Recently, I read an article on “fattism” in the U.K. An obese woman was riding a train and an average weight woman attacked her violently for no other reason than she was overweight. The article itself was scary, but the comments were of greater interest to me.
A comment that particularly caught my eye was one that said that being fat isn’t a normal or natural state. As “evidence” that this was the case, the commenter noted that people weren't grossly overweight or morbidly obese 22,000 years ago. Setting aside the fact that this person has no way of proving the presence or absence of people who were very overweight so long ago, the comment betrayed some interesting myopia.
The question really isn’t whether or not people were obese prior to the dawn of civilization. The important thing to consider is whether or not they would have been if they were exposed to the same circumstances that we are current living in. If people thousands of years ago had been given access to plentiful amounts of highly caloric food that could be acquired without physical effort, you can bet many of them would have been obese. In fact, there’s every likelihood that they would have seen being fat as a good thing as it would have ensured survival and been an indication of one being part of a tribe that had consistent access to food.
The thing that frustrates me about fattism is that people don’t seem to realize that evolution is what has lead so many people to be obese. Fattists act as though obesity is an unnatural state which is incomprehensible through any lens other than one of personal failure. The human brain developed as a result of the consumption of fat. In fact, the brain itself is composed of layers of specialized fatty tissue. Our intelligence and higher functioning would never have developed if our ancestors didn’t have a taste for the fattiest foods available.
Being overweight is not a natural state, but eating everything in sight is a natural act. The behavior that fattists find so reprehensible, a lack of ability to resist available food, is actually the most natural behavior of all. The part of our lives which is unnatural is not our actions in stuffing lots of food into our hungry maws, but the easily available food. It is actually far less natural to be surrounded by food and choose not to eat it than to choose to eat it all. If we approach obesity as the consequence of our biological nature (as it has been shaped by evolution) rather than an unnatural state which only people who have failed to develop habits that "normal" people have acquired, it might be easier to deal with and treat the problem.
Of course, fattists are not interested in logic, evidence, or science. They are only interested in blame and finding a way to feel smugly superior to people who are overweight.
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label articles. Show all posts
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Exercise, Good or Bad
Lately, there has been a lot of conflicting information about exercise and weight loss and control. For a few years, word was that walking for a half hour a day was good enough for you. Now, we're reading that it's not enough to actually lose weight, but it is good for your heart. Additionally, I've been reading lately that exercise simply is not useful at all when you want to lose weight because people who exercise just end up eating more.
The results of these studies are not only disheartening, but misleading. One of the problems with all surveys, studies, and tests is that they take a complex problem and oversimplify it so that they can get scientifically valid results. That is, they look at a limited number of factors and tend to watch behavior only over the short term (less than 2 years, in many cases). What is more, most researchers have a hypothesis before constructing their study and either consciously or unconsciously create conditions that will validate their theories.
If you scrutinize the information that is coming out carefully, you'll see that the interpretation is always spelled out in a particular way. One of the studies noted that certain types of exercise increased muscle mass and muscle burned about 40 more calories per day than fat and all it would take to mitigate any of the gains from having more muscle would be to eat one pat of butter more per day. While this is certainly so, the interpretation completely ignores the fact that you are burning more calories for the duration of the exercise (often around 100 calories or more) and that you are almost certainly suppressing your appetite for the time after exercising and possibly boosting your overall metabolism. In other words, exercising daily, even modestly, has the potential to burn around 150 calories a day or more from combined effects of aerobic activity and increased muscle mass. Even if you eat at a maintenance level (around 2000 calories for an average person), daily exercise should help you lose around a pound a month (possibly more).
Why do the study results focus only on increased muscle mass and calories burned at rest? Why do they assume that anyone who is trying to lose weight would simply decide to eat more just because their exercising happened to work up an appetite? My personal exercise habit is to get the exercise in a few hours after a meal and then rest and pretty much recover from the appetite suppression effects in about the right time for lunch or a planned snack. I don't eat more because I exercise even if I want to, and honestly, I don't find myself being greatly hungrier than usual because I exercise. I'm hungry and fighting it all of the time anyway so there's really not much of a difference.
I have to wonder what motivates this sort of reporting. Is it simply that the winds of information have been blowing one way for awhile so there's nothing new to say and they figure they might as well have them blow another way for a bit? Is it that they see the obesity problem getting worse so they assume they must create a reason?
I don't know why such discouraging news is being reported, and I do know that weight loss is actually more complex than "eat less, exercise more", but I do know that eating less and exercising more will eventually work for most people if they can hold the line against their biological and psychological impulses (which is no small task). My guess is that these studies are likely pointing to the fact that it is much harder to do these things than expected and that people who try to exercise to lose weight end up eating more without realizing it or believe their exercise is burning more calories so they can justify a little indulgence.
The answer would seem to be not to say that exercise doesn't help people lose weight, but rather to educate people about the effects such that they are more cautious about how much they are eating. Essentially, people need to know that exercise when you want to reduce your weight doesn't buy you much of anything in terms of being able to eat more.
The results of these studies are not only disheartening, but misleading. One of the problems with all surveys, studies, and tests is that they take a complex problem and oversimplify it so that they can get scientifically valid results. That is, they look at a limited number of factors and tend to watch behavior only over the short term (less than 2 years, in many cases). What is more, most researchers have a hypothesis before constructing their study and either consciously or unconsciously create conditions that will validate their theories.
If you scrutinize the information that is coming out carefully, you'll see that the interpretation is always spelled out in a particular way. One of the studies noted that certain types of exercise increased muscle mass and muscle burned about 40 more calories per day than fat and all it would take to mitigate any of the gains from having more muscle would be to eat one pat of butter more per day. While this is certainly so, the interpretation completely ignores the fact that you are burning more calories for the duration of the exercise (often around 100 calories or more) and that you are almost certainly suppressing your appetite for the time after exercising and possibly boosting your overall metabolism. In other words, exercising daily, even modestly, has the potential to burn around 150 calories a day or more from combined effects of aerobic activity and increased muscle mass. Even if you eat at a maintenance level (around 2000 calories for an average person), daily exercise should help you lose around a pound a month (possibly more).
Why do the study results focus only on increased muscle mass and calories burned at rest? Why do they assume that anyone who is trying to lose weight would simply decide to eat more just because their exercising happened to work up an appetite? My personal exercise habit is to get the exercise in a few hours after a meal and then rest and pretty much recover from the appetite suppression effects in about the right time for lunch or a planned snack. I don't eat more because I exercise even if I want to, and honestly, I don't find myself being greatly hungrier than usual because I exercise. I'm hungry and fighting it all of the time anyway so there's really not much of a difference.
I have to wonder what motivates this sort of reporting. Is it simply that the winds of information have been blowing one way for awhile so there's nothing new to say and they figure they might as well have them blow another way for a bit? Is it that they see the obesity problem getting worse so they assume they must create a reason?
I don't know why such discouraging news is being reported, and I do know that weight loss is actually more complex than "eat less, exercise more", but I do know that eating less and exercising more will eventually work for most people if they can hold the line against their biological and psychological impulses (which is no small task). My guess is that these studies are likely pointing to the fact that it is much harder to do these things than expected and that people who try to exercise to lose weight end up eating more without realizing it or believe their exercise is burning more calories so they can justify a little indulgence.
The answer would seem to be not to say that exercise doesn't help people lose weight, but rather to educate people about the effects such that they are more cautious about how much they are eating. Essentially, people need to know that exercise when you want to reduce your weight doesn't buy you much of anything in terms of being able to eat more.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Am I Full Yet?
A recent study that has been covered in both the New York Times and Psychology Today (among other places) has been confirming something I recognized a long time ago about overweight people. That is, our bodies don't talk to us the same way about eating as people who are thin or of average weight, and there's not much we can do about it.
The information is complicated and I'm not going to regurgitate the contents of the articles when you can find them and read them for yourself. Also, frankly, I find people who blog about the contents of articles to be pretty lame. If you don't have something to say, then you shouldn't have a blog, not choose to re-purpose content from news sources.
At any rate, one of the points discussed in those articles is the fact that people who are overweight aren't told that they are full until they have already over-eaten. There is a chemical in your brain called leptin which signals satiety and cues you to put down the fork. People who are prone to be fat (something which is decided in your mother's womb, according to the studies) appear to need far higher levels of leptin for their brains to recognize that eating should stop.
This is something which I have noticed in myself for quite some time, but have had difficulty acting on. When my husband and I have a meal, I often still feel hungry at the end of the meal for as long as an hour afterward. In the past, this has often cued me to keep on eating while he has already stopped because he's full. The method I have started to use to try and stop this is to focus on how my stomach feels rather than on what my brain is telling me. That is, I think about the fact that there is food in my stomach now and it is enough. I can't say that is 100% successful as a technique, but it works coupled with other behavioral modification practices like immediately washing the dishes, putting away leftovers, or generally engaging in some activity which prohibits me from continuing to eat.
This method works adequately when I eat at home, but the situation is quite a bit more complicated if one eats out a lot. Eating out almost certainly is going to compel one to eat too much for a variety of reasons. First of all, the food is often better or at least more interesting than what you eat at home. Second, it's usually plentiful and there is the sense that whatever you don't eat will be wasted, and third, it's expensive so you don't want to let it go to waste. Finally, if you're in a restaurant, you don't have a way to distract yourself from the food or the capacity to simply walk away the instant you have eaten "enough". You're just sitting there with tasty food in front of you and your brain is saying, "I'm not full yet."
I also wonder if part of the reason we eat more now is the loss of the sit down family meal as a part of our culture. If you sit down to eat with other people, there are a variety of factors that can influence how much you eat. You are talking more between bites so it takes longer to finish the meal (which gives even those who need more leptin a chance for their brain to reach the point where it says, "I'm full."). Also, being around other people, even your family may cause people who are inclined to overeat to be more modest. As I've mentioned in a previous post, fat people don't like to be seen as eating a lot in front of others. There's also the fact that the food is more mundane and people eat less if they don't find the food greatly appealing. Part of one of the articles I referenced says something about mice overeating on a chocolate supplement they liked, but cutting way back once their routine diet was reintroduced.
The articles I'm referencing talk about the question of whether the obesity epidemic in America is linked to unhealthy food or not because the food has never been particularly healthy. If you look at the Gallery of Regrettable Food, which shows cooking information from the 50's and other eras, you can see that food certainly was not great even when people were thin. My sense is that a lot of the obesity epidemic is linked to the great increase in eating out or frozen and prepared foods as a result of women's roles changing from homemaker to working outside the house as well as the decrease in manual labor and increase in sedentary recreational activities like television watching and computer use.
At any rate, thin people take their ability to stop eating for granted and one of the reasons they judge fat people is that they have no idea that we live a very different life than they do. They effortlessly resist whereas we have to focus very hard and trick ourselves if we don't want to overeat all of the time. The effort is not inconsiderable, though I'm guessing it is possible since I've had some success with it so far.
The information is complicated and I'm not going to regurgitate the contents of the articles when you can find them and read them for yourself. Also, frankly, I find people who blog about the contents of articles to be pretty lame. If you don't have something to say, then you shouldn't have a blog, not choose to re-purpose content from news sources.
At any rate, one of the points discussed in those articles is the fact that people who are overweight aren't told that they are full until they have already over-eaten. There is a chemical in your brain called leptin which signals satiety and cues you to put down the fork. People who are prone to be fat (something which is decided in your mother's womb, according to the studies) appear to need far higher levels of leptin for their brains to recognize that eating should stop.
This is something which I have noticed in myself for quite some time, but have had difficulty acting on. When my husband and I have a meal, I often still feel hungry at the end of the meal for as long as an hour afterward. In the past, this has often cued me to keep on eating while he has already stopped because he's full. The method I have started to use to try and stop this is to focus on how my stomach feels rather than on what my brain is telling me. That is, I think about the fact that there is food in my stomach now and it is enough. I can't say that is 100% successful as a technique, but it works coupled with other behavioral modification practices like immediately washing the dishes, putting away leftovers, or generally engaging in some activity which prohibits me from continuing to eat.
This method works adequately when I eat at home, but the situation is quite a bit more complicated if one eats out a lot. Eating out almost certainly is going to compel one to eat too much for a variety of reasons. First of all, the food is often better or at least more interesting than what you eat at home. Second, it's usually plentiful and there is the sense that whatever you don't eat will be wasted, and third, it's expensive so you don't want to let it go to waste. Finally, if you're in a restaurant, you don't have a way to distract yourself from the food or the capacity to simply walk away the instant you have eaten "enough". You're just sitting there with tasty food in front of you and your brain is saying, "I'm not full yet."
I also wonder if part of the reason we eat more now is the loss of the sit down family meal as a part of our culture. If you sit down to eat with other people, there are a variety of factors that can influence how much you eat. You are talking more between bites so it takes longer to finish the meal (which gives even those who need more leptin a chance for their brain to reach the point where it says, "I'm full."). Also, being around other people, even your family may cause people who are inclined to overeat to be more modest. As I've mentioned in a previous post, fat people don't like to be seen as eating a lot in front of others. There's also the fact that the food is more mundane and people eat less if they don't find the food greatly appealing. Part of one of the articles I referenced says something about mice overeating on a chocolate supplement they liked, but cutting way back once their routine diet was reintroduced.
The articles I'm referencing talk about the question of whether the obesity epidemic in America is linked to unhealthy food or not because the food has never been particularly healthy. If you look at the Gallery of Regrettable Food, which shows cooking information from the 50's and other eras, you can see that food certainly was not great even when people were thin. My sense is that a lot of the obesity epidemic is linked to the great increase in eating out or frozen and prepared foods as a result of women's roles changing from homemaker to working outside the house as well as the decrease in manual labor and increase in sedentary recreational activities like television watching and computer use.
At any rate, thin people take their ability to stop eating for granted and one of the reasons they judge fat people is that they have no idea that we live a very different life than they do. They effortlessly resist whereas we have to focus very hard and trick ourselves if we don't want to overeat all of the time. The effort is not inconsiderable, though I'm guessing it is possible since I've had some success with it so far.
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