Tag Archives: metabolism

Taking a Vacation from a Common Equation: Calories in, Calories Out

Myrtle, Esther and Bessie take a little trip outside of their comfort zone…

For the past few days, I’ve been back in Missouri. First we went to Rolla where my husband was presented with an honorary degree for his ongoing work in computer science. (Seriously, how cool is that?) And now we’re in St. Louis catching up with some of our friends that we haven’t seen in a few years. So I thought this morning I would talk about being on vacation and how it might apply to my work in size acceptance.

One thing that being on vacation can do is give you a broader perspective on how people live in other parts of the world. One thing that I ran across this week (as I was “on vacation” from doing more productive work on my computer) was this article containing 23 photos of people next to how much food they eat per day.

Marble Moahi, Mother Living with HIV/AIDS, Botswana – 900 Calories

What struck me so much about these pictures, besides the fascinating variety of different types of food consumed was the drastic differences in calorie consumption among these people. The Botswana woman above is pictured with the meager meals she eats each day totaling just 900 calories. Compare that with the picture of the man below.

Willie Ishulutak, Soapstone Carver, Canada – 4,700 Calories

This fellow is pictured with over 4,700 calories which he eats each day. Notice anything interesting here? How about this. Willie Ishulutak eats over 5 times as many calories as Marble Moahi. Now there is little question that some of Willie’s calories are, um, liquid. But he clearly consumes a lot more calories than she does. And while Marble is somewhat thinner than Willie, neither of them appear to be particularly fat. This goes against the grain of what many of us have been taught about bodies and nutrition right? If we use the old adage of calories in calories out, Willie should appear a whole lot fatter than Marble. But lo and behold, it just ain’t so.

I would like to invite you to explore this article and these photos with me. And I would like you to join me on a vacation over the notion that if fat people just ate less and exercised more they would be thin people. These people could be lying about what they eat. I’d love for you to take just a little time off from the adage “calories in, calories out”.

Now to be fair, this photo essay hardly constitutes a formal study on the notion of calories in, calories out. The photo subjects could be lying about what they eat. The photographer could have selected an atypical day’s worth of food for the photo shoot. But we’re on vacation right? So what if we took just a little time off from assuming that fat people lie about what they eat or that thin people exaggerate how much or how little they eat? What if we just took a little time to assume that both Marble and Willie are telling the truth?

The next logical step might be to assume that Willie burns 5 times as many calories as Marble. While this is certainly possible, it seems unlikely in the extreme. If we assume that Willie is a 150 pound man (which is a very rough estimate), he would burn approximately 430 calories per hour walked at a brisk pace. Willie consumes 3800 calories more per day than Marble. Taking brisk walking as a calorie burning exercise, he would need to walk 8.8 hours more per day than Marble in order to burn all of those extra calories. I suppose it’s possible. But let’s just take a little trip past the notion that Willie walks a marathon or two every day in order to “keep his figure”.

Look, I am not suggesting that there is no relationship whatsoever between calories consumed and body size. It seems logical to assume that some relationship is there. But I wonder if we could agree, at least temporarily that it is not that simple. So many of us have had “calories in, calories out” thrown at us from so many directions. Sometimes it seems that everybody from our online haters to the surgeon general of our nation is eager to suggest that if we ate just a little less, and exercised just a little more we would be thin. But I’d like to invite you to punch the time clock and walk away from this notion for just a little while.

I am far from expecting that I will change the world or even change your mind with my little blog over here. But I do hope that from time to time I am able to “give you pause”. I hope I can help you step outside of our culturally held beliefs about weight, food, exercise, health and more. Because sometimes just a little time away is all we need to reenforce the idea that the world is quite a bit more complicated than the advice offered around the water cooler. Sometimes life doesn’t fit into neat and tidy axioms–no matter how much money is spent trying to make them. And while we might not be ready to give up some of these simplistic ideas completely, maybe you could try a little time off and see how it feels. Who knows, after a few weeks you might be ready to adopt some of these new ideas full-time.

Love,

Jeanette (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. I would love to invite you to take another Virtual Vacation with me on the Fit Fatties Forum! We’re moving our bodies as we explore the world. And tomorrow is the last day for super early bird pricing! CLICK HERE to learn more.

Also, if you’d like to learn more about fitness and health and get FREE STUFF, be sure to join my mailing list here. Let’s keep in touch!

The Body’s Battle with Weight Loss

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I recently ran across this little gem on Cracked.com entitled “Fat is Officially Incurable (According to Science)” which offers a surprisingly accurate portrayal about just how likely those “before” and “after” shots in advertisements are to reflect the long-term experience of real, live people. While proceeding with tongue firmly inserted in cheek, the author offers a nice summary of some of the scientific evidence offered regarding long-term weight loss:

Probability of long-term maintenance of very modest weight loss (10-15 pounds)–Very low
Probability of a fat person becoming (and staying) a thin person–Practically Non-existant.

One of my favorite things about this article (besides David Wong’s deliciously snarky attitude) is the plethora of links to some other wonderful content that I’ve read, but probably forgotten about.

For example, a lot of the math about Weight Watchers “success stories” (including why you may be 20 times more likely to survive being shot in the head than you are to reach and maintain your WW “goal weight”) is derived from this wonderful blog post by fat fu.

And David also references this comprehensive NY Times Article in which Tara Parker-Pope breaks down a lot of the recent research about why permanent weight loss can be so difficult. She talks about a lot of the physiological changes that can happen with weight loss including:

Increased hunger hormones like ghrelin that make us feel more hungry.
Decreased leptin and peptide yy in the body which help to signal when our bodies are full.
Lowered metabolism.
Increased percentages of slow-twitch muscle fibers that make our bodies use calories more efficiently and burn fewer calories during physical activities.
Increased “reward response” to food in the brain leading to more intense cravings for and obsession about food.

Tara also reminds us that these changes in the body are often long-term–lasting months or even years after the dieting has stopped. And while both she and David Wong admit that there are some “rare creatures” found in the National Weight Control Registry who have maintained significant weight loss, the vast majority of us are unlikely to experience the same results.

I don’t say this to depress you. But I do feel very strongly that those of us who work in the health and fitness industries have a responsibility to help our clients to build realistic expectations. Very, very few of us will lose a lot of weight and keep it off. A very slightly larger number of us will lose a little bit of weight and keep it off. But most of us will neither lose a significant amount of weight nor will we keep it off. Does that mean we need to give up on either wellness or well-being? Nope! As it turns out, bodies respond very well to healthy behaviors regardless of whether or not they are accompanied by any weight loss. We can choose to de-couple wellness from weight loss and focus on simply doing the things that make us feel well. So in my mind, it really makes more sense to take this Health At Every Size(R) or HAES approach and let the body’s weight settle where it will.

And even though telling the truth has seriously blunted my book sales and ruined my chances of ever starring in my own late-night, cheesy infomercial, I still must tell it. Oh well, I’m more of a morning person anyway.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Ellen and the Biggest Bully

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I love the Ellen show. I love the sweet, silly nature of it. I love the dance breaks. I love Ellen’s work to end bullying. So I was so very sad when one of my readers gave me a heads up that Jillian Michaels was going to be interviewed on the Ellen show. Sure enough, the show aired yesterday, and I am so very disappointed. I am so sad that Ellen had professional bully Jillian Michaels on her show for a super soft interview. First, she let Jillian go on and on about how she’s helping people with The Biggest Loser. Please. Who exactly is Jillian helping with that show? Scientific studies have been conducted. One of those studies indicates that people are less likely to exercise after watching The Biggest Loser. So the show discourages exercise. What about weight loss? According to Yoni Freedhoff in his excellent article “When Science Met the Biggest Loser” even former contestants of the show are unlikely to keep the weight off. There are a few, who have since made their body size into a career with lucrative speaking engagements and product endorsements who manage to stay thin. A group of researchers including the show’s own Robert Huizenga have determined that those participating in shows like The Biggest Loser face an extremely significant metabolic slowdown after their weight loss, making it very difficulty and extremely unlikely that participants will maintain their weight loss. Another study cited in Freedhoff’s excellent article indicates that people who watched even a single episode of The Biggest Loser led viewers to “dramatically increase their own hateful and negative biases towards those with obesity”.

So who is Jillian helping? She’s making millions of dollars participating in a show that increases stigma against people of size, makes people less likely to exercise and espouses a weight loss method almost guaranteed to leave participants even larger in the long run.

Next, Jillian went on to complain that her role on the show is taken out of context and that people see her as a “cartoon caricature”. Yet, in this same episode of Ellen, Jillian participates in a segment where she “yells at Ellen” and is in turn yelled at by Sean Hays for not, yelling at Ellen well enough. The clip concludes with Ellen and Sean making sure Jillian is gone and then stuffing popcorn and donuts into their face as quickly as they can. So if Jillian worried about her image as the woman who yells at people a lot, she sure has a funny way of dispelling that image. I think it important to mention the one thing in this clip that is accurate. There are studies that indicate that shaming and bullying people is more likely to produce binge eating and other negative health habits than to encourage healthy habits. So score one for accuracy there. But I don’t think Jillian is misunderstood. She is a professional bully. She makes her living by finding new ways to humiliate and shame fat people. She makes MILLIONS of dollars at it. Misunderstood? I think she’s understood only too well. If by chance there is some shred of decency in her, if she really doesn’t believe in behaving like a cartoon villain, guess what? All she had to do was walk away from the show and not come back. All she had to do was turn down those big fat paychecks. She didn’t. She may use that “I’m helping people” line to make herself feel better, but she isn’t making people feel better. She isn’t making people healthier. What she’s making is money and LOTS of it. What’s not to understand?

Then Jillian went on to a section where she busted some exercise myths. Please. As if Jillian Michaels is somebody we should trust to fill us in on health and fitness. The Biggest Loser is one of the greatest perpetrators of exercise myths on the planet. As I pointed out in two previous posts, just about everything they do on The Biggest Loser goes against solid exercise science. And as was stated previously in this post, science indicates that The Biggest Loser does more harm than good. Either Jillian is in agreement with what happens on The Biggest Loser which demonstrates poor analytical skills, or she’s in disagreement with what happens on The Biggest Loser and participates merely to make a buck. Either way, this is not a person I’m going to turn to for solid advice about health and fitness.

I can’t say I’m disappointed in Jillian. She delivered exactly the kind of nonsense I thought she would. But I am disappointed that Ellen caved to whatever pressure was brought to bear and allowed someone like Jillian Michaels on her show. I’m so sad that Ellen offered yet another media platform to a person who makes her living hurting and humiliating fat people.

By the way, the petition to keep kids off The Biggest Loser is still live. If you haven’t signed yet, you still can. Why not do it Right Now?

Love,

The Fat Chick