kw: book reviews, science fiction, eating, obesity
My son loves roller coasters, and will ride absolutely anything. I can tolerate riding a few of them, but I seldom enjoy the experience. After the three of us visited a park with nothing but coasters, each scarier than the last, I said to him, "Do you know how many [our last name]'s it takes to ride a roller coaster? One to ride and two to watch!" His favorite is the eXtreme at 6Flags Magic Mountain. After climbing the hill, the cars flip the strapped-in riders face down and drop two hundred feet straight down. Guess where my stomach would be. I suspect they have good drainage to a big lagoon nearby.
It didn't take me long once I began to read Thinner Than Thou, by Kit Reed, to realize that this book is an emotional roller coaster that is quite a bit beyond my capacity. I jumped ahead to the denouement, which didn't surprise me at all, and figured, "That's enough!"
Usually when I skip a book it is because of anger at the author's premise. Not this time. It's really a great book, but like great roller coasters everywhere, not one I could tolerate riding. By the second page, I found myself daydreaming in a very paranoid way what I would do if dragged into the prison farm of a "perfect body" religious cult. It bore too much resemblance to the RPF treatment a relative of mine endured, yet he is still a member of Scientology!!! It just hits too close to home. I'd rather sleep at night.
Showing posts with label obesity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obesity. Show all posts
Friday, July 17, 2009
Monday, September 22, 2008
Fat conversions
kw: musings, obesity
I've been in calorie-watching mode for a few months. Losing the first twenty pounds was relatively easy because stopping my cholesterol medicine reduced my appetite; that stuff had made me always ravenous! I'd like to lose another ten pounds, and get by BMI closer to 27; it is 29 now, which is too close to the threshold of 30 for obesity.
Lately it got me thinking about the numbers. I've heard for years that each pound of body fat represents 3,500 Kcal (to use the Physics unit). Also, it is published everywhere that a gram of fat that you eat contains 9 Kcal. Now, a pound weighs 453.56 grams; 453.56 x 9 = 4,082 and some change. 3,500/4,082 = 0.86. That implies that about 86% of a fat cell is stored fat. Fat cells must contain a little protein also, but perhaps not much. I just had to dig into it.
This annotated image of fat cells is found with many other histology illustrations at this UCLA med. school web site. Cell membranes, shown in pink, are also fatty. The nuclei are more purplish (also the rare blood vessel or two). There is clearly very little protein to contend with. Adipose cells are primarily tanks containing stored fat.
It appears that the stored fat makes up more than 90% of the volume here. The difference between the storage percent and the 86% I obtained above must represent some very small conversion losses. Now I understand why so many nutrition writers say that the fats we eat are efficiently converted to body fat!
It also underscores, for me, that if I really want to reduce my weight another ten pounds, I have to eat 35,000 fewer calories than my metabolism needs. There's no way around the math.
I've been in calorie-watching mode for a few months. Losing the first twenty pounds was relatively easy because stopping my cholesterol medicine reduced my appetite; that stuff had made me always ravenous! I'd like to lose another ten pounds, and get by BMI closer to 27; it is 29 now, which is too close to the threshold of 30 for obesity.
Lately it got me thinking about the numbers. I've heard for years that each pound of body fat represents 3,500 Kcal (to use the Physics unit). Also, it is published everywhere that a gram of fat that you eat contains 9 Kcal. Now, a pound weighs 453.56 grams; 453.56 x 9 = 4,082 and some change. 3,500/4,082 = 0.86. That implies that about 86% of a fat cell is stored fat. Fat cells must contain a little protein also, but perhaps not much. I just had to dig into it.
This annotated image of fat cells is found with many other histology illustrations at this UCLA med. school web site. Cell membranes, shown in pink, are also fatty. The nuclei are more purplish (also the rare blood vessel or two). There is clearly very little protein to contend with. Adipose cells are primarily tanks containing stored fat.It appears that the stored fat makes up more than 90% of the volume here. The difference between the storage percent and the 86% I obtained above must represent some very small conversion losses. Now I understand why so many nutrition writers say that the fats we eat are efficiently converted to body fat!
It also underscores, for me, that if I really want to reduce my weight another ten pounds, I have to eat 35,000 fewer calories than my metabolism needs. There's no way around the math.
Friday, September 05, 2008
One person's fat-to-fit journey
kw: book reviews, nonfiction, obesity, self help
I've worked with a man who usually weighed 400 pounds or more. It was compounded by his short statute, no more than five feet eight. Convert to metric and figure BMI: 181kg / (1.73m)² = 61. Considering that the "standard" defines BMI>40 as "morbidly obese", I was amazed that he'd lived nearly sixty years. I remember that he ate almost constantly. I suspect he didn't pay much attention. Yet he knew he was "really, really fat". It seems he'd long since given up "reducing", and did a lot of walking to keep in some kind of shape. Thus he was in better condition to be out in the world than was Susan Blech in her mid-thirties.
As she reports in Confessions of a Carb Queen: the lies you tell others & the lies you tell yourself, Sue Blech passed 400 pounds about the age of 35, and weighed just over 468 pounds (212kg) by age 38, when she entered a "fat farm" clinic in North Carolina. She never mentions her height, but if it is near the average for a Caucasian woman (65 inches or 1.65m), her BMI was about 80! She also reports that it was very hard to walk, and she seldom left her apartment. She was well on her way to becoming first a quarter-ton, then a half-ton homebody. The heaviest verified weights are 1200lbs (544kg) for a man and 1190 lbs (540kg) for a woman: both well over a metric half-ton and both bed-bound.
As the author, with her sister Caroline Bock's help, reports in her first eight chapters, she spent up to four hours daily going from BK to Wendy's to McD to various pizza places, eating meal after meal, and "grazing" almost constantly betweentimes. All the while, she would say she was "a little chubby", always "on a diet", forever promising herself to "do better" at some later date, usually the upcoming Monday. Finally, at age 38, she realized, "As I get bigger, my life gets smaller." Spurred by the fear that she will have a stroke and end up like her mother, incarcerated in a mental hospital after a stroke in her 40s, she went for help.
She entered a weight-loss clinic in Durham, North Carolina where, over two-and-a-half years she lost 250 pounds. It wasn't steady going, and she had binges once or twice. With the help of friends she continued to battle. She had those she could call when she got home to report that she was safe: "'Safe' doesn't mean that I wasn't in a car accident; 'safe' means that I didn't stop at Wendy's".
Some have written that lying is one thing, but when we believe our own lies, that's obsession. She had been obsessed. She is frank that she was very seldom hungry. She didn't eat from hunger. She ate for comfort, the comfort of a motherless child whose father comforted his children with food. Yet her three siblings didn't become obese. As the youngest, perhaps she felt most keenly the loss of her missing mother, still alive but still rarely aware as the book was published. She reports that the only way she could sleep was in a calorie-induced coma.
She herself doesn't know how she was able to sleep under the clinic's regimen of little more than rice, grits, and water. Initially, while getting used to it, it was probably only total exhaustion. But she also got a personal trainer, who patiently urged her to greater and greater efforts until she could sleep from genuine fatigue. She'd been an athlete and bodybuilder in her 20s, so whe knew how to exercise. As she reports, she found she needed a "boss", just like at any job.
The book opens with a small picture of her, an anxious-looking figure in front of a door. She is exactly as wide as the door. It closes with a larger picture of a much more slender woman, one who looks really good at 210lbs (95kg). She is a pretty woman at either weight, but is much more appealing as a "merely large" forty-year-old.
She makes it clear that she is no expert on weight loss, but only an expert on how she lost weight. Bread triggers her obsession. Total expulsion of bread from her menu is a major key to her success in losing weight. Each of us must clear-headedly figure out what our own obsession is, or we'll go through life never knowing how much we are deceiving ourselves. Sue Blech's inspiration is rooted in knowing that it is possible to recover from obsession, and thus recover from the symptoms that follow.
I've worked with a man who usually weighed 400 pounds or more. It was compounded by his short statute, no more than five feet eight. Convert to metric and figure BMI: 181kg / (1.73m)² = 61. Considering that the "standard" defines BMI>40 as "morbidly obese", I was amazed that he'd lived nearly sixty years. I remember that he ate almost constantly. I suspect he didn't pay much attention. Yet he knew he was "really, really fat". It seems he'd long since given up "reducing", and did a lot of walking to keep in some kind of shape. Thus he was in better condition to be out in the world than was Susan Blech in her mid-thirties.
As she reports in Confessions of a Carb Queen: the lies you tell others & the lies you tell yourself, Sue Blech passed 400 pounds about the age of 35, and weighed just over 468 pounds (212kg) by age 38, when she entered a "fat farm" clinic in North Carolina. She never mentions her height, but if it is near the average for a Caucasian woman (65 inches or 1.65m), her BMI was about 80! She also reports that it was very hard to walk, and she seldom left her apartment. She was well on her way to becoming first a quarter-ton, then a half-ton homebody. The heaviest verified weights are 1200lbs (544kg) for a man and 1190 lbs (540kg) for a woman: both well over a metric half-ton and both bed-bound.
As the author, with her sister Caroline Bock's help, reports in her first eight chapters, she spent up to four hours daily going from BK to Wendy's to McD to various pizza places, eating meal after meal, and "grazing" almost constantly betweentimes. All the while, she would say she was "a little chubby", always "on a diet", forever promising herself to "do better" at some later date, usually the upcoming Monday. Finally, at age 38, she realized, "As I get bigger, my life gets smaller." Spurred by the fear that she will have a stroke and end up like her mother, incarcerated in a mental hospital after a stroke in her 40s, she went for help.
She entered a weight-loss clinic in Durham, North Carolina where, over two-and-a-half years she lost 250 pounds. It wasn't steady going, and she had binges once or twice. With the help of friends she continued to battle. She had those she could call when she got home to report that she was safe: "'Safe' doesn't mean that I wasn't in a car accident; 'safe' means that I didn't stop at Wendy's".
Some have written that lying is one thing, but when we believe our own lies, that's obsession. She had been obsessed. She is frank that she was very seldom hungry. She didn't eat from hunger. She ate for comfort, the comfort of a motherless child whose father comforted his children with food. Yet her three siblings didn't become obese. As the youngest, perhaps she felt most keenly the loss of her missing mother, still alive but still rarely aware as the book was published. She reports that the only way she could sleep was in a calorie-induced coma.
She herself doesn't know how she was able to sleep under the clinic's regimen of little more than rice, grits, and water. Initially, while getting used to it, it was probably only total exhaustion. But she also got a personal trainer, who patiently urged her to greater and greater efforts until she could sleep from genuine fatigue. She'd been an athlete and bodybuilder in her 20s, so whe knew how to exercise. As she reports, she found she needed a "boss", just like at any job.
The book opens with a small picture of her, an anxious-looking figure in front of a door. She is exactly as wide as the door. It closes with a larger picture of a much more slender woman, one who looks really good at 210lbs (95kg). She is a pretty woman at either weight, but is much more appealing as a "merely large" forty-year-old.
She makes it clear that she is no expert on weight loss, but only an expert on how she lost weight. Bread triggers her obsession. Total expulsion of bread from her menu is a major key to her success in losing weight. Each of us must clear-headedly figure out what our own obsession is, or we'll go through life never knowing how much we are deceiving ourselves. Sue Blech's inspiration is rooted in knowing that it is possible to recover from obsession, and thus recover from the symptoms that follow.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Weight - when body and mind don't agree
kw: opinion, obesity
Many years ago I visited the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I spoke for a while with the guide, a knowledgeable wrestler. When we talked of the different weight classes, he happened to mention that Bruce Baumgartner, the best-ever champion in the "Super Heavyweight" Freestyle Class, "just naturally weighs about 285 pounds, near the top end of the class."
While Olympic Super Heavyweight specifies 100+ kg (220 lbs), there is an unofficial maximum weight of 130 kg (287 lbs). Heavier contestants are seldom admitted.
Another attribute Mr. Baumgartner has, that distinguishes him from other men who weigh 250 lb or so, is that he finds it easier to get in shape and stay in shape. For most people, exercise on purpose is sheer drudgery, a hateful pastime, so while they'd like "to have exercised", they can't bring themselves to actually do it. Thus, most people who are strong are construction workers and others whose work activities keep them well-exercised.
Against this backdrop, a lot is being said and printed about an "obesity epidemic". Lots of blame is shed in all directions, primarily upon Americans. However, in every nation where food is becoming abundant, people are getting heavier. It is not just "fast food". You can get fat on a vegan diet, and some do...it is just more work to eat enough calories when animal fats are excluded.
My wife and I eat the same foods. She weighs 112-114 pounds (51-52 kg), and I weigh 225-230 pounds (102-104 kg). One irony is she has high cholesterol, and I have so little I take a medicine to raise it, at least the HDL.
My brother and his wife eat the same foods. I don't know their weights, but he is thin as a rail, and she is Rubenesque (a beauty, but a voluptuous one).
To boil down what is known: People have natural set points. Left to ourselves, we hold a pretty steady weight. The set point tends to go up by two to five pounds per decade for some people, and as much as a pound per year for others, such as myself.
In feeding studies people agreed to eat an extra 1,000 or 2,000 calories daily, and of course gained lots of weight, at a rate of a couple pounds a week. Funny thing is, they were as miserable as someone who is forcing themself to keep a strict reducing diet!
In all cases but one, when they stopped forcing themselves to eat extra food, their weight gradually went back to what it had been before. In that one case, the person kept the new weight, but didn't gain much thereafter.
I have known several people who weigh more than 400 pounds (180 kg). All of them said they find it easy to lose fifty pounds, and to gain it right back. One guy I worked with only weighed himself once a year, on a freight scale near our workplace. He came to me, rather worried, saying he'd lost sixty pounds ("I only weigh 380 this time!") and didn't know why. Such people either have no set point, or it is very "soft".
The current "standard" is that Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 or more is "overweight" and over 30 is "obese." Well, my BMI is about 30, and when I am undressed, I can see plenty of flab in the mirror, so I have plenty of extra fat. However, I have been getting back to an exercise regimen. I don't know if I can change my weight much, but I can make the mass I have into healthier mass.
I did so once before. In my early 40s, I did a lot of exercise, and learned to enjoy it. I used a stationary cycle 3 days a week, and did weight training 2 days. I had access to someone who could use a pinch tester to check my fat content. At the beginning, I was 35% fat; at 198 lb, that is 69 lb of fat! Two years later, weighing 199 lb, my fat content was 18%, or 35 lb. I'd removed 34 lb of fat and added 35 lb of muscle.
For a six-footer, at 199 lb, the metric is 183 cm and 90 kg, for a BMI of 27. But at that BMI, I was a lot healthier than before. By comparison, at six-two (188 cm) and 285 lbs (129 kg), Bruce Baumgartner's BMI was 36 when he was in fighting trim. Nobody is likely to call "Coach B" obese, even today!
Injuries and medical crises over the next fifteen years kept me from doing more than walking. So today my BMI is 30-31. I suppose that is really too much. I'll see if regaining a regular exercise routine will make me a healthier "fat guy". Will I lose weight? I don't know. But I think I can convert fat, and that's all to the good.
Many years ago I visited the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I spoke for a while with the guide, a knowledgeable wrestler. When we talked of the different weight classes, he happened to mention that Bruce Baumgartner, the best-ever champion in the "Super Heavyweight" Freestyle Class, "just naturally weighs about 285 pounds, near the top end of the class."
While Olympic Super Heavyweight specifies 100+ kg (220 lbs), there is an unofficial maximum weight of 130 kg (287 lbs). Heavier contestants are seldom admitted.
Another attribute Mr. Baumgartner has, that distinguishes him from other men who weigh 250 lb or so, is that he finds it easier to get in shape and stay in shape. For most people, exercise on purpose is sheer drudgery, a hateful pastime, so while they'd like "to have exercised", they can't bring themselves to actually do it. Thus, most people who are strong are construction workers and others whose work activities keep them well-exercised.
Against this backdrop, a lot is being said and printed about an "obesity epidemic". Lots of blame is shed in all directions, primarily upon Americans. However, in every nation where food is becoming abundant, people are getting heavier. It is not just "fast food". You can get fat on a vegan diet, and some do...it is just more work to eat enough calories when animal fats are excluded.
My wife and I eat the same foods. She weighs 112-114 pounds (51-52 kg), and I weigh 225-230 pounds (102-104 kg). One irony is she has high cholesterol, and I have so little I take a medicine to raise it, at least the HDL.
My brother and his wife eat the same foods. I don't know their weights, but he is thin as a rail, and she is Rubenesque (a beauty, but a voluptuous one).
To boil down what is known: People have natural set points. Left to ourselves, we hold a pretty steady weight. The set point tends to go up by two to five pounds per decade for some people, and as much as a pound per year for others, such as myself.
In feeding studies people agreed to eat an extra 1,000 or 2,000 calories daily, and of course gained lots of weight, at a rate of a couple pounds a week. Funny thing is, they were as miserable as someone who is forcing themself to keep a strict reducing diet!
In all cases but one, when they stopped forcing themselves to eat extra food, their weight gradually went back to what it had been before. In that one case, the person kept the new weight, but didn't gain much thereafter.
I have known several people who weigh more than 400 pounds (180 kg). All of them said they find it easy to lose fifty pounds, and to gain it right back. One guy I worked with only weighed himself once a year, on a freight scale near our workplace. He came to me, rather worried, saying he'd lost sixty pounds ("I only weigh 380 this time!") and didn't know why. Such people either have no set point, or it is very "soft".
The current "standard" is that Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 or more is "overweight" and over 30 is "obese." Well, my BMI is about 30, and when I am undressed, I can see plenty of flab in the mirror, so I have plenty of extra fat. However, I have been getting back to an exercise regimen. I don't know if I can change my weight much, but I can make the mass I have into healthier mass.
I did so once before. In my early 40s, I did a lot of exercise, and learned to enjoy it. I used a stationary cycle 3 days a week, and did weight training 2 days. I had access to someone who could use a pinch tester to check my fat content. At the beginning, I was 35% fat; at 198 lb, that is 69 lb of fat! Two years later, weighing 199 lb, my fat content was 18%, or 35 lb. I'd removed 34 lb of fat and added 35 lb of muscle.
For a six-footer, at 199 lb, the metric is 183 cm and 90 kg, for a BMI of 27. But at that BMI, I was a lot healthier than before. By comparison, at six-two (188 cm) and 285 lbs (129 kg), Bruce Baumgartner's BMI was 36 when he was in fighting trim. Nobody is likely to call "Coach B" obese, even today!
Injuries and medical crises over the next fifteen years kept me from doing more than walking. So today my BMI is 30-31. I suppose that is really too much. I'll see if regaining a regular exercise routine will make me a healthier "fat guy". Will I lose weight? I don't know. But I think I can convert fat, and that's all to the good.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
The double burden of the obese
kw: book reviews, nonfiction, autobiographies, overweight, obesity
Michael S. Berman is a bit of a big shot. He's a lobbyist and political activist who has worked on campaigns since 1964, including Bill Clinton's, and was V.P. Walter Mondale's Deputy Chief of Staff. He is also a big man. How big? It varies, from 220 to 330 pounds. With the help of Laurence Shames, he chronicles the divided life and many burdens of being fat in Living Large: A Big Man's Ideas on Weight, Success, and Acceptance.
Mike Berman repeatedly states that fatness is a disease, one with compelling power, that has no cure, but can be managed. In a way, it is similar to the AA view of alcoholism, except that 12-step programs for the fat are scarce, and there is as yet very little professional support. As I see it, American society views obesity the way it viewed alcoholism in the 1950s or earlier, as a problem of self-control and depravity. As a borderline fatso myself (currently 220 pounds, but it is a struggle to stay there), I know from the inside the power of addictive compulsion.
A story. In early 2001, undergoing chemotherapy, I was warned by my doctor to keep my weight up, because of the chemo's effect on appetite. I did weigh about 180 at the time, because before my operation, I hadn't eaten for two months due to a blocked colon. I replied, "Doc, I long ago learned to dissociate enjoyment of food from hunger. That's why I was fat."
You can be addicted to alcohol, sex, cocaine, cough medicine, amphetamines, and sometimes even heroin, and manage to hide your addiction nearly all the time. How do you hide a silhouette the width of a piano? How do you hide getting stuck in armchairs? You can hide Bipolar disorder, as I do, with judicious planning; our son's band director hides his Obsessive streak most of the time, but always carries a bottle of Purell®. How do you hide the ability to eat three racks of ribs at a sitting, or to spend two or three hours at a buffet, eating nonstop?
Berman unflinchingly relates his lifelong struggle to be thinner, and his tortuous, and torturous, path to acceptance of himself. Behind the successful lawyer and lobbyist, he has been an insecure supplicant of every weight loss scheme that didn't involve surgery or overly-"instant" claims. With maturity, and nine years of therapy, he attained a balance of insight and self-control, so he can manage his life, including his health. He can't be a 170-pound athlete, but he can be as healthy as a 230-pound man can be.
His life is not over by any means. He's only 66 (maybe 67 by now). He still yo-yos some of the time. He's been very successful, and found that his family, wife, and friends don't look on him as being quite as morbidly fat as he often views himself. By his own report, he's happy more than not, now. I hope he writes a sequel, perhaps in another ten years or so. I think he, and we, will be gratified at the equilibrium even a lifelong fat man can achieve.
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