In our last blog post, we talked about Aunt Frieda, everybody's best friend's cousin' sister-in-law, who lost a large amount of weight and kept it off forever. By doing this, Aunt Frieda accomplished something that only 10-20% of people can do (and I’ve seen some studies that say more like 4%). Still, Aunt Friedas do exist. People with six fingers exist, too, and so do ethical politicians, and I once heard about a guy who was born with only a brain stem, or what we call the “lizard brain,” and the rest of his brain was essentially missing. He was in medical school and having probable stress-induced migraines when they did an MRI and found this out. So, you know, weird stuff does happen.
The reason so few of us can lose weight and keep it off is because we evolved over 2.5 million years to be very good at surviving famines, which were frequent for pretty much that entire time. As a species, we are not good at losing weight. We’re good at gaining it, so as to survive the next famine and the next one and the one after that. Getting enough to eat was a constant problem from the time we first stood upright on that African plain.
First, we invented agriculture in BCE 12,500, approximately. (It was a Tuesday.) This helped a lot, and was a huge game-changer both in producing enough food for everybody and for kick-starting the development of civilization. Fast forward to the 1900s, when we fought World War I, then II. That helped even more. Besides adding essential nutrients to food, which we did because the Army was so unhappy about how many malnourished recruits were showing up to fight, we also made several very important discoveries about farming and fertilizer right around this time. We sort of had to, because much of Europe’s agricultural countryside was either blasted apart by shells or poisoned with mustard and chlorine gas. (In fact, there are areas in France where to this day, one hundred years later, nothing will grow. Not even crab grass. And there are signs that say, in French, something to the effect of “Do not walk here,” because some experts are afraid gas could still seep out of the ground and kill people if, say, it rained a lot.)
So that left it up to the Americans, in large part, to grow enough food to feed everybody. Luckily, we had lots of available land. We spread out into the Midwest, made lots of farms, grew lots of grain. We’d suffer a major setback in the 1930s, when a lengthy drought created the “Dust Bowl,” but for the most part, we got better and better at growing more and more. New farming innovations spread around the planet. Today there are 8.2 billion people, and at no time in history have we been better fed, better educated or better medicated. (But, see also, climate change, and ideal crop temperatures, and cross reference large-scale crop failures.)
Anyway, back to Aunt Frieda. Yes, there are people who lose weight and keep it off. I don’t want to suggest that they don’t exist at all. They’re just rare. Most people (80-90%) who lose weight gain it back, and usually more. But since there are Aunt Friedas, and everybody wants to be an Aunt Frieda, let’s take a look at what those ladies have in common.
(Some of them are men, but we’re calling them Aunt Frieda, so we’re going to use female pronouns. You guys don't mind if we use female pronouns, acknowledging they mean both men and women, right? Oh, you do? Too bad. It's my blog post. Go write your own.)
First and foremost, Aunt Friedas were probably a normal size for much of their lives. They were smallish or average size babies. They weren't fat kids. They probably hit all the growth markers. They didn't gain the Freshman 15 in college. They reached a certain adult weight and more or less stayed there until Something Happened.
Aunt Friedas are also pretty active. They often have jobs that involve a lot of physical activity, like a lot of walking, or manual labor, or they’re on their feet a lot. Think gardeners, construction workers, postal workers/letter carriers. If they are desk jockeys, they probably are or once were high school and/or college athletes. Even if not, they have a sport they love. They run, they play team basketball, maybe they swim on a swim team. They love their workouts and they’d never miss them. Some of them are Olympians, or would-be Olympians. They probably eat a lot compared to most folks, to fuel all this activity.
But, for Aunt Frieda to lose weight, she had to gain it in the first place. So what happened? Probably something medical. She got sick, she got hurt, she got pregnant. She had to stay home, on bed rest, couldn’t be as active as she had been previously. Maybe she was in the hospital. Maybe even the ICU (which helps you survive the crisis, whatever it is, but it’s really hard on the rest of you, especially your psyche). So she gained some weight. Maybe a lot, maybe just a moderate amount.
Then she got better. She had the baby, got out of the hospital, recovered from the injury. Being athletic, she doesn’t want to stay at the higher weight, not because she can’t fit into a size 6 anymore but because it’s messing with her center of gravity when she goes for a layup on the basketball court. So she embarks upon a campaign to lose weight, maybe medically supervised, maybe not.
So she loses the weight. Great. Now what? Well, Aunt Frieda monitors her weight, her exercise level and her calorie intake every day for, pretty much, the rest of her life. She writes down what she eats. She weighs herself at least once a week. She charts her workouts. Again, she’s probably athletic. A big part of how athletes perform at an elite level has to do with what they eat. So monitoring food and exercise is not foreign to her. She’s probably done it all along.
Aunt Frieda either knows, or is told, that now that she's gained weight and lost it again, she can't eat the way she used to. Every time a person gains and then loses weight, they have to eat fewer calories each time to stay there. For example, say we have a moderately active 40 year old man who weighs 180 pounds. He eats, say, 2600 calories a day. If he gains 30 pounds, and then loses it again, he will gain weight again on 2600 calories a day. To stay at 180 pounds, he can only eat maybe 2300 calories a day. If you lose a bunch of weight, your 2.5 million year old ancestral body will think you are starving. As soon as food is abundant again, you will want to eat a lot of it to get back to where you were. And a few pounds extra for security. Why? So you can survive the next famine, of course. And the next one and the one after that. If our 40 year old man gains 30 pounds a second time, and then loses it again, he may not be able to eat any more than 2000 calories a day.
And here’s the other thing. Probably the most important thing: Aunt Frieda only does this once. If she gains it back, it’s going to be harder to lose a second time, and harder still the third time, and so on. Each time she gains weight back, she’s likely to gain more than she lost, so she’ll end up at a higher weight than she started out. This is called “weight cycling”. Once this starts happening, we can’t call her Aunt Frieda anymore. She’s becoming one of the rest of us. People aren’t born weighing 300 pounds, you know. People get there by going on diets, losing weight, and gaining more back. It has nothing to do with being lazy or not having enough "willpower." It's about basic biology. You learned this in ninth grade.
We know that weight cycling has this result. We also know that it's hazardous to your health in lots of other ways. It causes muscle tissue loss, osteoporosis and damage to major organs. It's associated with depression, anxiety and a sense of failure. It's probably the major cause of type 2 diabetes (if, that is, diabetes has 2 types; some scientists think there are more like 4 or 5 types). Some diseases that are associated with being at a higher weight, like heart disease, are probably more closely associated with weight cycling. If you stayed at the higher weight and didn't try to lose weight, your risk of heart disease would drop proportionally. At least in theory, because we can't seem to find test subjects who haven't tried to lose weight. They basically don't exist. So we're stuck with algorithms. All else being equal, though, you will be in poorer health after two or three weight cycles than you were when you started out, no matter where you end up weight-wise.
So given all that, I would think that the responsible thing would be to, I dunno, tell people not to go out there and try to lose weight. That it would be better to just focus on getting exercise, because that's good for everybody in lots of ways, and eating better food, more fresh fruits and vegetables.
But.
First of all, there’s this huge weight-loss industry out there that is financially vested in making sure you keep trying to lose weight. Like to the tune of $75 billion a year. That's billion, with a b. This industry even funds scientific studies centered around proving that thinner is better. Also, most doctors learned in med school that no matter what, thin is better than fat. So they keep harping on you to lose weight, either unaware or not caring that doing so is actively causing you harm.
Secondly, besides the weight-loss industry, we have the food industry, which has also paid scientists to conclude that it's some other villain causing people to gain weight. It isn't the weight loss industry that created Big Macs or "family size" boxes of cereal. Look at commercials on TV. All the holidays, family times and "good times" mean there's lots of food. We even have an entire holiday, Thanksgiving, based on the idea of eating a lot. The food industry pays "influencers" to try to get you to eat more. Garfield said this first in 1980, and it's still basically true, that a huge percentage of Americans get their pay checks in some way from the food industry. So there's serious money behind how much you eat.
Thirdly, finally and most importantly, most fat people start dieting as kids. Just for example, I was nine; my wife was six. In both cases, the doctors told our mothers that we were too fat and they had to fix us. If you start dieting that young, it isn’t likely that you’re ever going to be an Aunt Frieda. Kids gain weight as they grow. It’s what they do. And since they keep gaining weight, the odds of somebody freaking out and putting them on a diet again and kicking off the weight cycling is, uh, extraordinarily high. You start doing that at nine, or God forbid six, honey, you are pretty much screwed.
If you want to be an Aunt Frieda in spite of all this, and you've been fat most of your life, what should you do?
Well: Scientists say that first, you should monitor everything you eat. Write it down and keep track of your daily calorie intake. You can use one of many calorie calculators that float around on the Internet to get an average number to aim for. Try to use one that asks for activity level and age, and remember that whatever "average" is may not work for you. You will have to try it out and move that number up or down. If you've gained and lost weight a bunch of times, the number is going to be way too high, so maybe adjust your activity level down in the calculator or just take the number with a grain of salt.
Second, if you do not have an active job and you don't walk a lot (ie, you drive a car and don't walk to work or school or to public transit), you need to exercise 60 to 90 minutes a day. Regular people can get away with about 30 minutes, but if you have lost weight and want to keep it off, you will need to do three times that. (Hey. If you have been a couch potato for years, please do not immediately start doing 90 minutes of exercise a day. Please oh please. You will hurt yourself. You will need to start small, like 10 to 15 minutes, and build up from there.)
Third, you are probably going to need some help. A doctor, for sure; maybe a Regular Doc, but maybe also an endocrinologist, especially if you have diabetes. A nutritionist or dietician to help you design an eating plan is not a bad idea, and if you have multiple food allergies or any known metabolic issues, it's basically a requirement. You might want a therapist if you have major issues with food or dieting. You might also want a coach or a support group. Overeaters Anonymous is a good place to start, if you believe in God. (I don't and I've never been 100% comfortable there, though they are good people and the program did help me.)
If this sounds like it might be pricey, well, it is. There are programs, especially in Canada, that have all this stuff under one roof, but in Canada they have (gasp!) Socialized Medicine. Down here, you have to cobble it together yourself. Insurance may pay for it and it may not, and if they won't or you don't have insurance, you're talking about thousands of dollars a month, probably. Oh, and don't forget you have to do all this stuff forever. Every day. For the rest of your life.
Given all that, I can totally see saying, "Fuck it," eating whatever you want, and exercising basically never. But because I'm a Buddhist and this is a Buddhist blog (no really, it is), I have to suggest the Middle Way. That's where you do the best you can to eat healthy foods, especially fresh fruits and veggies, but also have treats sometimes and even maybe share fries with somebody once in a while. Where you don't write down what you eat but you do try to pay attention to your stomach and when you start to feel full, you stop eating, even if there's food left. Where you don't eat stuff just because your mom made it for you special or you got it as a present at Christmas or because it was free at work, but because you actually like it and want to eat it. Where you find an exercise you like and do it as often as you can, but you don't count daily minutes and you just have a good time doing it. Where you don't weigh yourself. Let the doctor do that.
And you may lose weight and you may not, but you are absolutely guaranteed to feel better.
I'm just sayin'.
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