In Your Head, In Your Heeeead
We all know that when people lose weight, they have an incredibly high likelihood of gaining it back. But what about that small percentage who are able to lose weight and keep it off? One theory is that the difference is a mental one. Researchers studied activity in different parts of the brain, and found that B-quadrant people were the most successful.
These people are controlled, methodical, disciplined sticklers for structure and routine. Punctual and neat, they always have a plan, timetable and calendar with appointments penciled in.
Well, I’m punctual! I have a calendar! I… yeah, I’m screwed. (Although the article does say that you can train yourself to be more B-quadranty.) Other keys are incorporating some form of meditation into your life, finding a mentor, and tapping into your leadership potential.
It comes from I-believe-in-the-Secret Oprah.com, so maybe a grain of salt is in order. Still, interesting stuff. Thanks to La Wade for the link!
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“These people are controlled, methodical, disciplined sticklers for structure and routine. Punctual and neat, they always have a plan, timetable and calendar with appointments penciled in.”
Sounds close to the Type A personality, also.
I’m like this. It’s a great asset to my job, a great asset to my finances, and helped me lose a lot of weight in the last six months.
It also raises my chances of stressing myself into early cardiovascular problems.
Now I’m trying to teach myself not to count calories (and drive myself crazy) and to eat normally. Being obsessively pendantic isn’t about character or willpower or vibrating your way to success a-la the Secret, it’s just one of those random traits that some people have.
(And it will only help me keep the weight off if I want to obsessively count calories the rest of my life, which sounds both dull and like something I’d do. Go figure. I’d rather be overweight and sane.)
As someone who has done it and who has a mother who has done it and knows people who have done it… the fact that “researchers” can’t see through this makes me want to scream. You know what else the B profile is similar to when transported to the dieting realm? The profile for someone at risk for developing anorexia.
But, you know, clearly someone with those psychological characteristics must have lost weight in a healthy and doctor-sanctioned manner. S/he’s thin, isn’t s/he? And that’s the sign of health, isn’t it?
I’m actually pretty evenly split between A and C based on the broad descriptions, but I still think their grid could trap people with obsessive compulsive/black-and-white thinking problems in the B quadrant depending on the questions.
While I don’t doubt that structured behavior and somewhat compulsive planning would, indeed, be an asset if you wished to live such a vigilant lifestyle, I would also encourage you to take this with a grain of salt.
A quick search of Google Scholar came up with a paper by C. Victor Bunderson, PhD, called The Validity of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Indicator. He writes, “The HBDI was not validated for use in clinical or diagnostic testing, nor in medical or psychological classification.”
Indeed, it was created as an instrument to be used in business management and training.
Like secretly said:
‘You know what else the B profile is similar to when transported to the dieting realm? The profile for someone at risk for developing anorexia.’
More and more scientific theories about eating disorders and especially anorexia are tending towards it being a brain disorder. Located in the B quadrant, perhaps?
When I hear about these mythic people who’ve lost weight and kept it off, I apply this to my own behaviour after a diet and can see only ONE clear explanation why I can’t, and they can keep it off: they’ve most likely developed disordered eating or even a fullblown eating disorder – which, luckily for me I still think, I “can’t”.
B people: ‘Controlled, methodical, disciplined sticklers for structure and routine. Punctual and neat, they always have a plan’. When you’re “obese” and on a diet, that kind of behaviour nowadays is called: trying to get healthy. When you’re of “normal weight”, it’s called: watching what you eat. When you’re (severely) underweight, it’s: anorexia. Same behaviour, same difference.
I totally agree with the previous commenters. I’m really glad people are starting to talk about the resemblance between dieting and anorexic behavior, with the only difference to the outside world being the weight you’re at when you do it.
Hmmm… I know a few B quadrant people, and more that are well on their way there. Pretty much all of them would be considered at least borderline overweight, most overweight (which isn’t saying much, considering how useless the BMI is to start with), and a few that would be considered obese.
Hasn’t stopped them from becoming very successful business people.
I feel like a crucial distinction is being missed here by the people drawing parallels between dieting and anorexia. Anorexia nervosa is, by definition, intentional weight loss in people who are underweight. In contrast, if you are overweight, or trying to maintain a large weight loss, these kinds of behaviors are appropriate. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about exercising an hour a day or eating a low-calorie diet if you’re not underweight.
I think all of the studies that have come out of the national weight loss registry are very interesting. Someone commented that the personality test used in this study had not been clinically validated, but I think this right here, linking a very rare and dramatic clinical outcome (significant sustained weight loss) to a certain personality type is validation in and of itself. They’re not saying the correlation is 100%, though, so nobody’s trying to claim that everyone with this personality type will be successful at weight loss or that only people with this personality type can sustian weight loss.
As one of the “mythic” people who have lost a massive amount of weight and kept it off for years, I’d like to thank Wade for her commonsense observations. I exercise and weigh/measure my food and count calories every single day – simply because it’s the easiest way to make sure I don’t regain. I don’t know of anyone, myself included, who has sustained a major weight loss without being at least a little obsessive.
And in response to Dancinghawk, yes living this way is dull – but I far prefer it to regaining weight and feeling as though my life is slipping out of control along with my weight.
“There is nothing inherently unhealthy about exercising an hour a day or eating a low-calorie diet if you’re not underweight.”
From the mental side I would argue that it’s pretty much the same thing. The improvements to your physical health can mask the stress and wear and tear to your mental health. Some people are OK with very regimented behavior, for others it’s not a natural state of affairs and I think it does psychological harm. Just like some people can eat very little without causing themselves physical harm, whereas anorexics who are severely underweight cannot.
Hey Susan, how much did you lose and how long have you kept it off? Just curious. I swear I am not waiting to pounce on anything you say, I am just always interested to hear from someone who has achieved long-term weight loss and get any insights they might have on how they did it.
“Some people are OK with very regimented behavior, for others it’s not a natural state of affairs and I think it does psychological harm.”
I don’t know if there’s any evidence for this, but even if we accept it to be true, this study seems to show that the people who have been successful at maintaining weight loss are those people for whom regimented behavior does come naturally. And there’s actually a study showing that the people in this cohort don’t have an elevated rate of psychological disorders (abstract here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=9697943&query_hl=9)
I agree with the comment that it seems weight loss is maintained only after adopting what amounts to eating disordered thinking and behavior. It’s trading so-called “unhealthy” (being overweight…I don’t think fat is unhealthy, btw) for *actual* unhealthy, i.e. anorexia/bulimia thinking/behavior.
Calorie-counting and food journalling are eating disorder type behaviors. Exercising for more than an hour a day is supposedly unhealthy. Exercising excessively is anorexia. Exercising instead of eating when one receives a hunger signal (like the singer Madonna does) is anorexia. Designating ice cream as “bad” and lettuce as “good” is eating disordered thinking. (Food is food. It should not have a moral value.) Exercising extra because you ate “something you shouldn’t have” is ED thinking.
I used to hang out in a diet support group…until I realized they were all attempting to reach, reaching, and maintaining their goal weights through unhealthy ED thinking and behavior.
There seem to be a lot of comments at the moment conflating “dieting” behaviours with “eating disordered” behaviours. The two are definitely not identical. Both can involve control and a strict regime, but there are emotional components that are very different between the two. It is possible to have a highly regimented eating and exercising plan, loose weight, and still keep one’s mental health, if the particular plan you have fits YOU, and does not cause undue stress or burden in your particular life circumstance. Jen Wade also pointed out that there is a big difference between someone who is overfat working hard to loose weight, and someone who is already UNDERweight trying to become more so.
Everyone has habits and routines, some people feel trapped by them, some people are perfectly happy, and some people don’t realize that their habits might be harmful. I am starting to realize that my recent habit of having a glass of wine when I get home from work every evening is not helpful: it relaxes me, but makes me a bit sleepy and less likely to get any household stuff done. Oh No! My “drinking” is getting in the way of normal activities (like laundry folding), does this make me an alcoholic? Nope. It’s all about the scale of the problem. The same thing is true for whether or not a regimented lifestyle indicates an eating disorder or an organized person.
It is really unfair that some people never struggle with their weight, or keeping their checkbook balanced, or remembering appointments. Personally, I struggle with food and my weight, but I’m really good at keeping track of my finances, I’m very “type B” but not when it comes to eating and exercise. What I take away from this article is that there may be natural personality types that make certain things easier for some than for others. I think this is great, it means that someone can realize that is isn’t just about “willpower”,it really IS harder for some people to control their weight than it is for others. Recognizing that it’s harder, a struggling overweight person can then decide if it’s worth the hassle to loose weight, or if she’d be happier putting her energy into learning to paint. Even just acknowledging that it is indeed harder may make her feel better. Also, knowing the habits of people who are achieving what you want to achieve is always helpful, even if you don’t try to become them, you can emulate the parts that you want to.
“I feel like a crucial distinction is being missed here by the people drawing parallels between dieting and anorexia. Anorexia nervosa is, by definition, intentional weight loss in people who are underweight. In contrast, if you are overweight, or trying to maintain a large weight loss, these kinds of behaviors are appropriate.”
La Wade, that kind of thinking is why so many anorexics can’t get the treatment they need, because once they’ve regained a certain amount of weight, they don’t qualify as anorexics anymore. But the destructive/unhealthy behaviour is still there …
Spacedcowgirl – to answer your question, I have lost 40kg (or around 90 pounds, or slightly more than Nicole Ritchie on a “fat day”) and kept it off since 2003.
From my own experience and reading the experiences of others, it seems to be the norm for people who have lost a large amount of weight to get obsessive about diet and/or exercise at first. Then after a while you figure out a balance that works for you – perhaps that’s the key to not slipping over into disordered thinking?
Lucy – I’ve never heard that exercising for over an hour a day is unhealthy. Two hours of intensive cardio or more a day, day after day, would definitely be overdoing it. But over an hour of, say, cardio and weight training combined (not every day of the week) is the norm for many people. And surely you’re not suggesting that a long hike or bike ride once a week is unhealthy? Again, it’s all about finding the right balance.
Since I used the initial inflammatory language, I should probably take the heat, huh? :) I suppose this is something I’m increasingly becoming irked about, particularly as I’m watching what it’s doing to my mom and less so to me. Our situations: She started out in 1995 at 5’5” and probably 20 pounds overweight. She’s been underweight since 2002 and somewhere under 95 pounds since 2005 (discovered accidentally by me). I started out overweight, then gained very quickly due to a variety of medical issues. I dropped 75 pounds down to normal weight. I’ve been messing around trying to steadily drop weight, pound by resistant pound, in the normal range for years now. My mother is much more B quadrant than I am. She’s like… write B and slap it on her forehead, except that it may already be there, because she probably had the label already in her purse, neatly written with the sharpie she keeps there for emergencies. She can’t rest. Everything must be done, now, now, now, and perfectly.
You can start out fat and you can calorie count and you can be regimented. But what is the distance to the point where you’re sitting in a restaurant crying because the menu is too challenging? Because you can’t decide whether you can eat the french fry in your hand? Because the cheese is all through the salad, smeared on the lettuce leaves, and the whole thing is contaminated, inedible? I’m normal weight and I weigh myself at least ten times a day, maybe more. I eat yogurt two meals a day, binge eat after grocery shopping on Saturday mornings and then take out the trash, have to force myself not to forbid foods because I’ll never be able to eat them again. This is “normal weight” and “healthy.”
You know, obviously, it’s on some level anecdotal if studies show that maintainers aren’t more screwed up than obese people, unless both are totally screwed up. I just… I’m not nuts about the contention that calorie counting is an unmitigated good in overweight people, because I think it can be totally messed up and I think it probably was even when I was fat. I mean, I can look back at days that read “430 calories. Less tomorrow!” and know that.
Some people can find balance and that’s super, but I think some people are hard-wired to not ever, ever be able to safely do that… at the same time, I cannot ever, ever be thin on a normal calorie (say 1200 or 1500 calorie) diet. And I do think people like my mom and I tend to be Bs and the TPTB should not be holding us up to overweight people and saying “Well look at those healthy thin people who made it (you fat losers)! Why can’t you do it, too?” Answer: because you’re not a whackjob.
‘slightly more than Nicole Ritchie on a “fat day”’
Heh. :) Congratulations on your weight loss and thanks for the response.
secretly… I’m so sorry all that has happened to you and I think it really illustrates the point that disordered is disordered. I am not a big fan of the idea that someone who is fat should consider it normal to go around tortured about food, categorizing foods into “acceptable” and “bad,” totaling up exercise calories so you can eat this or that, obsessively monitoring your weight, etc. etc.
Again, if you can somehow find a balance then more power to you. But I think the idea that whether or not a behavior is “disordered” depends on the person’s weight who is exhibiting it, is sort of disturbing.
It’s sort of like saying you don’t need treatment for OCD if you are trying to avoid giving into your compulsion to clean 24/7, and if your house is therefore sort of messy (except it can be even worse because many fat people do follow diets but don’t lose weight. And I apologize in advance for this really convoluted metaphor). It would be real easy to say that you should just roll with your OCD rituals because then your house would get cleaner and a clean house would be proof that things were OK, because society values an orderly home. But your mind would still be tormented, and the OCD would still be there. The house being clean or not clean is irrelevant to whether someone is actually suffering from OCD.
secretly, I think you make an interesting point. The thing about the National Weight Control Registry is that the idea behind it is to identify common factors among people who have been successful at long-term weight loss with the hopes that these common factors can then be used to help people who have not been successful. The logic seems pretty straightforward there, but I think it remains to be seen whether it will work in practice, i.e. whether everyone (or even a significant subset of people) will really able to make these same lifestyle changes without making themselves crazy. The thing I found objectionable in the comments here, though, was the assumption that the NWCR people are miserable and anorexic, assumptions that are not validated by the many studies that have been done on these people.
To Susan — I’ll try to find my source, but as far as I’ve learned, over an hour of exercise a day, no matter what it’s comprised of, is excessive. As for a hike or bike ride, as recreation it wouldn’t be excessive, but ED people easily use recreation to cover up unhealthy excessive exercise.
To secretly — I really feel for you and also think your experience supports my point. Just wanted to say, though, that 1200 to 1500 calories is not normal. That’s about 750 to 1050 calories less than what a woman should consume daily — 2250 calories a day is normal.
Lucy, if what you say about exercise were true, all professional athletes, exercise instructors, furniture movers, baggage handlers, and parents of small children would be in big trouble!
And caloric intake is dependent on body size, metabolic rate, and activity level. There’s no one “normal” caloric intake that can be applied to all people.
Secretly – I can relate to a lot of what you wrote. I know this isn’t a weight loss support forum, so forgive me if this is out of line, but have you tried strength training?
I, too, wasn’t able to lose weight on a 1200-1500 calorie diet (until I got *really* heavy, that is) but now I maintain at around 2100. Strength training will help you to lose weight and maintain a lower weight, simply because muscle raises your metabolic rate.
Just chiming in to agree with LaWade’s latest post.
I guess I can’t really comment on the science–and I am actually happy to learn that people on that registry don’t seem to be as screwed up as I was afraid they are. The only caveat I would apply is that I think many of the behaviors dieters display ARE a priori “disordered eating.” They wouldn’t have been considered as such by the researchers because people these days think it’s normal to write down everything that goes into your mouth, or use exercise as an equation that allows you to eat a little more, or eat less than say 1200 calories a day. But I don’t think that’s normal eating. I think of it as disordered eating. YMMV.
La Wadw said:
“Lucy, if what you say about exercise were true, all professional athletes, exercise instructors, furniture movers, baggage handlers, and parents of small children would be in big trouble!”
You’re missing my point. It’s the motivation behind the behavior. Obviously hard labor jobs and pro athletes don’t fall into the same category as dieter. And please don’t pretend furniture movers and parents of toddlers are exercising in the same amounts and types as a dieter doing aerobics and weight-training three to seven hours a day.
“And caloric intake is dependent on body size, metabolic rate, and activity level. There’s no one ‘normal’ caloric intake that can be applied to all people.”
In case it wasn’t clear, 2250 is the normal *average* caloric requirement for women — 1200 to 1500 is still way too low…those are war-rationing calories.
Correction: my last post should be addressed to La Wade, not “La Wadw” :)
Thank you, spacedcowgirl. Agree 100 percent. Disordered thinking *is* the norm and acceptable. Huge problem. Basically, I cannot weigh what society wants me to (or even I want myself to) without adopting ED thinking/behavior. And my own experience observing other dieters shows the same is true for them.
I lost 48 pounds years ago…it cost me my gall bladder. I was also obsessing over the calories in toothpaste and ibuprofen. I’ve since gained the weight back and about 15 pounds more. I’m still writing down everything I eat, including medicine. Even when I wasn’t watching what I eat, I still wrote it all down. This is not normal behavior.
Presently I exercise four times a week, try to make better food choices without giving in to ED-type thinking, and come to places like BFD in an attempt to accept myself the way I am.
I understand the urge here to classify what we consider as extreme behavior to be pathological, but there’s a good reason why the medical community has drawn some distinctions here. I think we all know some people who we think go a bit overboard with their hobbies and interests, whether it be exercising or scrapbooking or scrimshaw or watching television or whatever. But the question of “how much is too much?” is not a clear-cut one. The dividing line between quirkiness and psychiatric illness is not a matter of hours spent, but instead of impact on one’s overall physical or mental health. There’s no magical number of hours in the day that it’s OK or not OK to exercise, and as we know from the example of professional athletes, there’s no physical danger in spending several hours each day exercising. Obviously, exercise bulimia exists, but not everyone who exercises a lot has it.
A similar approach applies to caloric intake. By definition, a healthy caloric intake is the number of calories needed to maintain a healthy body weight. This number varies dramatically among individuals, and 1200 to 1500 is perfectly appropriate for some people, especially weight reduced people who have permanently altered their metabolisms through prolonged obesity. In fact, people in the NWCR reported eating an average of 1382 calories per day, while burning about 400 calories through exercise each day.
I have to take issue with the idea that these people have “permanently altered their metabolisms through prolonged obesity.” Haven’t they either altered them through prolonged dieting, or by forcing their bodies to maintain a shape that they would not naturally be?
(By the way, it doesn’t really seem that simply being overweight is bad for you so I also don’t see the health or moral imperative for being thin unless that is your natural body shape.)
It is really noteworthy that these people as a group can’t maintain their losses without eating less than 1400 calories a day, and burning 400 of that off. That’s crazy to me. Certainly for some people that would probably be an appropriate intake; everyone’s different. But for the majority of people, at any point in time, has 1000 net calories a day (except when people have lacked access to food) been considered a “normal” food intake until now? If that’s how little you have to eat to maintain your weight, I’d say there is something not quite right there. I have always heard what Lucy asserts, that 2000 calories or more a day should be perfectly normal and healthy for the average active woman. It seems like it’s only recently that people have started feeling like they should be at the mid-1000’s or below, even if they are not dieting.
I’ll stop beating the dead horse after this too, but I really think that just because we think that dieting doesn’t impact our mental health, doesn’t mean it really doesn’t. It’s just considered normal now to take a super-controlling approach to eating and to experience the stresses that go along with that (any amount of your time that it takes up, and any amount of obsession, is considered acceptable as long as you get thin). And meanwhile our relationship with food as a society gets more and more screwed up and people get fatter. I think these things are related. Though I also think the people are getting fatter precisely because we have access to plenty of nutrition now and although that is not always a good thing (junk food and such) on the whole I think it means roughly the same thing as the fact that we are getting taller. We have more energy to put into growing babies and kids these days.
I have a question: Isn’t anorexia in part defined by the person’s view of themselves? For example, if an average-height adult woman weighed 90 pounds and still thought of herself as “overweight,” and who then engaged in excessive exercise and an extremely calorie-restricted diet, she would be classified as having anorexia nervosa. Is this inaccurate?
I’m not saying there’s not disordered and OCD behavior thinking involved in a lot of dieting. I’m just wondering if I am misunderstanding the clinical definitions of these disorders, because it seems like a lot of people are labeling things “anorexia” which are actually OCD or some other disorder. Which makes the other disorders no less serious, but sometimes I think that people who are not anorexic but who do exhibit debilitating OCD behaviors might be more likely to seek help if these disorders weren’t all lumped into “anorexia,” allowing people in turn to say, “see, I’m not 90 pounds, there’s no problem with my behavior.”
Am I making any sense at all here?
I, too, feel that this topic is starting to get beaten into the ground (and acknowledge that I am to blame to a large extent) but I’ll just comment on a couple of the things spacedcowgirl raised.
The idea that yo-yo dieting damages one’s metabolism has not been validated by science but remains a popular misconception. However, it is established that once you have been obese, your body wants to stay that way. This is because obesity causes people to become resistant to the hormone leptin, and if they lose weight, their levels of leptin go down causing further leptin deficiency. Leptin’s function is to promote leanness through curbing appetite and increasing energy expenditure, so reduced leptin function means you’re going to have a slow metabolism and a big appetite. Hence the trouble with losing weight and keeping it off.
And I think, when you refer to overweight not being associated with health risks that you’re maybe referring to the 2005 study which associated overweight with a lower overall mortality? That study has been widely disputed, though, and is at odds with literally hundreds of others studies showing that overweight and obesity, in and of themselves, increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, osteoartritis, certain types of cancers and several other serious health problems.
That said, I’m not arguing that the health risks of overweight are necessarily sufficiently compelling that every overweight person should make the choice to live as those in the NWCR do. It’s a huge committment, obviously. I’m just putting this out there because there is a tremendous amount of misinformation surrounding the issue.
On the whole, I think I agree that outlook has a lot to do with it.
I mean, if I make myself miserable by keeping myself to a really rigid routine and beating myself up if I ever slip from it, I have a problem, even if I’m a “healthy weight”.
On the other hand, if my routines make my life less stressful and I don’t freak out if I have to deviate from them, then they are probably beneficial routines.
On the personal level, when I’m exercising and eating healthily I feel good about myself because I’m doing that, not because of the number on the scales. They make me feel good about the way I am now, not the way I might be if I keep doing this for X amount of time. That’s how I know it’s the right thing for me. I’m not saying it’s the right thing for everyone, or that anyone manages to do it all the time, because they don’t.
I think the OCD suggestion might have quite a bit of value – and I live in a house which is tidy because of my OCD husband! He gets anxious about his weight, right enough, even though he’s normal-to-thin (and always has been). He isn’t endangering his health either way, but he doesn’t forgive himself for eating an extra piece of cake.
If I was like that, would I be thinner? Probably. But I’d rather be me and not as thin.
La Wade said:
“There’s no magical number of hours in the day that it’s OK or not OK to exercise, and as we know from the example of professional athletes, there’s no physical danger in spending several hours each day exercising. ”
Sorry, but you’re missing my point again. Over-exercising has two components: the physical exertion and the motivation to do so. I was speaking more to the latter. Also, I’m curious as to whether you have never heard of ED’ed pro gymnasts, pro figure skaters, runners, and exercise instructors? Heck, I looked into becoming an aerobics instructor so I could exercise several hours a day without raising suspicions.
“In fact, people in the NWCR reported eating an average of 1382 calories per day, while burning about 400 calories through exercise each day.”
That is not normal! The BMR of a 150-lb. woman needs about 1450 calories. That doesn’t take into account any type of physical activity. That’s how many calories it takes for her body to function if she stayed in bed 24 hours a day. What weight is maintained on 1000 calories a day?!? I shudder to think. It’s probably around 100 lbs. A thousand calories a day is about half what is recommended for adults. That’s downright scary.
“And I think, when you refer to overweight not being associated with health risks that you’re maybe referring to the 2005 study which associated overweight with a lower overall mortality? That study has been widely disputed, though, and is at odds with literally hundreds of others studies showing that overweight and obesity, in and of themselves, increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, osteoartritis, certain types of cancers and several other serious health problems.”
Nah, she’s probably referring to something more like http://www.bigfatfacts.com. You know, how overweight people actually have the same mortality rate as thin people. And that fat active people actually have a lower mortality rate than inactive thin people. Health isn’t determined by weighr, but rather whether one is sedentary or not.
There’s no proof, last I heard, that fat leads to diabetes and the other ailments you list. In fact, those diseases may cause people to be fat. They just don’t know. Those diseases and being fat are correlated, but there have been no causal relationships proven at this time. Read The Obesity Myth by Paul Campos (The Diet Myth in paperback). My gallbladder disease was caused by dieting, as a matter of fact.
To spacedcowgirl: Once again, an excellent comment I couldn’t agree more with. I think I’ll take a page from your book, though, and stop trying to beat my dead horse as well. If I haven’t made my points by now, I’m inclined to give it a rest because I don’t find arguing back and forth very therapeutic.
OK, one last comment. I just figured up what weight has a BMR of 982 calories a day, based on my own age and height. It’s 41.6 pounds. So if I consumed 1382 calories a day and exercised off 400 calories a day, the remainder is only enough to keep alive a 30something, 5′ 3.5″ woman who weighs 42 pounds.
Btw, to figure BMR (basal metabolic rate):
655 + (4.3 * weight in lbs.) + (4.7 * height in inches) – (4.7 * age) = BMR
BMR is the calories it takes just to keep one’s body functioning if one were to stay in bed 24 hours a day.
La Wade, Kate Harding summarizes my current thinking about weight and health in sort of a “review” type essay called “Don’t you realize fat is unhealthy?” You can link to it from the front page of her blog… in case you were wondering where I was coming from. I’m personally not that up on the literature but I think the evidence she presents is pretty compelling.
Lucy, that is really interesting stuff about BMR and that kind of thing makes it clear that calories in=calories out is a gross oversimplification of the issue. I agree 100% with your comments too.
K, your attitude toward this whole thing makes me really happy. Maybe many of us could be a whole lot saner and healthier if we took your approach.
Just adding another comment on the BMR stuff that Lucy posted. The “age” factor is based on the *average* bodyfat percentage of a man/woman of a particular height at that age. Everyone loses muscle mass as they age, unless they do strength training.
I once worked out that to maintain my weight on my current calorie intake and exercise schedule I’d need to be 28. I’m 51 – but muscular. ;-)
I’ve been wondering about the quote above that “people in the NWCR reported eating an average of 1382 calories per day, while burning about 400 calories through exercise each day.”
An abstract of a research paper at the NWCR site says “Mean (+/-SD) current consumption reported by registry members was 5778 +/- 2200 kJ/d, with 24 +/- 9% of energy from fat, Members also appear to be highly active: they reported expending approximately 11830 kJ/wk through physical activity.”
That sounds a lot more realistic.
That 5778 kJ converts to 1380 kcal (and 11830 is 2825 kcal/week or about 400 per day), so I think it’s the same numbers.
Heh. I’ve never claimed to be particularly numerate.
But 1380 calories a day!?!?! Minus all that exercise!?!? That’s starvation level. I think the most likely explanations are (a) these people are grossly underestimating their food intake or (b) (more likely) they are cardio bunnies and their bodies have adapted to excessive amounts of cardio.
I’m telling ya – strength training is the answer (along with *moderate* cardio.
I’m not good at much but I’m an engineer and if there’s one thing we can do, it’s convert units. So I thought I would barge in and contribute my “special expertise.” ;-)
I think your explanations are both plausible, though I also think that it’s possible that the registrants were never meant to be that thin so they have to eat a very small amount to stay there; or that they screwed up their metabolisms dieting (anecdotally, some folks I have observed on Weight Watchers seem to lose quickly at first by being super-strict about points, eating under their points, or not eating activity points or whatever, then they plateau and the only way to continue losing is to restrict even further until they’re eating a ridiculously tiny amount. In a general sense I feel like it’s better to eat as much as you possibly can and still lose (even if it’s a very slow loss) so you have somewhere reasonable to go if you hit a plateau. Then again this doesn’t happen to everyone and it’s just anecdotal anyway, so I am not sure if the idea is worth anything).
The possibilities involved with increasing your muscle mass through strength training and possibly improving your metabolism that way are interesting. I definitely agree with you there.