What's Wrong With Hard?
by Andrew Heffernan on Dec 10, 2008 2:24 PM EST
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PrintWhat with the new kid, a bout with some nasty virus I contracted in the hospital, and a wonky-as-hell sleep schedule, I've barely exercised in two weeks. Like a lot of inveterate exercise freaks forced by circumstance to curtail their habit for a time, I actually feel good--all the microtrauma I systematically inflict on myself has had a chance to heal.
I don't usually adhere to the very-reasonable "Take a Week Off Now and Then!" philosophy (because, you know, aren't I exempt from that stupid rule?), but when I'm forced into it and it makes me feel great, I realize (begrudgingly) that it's probably not a bad idea.
Because it's rare for me, it's interesting for me to note how my body responds when I'm not regularly pounding away in the gym. The first thing is that I eat more like a normal person, meaning, less voraciously, yes, but also with less variety and less emphasis on the best foods. I don't crave the good stuff as much. I just want calories to keep me going, in the form of any old random food, rather than the food items that appear, anthropomorphized and animated, on children's educational videos.
Out of curiosity--and, okay, trepidation--I got on the scale yesterday and discovered I've also lost five pounds. Apparently, after all these years, I'm still the kind of guy that has a hard time holding onto muscle mass, and it tends to go away when I'm not working to build more. After all these years, I've still got the same body-weight set-point to which I always return, struggle as I may to bust forever from its clutches.
I was thinking of all this--how my body continuously leans in a certain direction, like a grocery cart with a bad wheel--when I found this New York Times piece by Gina Kolata, which makes three major points:
Weight control is not simply a matter of willpower. Genes help determine the body's "set point," which is defended by the brain.
Dieting alone is rarely successful, and relapse rates are high.
Moderate exercise, too, rarely results in substantive long-term weight loss, which requires intensive exercise.
Amidst all the claims that we can all "Get in shape WITHOUT DIETING!" and "In four minutes a day!" and how it's a "SNAP!" and so on, it's refreshing to see something more closely resembling the truth in print. Every client I've had who has lost significant weight has always had to struggle to do it. It's a street fight with their genes and willpower and habitual behavior. And when/if they reach their target weight, they keep struggling. It's never, ever easy for anyone.
Part of the reason is that the body is really, really sensitive to any situation that pushes it to deviate from its set point:
The body’s determination to maintain its composition is why a person can skip a meal, or even fast for short periods, without losing weight. It’s also why burning an extra 100 calories a day will not alter the verdict on the bathroom scales. Struggling against the brain’s innate calorie counters, even strong-willed dieters make up for calories lost on one day with a few extra bites on the next. And they never realize it. "The system operates with 99.6 percent precision," Dr. Friedman said.
Add to that this surprising theory, which has been gaining some traction in the past couple of years:
...new research suggests that the environment that most strongly influences body composition may be the very first one anybody experiences: the womb.
According to several animal studies, conditions during pregnancy, including the mother’s diet, may determine how fat the offspring are as adults. Human studies have shown that women who eat little in pregnancy, surprisingly, more often have children who grow into fat adults. More than a dozen studies have found that children are more likely to be fat if their mothers smoke during pregnancy....weight control is difficult for most of us. And obesity, the terrible new epidemic of the developed world, is almost impossible to cure.
I'm enough of a fitness optimist to question quite that degree of resignation. Still, the article suggests something we've known for a long, long time, despite the rah-rah proclamations that assail us from the covers of fitness magazines: weight loss is a tough, long haul, folks.
And I for one have just about had it with magazines and experts who talk about how 'easy' it is to lose huge amounts of weight, build mighty muscles, look like any celebrity, and on another note, put your kids through college or retire rich at 32. The insistence that it's possible to receive a huge reward in exchange for a tiny investment, that you can get something for nothing, that the piper need never be paid. strikes me as a distinctly American fantasy, and it's a harmful one. The sooner we accept that these things actually require attention and diligence and a degree of long-term struggle, instead of pretending they're easy and fun all the time, the more likely it is that our efforts would succeed.
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Interesting piece.
While I agree that the eating habits of a child’s mother effects his or her health, I doubt that it’s what happens in the womb that is making the difference. I think it just comes down to parenting. Not enough parents are involved enough with their children’s diets. I have two brothers, one nineteen and one twelve, who are severely overweight and while I have expressed concern to my parents they just continue to allow them to do eat as they please. I’m sure I am not alone in this. I, like you, am a fitness optimist and don’t believe that some people are genetically programmed to be overweight. They may have been brought up in an environment that allowed their weight to balloon, but that is entirely different.
I hate the set point hypothesis
(obviously this is all my opinion…)
Anybody who has gained weight over the years knows that the “set point” can move in one direction… why can’t it move in the other direction? If we believe the “set point” is preventing us from losing weight, why don’t we believe that the “set point” will prevent us from gaining weight if we pig out and eat all the candy, cookies, cake, brownies, etc. that we want? Why even diet, if there’s a “set point”?
About cutting out 100 calories one day or skipping a meal: the problem there is what you eat, and dealing with the resulting hunger. You can’t go hungry forever. So you’ll eventually have to eat something whether it’s an hour later or a few weeks later, and if you continue to eat bad foods, it’ll bring you back to the “set point”.
I think it’s fairly obvious that some foods are more filling than others. There’s a general consensus that proteins, fat and naturally occurring fiber are more filling than processed carbs.
I think reducing 100 calories a day could be easily obtained just by changing what’s eaten. But, one problem with dieting is that nobody wants to be a social outcast. If everybody else is eating junk food, it’s hard to resist joining. You can say you’re “dieting”, but that’s only socially acceptable since it implies it’s temporary. And you can’t just shed your current social group and jump into a new social group that eats healthier. The other problem with dieting is the prevalence of junk food everywhere. It takes a great deal of vigilance and planning to avoid junk food—more than most people realistically want to do.
I hope for the sake of my career...
…that you’re both right: that food environment has more impact than genetics and that the ‘set point’ idea is a fallacy. Sadly, the science suggests that what a mother eats in the four days after conception (not even throughout the pregnancy!) profoundly affects her child’s metabolism, and that it tends to be difficult for most people to stray beyond about 15-to-20 pounds from a certain weight.
I’m not suggesting that hard work and diligence can’t overcome genetic obstacles (I’ve seen that happen), just that it’s useful to go into a weight-loss program with a clear sense of what we’re up against. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking we’re taking a leisurely hike up Telegraph Hill when in fact we’re climbing Everest.
by Andrew Heffernan on Dec 11, 2008 12:37 AM EST reply actions
I, too, have difficulty accepting the womb environment or set-point-works-only-in-one-direction theories. There is an obvious obesity epidemic that began sometime in the 1980s and has probably gained momentum ever since. So, if it’s all genetic, what sort of mutation on a mass scale occurred? If it’s all about conception or the environment in the womb, what changed in that regard?
There’s a basic scientific principle that states the simplest theory is the correct one. Well, there are any number of possible explanations for Americans’ unprecedented weight gain (more sedentary employment and leisure activies, larger food portions, more processed foods, exponential increases in sugar and starch consumption, etc., etc.). Any one of these, or combinations of them, are far more simple and obvious explanations.
(Incidentally, Andrew, you caught me the other day. I had hoped that, after that whole Syndrome incident was behind us, the family could once again get out of the public glare. All of us are doing well, and Jack-Jack will soon be starting school.)
Really?
Women who smoke during pregnancy are likely to have fatter kids? Really? Maybe that’s because they’re likely more likely to feed their kids crap later on. Just a theory. Why don’t we also say that mothers who smoke crack during pregnancy are more likely to have neglected children later on? There’s no medically significant causation, but its easy to point out why the two correlate.
I’ve also discovered that when I’m not working out, I’m not eating healthy. I need to be working out a minimum of 2-3 days a week to keep my diet honest. For me, it’s very easy to eat well on a workout day, and the day after a workout day. And, to a lesser degree, it’s fairly easy to eat well the day before a workout day. But once my days get farther away from a workout day… [insert plummeting sound here]. No matter how many times I tell myself that I will just have to work harder when I get back in the gym, the taco bell, wendy’s and buffalo wings call is just too much to resist.
I’m currently working on trying to find my motivation during these rest times/injury recovery periods. Any suggestions out there?
More womby stuff...
As Mr. Incredible/Parr points out above, the obesity epidemic has a constellation of causes, some environmental/behavioral, and some genetic, and right now, we seem to be in a ‘perfect storm’ period where most of those factors are in evidence. The pitfall as we try to address the epidemic is to assume that ONE factor is to blame. That’s not the case, and I think that may be part of why it’s such a tough nut to crack.
In the “womb environment” theory, the mother’s behavior affects the child’s genes—we inherit the dietary sins of our forebears.
This works in an oddly counterintuitive manner. I imagine I’m vastly oversimplifying here, but my understanding is that if the mother is eating heartily and well, the baby’s metabolism tends to be speedier because it senses that it will be entering an environment where food is plentiful. But if mom’s eating spottily—because of famine or a strict diet—the baby tends to grow up with a slower metabolism and thus more apt to put on weight. As a survival mechanism, it actually makes sense, but for fitness folks, it’s a tough inheritance. The take home lesson seems to be that if you’re trying to get pregnant, eat hearty!
In this formulation, you can see how a generation of people who eat poorly could indeed beget a generation that tends to put on more weight.
Of course, that would suggest that a significant portion of the heavier people out there had moms who weren’t overeting but undereating when they were conceived. I can imagine a few scenarios in which that might very well be possible (fad diets?), but even if smart folks in lab coats could figure out why or how that happened, or even if the theory itself is shown to be incomplete or flawed, its still just one piece of this very complex puzzle.
And, understandably, a piece that many fitness folks seem to have a hard time swallowing : ).
by Andrew Heffernan on Dec 11, 2008 1:16 PM EST reply actions
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