Category: weight loss

athletes · body image · cycling · racing · training · weight loss

Big women on bikes

Sam B17 Comments

In my recent post about strava and downhill segments, I said it was no big surprise the victories were mine as weight is an advantage downhill and I’m the largest woman out there on a road bike. I don’t think that means I don’t deserve them. After all, being small is an advantage uphill and yet we don’t say the fastest climbers don’t deserve their strava trophies because they’re small.

Here I’m using the bigger/smaller language rather than calling all larger people “fat.”  Language is tricky. See here for why.

I confess I’ve often wondered why you don’t see more women of size on road bikes. Unlike running, cycling isn’t a weight bearing exercise. Your weight isn’t a huge disadvantage when riding on flat roads. Weight does hurt going up hill. Hill climbing is all about power to weight ratio but absent hills, weight doesn’t make a big difference.

It’s also an issue accelerating from standing still but again, how often do you do that on a typical ride?

Yes, modern road bikes are light but they’re not fragile. After all, they’re mostly built for men. Here’s a good discussion of bike choices which notes though the frames are typically built for 185 lb men they’re tested to a much higher weight.

Searching for information about road cycling and larger women was itself informative. I got lots of information about cycling as a means to weight loss. There’s some of that for men too, of course. But lots of the men’s info was much more matter of fact. “So you’re 350 lbs and you want to ride a road bike, here’s some advice on wheel choices.” Larger men who ride even joke about their size. A Clydesdale club was even selling jerseys that read “Big Men Break Wheels.”

I’d like to be leaner but it’s not the reason I ride my bike. Short version: I want to get up hills faster.

I see a lot more larger women running than I see riding. Of course, there’s women of all sizes running but I have wondered what puts larger women off road cycling.

There’s the image, I suppose. Road bike riding is all about the young, lean men with the physiques of greyhounds. But it’s a mistake to look at the Tour de France bodies and think that’s what you need around here.

A friend (hi Natalie!) recently suggested it was the extremely unflattering posture one assumes on a road bike that made cycling tricky for larger women. Let’s squish all the abdominal fat and breasts together! I laughed but later I wondered whether she might be on to something.

It doesn’t help either that you assume the unflattering posture while wearing skin tight cycling lycra.

Here’s the thing. I consider myself very body positive. Hills aside, I’m okay with my large active body. But Natalie got me thinking. Even I don’t like the way I look riding my bike! I love my bike. I love cycling. I post a lot of pictures of me with my bike, usually with me standing beside the bike. But riding shots? Not so much.

It’s not that I don’t own them. If you race, chances are there are photos of you out there riding. I hate it when they’ve got the camera near the top of the hill! But I tend not to share them. Tellingly, the photo below is saved on my computer with the file name “chubbyme.”

chubbyme

Maybe I’d be less self conscious if there were more of us out there. Come play! It’ll make you feel like a child again.

Here’s a happier me on a bike shot. I’m a little lighter it’s true but I’m also wearing a flowing dress on top. It’s from Red Dress Day on the Friends for Life Bike Rally…

image

Here’s some inspirational plus sized women cyclists with their stories:

http://www.borntoreignathletics.com/

Krista Henderson is an award-winning, multi sport plus size athlete. She began her athletic career in 2004 when her Fitness Director recommended she “train like an athlete”, in response to her commitment of living an active and healthy lifestyle. This advice dramatically shifted Krista away from the diet and exercise mentality, where she constantly felt the need to “fix” herself by solely focusing on losing weight. This fresh new approach set Krista on a path of changing the way she lived which resulted in becoming happier and healthier.

Since then, Krista has earned her certification as a Johnny G Spin Instructor and Can-Fit-Pro Personal Trainer, has coached athletes of all body shapes and abilities and has competed in over 20 races (triathlon, duathlon, half marathon and rowing).Through this journey, Krista has learned some key lessons and is now on a mission to share them and inspire other plus size women, to live a healthy life by tapping into their inner athlete. The foundation of the athletic lifestyle is rooted in properly fueling your body, working out with a purpose and getting plenty of rest.

 

Fat broad on a bike

Being overweight and being a cyclist is not contradictory. I’ve been both for 22 years. Too many women are psyched out by those lean bodies dancing on the pedals up the Gatineau Hills. Cycling does not require a skinny body, it helps if you want to go fast, but it’s not necessary to enjoy cycling.

Fat girl on a bike

The image of a bike commuter, especially one with true bike style, is often one of a lithe woman wearing incredibly cute clothes, pedaling easily with cute Po Campo panniers. When I say I am a bike commuter, this is the image I like to think people have. The reality for me, however, is very different, but it is one that I do my best to accept with open arms. I am a fat girl on a bike.

 

body image · fitness · Guest Post · health · weight loss

Canine fitness coach (Guest post)

Cate Hundleby

At one time I thought it would be good to have a small dog that I could take places with me, but I soon learned that a big dog could take me all sorts of places I really wanted to go! I had the chance to adopt a very nice husky-shepherd mix that a friend had rescued, and I knew she’d keep me active. I knew she could run with me, if I wanted, and that otherwise keeping her happy would require me to walk a lot. I named her Abbie – Abigail means “heavenly gift,” and she has not only required me to be active but helped me to enjoy exercise and build a better body image.

I’ve never particularly enjoyed exercise, except for step classes in certain places, dancing, and walking. Finding exercise that I can enjoy has been a long-term quest. I would run a little from time to time just because it was minimal hassle and investment. But running has become a special pleasure with Abbie: finding the freedom in letting out my stride and running alongside her, sharing the joy she finds in running. Nobody enjoys running like a dog, and perhaps no dogs more than huskies. Her pleasure at using her strength inspires me to simply enjoy what I’m doing, and to accept the exercise as an end in itself. We enjoy our movement, being together, and being simply being out!

I find it easiest to lose weight (and keep it off) when I run or get intense cardio of any kind, and I used to consider losing weight really important. It was my central reason for exercising: I’ve suffered from the usual body image nonsense that many women endure. I wanted a better motivation to exercise, but I couldn’t internalize the other goals it serves: stress reduction, energy, sleeping well, and so on. That’s a lot easier to do now that Abbie’s helped me to appreciate the pleasures of exercise itself, and being outside just to be in the light and the air. That motivates me to continue to exercise, so I can continue to do more, especially as my aging body needs encouragement.

Abbie checks out my new shoes, reserves judgement
Abbie checks out my new shoes, reserves judgement
Guest Post · weight loss

Losing 20 lbs: A complicated gift (Guest post)

natalieh (she/her)19 Comments

(Trigger warning: sexual assault)

I’ve been re-assessing my eating habits in light of my recent high blood pressure diagnosis and getting at the heart of over eating with the help of a psychologist. Fortunately eating intuitively has helped a great deal as well as using Canada’s Food Guide. Not exactly a miraculous breakthrough but it has meant, since that early April appointment I’ve lost 20 lbs. I don’t think weight loss is always the answer to high blood pressure but in my case it certainly is. That’s hard for me to say because for many people their blood pressure and weight don’t impact each other.

So it’s complicated when people start to notice I’ve lost weight. On my frame right around the 20 lb mark acquaintances who haven’t seen me in a bit start asking if there’s less of me. Nope, just a good bra shirt combo I say. Thankfully I’ve trained my friends to say “hey you look great” instead of “have you lost weight?”. I hate that question. I hate the assumptions about how losing weight must be my greatest achievement since, you know, getting my carcass out of bed. I get pretty angry about the patrolling of women’s bodies and that is partly why I cultivate a punk/queer aesthetic. I want you to know when you see me I don’t give a damn about what you think women should look like and keep that opinion to yourself. I’m not here to be attractive to you, I’m here for me and what I like…oh and leave me alone.

image

But acquaintances are hard to wrangle, I don’t want to get into it with them. I don’t want to tell them that I started overeating after that boy stuck his hand down my pants when I was 13 when I didn’t want him to. About the time a man I worked with showed me a picture of his penis in front of our entire crew. About the time a co-worker bit my neck at a party. and on and on and on and on and the food felt good. It felt safe and after gaining 100 lbs or so they did stop bothering me, until today. Today I was in the parking lot at work and a man walked up to me and said I looked nice. He made a whimpering sound when he said it, like he could barely contain himself. I walked away.

It’s not lost on me that women’s health is impacted by sexism. That women safety plan all the time just to go for a run or a hike or a bike ride. Sometimes I forget to do these things. I forget I have to plan on other’s behaviour threatening my well-being. I resent it but not so much that I will eat myself into an early grave.

So losing the first 20 lbs has been a complicated gift and something I’m not always up for talking about. I’m glad my blood pressure is back in the normal range without medication. I am enjoying eating lots of great foods while getting the therapy I need to be healthy. It’s not easy, confronting everyday sexism without numbing it out or getting so angry my head explodes. I think I forget that because I choose to confront sexism I have to work very hard to be fit. It’s hard to manage the stress and impact of calling people out on their crap or the guilt I feel those times I  just walk away.

So I keep on this path to being healthier/fitter/happier than I’ve been in a long time. It’s about so much more than how much I weigh or how much I’ve lost.

body image · swimming · training · weight loss

Why Swim?

Tracy I15 Comments
Swimmer in lake. Image credit: http://www.beaverlakeboaters.net/events/swimmers-trek-40-miles-to-beaver-dam/
Swimmer in lake. Image credit: http://www.beaverlakeboaters.net/events/swimmers-trek-40-miles-to-beaver-dam/

Regular readers of the blog will know that I am totally in love with swimming. So when Sam sent me this post “5 Reasons Why Swimming Is the Perfect Workout for Weight Loss” I kind of bristled. Why? Posts like this rub me the wrong way because they make it sound as if weight loss is the only good reason to do it.

What if swimming turned out to be great for our health but not great for weight loss?  Should we then ditch it?

But back to the five reasons. Here’s what the article says:

1. Burns calories

You can burn much more calories swimming than could while you walk or run. An average built person can easily burn 400-500 calories in a 60 minute session of moderate-intensity swimming.

2. Works out your muscles

The different strokes involved in swimming requires a good amount of muscle power. This gives your muscles a good workout every session. Those looking out for a muscle building workout should try high-intensity swimming as this can adequately stimulate your muscle growth.

3. Tones you out

Swimming no doubt exercises your whole body. When you swim your arms, shoulders, back, core, glutes and legs get a thorough workout thus toning them effectively.

4. Boosts metabolism

Any activity that burns calories and gets your heart rate up also boosts your metabolism. This makes swimming the perfect metabolism boosting activity. An active metabolism in turn aids fast weight loss.

5. Motivates you to try harder

The swimming attire usually requires you to strip down to bare minimal. This motivates you to train harder to look good in your swimwear.

I’m not going to quarrel with the first four things on the list.  It does burn calories, work out a variety of muscles, gives you a good total body workout, and as much as anything that gets your heart pumping it boosts the metabolism.

But that last reason? Really?  Swim suits are skimpy, so if you want to look good while you work out (see Sam’s post on looking cute while working out), you’ll be motivated to train really hard if you swim.  Strange logic.  In fact, emphasizing the minimalism of swim wear is more likely to discourage people who are body conscious from ever stepping onto the pool deck.

A bunch of good reasons to swim are missing from this list, and these aren’t all about weight loss.  Swimming is a non-impact activity, so it’s easier on the body than running.  It provides excellent cardio, so helps build a strong and healthy cardiovascular system. And that promotes endurance.  One of the things I love most about swimming is that feeling that I could go on forever.

I much prefer this post by Master’s swimmer Alex Kotisch: 9 Good Reasons Why You Should Get in the Pool. Among the reasons:

1. Heart Helper
Swimming provides unparalleled cardiovascular conditioning, provided you practice consistently and with good technique. While other forms of exercise may be more effective at elite levels (such as running or cycling), incorporating swimming into a cross-training routine and pushing yourself in practice will result in overall improved fitness.

2. Balance Your Build
Swimming builds longer, leaner muscles that complement the shorter denser muscles that develop from weight training. These “swimmer’s muscles” also help boost metabolism to keep calories burning longer.

3. Cross-training
Swimming not only boosts cardiovascular capacity while increasing muscle strength, but it also gives your body a break from higher-impact activities like basketball, running, and weightlifting. By creating a balanced workout routine, athletes avoid injury by allowing their body time to heal, while not forgoing daily training sessions.

4. Increased Flexibility
A heated pool relaxes muscles, increasing flexibility and enabling important stretching. Also, after intense lactic-acid-building endurance workouts (running, cycling, weights), an easy swim helps flush out toxins preventing muscle tightness and soreness the following day.

5. Strengthen Your Core
Swimming develops core body strength because it utilizes all the body’s muscles simultaneously. Although 70 percent of a swimmer’s effort comes from the upper body, kickboard and fin workouts can provide an excellent leg workout.

6. Endurance
Swimmers are able to swim longer than they can what they could sustain doing other activities. With the right technique, a swimmer will be able to train for longer periods of time than if he/she were running and, as a result, more calories are burned.

7. Adventure
Swimming has branched out from the darkened, indoor community pools of yesteryear. Many new health club chains offer clean lap pools, and local communities are finding renewed interest in outdoor facilities during the summer months. Seek out available natatoriums in your area (swimmersguide.com) and if you are able, locate a natural body of water (lake, ocean, pond, or quarry) and explore the joys of open-water swimming.

8. Social Outlet
Imagine meeting the man/woman of your dreams, and seeing what they look like without their clothes on for your first date! That’s one benefit, at least, of joining a Masters team or triathlon training group. In addition to the possibility of romance fueled by mutual interests, team programs offer peer motivation and professional coaching to provide you with increased performance results.

And finally, the last reason is: weight loss.

9. Weight Loss
“People who consistently swim strenuously enough to be out of breath when they finish and elevate their heart rate do burn calories and lose weight,” says Jane Moore, M.D., a physician and active swimmer from Tacoma, Washington. “The key is to push yourself a bit.”

“Putting on a swimsuit and appearing in public should also motivate one to shed a few pounds,” says Kris Houchens, head coach of the YMCA Indianapolis SwimFit Masters.

Again, there’s that ridiculous comment about having to appear in public in your swim suit.  Ugh. I’m all for promoting the other reasons to swim, but highlighting the horror of looking “unsightly” in a swim suit is, as I said before, much more likely to discourage people from taking a dip than it is to encourage them to work harder in the pool. We need to get people to the pool first.

I swim because it makes me feel energized and strong. I love the rhythm of my breathing when I swim, and the feeling of gliding through the water. I also find it a very meditative activity. I’ve blogged about that before.  Also, though I’m not the fastest swimmer in the pool, I am faster than a lot of people, and that makes me feel good.  It’s also amazing to take it out to the open water in the summer.

So for all the great reasons to swim, dive in! The water is fine!

eating · weight loss

Eating more veggies won’t make you lose weight, eat them anyway

Sam B6 Comments

Turns out that the truth sometimes isn’t what’s obvious or comfortable to believe. Some thing can seem true while being false, in fact. For example, I’ve long favoured approaches to nutrition that focus on the positive. Instead, of telling ourselves to eat less junk, we should instead focus on making sure we eat enough fruits and vegetable. And it’s true that eating enough fruits and vegetables is good for you, no matter what.

But here’s the rub. Sometimes it’s offered as an approach to weight loss. Don’t count calories or ban carbs (or whatever) just focus on making sure you eat enough of the good stuff. And you’ll lose weight. The idea is displacement. The thought is that carrots will take the place of cookies, arugula will be your go-to instead of apples, and you’ll eat fresh veggies before your meal instead of bread. That sounds right, doesn’t it?

But no. Sounds right, in fact, false.

See Kale Salad Won’t Make you Lose Weight.

“Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have found that increasing fruit and vegetable intake does not lead to weight loss, despite decades-old popular belief.

A team of investigators performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of data of more than 1,200 subjects in seven randomized, controlled trials to explore the weight loss effects of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption.

“Across the board, all studies we reviewed showed a near-zero effect on weight loss,” says study leader Kathryn Kaiser, Ph.D.,”

 

The displacement theory seems to be false, at least when it comes to fruits and vegetables. Randomized controlled trials are pretty much the gold standard when it comes to evidence.

“In the overall context of a healthy diet, energy reduction is the way to help lose weight, so to reduce weight you have to reduce caloric intake,” Kaiser said. “People make the assumption that higher-fiber foods like fruits and vegetables will displace the less healthy foods, and that’s a mechanism to lose weight; but our findings from the best available evidence show that effect doesn’t seem to be present among people simply instructed to increase fruit and vegetable intake.”

 

Three further things of note:

First, displacement seemed more effective when it comes to high protein foods. Simply adding two eggs for breakfast did reduce subjects’ overall calorie intake.

Second, the Precision Nutrition version of this theory comes with an additional tool, the idea that you only ever eat to 80% full. I wonder if that would make a difference.

Third, it’s still super healthy and good for you to eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables, even if doing so doesn’t lead to weight loss.

Image

 

diets · eating · health · weight loss

Non-Dairy Ice Cream Cleanse. Really?

Tracy I4 Comments

coconutThe article asks: “Would you go on an ice-cream diet to lose weight? New cleanse prescibes FIVE PINTS a day for four days straight.”

Let’s start with my answer to the question: No.

I don’t care if it’s dairy-free. Even if it were completely vegan (it’s got honey in it, so I’m kind of surprised that they’re claiming to be a vegan ice cream shop). I would not go on an ice cream cleanse to lose weight or to “detox.”  And I especially wouldn’t pay $240 for it!

Here’s are the deets:

Kippy’s, a vegan ice-cream store in Venice, is offering a $240 cleanse in which dieters eat five pints of raw coconut-based ice-cream a day for four straight days.

The cleanse, which amounts to 1,000-1,200 calories and 70 grams of fat per day and boasts 20-25 grams of sugar per ice-cream pint, is designed to help people lose weight and achieve a clearer state of mind.

What you get is four days worth of ice cream and you eat it five times a day. They’ve got a “master cleanse” flavor and a “Superfoods” flavor, as well as dark chocolate with Himalayan fire salt, coconut yogurt (for breakfast), and orange creme.

There are lots of reasons I wouldn’t do this.

First, you can’t lose weight in four days and expect to keep any of it off.  The journalist who tried out the cleanse learned this first hand:

A reporter for Gizmodo, who reviewed the ice-cream cleanse with his girlfriend, revealed that despite their typical cleanse grovels (missing the feeling of chewing, salty foods, and solid foods in general), they both lost a similar amount of weight – approximately six pounds each.

But he admitted that ‘in the span of one long weekend, I managed to put all of that cleanse-weight back on (plus another pound or so).’

No surprises there.

Moving on:  all this talk of “cleanses” is just ridiculous. This article on the website “Science-Based Medicine” talks about the whole “detox”/”cleanse” trend as a scam ($240 for four days of ice cream, anyone?)  and gives suggestions about how to avoid it. According to the article, the premise that our bodies ingest and accumulate toxins that we need to cleanse ourselves of is just plain bad science:

Today’s version of autointoxication argues that some combination of food additives, gluten, salt, meat, fluoride, prescription drugs, smog, vaccine ingredients, GMOs, and perhaps last night’s bottle of wine are causing a buildup of “toxins” in the body. But what is the actual “toxin” causing harm? It’s nothing more than a meaningless term that sounds scientific enough to be plausible. A uniform feature of detox treatments is the failure to name the specific toxins that these rituals and kits will remove.

The colon remains ground zero for detox advocates. They argue that some sort of toxic sludge (sometimes called a mucoid plaque) is accumulating in the colon, making it a breeding ground for parasites, Candida (yeast) and other nastiness. Fortunately, science tells us otherwise: mucoid plaques and toxic sludge simply do not exist. It’s a made-up idea to sell detoxification treatments. Ask any gastroenterologist (who look inside colons for a living) if they’ve ever seen one. There isn’t a single case that’s been documented in the medical literature. Not one.

We see this vagueness about cleansing and what is to be cleansed in the claims made by Kippy’s coconut ice cream diet: “It helps us digest, repairs the gut, feeds the brain, boosts the metabolism and is a powerful agent of detoxification,” or so claim its developers and purveyors.

That the offending toxins are either unnamed or, if named, invented or falsely identified, leads to the debunking of the second assumption of cleanses: that the toxins are the root of illness.

And the final suspect claim is that these detox regimens and cleanses remove toxins.  According to the article, “there is no evidence to demonstrate that detox kits do anything at all.”

Yeah so what that says to me is that the very idea of a cleanse of any kind is just a waste of time and money.  My radar for that sort of thing is fairly sharp. I just have to hear the word “detox” or “cleanse” and my hackles go up.

And I think too that there’s a ton of slippage between the cleanse motive and the weight-loss motive.  If you challenge someone about a detox on the grounds that they’re not going to lose weight and keep it off, they will claim that what they’re really doing is detoxing.

Another thing worth pointing out is that there are medical applications of the term “detox.” It refers to a pretty horrible process of withdrawal that people addicted to substances like alcohol or narcotics go through when they are attempting to quit, or people who have ingested poison have to go through to literally clean out their systems. So it’s not a completely bogus idea, it’s just not the sort of thing that is covered in things like an ice cream diet or a cayenne and lemon juice drink or a “rapid cleanse” (which sounds just scary).

Here’s the conclusion of the article I’ve been referring to from the Science-Based Medicine website:

Any product or service with the words “detox” or “cleanse” in the name is only truly effective at cleansing your wallet of cash. Alternative medicine’s ideas of detoxification and cleansing have no basis in reality. There’s no published evidence to suggest that detox treatments, kits or rituals have any effect on our body’s ability to eliminate waste products effectively. They do have the ability to harm however – not only direct effects, like coffee enemas and purgatives, but the broader distraction away from the reality of how the body actually works and what we need to do to keep it healthy. “Detox” focuses attention on irrelevant issues, and gives consumers the impression that they can undo lifestyle decisions with quick fixes. Improved health isn’t found in a box of herbs, a bottle of homeopathy, or a bag of coffee pushed into your rectum. The lifestyle implications of a poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking, lack of sleep, and alcohol or drug use cannot simply be flushed or purged away. Our kidneys and liver don’t need a detox treatment. If anyone suggests a detox or cleanse to you, you’d do well to ignore the suggestion, and question any other health advice they may offer.

So I’m saving my money. I have nothing against coconut ice cream, by the way. I love it. But I’m not about to spend $240 for a four-day supply, eat it as my only meal for days in a row, and try to fool myself that I can use it to improve my health.

 

 

diets · weight loss

Sam and Tracy Respond to the Near Impossibility of Weight Loss: Our Posts All In One Place

Sam B

I thought it would be helpful to have all of our posts that started as reactions to the near impossibility of maintaining weight loss piece on CBC all in one place.

Enjoy!

And since lots of it’s not happy news, here’s a beautiful flower to make feel better. Enjoy.

diets · eating · fat · fitness · weight loss

Questions and quibbles about impossible weight loss

Sam B11 Comments

The impossibility of long term weight loss success was in the news again last week and it made its way into this blog despite our view that body weight and fitness aren’t connected in the way many people think. Certainly I’ve been fat and fit and thin and woefully out of shape. In my life they’ve been different things, thinness and fitness.

Read last week’s posts for my analysis of why doctors mislead patients about the reality of weight loss, and in particular, about the reality of maintaining it, and my thoughts about what weight loss unicorns, those rare people who do keep the weight off, have in common. Tracy also blogged about her ongoing experiences with Precision Nutrition’s Lean Eating for Women program and how the “news” that long term weight is close to impossible made her feel.

My weight loss story:

I thought I was a fat kid. Looking back, I think I was a pretty normal-sized kid who thought she was fat. I joined Weight Watchers in grade six, read about that here, and began a period of getting skinny and looking good all the while living on coffee and cigarettes. I was in horrible shape but I was a teenager and I looked great. It was the 70s. What can I say?

Enter feminism and university, the 80s, punk aesthetic, and an avowed rejection of mainstream beauty standards. I got a sort of gentle mohawk and dyed my hair pink and purple. I wore a lot of black. I also gained weight. By the start of grad school I weighed 235 lbs. When I stepped on the scale and saw that number, I was shocked. I was having a hard time finding clothes that fit. No wonder, I thought. I was a solid size 16 but clothes that size were in regular stores. The next stop would have been plus-size fashion and it felt like enough was enough. I took up weight lifting, added some cardio, quit smoking, pretty much quit eating, and in the course of an academic year lost 80 lbs. I was twenty-four.

I haven’t kept clothes from either high school or skinny me grad school with two exceptions. Can you guess? Probably you can. I kept my prom dress and my wedding dress, neither which even fit my kids as Halloween costumes. They looked impossibly tiny. Finally, a couple of years ago, I send both to a thrift store/charity shop. Enjoy some other/not me skinny person!

By the time I was 34, I had a PhD, three children, an academic job, tenure and had regained all weight I’d lost in grad school. It was the late 90s.

Coming up to 40, I became department chair, took up running, hired a personal trainer and made it back to 165 lbs. Lower than that never tempted me. I was a size 10. Though technically still overweight, I could feel my ribs and my hip bones and I felt skinny. Certainly I had skinny face!

Now with the fittest by 50 challenge coming to a close, I’m thinking again about weight. I’m not back to my highest weight but I wasn’t able maintain 165 either. I’m about halfway in between these days.

As a very active but larger person (or fat, whatever) with a pretty good health and fitness profile I wonder lots about weight, size, destiny and biology and here are some questions that I’d like to ask an obesity researcher if we had a long flight together to chat. (I’m thinking about that because I’m writing this on a flight between Toronto and Los Angeles.)

My weight loss questions:

1. 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.

2. The commonsense view also says it’s really bad to regain weight. So bad that you ought never have lost in first place. You’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of yoyo dieting and ruining your metabolism. But how true is that? How bad is regaining weight if it happens slowly, over time? Yes, it’s depressing and demoralizing but is it bad from a health point of view?

This question has bothered me so much that I’ve set out to find out answers. I’ve looked through Google scholar and started reading way outside my field of research expertise. No clear answers emerged. If you’re reading and you’re an obesity researcher and you know the answer, please email me.

My experience is that of regaining weight over the course of years, not months. Did my health benefit from those years at a lower weight? The weight crept back on for sure but kind of the rate of a pound a month, or less.

Suppose I only do the complete up down cycle three times my life, would i really ir have been better off at a consistent but high weight? That doesn’t seem obviously true to me.

Suppose too that my low weight keeps changing, getting higher, first 155, then 165, and maybe next time 175. And my high weight on the up cycle gets lower. First 235, then 225, now 200. Maybe eventually it’ll settle somewhere in the middle as the ball’s bounce diminishes.

I think that on my optimistic days!

3. What counts as success? Suppose I only ever regain half the weight I lost. Is that success or failure?

Yoni Freedhoff commented on the blog saying there were lots of unicorns in a study he’d written about.

“There sure were a boatload of unicorns 8 years after the Look AHEAD trial began – even among those with the most minimal of interventions: http://www.weightymatters.ca/2014/06/more-on-almost-impossible-feat-of.html”

I trundled off to look at it and saw was measuring something different. Writing about the study on his blog Freedhoff says, “It’s quite heartening to see that after 8 years, for 35% of the DSE control group, 3 1-hour group talks a year were sufficient to help fuel a sustained weight loss of 5 percent or more of their presenting weight, and for 17% of them, enough to fuel and sustain a greater than 10 percent loss. “

There are at least two different ways to measure long term weight loss success. We can focus on those who maintain a goal weight or on those who maintain a weight loss of just five or ten percent of their starting weight. By that more easygoing measure, I’m in, I’m a success story. Lots more people are in even if we don’t typically think of only losing 5-10 percent of your body weight, a weight loss success story.

Call the people who meet standard 1, getting to goal and staying there, the unicorns. They are rare. Far more common are people who meet standard 2, exotic but not unfamiliar. Call them the weight loss alpacas. I’m a weight loss alpaca! (I’ve got a soft spot for alpacas.)

Animals and mythical creatures aside, the point here is a serious one. Let’s think about success a bit differently. There are tremendous health benefits that come with some pretty small weight losses. Even bariatric surgeons are starting to think in terms of small differences in weight instead of unsustainable weight loss miracles.

Rethinking success is part of Freedhoff’s pitch too. He writes, “What I’m getting at is that I think what makes maintaining weight loss seem “almost impossible” are the goal posts society has generally set to measure success. No doubt, if the goal set is losing every last ounce of weight that some stupid chart says you’re supposed to lose then the descriptor “almost impossible” may well be fair. On the other hand, if the goal is to cultivate the healthiest life that you can honestly enjoy, subtotal losses, often with significant concomitant health improvements, are definitely within your reach. “

4. Is all obesity alike? Catherine Womack and I have chatted about whether there are medically significant different kinds of obesity (her suggestion). You know that there’s conceptual cleaning up to be done, of the sorts philosophers love, when medical researchers start talking about “thin fat” people and metabolically healthy obese people. It seems clear that these weight categories aren’t doing the work we need them to do. “Thin fat person?” What the heck is that? Oh you mean a metabolically unhealthy thin person. Then why not say so and leave weight out of the picture?

There’s far too much running together of various health problems with various numbers on the scale, with seemingly little awareness about the ways in which the two might be linked (or not).

So, lots of questions. I’ll keep reading and thinking. But for now, back to fitness!

 

 

aging · weight loss

What are the habits of weight loss unicorns?

Sam B23 Comments

Suppose again that the premise of my post earlier this week (Well intentioned lies, doctors, and the diet industry) is right that very few people who lose weight keep it off. Most regain it, some regain more and only a teeny tiny few manage to maintain the new low weight.

You might well ask, why can’t I be one of the few? Why can’t I be one of those rare, mythical creatures, the weight loss unicorns?

In my case, I’m a classic type A personality, a lover of plans, structure, and schedules. I’m an analytic sort, a researcher and problem solver by temperament, and I’m highly motivated to achieve my goals.

So maybe I should just find out what those who’ve succeeded in the past have done and try be like them.

According to Canadian health researcher Timothy Caulfield, author of The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (I reviewed his book here) people who keep off the weight they have lost are a pretty special breed.

Members of this group all have some traits in common and because they’re rare, have been studied closely.  First, constant vigilance. They remain as focused and determined as they were when losing weight and they log and track just as carefully as when they started. Second, they exercise a lot. Third, they also don’t eat very much. Yikes.  One of the women profiled in Caulfield’s book hasn’t eaten a full size entree since she began losing weight. She eats appetizers only and shuns all desserts and alcohol.

The Center for Disease Control which maintains the weight loss registry for people who’ve kept weight off long term also describes the traits that people who maintain a weight loss, long term, have in common. They exercise 60-90 minutes most days, they eat breakfast, they weigh themselves regularly, they track food intake, and they plan meals.

In an Atlantic article from a couple of years ago, What do we really know about losing weight? you can read a profile of one person who maintained a new lower weight. I’ll excerpt a bit here but it’s worth going to read the entire thing.

During the first years after her weight loss, Bridge tried to test the limits of how much she could eat. She used exercise to justify eating more. The death of her mother in 2009 consumed her attention; she lost focus and slowly regained 30 pounds. She has decided to try to maintain this higher weight of 195, which is still 135 pounds fewer than her heaviest weight.

“It doesn’t take a lot of variance from my current maintenance for me to pop on another two or three pounds,” she says. “It’s been a real struggle to stay at this weight, but it’s worth it, it’s good for me, it makes me feel better. But my body would put on weight almost instantaneously if I ever let up.”

So she never lets up. Since October 2006 she has weighed herself every morning and recorded the result in a weight diary. She even carries a scale with her when she travels. In the past six years, she made only one exception to this routine: a two-week, no-weigh vacation in Hawaii.

She also weighs everything in the kitchen. She knows that lettuce is about 5 calories a cup, while flour is about 400. If she goes out to dinner, she conducts a Web search first to look at the menu and calculate calories to help her decide what to order. She avoids anything with sugar or white flour, which she calls her “gateway drugs” for cravings and overeating. She has also found that drinking copious amounts of water seems to help; she carries a 20-ounce water bottle and fills it five times a day. She writes down everything she eats. At night, she transfers all the information to an electronic record. Adam also keeps track but prefers to keep his record with pencil and paper

Now some of you might find this horrifying. You might read about it and want to scream, “These are not my people” and run fast in the opposite direction.

But my reaction isn’t that extreme. I’m a fan of planning and tracking. I weigh myself regularly. I always eat breakfast and as readers of this blog well know, I get lots of exercise.

So maybe it’s not all bad. Consider Canadian obesity researcher Yoni Freedhodf’s view in Is It Really Scientifically Impossible to Keep Your Weight Off?.

In responding to the same piece that prompted this blog post, he suggests that we might be able to rebrand “constant vigilance” as “mindfulness” and think more positively about it.

Says Freedhoff, paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise, and never not thinking about weight does sound like not much fun.

“That does indeed sound rather severe, and she definitely writes about it with the spin of negativity. What do I think?  I think negative depends on approach and attitude.  For instance where Tara might use the word vigilance, I’d use the word thoughtfulness and that being aware of every calorie doesn’t mean you’re not eating indulgent ones.”

Okay, whatever we call it, vigilance, awareness, thoughtfulness, it seems required for keeping off weight. So is a commitment to lifelong mindfulness about food enough to stave off weigh regain? But my suspicion is that it’s not enough. My experience is that I’ve sometimes started to regain weight through practising the exact same habits that earlier resulted in weight loss. I’ve tracked food and exercise very carefully through periods of gaining pounds.

The problem is that these traits, mindfulness, tracking, weighing and on, might be necessary but not sufficient for keeping weight off, once you’ve lost it. That is, everyone who keeps weight off lives this way but not everyone who lives this way keeps the weight off. Tracy in her blog post yesterday about weight loss wondered how much weight regain can attributed to changing habits and how much to biology. I think there’s a significant biological component and that even vigilant people face further obstacles. Here are just four of them.

1. Changed body chemistry, Biological Changes Thwart Weight Loss Study Finds.

For years, studies of obesity have found that soon after fat people lost weight, their metabolism slowed and they experienced hormonal changes that increased their appetites. Scientists hypothesized that these biological changes could explain why most obese dieters quickly gained back much of what they had so painfully lost.

2. Smaller bodies use fewer calories: This is one of the tougher things to get used to. At my largest I’ve weighed 235 lbs and at my smallest 155 lbs (all adult weights). The thing is that my 235 lb body uses a lot more calories just getting about in the world than its lighter cousin does. (Using a standard base metabolic rate calculator and plugging in my age and activity level, I see I need just under 3000 calories a day to sustain my weight at 250 lbs and just over 2300 calories a day if I weighed 150 lbs.) Thus, I need to eat less and less as I lose weight. That’s not easy.

3. Fitter bodies use fewer calories too: When I first ran 5 km at 235 lbs, that was really tough going, not just because of my weight. I was also not used to running. As I got fitter, running 5 km got easier and easier. I burned fewer and fewer calories running 5 km.

Outside Online answers the question about fitness resulting in fewer calories used in this article, Do Seasoned Runners Burn Fewer Calories Than Newbies?

“One study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology determined that well-trained runners burn five to seven percent fewer calories than their nonathletic counterparts. A run you did as a newbie athlete that burned 500 calories, for example, might burn 465 to 475 calories when you’re better trained, assuming you’ve stayed the same weight.”

And there’s the rub. If you’re getting both fitter and smaller (both the goal of many people) you’re also now using fewer calories for an equivalent workout.

Yes, in theory you could making it equally hard. You could run more distance or run faster or add intervals. The reality is that few of us push ourselves as hard as we did when we started. Getting more efficient just is what getting fit is all about. And that’s great but it terms of calories, efficiency isn’t our friend.”

4. Age and metabolism:  I’ve written about this one before. See Monday morning, perimenopause, and metabolism.

For runners, you need to run further and faster each year to burn the same number of calories. Getting fitter just means it takes less effort, hence fewer calories, to do the same thing. That’s just what fitness is. Ignore the calorie counters on exercise equipment at the gym.

And no matter what else you do, you’re aging and your metabolism is slowing down. And truth be told, few people run more or run harder as they age. Why that’s so was the subject of an earlier blog post, Is Aging a Lifestyle Choice?

There’s a sad funny story in Timothy Coalfield’s book The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness about a colleague who ran 18 marathons, one a year, and gained one pound per marathon.

So getting fitter and thinner and older means eating less and less, and working out more and more, to stay the same weight. Behavior and habits that at one point in one’s weight loss journey led to a loss on the scale, can, at a later point on the journey, lead to weight gain. Not exactly inspirational!

Caulfield’s book, like Gretchen Reynolds’ book The First Twenty Seconds, makes it clear that the truth doesn’t provide much fodder for catchy motivational slogans: Exercise intensely for long periods of time and you might just stay the same! Both cite the same study showing women who exercise a lot, and regularly, still gain weight as they age. They just gain less. That’s good health news but won’t exactly make for a very good poster at the gym.

I’ve got one more post on this subject left to go–it’s in the draft folder and is called “Impossible Weight Loss: Questions and Quibbles”–and after that I promise I’ll return to fitness, which I don’t actually think is connected to fatness at all.

body image · diets · eating · health · motivation · weight loss

“Healthy stuff is still healthy, it just doesn’t make you thin”

Tracy I6 Comments

Yesterday Sam posted about the CBC report with latest “news” about obesity research: “Obesity research confirms, longterm weight-loss almost impossible.”  This is hardly news. We’ve said this many times.  It’s one of the most controversial claims you can make that’s fully supported by research.

I responded last summer with the post “If Diets Don’t Work, Then What?”   There I promoted the benefits, mostly in terms of mental health, of the intuitive eating approach.  I didn’t lose weight when I embraced intuitive eating. But I did lose a debilitating obsession with food and weight.  That more than made up for it.

And yet, after a year of intuitive eating, I still chose to pursue the Precision Nutrition Lean Eating Program for Women. Knowing what I know, it may seem like an odd choice. Why, when all the advertising surrounding the program is about body transformation, would I want to do it? I blogged about it in the post “Why I’m trying PN “Lean Eating” after a year of intuitive eating.”  There, I said my main reason had to do with tweaking my nutritional habits:

One of the principles of Intuitive Eating–the last principle, in fact, because it is so loaded for so many chronic dieters–is “Honor your health with gentle nutrition.”  I don’t want to exaggerate. It’s not as if I’m living on junk food and soda pop or anything like that.  But I do feel as if I’ve not quite mastered nutrition since I became vegan just over three years ago. And while I’ve been focusing on a more intuitive approach to eating, nutrition hasn’t been the main guiding principle in my choices.

And truth be told, I’m ready for a change.  From what Sam has told me about the Lean Eating program and from everything I’ve read, it’s not a diet and it can be compatible with an intuitive eating approach to food. So let’s just say that this year, I’m honoring my health with the re-introduction of gentle nutrition.  Nothing extreme will work for me.

And so far, it’s been doing that really well.  What I didn’t know ahead of time is just how compatible with intuitive eating the PN approach in the Lean Eating program actually is. If you could just embrace the two “anchor habits” of eating slowly and stopping at 80% full, you would be a fairly successful intuitive eater. And a whole lot more comfortable after meals.

So I’m engaging in some healthy behaviors and developing some healthy habits. And since they do ask for weight and measurements on a regular basis, I can report that I have dropped a few pounds along the way. But I am not deluding myself this time. The real test of any program is not to be found by comparing the “before” with the “immediately after.” Not at all. Check back a year after. Or two years after. What about five years after?

As Sam reported yesterday, PN doesn’t track that sort of thing at all. No follow-up means no data to report.  With the stats for any program as they are, it’s not surprising no one wants to track the long term results. And the fact that lots of people do PN multiple times is evidence that despite its focus on healthy habits, the results are not likely to be sustainable for the majority of people.  If they were, they would be more enthusiastic about follow-ups and reporting the longer term outcomes for their clients.

The quote from the CBC article that I liked the most, is the one that I put in the title today. Pyschologist Traci Mann, who ran an eating lab at the University of Minnesota for 20 years, says: “Healthy stuff is still healthy, it just doesn’t make you thin.”

As Sam did yesterday, I’m concerned about people who put thinness as their primary goal for engaging in activity or for making balanced nutritional choices.  That’s not the only reason to make those choices. As the research shows, it’s not even a good reason.

I do wonder whether I will keep these “healthy habits” over time.  Does the weight come back on inevitably, or is it because habits slide? “Researchers are divided about why weight gain seems to be irreversible, probably a combination of biological and social forces. ‘The fundamental reason,’ [obesity researcher Tim] Caulfield says, ‘is that we are very efficient biological machines. We evolved not to lose weight. We evolved to keep on as much weight as we possibly can.'”

Okay, so as Sam asked yesterday: liberating or depressing?  For me, it’s helping me a lot to keep any weight loss that I might be experiencing in PN LE in perspective. Thankfully it’s not my primary goal, and even more thankfully the weighing and measuring has not fostered a new obsession. In fact, I have found myself quite capable of adopting the recommended attitude of “get ’em and forget ’em” towards the weekly updates.

I used to feel more hopeful about a different outcome, namely a change not in weight but in body composition. But now I think that aspirations of that nature are just another breeding ground for false hope.

When I reflect on what has been most amazing so far about the “fittest by 50 challenge” that Sam and I are on, for me it comes down to two things:

1. becoming adept at intuitive eating, to the point where I no longer obsess about food.  I repeat: I NO LONGER OBSESS ABOUT FOOD!

2. how much I am enjoying the activities I’m pursuing these days. I’m all geared up for my first triathlon of the season on the weekend and I couldn’t be more excited.  Weight loss and even body composition just aren’t factoring into that picture.

I also have an expanded conception of health that includes my mental health.  I feel more grounded, more at peace with who I am, much healthier in my relationship and attitude towards food, activity, and my body.  I’ve still got a bit of a way to go with respect to body image, but I am further than I was last summer when I wrote this post.

I too fall into the “liberating” camp.  Knowing the facts should also liberate us from stigmatizing fat bodies and making moralized judgments about body fat (on ourselves and others). In moral philosophy we have this principle that says “ought implies can.” It means that you can’t be under an obligation to do anything that is impossible.  If we say you “ought to” then it means you should be able to.

And the stats on long term maintenance of lost weight don’t support the “can.” Therefore, they call seriously into question the “ought.”

At the same time, that doesn’t mean we need to give up on making choices that make us feel better. But making thinness the primary motive is a set-up for feeling much, much worse.