Month: October 2014

racing

Tracy’s First Half Marathon: A Whole Lot of Fun

Tracy I8 Comments
Biting into my medal at lunch after the race.
Biting into my medal at lunch after the race.

Everyone always says there is no point if it’s not fun.  But seriously, “fun” is an odd demand to make for endurance races. There are lots of great things about the challenge of endurance events. They’re satisfying. They create that adrenaline rush. They show us what we can do.

But fun?  I don’t know. Before Sunday I might have thought that to expect it to be fun might be, well, a bit unrealistic.

But fun it was. Here’s my race report for the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon.

The Night before the Night before

Anita told me that her coach told her what apparently is a secret that escaped me until now: the night before the night before the race is more important than the night before.  Since this little gem fell into my possession in time enough for me to plan appropriately, Renald and I had a quiet night in on Friday, two days before the Sunday race.

I cooked an elaborate meal (Spaghetti Squash Mexicana with Pineapple-Avocado salsa) and baked a coconut-lemon cake (because I promised to bring a vegan to the family gathering in Toronto in celebration of my 50th birthday the night before the race and Veg Out was unable to cater it for me by the time I called them). Cooking complicated things from scratch is a thing I do when I want to relax and empty the mind.

By the time I took out the cake, the stress of the short week behind me had dissipated. I crawled into bed and pulled off one of the best sleep’s of the year–as challenging a feat at this time of life as a half marathon.

One Day until Race Day

Rob and Anita picked me up for the 2 hour drive to Toronto. Anita kept us occupied by reading the “Race Etiquette” sheet that she’d printed from the website. There were lots of rules, from things like “Run or walk no more than two abreast” to “Don’t put loose change in your jacket pocket — it is very distracting for other runners around you.”

There was a detailed account of how to approach hydration stations, for example, “Throw your used cup to the side of the road as close to the hydration station as possible. Drop your cup down by your waist so you don’t hit/splash another participant.”

Rob dropped us off at the Race Expo so we could pick up our kits.  With 20,000 participants in the race and mandatory pre-race day kit pick-up, the expo gave us a sense of what the starting line would feel like the next day: crowded.

The cake and I survived.

Onward to  meet my god-daughter who drove me to the family get together where I got to spend time with loved ones whom I see all too infrequently. After a few hours of fabulous company (I’ve got great relatives) and an abundance of excellent food, my cousin dropped me off at my hotel, where I arrived just at the same time that Rob and Anita were getting back from dinner.  I got my cookie (Doubletree), room-key, a late check-out, and by the time I was done at the front desk Rob had brought my suitcase up from the underground parking.

Anita and I made a plan to meet at 8:20 a.m. to get to the start line for 8:45.  I had the time etched into my mind when I got up to the 8th floor. When my room key failed to open up room 820, I checked for my room number again.  817.  Oops.

I like to lay out everything I will or might need the night before a race, from clothing to race bib to accessories to breakfast. I never ever rely on a hotel for breakfast on a race day.

I spent a little while after that obsessively checking the weather. The forecast was partly cloudy and a cold 3 degrees Celsius in the morning. I missed the memo about bringing throwaway clothes to toss to the side of the road (later to be picked up for charity) as conditions warmed up through the race.  So along with my capris I had a tank, two long-sleeved layers (to be tied around my waist, not thrown aside, if necessary), gloves, Buff for keeping my ears and head warm, and gloves. Other essentials: Garmin Forerunner to give us our 10-1s, water and fuel belt, new belt for phone so we could take some pictures, shot blocks and gels, sunglasses.

Some of my stuff -- in the end the cold temperatures determined that Buff would come with me and the hat wouldn't.
Some of my stuff — in the end the cold temperatures determined that Buff would come with me and the hat wouldn’t.

Bedtime.  Alarm set for 6:30 a.m.

Race Day

My stomach is the only way I can tell I’m nervous on race day. Even if I feel totally calm, I have to force down whatever food I need to eat and I need to spend a bit of time in the bathroom.  Sunday was no different.  I made up my cereal and even drank a real coffee (I only ever do this before races, and even then, only sometimes).

I kicked around the hotel room for about an hour and a half after my shower. It gave me enough time to eat, drink the coffee, journal, meditate, stretch, shower, and go into a state of frantic indecision about how many layers to wear, whether to wear the cap or the Buff.

Anita (in her throwaway hoodie) and I (in my Buff and not throwaway top) at the starting line. As someone remarked when they saw this pic, we are the only two who are smiling. Yes, it was COLD.
Anita (in her throwaway hoodie) and I (in my Buff and not throwaway top) at the starting line. As someone remarked when they saw this pic, we are the only two who are smiling. Yes, it was COLD.

At 8:20, with my three layers and the Buff, I met Anita in the lobby and off we went to find the purple corral. That was the corral we were assigned to based on our estimated finishing time of 2:30.  Yes, it’s not overly ambitious, but hey, running 21+ K is ambition enough for me.  The streets were teaming with people. Our corral was near the end, way back from the starting arch. You couldn’t even see it from where we were standing, shoulder to shoulder with others who planned to run a similar pace.

We knew we were in the right place because we were very near the 2:30 continuous pace bunny and the 2:30 run-walk (10-1) pace bunny. Though we didn’t choose to run alongside the run-walk pace bunny, we did keep her in view for the whole race.

It’s tough to wait around on a freezing morning when you know full well that you’ll be warm enough soon, but there’s nothing you can do to warm up right then.  Start time was 8:45 a.m., but the purple corral was far enough back that we wouldn’t hit the starting line for another 20 minutes after that.

We began to move forward, walking then stopping, walking then stopping. The red and white balloon arch came into view.  Walking, stopping, walking, stopping. And then we crossed over the timing mat, I hit start on the Garmin, and we began to run.

Anita and I had agreed to keep to a 10-1 system for most of the race, aiming for a 2:30 finish. That meant that we need to sustain slightly better than a 7 minute/kilometre pace to accommodate our walk-breaks.  She is a self-described pace dominatrix. I, on the other hand, get carried away by the moment.

Running through the streets of a major city with thousands of other people is just the sort of “moment” that gets my energy up. Enthusiastic spectators lined the side of the road. When we ran west on Bloor Street past Varsity Stadium, the University of Toronto cheerleaders waved their blue and white pom poms as runners sped by.  The crowds on the side of road thinned out a bit as we headed south, but there was never a quiet stretch with nothing. We passed reggae bands and showgirls, people holding up signs telling us (well, not us specifically) how awesome we were, and a few stunned pedestrians trapped on one side of a road that the constant stream of runners rendered impossible to cross (I guess they forgot about the race).

Anita and I chatted and checked with each other as we went.  We skipped the first walk break, still finding our stride and not quite yet settled into the right pace.  We passed by the first hydration station as well. The first 5K just whipped by, hardly even noticed we were running.  We passed by the Princess Gates at Exhibition Place (that’s where we saw the showgirls) and headed west along towards the waterfront. By the time we got there, people ahead of us were coming back the other way on the lake side of the boulevard.

Impatient runners shuffled from side to side as they withstood the long line-ups at the banks of port-o-potties at regular intervals on the course. You have to know that if someone is lining up in the middle of a race, they really need it. Anita and I ran on, thankfully neither needing a potty break at any point during the race.

I felt strong and happy.  Anita was also having a good run. The signs for each kilometre just kept on coming. No sooner had we passed 10 than, hey, there’s 11.  We stayed on pace.  The run-walk pace bunny had a crowd around her. We would pass them as they took their walk-breaks and then they would pass us as we took ours. After skipping the first two, we settled into 30 second breaks for a few rounds. From about 10-16 K we stayed fresh by taking the full minute.

It was in that stretch that I started reaching for the Gatorade when it was offered.  On our walk breaks I popped a couple of shot blocks.  But still, I felt strong. I can’t tell you what we were talking about, but Anita and I kept chatting. We sometimes ran into others from her running group who’d been training for about the same pace. With them, the spectators, the happy pace bunny and her crew, the perfect pace, the lake — you could feel the love.

And then we hit a bottleneck at about 18K where the marathoners split from the half marathoners and everyone seemed to get crunched into a lane that was too small.  The congested roadway was just one source of distress. I felt immediately exhausted when I thought of the marathoners who still had more than half their race to go.

The energy began to drain from my legs. At that point, I had to stop talking.  My smile was well and truly gone. I know this from the professional race photos that I have the option of purchasing if I want — no smiles.

Where earlier, the kilometers seemed to collapse into one another, now, the final stretch felt endless.  At about 2K to go, Anita said, “We don’t have to talk anymore,” which I’d already stopped doing anyway.

We had been opting for shortened walk-breaks for a while, reducing them to 30 seconds so we could keep to our pace. We still had the walk-run pace bunny in view, and when we dropped down to the 30 second intervals we passed her and she didn’t quite catch up.

Approaching Queen’s Park and City Hall, Rob called out from the side of the road. He waved and snapped some photos of us and urged us on.

Anita and I coming to the last few hundred metres. Okay, so I had a little smile left. Photo credit: Rob Stainton.
Anita and I coming to the last few hundred metres. Okay, so I had a little smile left. Photo credit: Rob Stainton.

Just after we saw Rob, the sign said “500 metres to go.” Then 400, then 300, then 200 and 100. The last few kilometres my breathing got more labored. Anita said later that it wasn’t obvious that I was struggling, but I honestly had to talk myself through those final hundred metres.

And then we crossed the finish line in just under 2:30. We kept walking as we passed through the finishing chute (that was one of the rules–keep moving when you get to the end).  I had no idea we were getting medals from this race, but we did get the best finishing medal I’ve seen so far in my short racing career. We grabbed a foil blanket, a cup of Gatorade, and a bottle of water.

The temperature hadn’t got much warmer, so as soon as we stopped running we felt the chill. The foil blanket blocked the wind and made a remarkable difference. We kept following the crowd–and it was a crowd–to the food. We exchanged the voucher at the bottom of our race bibs for a plastic bag that contained a banana, a few pieces of flavored melba toast, some gummies, and a breakfast pita. Nom nom.

After the race, with foil blankets and food bags.
After the race, with foil blankets and food bags.

We tried to find Rob in the swarms of people but had no luck.  Rather than stand around and freeze, we pulled our foil blankets around us and walked back to the hotel.

Thank heavens for the late check-out and a hot shower.

Time: 2:29:13

 

 

sleep

Sleep, better alone or together?

Sam B5 Comments

While I was away at a conference this past weekend, I thought I’d try out the android sleep tracker. I confess I’ve been curious for awhile about how much deep sleep I got. With a king size bed all to myself, I slept like a rock star. Eight hours, eleven minutes. 75% of that in deep sleep. Woo hoo.

(By the way, I’m doing well on this week’s resolution. So far, no snoozing. It works well having the alarm go off in a light sleep period, I think, though it’s hard to get used to the random awakening times. Ah, 5:22. You again.)

On a regular weeknight, my sleep is not so luxurious. Usually I get seven hours and change. And I get less deep sleep.

I share my bed with my partner, when he’s not in Toronto, and with our cuddly labradoodle (that’s a guess, she’s a rescue puppy) Olivia. Sometimes, also, the cat.

Behind us are the days of multiple babies and toddlers in the bed. It was a futon then, king size, with lots of room for extras.

Sharing a bed isn’t just about sleep quality though. There’s also sex, conversation, cuddling, and companionship to consider.

Strictly from the sleep quality point of view, it turns too there’s no clear consensus on whether alone or together is better. I’d heard three of these arguments before, better alone, better together and in opposite sex couples, worse for women, better for men. The new one was worse for men, better for women.

Better for everyone
Sleeping together improves health

Couples sleeping on the same bed may live longer and be in better health that people who sleep by themselves, experts say.

In fact, some researchers believe that sleeping with a partner may be a major reason why people in intimate relationships tend to be in better health.

Worse for everyone
Why It Might Be Healthier to Sleep Alone
From the marriage sucks file: The couple that snoozes together, loses together. scientists say sleeping together ruins your health.

The study reports that if you’re shacked up and sharing a bed, you experience 50% more sleep troubles than singletons. Sleeping together is downright unhealthy. So weird – I’m not married for this exact reason! Strategic brilliance from Ost, yet again.

Better for women, worse for men:

Bed sharing ‘drains men’s brains’

Sharing a bed with someone could temporarily reduce your brain power – at least if you are a man – Austrian scientists suggest.
When men spend the night with a bed mate their sleep is disturbed, whether they make love or not, and this impairs their mental ability the next day.

The lack of sleep also increases a man’s stress hormone levels.

According to the New Scientist study, women who share a bed fare better because they sleep more deeply.

Better for men, worse for women

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21091112/ns/health-sleep/t/men-sleep-better-beside-mate-women-worse/

Taylor’s trouble getting a good night’s rest next to her husband isn’t unusual.Women sleep less soundly when they share a bed with a romantic partner, a study published this month in Sleep and Biological Rhythms found. Surprisingly, men actually sleep better when they sleep next to a woman.

There are a lot more couples sleeping separately than you might guess, says Mark Mahowald, director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis and a professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. An estimated 23 percent of American couples sleep apart, according to a survey by the National Sleep Foundation. A Canadian study reported that 34 percent of couples hit the sack separately.

cycling

Bike question from a reader

Sam B11 Comments

A blog reader asks,

Another bike question for y’all: What kind of bike (frame type, tire/tyre type, etc.) would you recommend for a commuting bike? I have a bike that I bought years ago for this purpose, but the dimensions are more towards an upright cruiser. What I gain in relief on my lower back I lose in stroke power and strain on my knees, so I’m looking for something else, but I don’t know where to start. I don’t think a long-distance road bike is what I want just yet, but I would like to be able to ride this comfortably for ~10 miles or so at a time.

Suggestions?

 

sleep

Snoozing the snooze button, that’s my resolution for this week

Sam B8 Comments

As regular readers of this blog likely know, sleep is my super power. But despite my motto, start as you mean to continue, this term got off to a tough start.

I have no trouble at all getting to sleep and I can still nap anywhere at anytime. But getting up this semester is proving to be a challenge

I’m teaching until 9 p.m.on Mondays and that sets the whole week up wrong.  I’m up later than usual Friday night and Saturday night and now Monday nights too. Sometimes I even add Sunday to the list and do some late evening grocery shopping. Staying up too late and struggling to get up in the morning has been my Autumn bad habit.

I’ve been relying on the snooze button more than I like. My alarm goes off at 5 or 6 and instead of leaping out of bed, I snooze until twenty past and sometimes until 7. That’s when I absolutely have to get up to wake teens and get us all out the door by 815.

I know the snooze sleep isn’t good sleep. But somehow, I keep snoozing.

This week, no snoozing. I may need to pick a later time for the first alarm but this week it’ll be the first, last, and only alarm. My partner’s alarm only goes off when you solve a math problem. It’s set to the most difficult level. I know this because it sometimes goes off while he’s showering and my math skills, without glasses are limited.

I’m looking over my options. How to you wake up in the morning? Alarm or no alarm? easy off or challenging off? Snooze or no snooze?

Here’s the case against snoozing.

Snoozers are losers

It may seem like you’re giving yourself a few extra minutes to collect your thoughts. But what you’re actually doing is making the wake-up process more difficult and drawn out. If you manage to drift off again, you are likely plunging your brain back into the beginning of the sleep cycle, which is the worst point to be woken up—and the harder we feel it is for us to wake up, the worse we think we’ve slept. (

Why the snooze button is ruining your sleep

Weird but true: Relying on the alarm clock’s snooze button can actually make us more tired. Especially after a night of too little sleep, hitting snooze won’t make getting up any easier. Those five extra minutes in the morning are less restful than five minutes of REM sleep because they take place at the end of the cycle when sleep is lighter. And, although sleep is usually the time when the brain forms new memories, that process doesn’t happen while we’re sleeping in between alarms. Skipping that high-quality sleep can have serious consequences: A recent study found high school students with poor sleep habits (including using an alarm to wake up) didn’t do so well in school [2].

The secret to an easier wakeup is simple—get more sleep! Set the alarm for the time you actually get out of bed (i.e. the last snooze) and avoid the snooze button altogether. If keeping those paws off the alarm clock is just too difficult, try placing the alarm clock across the room. It’s much easier to resist the siren song of the snooze button if it’s not right next to the bed! Die-hard snoozers should try to minimize the damage by setting the alarm for 10 minutes earlier than usual and snoozing just once or twice. Ten minutes of disrupted sleep ain’t perfect, but it’s better than 30 or 60!

Hitting the snooze button is damaging your health

According to data collated from 136,000 people between 2003 to 2012, people felt best when they awoke naturally, but snoozing was alse seen as a pleasurable experience. “It feels like a blissful dream state because the closer you get to wakening, the more rapid-eye movement and dreams occur,” Dinges explained. However snoozing does not add to people’s total sleep quota, it simply prolongs the act of waking up, he said

Why the snooze button is evil

The reason I dislike the snooze button is that it represents a pernicious self-deception about how you plan to spend your mornings. There is nothing wrong with sleeping. Sleep is wonderful. If you’d like to spend your mornings sleeping, why not set the alarm for the time you actually intend to get out of bed? Your body would probably prefer 27 minutes of uninterrupted sleep to three 9-minute segments of snooze-button time.

Instead, the snooze button is a weapon in the battle between the selves we’d like to be and the selves we actually are. Research into the science of willpower finds that we wake up with a robust supply of self-discipline that is then depleted by decision-making during the day (see my related post, Can You Learn Willpower?). The snooze button turns the simple act of getting out of bed into a willpower-sapping episode of trench warfare. I’ll give you 9 minutes if you promise not to take so long in the shower. I’ll give you 9 more minutes if you don’t eat breakfast. Eventually, your ability to invest that willpower in meaningful tasks later on is shot.

Uncategorized

Reblogged: Sleep is a feminist issue

Sam B

I’m going to be blogging about sleep this week. Here’s an older post about the significance of sleep.
Cheers, Sam

Guest Post · health · weight loss

Disappointing news (Guest Post)

natalieh (she/her)8 Comments

It wasn’t all that long ago I was celebrating being off blood pressure meds and musing poetic about losing 20lbs. On Oct 15, just 5 days after my fortieth birthday I had a follow-up with my doctor for my blood pressure. It read 145/97. That is not what I was expecting.

I had arrived early, drank little coffee and had been relaxing in the waiting room, confident I would be in the 120/80  zone. I had met my first weight loss goal of 10% of my mass, which for me is 27 lbs. I had picked that because of what I read on the Heart & Stroke Foundation website and that amount of weight loss was correlated to reduced blood pressure.

Friends had cautioned me (I’m looking at you Cato, you very well informed and smart woman) that weight loss may not lead to lower blood pressure and I’m glad I opted not to have bariatric surgery. I would have been in the position of having had surgery and still be on blood pressure meds, pretty much intervention hell for me.

So I was pretty bummed out, actually I was really pissed off. (ya, ya “Type A” blah blah blah). When leaving the treatment room, with my new prescription in hand, I ducked into the washroom and had a pretty good cry. I pulled myself together enough to book my follow-up appointment, got to the car and cried the whole way to work. I looked like a red puffer fish. Thankfully I have an office and could quietly be a wreck as I went about my work.

I had started some intensive therapy in April because, like a great post on here by Moira said, I shouldn’t confuse the therapeutic benefits of exercise, blogging and my support network with actual therapy. I knew I needed to make substantive changes for my health including attitudes to food.

So it is disappointing, but not devastating, that I will be on meds for the rest of my life. I will also eat food, mostly plants, not too much. I will keep moving my body and accessing the services I need to be well, like my doctor, chiropractor, massage therapist and psychologist. I’m ridiculously resourced. I better leverage that for the best outcomes because it turns out I’m worth the effort after all. 🙂

image

racing · training · Uncategorized

Heading out for My First Half Marathon

Tracy I4 Comments

slides14_youtubeYes, you read that right. I’m finally doing that half marathon I said was my main “fittest by 50” goal way back, before I discovered triathlon. See my post about goals here.

My commitment to that changed after my first triathlon. But when I started doing longer runs on Sunday mornings with my friend, Anita, before I left for Burning Man, she asked if I’d be interested in the Scotiabank Waterfront Half Marathon in Toronto (that’s the same one Stephanie wrote about the other day, but she’s a true amazon–doing the full marathon). I had two months to train for it, and it would be one month after my Lakeside Olympic distance triathlon.

Why not?  I registered (which, as I’ve said before, is enough to get me to follow through).

My training for this race has been haphazard, at best. I kept up something of a running routine on our summer vacation, with runs along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and in hilly Sedona, Arizona. But once we got to the Nevada desert, the environment was just too harsh.  That took out a week of training, though Burning Man challenged me physically in other ways.

For the past few weeks, I’ve managed a couple of runs during the week and longer runs on Sundays.  Twice I embarked on 18K all by myself.  The first time, Anita couldn’t make it but I knew I had to show up for the distance or risk not being ready for tomorrow’s half.

That’s when my whole view of long distances changed. Instead of facing the run with fear and dread, I looked at it as a morning outing. I gathered up my water and my snacks, put on some sunscreen and my red running cap, grabbed my sunglasses and set the Garmin to 10-1 intervals so I could run-walk my way.

I pre-planned a route in advance so there’s be no guesswork.  We’ve been blessed with outstanding fall weather this year.  I brought my iPhone so I could listen to music or a book. And off I went.

The first 15K or so I felt fresh and strong.  Towards the end, my legs dragged and I shuffled along, hardly able to pick up my feet. I had to add some extended walk breaks — two minutes instead of one — and a bit more frequently.

I coaxed myself along with promises like “make it as far as that road sign and you can take a walk break” and “you’re almost at the top of the hill” and my go-to comment when I’m depleted and all creativity has left me: “you can do this!”  And I did do it.

The next week was better. I added on 0.5K just because. I didn’t have to take more frequent breaks and there was no need to lengthen them. Yes, my legs ached and my feet got tired. But I wasn’t shuffling at all.

Two weeks ago I did my last long run with Anita and a friend.  20K on a perfect autumn morning. I’d enjoyed running alone but with the two of them, it really did feel like a leisurely outing. I wrote about it in my post about doing the impossible: here. I realize that leisurely is probably not the adjective I’ll be looking for tomorrow when I’m at the race.

Anita and I are driving to Toronto with my longtime friend and colleague (who happens to be her spouse), Rob, later this morning.  We’ll check into our hotel, go to the Race Expo, pick up our kits, and soak in the prospect of doing a race that has 10,000 people in it!  This afernoon my god-daughter is picking me up for a family party in my honor (for my 50th–let the celebrations continue!).

I’m planning an early night, a restful sleep, and a quiet morning leading up to the race.  Start time: 8:45 a.m. It’ll be chilly, but hey, we’re Canadian. And the sun will be shining.  Report to follow.

So far, being 50 is working for me!

 

 

weight loss

Slow or speedy, when it comes to weight loss, it’s up to you

Sam B1 Comment

Why? Because when it comes to the long term, they’re both equally bad.

You might decide you want to lose weight anyway. I’ve got some hills I want to climb on my bike. Maybe you’ve got some health reasons that make losing weight even in the short time worthwhile. I wouldn’t recommend losing weight for a high school reunion or a wedding but I wouldn’t judge you for it either.

A recent blog post looked at a new study that showed slow, gradual weight loss and speedy, dramatic results style weight loss had the same effect long term. No matter how you lose it, small changes in habits or drastic measures, the weight returns for most of us. It’s not even the case that weight lost slowly comes back slowly and weight lost quickly comes back quickly.

Mainstream media instantly declared it a victory for Team Speedy.

How so?

Well, in recent years the tide has turned against quick weight loss. The claim was that quick weight loss just leads to quick weight regain. It was thought that slow gradual weight loss, with a lifetime change in habits, had better long term results.

And you can see how the reasoning goes. With long, slow weight loss you have time to consolidate the changes. What was once strange becomes the new normal. The slow losers seem to have taken the moral high ground. They can be anti diet and lose weight the right way.

I confess that I’ve been judgemental about friends who set out to lose weight quickly, whether it’s on the Tim Ferriss diet or the more usual extreme low calorie plans. I’ve also touted gradual habit change over quick fixes.

After all, it sounds so sensible. Give yourself time to make the new habits stick. It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change, blah blah. But here’s something about that that’s never sat quite right with me.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think weight regain is about necessarily going back to your old ways and having old habits creep back. It hasn’t felt that way to me when I’ve regained weight. Indeed, I’ve tracked and counted and weighed and measured all the while gaining weight.

See Weight lost and gained where I talk about the idea of habits and weight loss maintenance.

While debate exists about how many people regain weight they’ve lost (let’s just say most, or lots), how much weight they regain (all of it or more) and how long it typically takes to regain weight (certainly within five years pretty much everyone will have gained it back), no one denies that keeping weight off is much, much harder than losing it in the first place.

When people talk about weight regain one thing they often say, which I think is mistaken, is that people regain weight because they give up the restrictions and go back to their old habits. As Ragen Chastain says, “The myth goes that almost everyone fails at weight loss because almost everyone quits their diet and goes back to their old habits/doesn’t have the willpower to keep dieting/doesn’t do it “right”” But that’s not what the evidence says. People have a hard time keeping the weight off because their bodies have changed.”

This recent study isn’t the first evidence against the claim that slow weight loss is better than fast.

I asked about our preference for slow weight loss in an earlier post, questions and quibbles about weight loss:

What’s better in terms of losing weight and keeping it off, slow weight loss or fast weight loss? The common sense view is that it’s better do it slowly, that too restrictive a diet sends your body into starvation mode. But commonsense isn’t always right and though I like the common sense view, recent research casts some doubt on it.

But see 4 days, 11 pounds in the New York Times.

Losing weight is simple: Ingest fewer calories than your body burns. But how best to do that is unclear. Most experts advise small reductions in calories or increases in exercise to remove weight slowly and sensibly, but many people quit that type of program in the face of glacial progress. A new study, published in March in The Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, suggests that minimal calories and maximal exercise can significantly reduce body fat in just four days — and the loss lasts for months. The catch, of course, is that those four days are pretty grueling.

In a study, on men, of course, a group of test subjects worked out a lot (8 hours a day) and ate next to nothing (just 360 calories a day) but 4 days. Of course, they lost a lot of weight but what got the researchers attention was that it stayed away.

More surprising, the men did not immediately put the weight back on after the study ended. “We thought they would overeat and regain the weight lost,” Dr. Calbet says. Instead, when the volunteers returned a month later, most had lost another two pounds of fat. And a year after the experiment, they were still down five pounds, mostly in lost body fat.

See also Seven Dangerous Myths about Weight Loss.

“There’s no reason to think that slow, gradual weight loss is better over the long-term compared to losing lots of weight fast. A pooled analysis of randomized clinical trials that compared rapid weight loss and slow weight loss (or, to be more precise, extreme diets and less grueling ones) found that though the extreme diets resulted in the loss of 66% more weight (16% of body weight versus 10% for the regular diets), there was no difference at the end of a year.”

That’s reporting on research in “Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity,” by Krista Casazza et al, New Engl J Med 2013; 368:446-454, January 31, 2013.

What this means is, it’s up to you.

If you decide it’s worth it to lose weight for as long as you can keep it off, it’s up to you how you do that. Slow and gradual sounds more sensible but if you prefer the “pulling off a band aid” method then go for it.

I’ve had experience with both kinds of weight loss this past year. I did the Precision Nutrition online nutrition counseling program for a year and lost 15 lbs during our run to up to “fittest by fifty.” Then the year went badly wrong with two deaths in the family and I regained most of the weight I’d lost within a couple of months.

Lesson learned, weight lost slowly can be regained pretty quickly. Also, death changes everything.

But then the summer cycling season hit and my significant other decided time on the bike was excellent grief therapy. I rode 1300 kms in July and the weight dropped off quickly. Zoom! Speedy weight loss.

Normally I get off the bike starving so that never happens but I’ve also gotten better about eating a lot on the bike and so now that happens less often.

I’ve also given up my belief that slow and steady is necessarily better than making progress in hard, fast bursts. I should have known that. On the bike, I’m a better sprinter than I am endurance athlete. Maybe that’s the case with weight loss as well.

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Guest Post

Guest post: Philosopher Charlotte Witt on “Livestrong”

Sam B7 Comments

orange kayak on car roof

Before being diagnosed with breast cancer in April 2013, I was a physically active person, who enjoyed yoga, dance, biking, kayaking and also went to the gym regularly. Although I was no athlete in my pre-cancer life, it was shocking to find myself in a wheelchair unable to breathe or to walk as a consequence of chemotherapy induced pulmonary embolisms and atypical pneumonia. Once I pulled through the crisis I decided that regaining my range of physical activities would be the central focus of my life after treatment. Accordingly, a week before the end of my daily radiation treatments, I went back to work and I joined a Livestrong program at my local YMCA. (http://www.livestrong.org/) The Livestrong program provides free exercise coaching and YMCA membership to cancer “survivors”. Free is important because no matter how good your health insurance is, cancer is very expensive in the United States. I put the word “survivors” in quotes because the term implies a terminus of treatment, which for many Livestrong participants is ongoing, and because it suggests the equally mistaken idea that survivorship is a permanent rather than a temporary status.   Approximately 30% of people diagnosed with primary breast cancer will develop metastatic breast cancer.

 

I knew that I would not last long in a typical breast cancer support group, which would inevitably turn to spiritual theories, embarrassing self-disclosure and mind-numbing advocacy for all things pink. I thought things might go better in an activity based group whose members would understand the particular challenges of post-cancer fitness. For example, there is the wig problem. I would not be able to exercise in a wig; it would be too hot, it would move around, and it could not go in a ponytail. Also there was the difficulty of finding appropriate exercise gear for a prosthesis, and, indeed, finding an appropriate prosthesis. On top of these novel logistical challenges was the simple fact that I had not exercised for almost a year and had spent several weeks in a hospital bed. One day in bed is equivalent to a week of inactivity. I needed a group where when you miss a session and then show up explaining “I’ve been sick, but not really sick” they all get it. I could not imagine returning to my pre-cancer hot yoga class among all those apparently healthy and apparently perfect bodies or to dance class where every eye is on the mirror.

 

I had not anticipated two aspects of the Livestrong program. First, the informative presentations on topics like “The 10 Keys to Longevity” by so-called experts turned out to be riddled with misinformation about the causes of cancer and cancer medicine.   I was enraged by the implication that proper diet or exercise or stress reduction could have warded off our cancers and amazed by the hubris of the speakers and their fact-free speculations.   But I was equally dumbfounded by the sheer bravery and physical determination of my peers, several of whom had had multiple cancers, recurrences and damage or side effects from treatment. I took to heart the example they set, which combined the importance of optimism about the future with full immersion in the present moment.

 

Alas my story does not end triumphantly with a triathlon “for the cure” featuring a Livestrong team finish, although that would make for a nice narrative arc. My return to health and fitness BCE (before the cancer era) remains a goal rather than an achievement. It is taking longer, requiring more work and greater determination than I had anticipated. There is fatigue; there is pain, stiffness and lack of mobility in my arm.   There is residual weakness and discomfort from chemotherapy and radiation, and I still have neuropathy in my feet. My sense of balance has not yet returned. And, I am still unable to engage fully with two of my favorite pre-illness activities, biking and kayaking because of the threat of lymphedema if I lift anything over 8 pounds on my mastectomy side. So the simple task of loading my bike or my kayak onto the car has become a potentially dangerous proposition. These are all reminders of my illness that won’t be going away anytime soon. However, there are some unexpected gains.   Now, I am directly aware of the stubborn courage of those who are active despite whatever limitations they might have. And now I am able to experience the sheer pleasure of walking or running that is probably only available to someone who has been unable to walk or to run. For the time being, these gains will have to substitute for a triathlon finish or a race for the cure.

 

Charlotte Witt is a philosopher who lives in Maine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

diets · weight loss

Weight loss and the one question I want answered!

Sam B7 Comments

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A weight loss study is making the news today. See Gradual weightloss no better than crash diets in the long term.

That’s a link to the Guardian but it’s in every major newspaper.

It’s being headlined as a triumph for speedy weight loss though that is clearly a misnomer. The study follows a group of obese people who lose weight on two different plans, roughly long and slow, and short and speedy.

We all know that people who lose weight quickly gain it and more back within five years. That’s not news.

But what we tend to want to say is that’s not the right way to lose weight. What about people who do it the right way?

There are different versions of this mysterious right way but most have in common slow, gradual weight loss.

Except in this study both groups, fast and slow, regained the weight.

Oddly, this is being called a victory for speedy weight loss rather than another nail in the coffin of the impossible dream of losing weight and keeping it off.

From the Guardian story, linked above:

Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford, was also enthusiastic. Doctors should, on the basis of the study, feel they can suggest a very low calorie diet to an obese patient, if they feel that would suit them. She was not dismayed by the numbers who put weight back on. “After two years the mean weight in both groups was still 5% lower than baseline,” she pointed out. Even if they put it all back on, they will have been at a healthier weight for some of the time, which can only be good. Jebb, in fact, told me earlier this year that some people probably need to resign themselves to going on a diet every five years for the sake of their health.

Yoni Freedhoff on his blog Weighty Matters raises some excellent questions about the study. He notes, for example, that neither group received post weight loss counseling. We all know that it’s harder to keep weight off than it is to lose it but they were left to fail on their own.

The fact that weight lost comes back when the intervention you undertook to lose the weight is stopped is anything but surprising, and yet that is precisely what was done with both the rapid losers and the slow losers. That there was no difference in their rate of regain speaks more to the authors’ failure of recognizing obesity as a chronic condition, which like any chronic condition, returns once treatment is stopped, than it does to the speed participants lost weight using weight loss interventions that they were explicitly instructed to stop once their weight was lost.

In a discussion of this study on our Facebook page, a reader asks a question I’ve posed before and to which I’ve found no answer.

Suppose weight regain is inevitable. Barring some weight loss unicorns, that is what study after study shows.

If that’s true, should you try to lose weight? I posed that question as one of a few questions I have about weight loss here.

If you eventually regain the weight is it better health wise to have been at the lower weight for awhile, or better never to have lost it?

I suspect the answer is complicated by individual health factors and by variables such as the amount of weight.

I just saw an endocrinologist about my weight issues recently and was told that given my metabolic health markers, excellent all around, I have no health reasons to lose weight. But if I want to lose weight for other reasons (for example, hills) I’m not going to hurt myself either. I’m going to blog later about my status as a “healthy fattie” and why that’s a complicated crown to wear.

In the meantime, if you turn up any good answers to the question I’ve posed here, let me know!