bearing blog

Clean eating and a short pre-review of the new Taubes book.

I'm feeling a little less despondent this morning than I was when I wrote the last post, probably because two full days of clean eating has eliminated my weight spike.   And thank you to commenter LeeAnn for reassuring me that I probably can continue watching portions for my health, and even if that tends to exacerbate my vanity problem, I probably don't have to stop, and can look for other ways to alleviate the vanity thing.

 From 116.6 the other day, I'm now back below 112.  Yes, I am aware that a lot of that weight is probably water.  Still, I think it was worthwhile reacting quickly.

For one thing, I had lost track of portion size.  During the first nine months or so of the baby's ex utero life, I needed to eat a lot more than I do now, and so I had pretty much been eating freely -- seconds and thirds, whole sandwiches instead of halves, et cetera.   I have gotten out of the habit of starting with a small amount and then waiting to see if I needed more. 

Are you curious what "two days of clean eating" looks like for me?   I planned on avoiding white flour as much as I could and keeping the calorie load under 1400 calories (reasonable for me -- I'm quite small framed, and the baby has not been nursing heavily).  I am currently staying as a houseguest, so I have limited control over what's available, but with self-control I can keep from getting derailed.  Here's what I did for two days:

First day:

• Breakfast:  1 hardboiled egg.  15 fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around half a cup of chili with beans, two tablespoons shredded cheddar cheese, and a generous handful of fresh spinach, plus some chopped tomato and onion.  10 fresh cherries.
• Snack:  5 pecan halves, an ounce of cheddar cheese, and ten more blueberries.
• Dinner (from the local pizza chain):  A big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese and one tablespoon Italian dressing.  One-eighth of a large thin-crust pizza (bacon and veg).
• Unplanned eating:  About a half ounce of hard pretzel near bedtime.

I felt hungry between meals right away, which I took as a good sign.  Second day:

• Breakfast:  One hardboiled egg.  Fifteen fresh blueberries.  Lots of coffee.
• Lunch:  100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around 100 calories' worth of Italian sausage, 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons of mozzarella cheese, and a handful of fresh spinach.  Another big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese (left over from the night before) and one tablespoon Italian dressing.
• Snack:  Five pecan halves and one small apple.  Coffee.
• Dinner:  About two cups cooked canned green beans.  One half cup canned baked beans in a sugary sauce.  One quarter-pound hamburger patty with a teaspoon of ketchup.
• Unplanned eating:  About a quarter-ounce of hard pretzels.  One bite of sugar cookie.

Being a houseguest here, I'm free to make my own breakfasts and lunches from whatever's around, and dinner is whatever's being served.  The tortillas happen to be the most whole-grain bread in the house, so I stuck with them for lunch; on burger night, I quietly skipped the bun, and that didn't seem to cause a problem.    I enjoyed small portions of the sweet baked beans and the carryout pizza.  I measured the salad dressing and found the mixed-salad calories by looking them up on the restaurant website.

Some travel is coming up in which I'll have even less control over the types of food available, but I always have control over how much I eat of it.  So I'm feeling a lot better.

On a related note, I recently picked up Gary Taubes' new book, Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It.  You may remember that Taubes wrote the huge tome Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I reviewed in some detail here.  I will post a full review of the new Taubes book later, but the short review is this: 

 It's a shorter, more accessible version of Good Calories, Bad Calories.  So if you have been intimidated by that huge book, by all means, read the newer, sleeker version, and if you wish your doctor or spouse would read GCBC, consider lending them the new, less-frightening book instead.  It also contains dietary recommendations, basically for a paleo diet.  I have some comments about these recommendations, but I will save it for my full review.

The demon that feeds on fasting.

 

It just goes to show:  Never brag.  A couple of days ago I wrote a weight loss update in which I mentioned that when I tried to drop a pound, I hadn't been able to do it without effort, and (not really wanting to make the effort) I hadn't pushed it.  "But I'm holding pretty steady, and that's okay," I wrote. 

So, a couple of days after I'd been traveling, I suddenly saw my weight SPIKE.  Probably water, most of it; but my experience is that if I don't reverse it quickly, the water weight sticks around and becomes non-water weight.  Maybe a better way of putting this is that I suspect that the first sign I'm beginning to store some fat is a sudden episode of water retention.  Only a hypothesis, and only about me -- but still.  I was alarmed, and even more alarmed the next day when it didn't go away but was higher.

How big a spike?  Well, I've been a stable 113 pounds for about six weeks, but one morning the scale said 116, and the next 116.6 .  Yow!  I haven't seen either of those numbers for a long while.  And I have a philosophy about the scale:  don't bother too much about daily ups and downs, except when I see a number I haven't seen in a while.  I notice those.  The big ones scare me.

Like, really scare me.  Lie-awake-in-bed-sweating scared. 

And maybe here's the right time to mention a significant spiritual struggle.  Gluttony was a real problem for me, and somewhere between my asking and God answering and my work to meet Him where He wanted me to go, it's not a problem for me (much) anymore.  Yay me!  Except:  enter vanity.  I am now seriously, seriously afraid of regaining weight.  I like the way I look and feel now.  I am proud of myself -- not necessarily in a good way.  Am I diligent about getting to the gym... or obsessive?  It's hard to tell the difference. 

It's only natural to be pleased with my success so far.  There is, I am sure, a correct attitude somewhere, where I could be grateful to God for the gift of self-control, diligent in my stewardship of the health I have been graced with, pleased to adorn myself attractively for my husband and to reflect to the world my inward happiness and peace, and still unattached to the world and to my flesh.  I am not there.  I fear that I have made thinness and physical health an idol. 

Maybe it's always been an idol for me, but it was perhaps safer when I couldn't attain it.  Now it's my precious, y'know?  And I think the surest proof that it's really a problem is this:  I pray earnestly, "Please Lord, take away my vanity...." and what pops up in the mind is "...but even more than that please please please don't do it by making me fat again."   Don't make me choose between You and my body, I mean.  But I know darn well that God has already made me choose between Him and my flesh.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple."

Oh yes, I know what THAT means.

And meanwhile I keep looking for a way around it.

+ + +

If any of my readers think of gluttony as a big spiritual problem for themselves, then maybe this sounds self-indulgent. Wish I had your spiritual struggle instead of mine, Erin!  But bear with me.  Back when I was fat, it was really obvious that food was a sort of idol for me. Looking back at those struggles back then, they seem so simple compared to these crazy mind games.   Simple, simple struggles of the flesh versus the spirit.  All I had to do was deny the flesh!  Just like it says in the Bible!  It wasn't easy to do, always, but it was easy to understand.  Such a childish little weakness, wanting more cake.  Now I struggle with spirit against spirit -- it's not myflesh that makes war against God's will, but instead my love for my flesh.  So much harder to root out cleanly.

 
Gluttony isn't that complicated to fix (it's tough, but uncomplicated), because you only have to change something visible.  Your attitude doesn't have to change right away.  You can will your fist to put down the plate, and your heart can let go later, when it sees that it is safe feeding on the Lord.  But now I have to change something invisible, while not changing the visible all that much.  Can my heart let go of the idol of health, while my decisions and actions still responsibly preserve it?  What does that look like?  Does it look like anything at all, or is it entirely within?  How?  If I could only drive this demon out by prayer and fasting -- but on fasts, this demon grows sleek and strong.

+ + +

Today, vanity or no, I'm controlling calories and experiencing hunger.  I am thankful for obedience, which relieves the heart of some of its responsibility to ferret apart good and bad intentions.  It only makes sense to follow through with my plan to respond to a weight spike with careful attention to my food intake. 

At the same time, I am troubled by the intensity of my worry, and I wonder if I can somehow find peace.  I know, rationally, that the answer is not to set my heart on thinness and health and youth and beauty -- even though these things are often rewards of a disciplined life, I must not love them.  I must love God more.  And He has not yet asked me to choose between Him and those things -- except in the tiniest possible ways, just enough to chide me, to show me where my heart lies. 

I must be willing to lose it all, cheerfully.  I am not willing.   And yet I must be willing.  And I'm not. 

Yet.

"He went away sorrowful; for he had many possessions." 

Yet.

Weight maintenance and the Akron U-turn.

It's been a while since I posted an update on the topic of weight loss and weight maintenance, which continues to be the number-one reason people find their way to my blog.  So.... how is it going?

Well, let's recap with a little data.  I gave birth almost a year ago, in January.  Here's some data that begins May first.  My postpartum goal was to take the weight down to 112.  Right about the time I got down to 112, the baby started solids.

 

Here's a closeup of data from this month.

 

I think I can safely say I'm holding pretty steady at 113, without much effort.  I want to bring it down to 110 eventually, but not on any particular time frame; and not because 113 is "too heavy," more because I want to give myself a little extra margin of error.  

So, one thing that I have noticed, about 3 years since I began the lifestyle changes that took me down to a healthy weight:  I think my body is doing a pretty good job at driving me to eat to maintain my current weight.  

About a month ago I thought I might try to control my eating a little bit more strictly to try to slowly take off just one pound.   Interestingly enough, it didn't work.  Granted, I wasn't working very hard at it (and I'm still confident that if I decide to work hard at it, I will do it).  But this is what happened several times.

(1) Day 1:  Wake up in the morning, decide "Today I will carefully watch what I eat, avoid taking seconds or nibbling leftovers, and I'll skip bedtime snack."

(2) Follow through well on this plan all day long.

(3) Day 2:  the scale will look about the same, which is fine and to be expected.  I'll continue my plan.

(4) All goes well until dinner.

(5) At dinner I'll be freezing cold and RAVENOUSLY HUNGRY.  Real, pit of the stomach hunger.  Since it's not terribly important that I lose weight at this time, I go "Screw this, I'm starving" and I have more than one helping.  

(6) Continue craving, freezing, and nibbling all evening.

(7) Day 3:  Get on the scale expecting to see that it is spiking high because I put so much food into my body the night before.  Scale actually shows that I am a pound or so low.

(8) Remain hungry, cold, and nibbly for the next couple of days.  Scale eventually returns to where I was on Day 1.  

(9) Once scale goes back to where I was, I miraculously regain the will to control my food intake.

My guess as to what's going on:  my body is driving me to eat every time I start to burn some fat, and I am mostly responding to it.   This is not a bad development, considering that where I am is a good place to be (BMI 22.8, and looking pretty good in my own opinion, and my clothes all fit.)  

I think I always have had this weight-stabilizing mechanism in place though.  I suspect most people have it, and it works pretty well even in the obese:  a feedback loop, a system of urges which responds to fat burning by driving people to eat, and which go away when we stop burning fat.     Weight stability seems to be something the body naturally seeks.  

When people say that their "hunger signals are broken" I think that this may really just mean that they have difficulty identifying the sensation of hunger as hunger -- a cognitive difficulty.  Ultimately it doesn't matter how the body convinces your will to put stuff in your mouth.  I think, sometimes, in its drive to keep you from burning more than a little fat, it will use all the tools at its disposal to get you to eat and STOP THE SCARY DANGEROUS FAT BURNING, from pure animal hunger to emotional mood swings to higher-brain rationalization.

If you have ever tried to lose weight on purpose, think back.  After dropping a couple of pounds, and still wanting to lose more, did you ever find yourself thinking, "I'm down a couple of pounds.  I can afford to splurge at this meal/have this extra snack/eat the whole thing."   I am sure it is really common; I have done this myself, lots of times.  

Step back and look at how loony it is from a loss standpoint.  "I'm down a couple of pounds; I can eat more" is correct if your goal is to remain the same.  Because eating more will fix the problem of having lost weight.   This is what your body has tricked you into thinking with that supposedly smart brain of yours!

 It is as if you have started driving from New York to L. A.,  and after a while you realize you've gotten all the way to Akron, so you decide you can afford to turn around and go east for a while, which feels better because now the sun isn't in your eyes so much, and then after a while you're like:  What the hell?  Why am I seeing these signs for Scranton?  This isn't working!   

No, the proper response is:   I want to go past Akron.  I got to Akron by traveling west.  Therefore, I can keep going west and that will get me past Akron.  

  Not "I have made progress, so I can reverse my progress;" but "I have made progress, so I can continue my progress."

Successful weight losers have to exert their will to override all the messages the body sends them to try to put the brakes on their progress.  They have to get hungry and stay hungry for at least a little while every day.  They have to resist the impulse to respond to a milestone by turning around and going back to the last one.   

It isn't terribly important to me to drop one pound right now, so I haven't resisted the corrections my body keeps applying every time I start.  But having made a few attempts and watching what happens, I think I understand those corrections a little bit more.  If I decide I am going to drop that one pound, it will require me to spend a couple of weeks feeling an urge to eat and resisting that urge.  I know I could do it if I really wanted to because I've done it before; the evidence is that I don't want to enough right now to push back (which is fine; as I said, I am in a healthy weight range).

And there's the hard truth about weight loss in general -- if you have many pounds that you want to lose, it requires you to spend quite a long time feeling the urge to eat and resisting the urge.   It is do-able, but it is difficult, and because (I believe) the body enlists the help of the brain's rationalization capacity to trick your will into submission, it requires mustering your intellect as well.  

Because really, don't you want to get out of Akron?

The "maintenance algorithm" as it stands today.

Rebekka asked me a couple of days ago to write about the weight maintenance algorithm some more.  I already mentioned it pretty recently, but I'll do it again.  As always, I find there's a difference between the ideal and the reality, and that difference changes over time too, and I'll try to show that.

Okay, so in this post long ago I explained some me-specific context, a few habits I have all the time that set me apart from the average person.  I don't drink a lot of caloric beverages, I eat a lot of vegetables, I use small plates at home, I'm habitually wary of sugar and white flour, I don't buy much snack food (lately this has slipped -- I can at least say, "not for me"), I keep almonds in my car, and I chart my weight daily.  

That's pretty much the extent of my self-control as long as my weight stays within range.  I would like to say I don't eat kids' PB&J crusts, or that I don't take seconds unless I'm actually still hungry, but it's not true.  I don't eat like I used to, but that's largely because I'm used to a different level of eating, not because it requires a lot of self-denial.  The small plates are a big help.

So, if I get seven measurements in a row above my target weight, that's what triggers my "oops, I need to lose weight."  And then I don't get to go back to maintenance until I bring the five-day average down at or below the target.

So while I'm in that "oops" mode I am mainly working on reining in the sloppiness that may have developed since the last time, a surprising amount of which consists of "eating things I don't even want to eat." Often, getting rid of that is all it takes, and I'm back to my usual weight in a week or two.

Seven in a row. And a new ID.

This morning I'm going back into "weight loss mode" for, I think, the first time since I got back down to my postpartum goal weight.  I've been within bounds for close to three months -- not a bad run, considering I'm dealing with the ups and downs of breastfeeding.

(A note on that -- When I was heavy, I didn't even notice that breastfeeding made me need more food.  I figure I was already eating so much and throwing off the excess in heat, that my body just threw off less heat and fed the baby from that.  Now it's very, very obvious that feeding the baby means I have to eat more, though the exact quantity is difficult to hit.)

I weigh daily.  One way I make this work for me -- one rule -- is that I return to stricter habits when I have seven readings in a row that are above my target weight of 112.  It goes very nicely with daily weighings (seven days = one week) and it's not hard to remember.   Seven is enough data points that a trend can be visible among the random ups-and-downs.  

I still have a hard time understanding why people say "Oh, I can't weigh daily."  Data from the National Weight Control Registry has me convinced that daily weighing is not harmful (even though you will frequently see that advice on dieting sites and in books as if there was evidence that daily weighing stalls weight loss all by itself).  

I guess I can understand it depending on the personality.  I have to hold myself back from restricting my habits too soon -- like, oh no, I had a bad food day and the next day the scale reads 2 lbs higher, I better act NOW.   Well, I hadn't thought of this possibility, but it can act the other way too -- a friend of mine told me she doesn't weigh daily because, when she happens to have a lower reading, it's easy to convince herself she "has room" to go off habits that day.  

(Which is a normal part of maintenance -- but is an act of pure self-sabotage in attempts to reduce weight.  "The data shows that what I've been doing is working!  I should do the opposite today!")

Anyway.  Seven "high" days in a row, and it's time to check my habits.  I consider myself back in maintenance after I bring my five-day running average under the target.  That can take a few weeks.  

Habit number one:  tomato juice and boiled egg for breakfast...

 

 * * *

In other news, my new driver's license arrived today.  It strikes me as a really stupid idea to scan pictures of my ID and put them on my blog, so I won't, but let me tell you -- the difference between the old one and the new one is really cool.  I keep putting them side by side and looking at them.

A couple of times over the last couple of years, I pulled my driver's license out to prove to someone that I used to be heavy.  (The weight listed on my old DL is 160 lbs; my new one, 112.)  I think I'll go on carrying the old one in a spare slot in my wallet.

 

Post-mining complete for printable version.

OK, I've been through my ENTIRE blog since the beginning of 2008 and I have stuck every post that had anything to do with weight loss into one or more of four provisional categories:

1. Weight Subtopic Other Writers (where I do links to other people or sometimes book reviews)
2. Weight Subtopic Recipes Menus (self-explanatory)
3. Weight Subtopic Tips (also, I hope, self-explanatory)
4. Weight Subtopic Personal (which was going to be "my personal story" but also which got "personal philosophy" in there too and so is very bloated compared to the others.)

I am still not sure what form to put everything in.  I guess the biggest question is, should I take the "personal" subtopic and divide it up into two or more separate threads?  There seems to be a difference between "just telling my own story" and struggling to articulate principles that might help other people, but the dividing line is difficult.

I could just leave it as it is now, put together chronologically.  If you'd like to see roughly what that would look like, only backwards, you could start with the earliest posts (which as of today appear at this link: http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/weight-subtopic-personal/page/19/), go to the bottom, and read upwards/page backward.  

(Note for the future:  As I continue to post in that category, the "earliest" posts will move to a page with a higher index page number.  So that link may go out of date.)

If you've an opinion, let me know in the comments.

Seeking.

I just had to pull this analogy out of the comments to the last post, because I think Tabitha hit it out of the park.  I had written that I didn't think cutting back on habits and  "just maintaining" the numbers on the scale was a good goal, because going back to old habits isn't "maintaining" behavior, it's "gaining" behavior.  Tabitha wrote:

I see what you mean, Erin. It's like when my NFP teacher told me that if you "take chances" your behavior says you are seeking a pregnancy.

The eating behaviors aren't a perfect analogy, of course, but it makes sense that you either have the healthy habits or gaining habits.

I remember encountering that language in NFP class too, and I thought it was a very helpful and realistic way of thinking about it.  There is no such thing as "avoiding pregnancy" and "taking chances" at the same time.  The criterion of whether you're "seeking pregnancy" or "avoiding pregnancy" is to be judged by what your ACTUAL REAL BEHAVIOR is consistent with.  

That's not to say there's not room for an oops, as in, an honest mistake interpreting a chart, or medication screwing up your fertility signs -- that's a time when you might say "I was avoiding pregnancy but I got pregnant anyway" --- although a better way of phrasing it would be "I THOUGHT I was avoiding pregnancy but I got pregnant anyway."

But see here, if you have sex during your fertile time, you're "seeking pregnancy" even if you don't want to get pregnant.  Your biology doesn't care one whit about your intentions, or whether you have your fingers crossed.

And yeah, Tabitha's right -- regaining weight is kind of like that, although it can be a little more complicated because there are more behaviors involved.  If you change enough of your habits from "new weight-maintaining habit" to "old weight-gaining habit," well, you're trying to gain weight, whether you want to or not.  

That's why I want to point out that it's much better to think in terms of permanent change to new, low-weight-maintaining behaviors, and eliminating the old, high-weight-maintaining behaviors.

Just maintaining.

I'm almost done going through and finding all my weight loss posts and categorizing them into broad categories so that I can maybe, eventually, produce a printable version.    

Along the way I'm re-reading some of them, remembering where I was at each stage, and occasionally thinking of interesting updates.  (Remember those cookies on my dresser?  Guess what?  They are STILL THERE.)

One thing I've been trying to figure out is whether there is really anything original or unique about my own approach and philosophy.  I know that I have an original and unique personal experience and an original and unique voice, because everyone does, sheesh.  But what is there in the meat of what I did and what I write about that is different from all the other gazillion books out there?  If not, why bother?  (Of course, the other way of looking at it is -- if so many other people can publish and self-publish the same old advice over and over again, why not me?  But I digress.)

The part that seems to me like it might not have been done (much) before is the notion that what we really can control is the habit-changing, not the numbers changing.   To let go of the numbers and embrace the desirable habits whether they "pay" in numbers or not.  Add that to the idea of measuring and celebrating success in habits, not in numbers -- and the idea of adding habits slowly, systematically, and deliberately ---and I'm not sure I've seen that anywhere else.  

The closest thing I've seen is in The Beck Diet, which is a cognitive-behavioral therapist's take on it.  I am not a cognitive-behavioral therapist, but it seems like a good approach (or at least, it seems similar to mine).

Is there something I'm missing, or does that sound about right?

This occurred to me a couple of weeks ago when a friend who has been changing her habits and who has dropped 20-odd pounds in the last several months posted that she was changing her goals during an upcoming stressful time.  She was going to work on maintaining her weight rather than on losing weight during that period of predictable high stress.  

It is the sort of thing that years ago I would have said "Great goal!"  about, but these days I just don't believe that anymore.  I commented that I didn't think maintaining the scale was a "goal."  The reason I gave is that it's not directly under your control the way habit is.  (Post and comment are here.)

It bugged me and bugged me for a few days because there was something else about the notion of easing up on yourself, and just maintaining weight rather than continuing to lose it, during a stressful time that bugged me. Even though on the surface it sounded perfectly reasonable.

And then this morning I think I figured it out.  Here on the other side of weight loss, it's perfectly obvious that "how I lost the weight" and "how I maintain the weight" are THE SAME.  There is not a  significant difference between my behaviors as a weight-losing person and my behaviors as a weight-maintaining person.  

Oh, sure, I must be consuming more calories.  (Especially since I am breastfeeding an eight-month-old.)  But the habits are not very different.  At least, if you compare these three versions of me:

•  (A) stable-but-heavy, pre-2008 me; 
• (B) 2008, weight-losing me; 
• (C) stable-but-normal weight, current me

... well, (A) and (C) behave very, very differently.  (B) and (C) behave much the same.  

(Whereas conventional energy-balance wisdom might seem to imply that (A) and (C) would behave similarly, and (B) is the one who would be behaving differently.)

I guess I now believe that maintaining is just as hard, or just as easy, as losing weight.  I guess I now believe that you can't really save much effort and stress by changing from "trying to lose" to "trying to maintain."  Going back to old habits is not "maintaining" behavior, it's "gaining" behavior.

What you can do to ease up on yourself, to make things less stressful, is to temporarily stop adding new good habits and "maintain" the ones you have.  

Like much that I've learned, it's kind of bad news.   But it's good news in a way too, I think.

The answer depends on the question.

A friend of mine asked me a week ago, "So, how important do you really think exercise is for weight loss?"  I gave a rambly off-the-cuff answer, but I wasn't satisfied with it.  Let me try again.

Research data does exist about the subject.  But the kind of data that's out there is not the sort that can be translated into advice for everyone.

Some of it reports a relationship between exercise and immediate weight loss; some of it reports a relationship between exercise and long-term weight maintenance.  Some of it compares cardiovascular-type exercise to resistance-type exercise.  Some of it reports what happens when totally sedentary people take up very minimal exercise; some of it reports what happens when people who move around during their normal lives introduce sessions of intense exercise; some of it reports what happens when people who already exercise in sessions add more sessions.  Some work studies people who are generally healthy, some work studies people who are ill or frail.  Clearly not all of the results are relevant to each person.

And then, what comes out in the headlines isn't necessarily what the researchers were studying.  Check out this apparently decent article in The Guardian:  "Why exercise won't make you thin."  The article reports:

In what has become a defining experiment at the University of Louisiana, led by Dr Timothy Church, hundreds of overweight women were put on exercise regimes for a six-month period. Some worked out for 72 minutes each week, some for 136 minutes, and some for 194. A fourth group kept to their normal daily routine with no additional exercise.

Against all the laws of natural justice, at the end of the study, there was no significant difference in weight loss between those who had exercised – some of them for several days a week – and those who hadn't. (Church doesn't record whether he told the women who he'd had training for three and half hours a week, or whether he was wearing protective clothing when he did.) Some of the women even gained weight.

But if you go to the journal article abstract, you will find no mention of weight loss.  The study's authors apparently felt that the really important result was the relationship between exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness.  (There is one.)

Finally, the numbers are not really simple enough to be distilled into headlines without losing some subtlety.  Let's say that "New study shows that X is superior to Y when it comes to losing weight."  This may mean that the average weight loss in the X group was significantly more than the average weight loss in the Y group.  Or it might mean that a greater percentage of the X group than of the Y group achieved some criterion for "success." But often there are some individuals in the Y group who outperformed individuals in the X group for some unknown reason.  How do you know which group you would do better in?  You don't, unless you try X and you try Y.

So:  Most of what you read in the papers may as well be ignored as acted upon.

That being said, I am personally convinced of this:

Exercise is next to useless for weight loss.  If there is an effect, it is so small as to be not worth the time and effort anyone puts into weight loss.  If the only reason you want to exercise is to lose weight, don't bother.  Seriously. 

(I've written about this before.)

But.

Why do you want to lose weight?

If any part of that is "Because I want to be healthier" --- or "stronger" --- or "able to do more things" --- or "longer-lived" ---

--- then exercise will give you that, EVEN IF YOU DO NOT LOSE ANY WEIGHT AT ALL.

I can't stress this one enough.

Mark told me about a paper that he saw presented at a conference that, while I cannot link to it, will do for an illustration.  The research subjects were overweight people who increased their exercise for the study.  Rather than just presenting averages and standard deviations and the like, the presenter showed data for all the individuals.  A few gained weight.  Most lost very little weight or no weight.  Some lost a significant amount of weight.  But all of them increased their muscle mass, and all of them increased their lean-to-fat body ratio. 

Yeah, some people will lose weight after they start exercising.  Good for them.  But why not just start with the assumption:  "Exercise will probably not help me lose weight, but it will definitely make me healthier."

So fess up.  If you are the sort to say you don't care so much about your appearance, but you want to lose weight because it's good for your health... well, if that's true then the only logical response is to get some exercise.

Or even if you DO care about your appearance, AND you want to lose weight because it's good for your health, then the only logical response is STILL to get some exercise.

"But wait," you might be saying.  "I do only care about my health, but we all know that simply being obese is so very bad for my health, that if I stay obese I'm going to be unhealthy anyway.  I should try to lose weight first, and if exercise won't help me lose weight or might even make it harder to lose weight, then it'll actually be standing in the way of better health."

Bzzt.  Very, very little evidence exists for the assertion that being obese, alone, causes health problems.  Correlation has been demonstrated.  Causation, not so much.

Exercise will definitely make you healthier.  Losing weight will not definitely make you healthier.

So.  Let me distill this into a handy Q&A.

***

Q.  I want to lose weight, so should I be getting regular exercise?

A.  Yes.

***

Q.   If I want to GAIN weight, should I be getting regular exercise?

A.  Yes.

***

Q.   Let's suppose I don't give a flying fig newton whether my weight goes up or down or stays the same.  Should I be getting regular exercise?

A.  Do I really have to answer that?  

Q.  Yes, just for the sake of completeness.

A.  Yes.

Q.  That's what I thought you would say.

A.  Glad to oblige.

Q.   Okay, this is what I REALLY meant to say. I'm not getting regular exercise, and I'm not losing weight as fast as I want to.  Will it help me lose weight if I get more exercise?

A. I can't be sure, but probably not.

Q.  Is that bad news or good news?

A.  Yes.

Wanted: Honesty.

At Whatever, science fiction author John Scalzi has some good things to say about finding the time to write.  

As I read it, I thought that it really applies to anything people say they "want" to do.

So: Do you want to write or don’t you? If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.” And that’s fine. Just don’t kid yourself as to what “yes, but” means.

If your answer is “yes,” then the question is simply when and how you find the time to do it. If you spend your free time after work watching TV, turn off the TV and write. If you prefer to spend time with your family when you get home, write a bit after the kids are in bed and before you turn in yourself. If your work makes you too tired to think straight when you get home, wake up early and write a little in the morning before you head off. If you can’t do that (I’m not a morning person myself) then you have your weekend — weekends being what I used when I wrote Agent to the Stars.

And if you can’t manage that, then what you’re saying is that you were lying when you said your answer is “yes.” Because if you really wanted to write, you would find a way to make the time, and you would find a way to actually write. Cory Doctorow says that no matter what, he tries for 250 words a day (that’s a third of what I’ve written in this entry to this point), and if you write just 250 words a day — the equivalent to a single, double-spaced page of text — then in a year you have 90,000 words. That’s the length of a novel. Off of 250 words a day. Which you could do. On the goddamned bus. If you really wanted.

This is why at this point in time I have really very little patience for people who say they want to write but then come up with all sorts of excuses as to why they don’t have the time. 

I particularly liked the line:  "If your answer is “yes, but,” then here’s a small editing tip: what you’re doing is using six letters and two words to say “no.”"  Rings true, no?

I hear it about homeschooling from time to time.  I occasionally hear "I would like to homeschool, but there's no way I could do it, I don't have the patience, etc."  This is a good example, because believe me, every one of those obstacles has been overcome by many, many people who really wanted to homeschool their kids.  Or, lacking a desire, who really believed it was what they ought to do.  There is nothing wrong with not wanting to homeschool your kids, by the way.  And it's not what everyone ought to do.   But again, honesty about it.

And I hear it about regular exercise -- much more commonly than about homeschooling.  "I want to exercise, but I don't have the time."  Same thing.  Whatever your obstacles, whatever your set of obstacles, other people have had them, and some of those people -- the ones who really wanted to -- have gotten through and over and around them.  

The doing is the measure of the wanting.  "Doing" might involve planning and preparing, but it implies action of some kind.  Without action, so-called wanting is only vapor and wind.  Not wanting at all.

Which makes me think that a good resolution to make might be to stop saying "I really want to do X" when the evidence demonstrates that I don't.  And that means facing up to some truths about who I am, because don't we all measure ourselves in part by what we imagine ourselves doing, rather than by what we really do?  And couldn't that truth set us free?

Like this:  

• I don't want to read stories to my children every day. 
• I don't want to go to Mass except on Sundays.  
• I don't want to turn off the computer every night as soon as my husband gets home.
• I don't want to take public transit instead of my car.
• I don't want to grow kitchen herbs in containers.
• I don't want to stop feeding the kids convenient and cheap packaged cookies for tea snacks.

What don't you really want to do?