combination of healthy eating and exercise. The final evidence used to support the hypothesis is that in studies of adoptive children and twins, those with biological parents who are obese tended to be obese themselves. I have a couple of beefs with this. First of all, what's the standard deviation compared to the rate of obesity in the population at large? Secondly, if 80 percent of children have the obesity gene from at least one parent, why aren't 80 percent of us obese? The article closes with an ominous comparison of a formerly obese person's drive to eat to a normal person's need to breathe, which the scientist urges the formerly obese person to resist. Snort. Either that's a horribly inaccurate analogy and the drives are not on a similar level of intensity, or you are telling people who have this horrible genetic tendency that they should not do something that is as essential to their bodies as breathing. So which one is it, doc?
Reading articles like this always piss me off. I'm a social scientist, not a 'hard' scientist, but even I, with my piddling, bumbling introduction to the scientific method know that any study that does not take into account the effect of exercise on metabolism is not strictly scientific -- it does not look at all causal variables, and makes a conclusion that purports to explain a phenomenon with multiple causal variables. There is an argument to be made, equally as compelling as the genetics argument, that our modern sedentary lifestyles contribute to the obesity epidemic as least as significantly as genetics. I'm certainly not saying that genetics doesn't play a large part, but correlation does not necessarily equal causation.
For my part at least... I've been obese since childhood. I've lost and gained a whole person. My metabolism is pretty dang slow. Yet I can say with complete honesty that since I started eating properly (getting in my five fruits and veggies per day, I can say that I regularly eat 1000 calories a day without feeling deprived) and exercising, I have not been hungry or had cravings, not one single time in two and some months. I guess I must have a genetic anomaly.
Friday, May 4, 2007
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