on the causes of physical changes

[jazzfish]

It's been an item of faith with me that I dropped thirty-five pounds in 2006 by taking up running. However, it's recently come to my attention that there may have been additional factors involved. With that in mind, a list of possible reasons why I lost weight, and gained a good bit of it back.

Reason #1: I took up running

Argument for: I started running in late April, three times a week. By mid-July I'd lost a visible amount of weight.

Argument against: The weight loss continued into winter when I wasn't running anymore. Taking up running again this autumn for seven weeks had zero effect on my weight. (It has other health benefits, so it's not like I'm going to stop.)

Reason #2: I took up swimming

Argument for: I spent July and August going swimming two or three times a week in the afternoon, and swimming's more calorie-burning than running. No swimming the past two summers corresponds to no loss of weight.

Argument against: Weight loss continued after the pool closed on Labor Day.

Reason #3: I ate less

Argument for: If I'm acquiring fewer calories and burning the same amount (or more, see nos. 1 and 2), the excess has to come from somewhere. And when I left B'burg I also started eating a sandwich and cookie-snack-pack for lunch every day, instead of a restaurant meal with coworkers.

Argument against: Weight loss reversed itself over the course of 2007 and 2008. It's possible that my body just adapted back to acquiring fewer calories, I guess.

Reason #4: Stress / lack of sleep

Argument for: I spent 2006 from, let's say, Memorial Day through Columbus Day and then Thanksgiving through New Years, exceedingly stressed out. Most obviously over relationship stuff but also with moving, job-finding and -adapting, and Granddad's death. I was sleeping less than was perhaps ideal and generally burning my candle at both ends. 2007 and the first ten months of 2008 were a lot less stressful overall, and I regained much of the missing weight. Stress and five-hour nights started back up at the beginning of last month; I'm down about five pounds, and this after devouring at least one entire pie over Thanksgiving weekend. Also, historical data: when everything went pear-shaped in late March 2003, I dropped five pounds in a week.

Argument against: . . . I really don't want this to be right?

Comments

[jadelennox]

no diet or exercise plan, ever, has been shown in a scientific study to make people lose weight and keep it off for more than five years. While individuals can lose weight and keep it off -- bodies change over time, health conditions change, etc. -- on average, people have setpoint waits which their bodies eventually return to. If you are eating healthily and exercising a reasonable amount, your body will be at the weight it needs to be at, and that is a weight which will almost certainly increase as you age.

my favorite book on the subject right now is Gina Kolata's Re-thinking Thin, an accessible exploration of the science of weight loss.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this comment. I kinda wanted to say something similar, but wasn't coming up with a good (in my mind) way to say it.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

She didn't really address exercise, though. It was almost all about diet and bizarre physiological conditions.

[diadelphous.livejournal.com]

I want to second this comment. Don't worry about weight; worry about whether or not you feel healthy.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

While I agree with this to some extent, I would tend to disagree with the somewhat fatalistic view that you're stuck where you are. Tucker will understand where I'm coming from on that, as I lost over 120 pounds seven years ago and am now still down over 100 from then. It doesn't matter what plans have or have not been shown to work overall, it matters what you the individual do. If you ask most people on plans they will tell you that they haven't lost much weight because they haven't followed the plan, not because the plan itself doesn't work. There's a lot more going on than the physical science of food: weight loss is about the psychological as much as the physiological and about the environment as much as the individual. To say that weight loss plans don't work is to deny the culture that surrounds those plans and that's an oversimplification of what is really a complex issue.

I agree that bodies have a point that they tend to stay at, but I think that our culture of plenty has added a bit to that point for most people in the USA. And I think that whether or not the odds are against the "average" person losing weight, individuals who want to lose weight (with the disclaimer that I'm talking about people who DO weigh too much and not those who have unrealistic expectations or screwed-up body images) should be encouraged.

[jadelennox]

I don't think my view is fatalistic, because I don't think there's anything wrong with being fat. The studies connecting poor health and fat are immensley flawed and contradictory, and weight change is consistently shown to be more of a indicator of poor health, through heart strain, than fatness. Some individuals can lose weight and keep it off, others can't -- and neither type of person is necessarily healthier than the other.

As for lack of maintained weight loss, the "five years" number comes from studies in which people *did* follow the plans, if only because those who stopped following the plans were obviously no longer valid targets for the studies.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

The studies I've seen all revisit someone after five years, they don't continuously monitor someone for the full time. Can you provide a link to the ones you're referring to? Thanks!

As to "fatalistic": if you as someone who doesn't think there's anything wrong with being fat say "weight loss plans don't work" to someone who does think there's something wrong with it then there's not common ground. I see such a statement as fatalistic because it would require me to accept that being fat was okay (and in my case it most definitely was not). I was assuming from the tone of Tucker's post that he had a similar. It is of course up to him to interpret our opinions appropriately. So I'll retract the word choice but note that it's probably reasonable for us to disagree on that. :)

[jazzfish]

It's complicated. When I started this mess it was from a mental place where being fat was Not OK. I'm happier (not happy, just happier) with who I am and how I look these days, even with not being that much lighter than I was then, and the ways that I'm unhappy are more health-related (again, not entirely, just more).

I'm also a bit more aware of the pressure that says one must be Thin to be attractive.

Which is to say, I sympathise mostly with jadelennox's view, and the places where I don't, I'm still not certain she's wrong.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

Gotcha.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

I'll never understand why people get so hung up on the health-related and aesthetic aspects of body size/composition, when to me it is almost exclusively a matter of range of motion and functionality. If someone has the urge to climb a tree, explore a cave, or sprint across a field, I think it's sad that one might be prevented from doing so because of excess body mass.

I've never been heavy, but in the last few years I've developed a great deal of strength and flexibility that I had never had before, and I would be miserable to return to my less functional self. I would feel imprisoned in my body.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

Do you lurk on Shapely Prose?

[jazzfish]

If you are eating healthily and exercising a reasonable amount

That's the real issue. A lot of the problem is that I know that the shape I was in when I started this was "out of": little muscle mass, lungs that were /awful/ instead of merely pretty bad, etc. This was a result of a number of poor lifestyle choices.

The original impetus for the running and such was mostly 'to look better,' with 'to be in better shape' a relatively distant second. I'm somewhat over the hangups that sparked 'to look better,' so what's left is me eliding "being in better shape" with "weight loss." Which is only fair to a certain point: where I am now feels like a result of Not Getting Enough Exercise, but my "target weight" from 2006 is likely even more unhealthy for me.

So. . . bleh. Time to a) find a better metric for "in shape" and b) work harder at shaking off the YOU MUST BE THIS THIN TO RIDE mental blocks. Stupid patriarchy.

that is a weight which will almost certainly increase as you age

This I had not heard before. I. . . think I'm relieved?

Thanks for talking with me about this. It's much appreciated.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

We all want to hang on to the weight and shape we were (or would have been able to be) when we were 20. :)

But we're talking a couple of pounds a year MAYBE due to aging.

There's definitely an objective metric for "in shape" in that you want to be active and healthy and fit in airplane seats and whatnot, but I do agree that there's also a subjective metric for "am I happy with my body" that is just as important and you can work on that from both the physical and the psychological.

[europasings.livejournal.com]

First off, good luck with the weight stuff. I've dealt with this type of thing my entire life. Truth be told, I'm still some 40 odd pounds over what they (whomever they is at any given time) say I should be. However, I'm back to the weight I was for almost a decade before the cancer started. So I'm happy. If you can find that weight (and you may be there), where you feel healthy, you can walk up stairs and not pass out, and the weight is not causing major health problems, I say relax--you are good to go!

Secondly, if the loss corresponds to stress and lack of sleep, there's probably something else like eating habits or amount of heart-rate accelerating periods/activities (even if it's just going to the store with heightened speed)
that are changing. Possibly just in small sneaky ways. So try maybe keep a detailed account of everything you do and see if there are some other weird correlations instead of solely lack of sleep and stress. (If nothing else, it'll keep you focused on that instead of the stress...maybe? [hopefully look here])

Thirdly, I feel like I've been told these two things over the years weight stuff. I have no idea if they're true, but we'll operate under that assumption for this post. (People who know better, PLEASE let me know!)

1. Muscle burns more calories than fat.
Once it's created/toned, the muscle could be continuing to burn calories even when you aren't using them any more.

2. Muscle weighs more than fat.
So you built up a bunch of muscle as you ran & swam. When you stopped building/maintaining, some of the weight you lost afterwards could have been the muscle mass you had previously created.
------------

I don't know that any of this will help ease your mind. But I'm sending good thoughts your way regardless!

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

Yes! I cannot emphasize the muscle thing enough. Building muscle increases your resting metabolism; running does not.

[jazzfish]

. . . so running doesn't build muscle mass sufficiently to increase resting metabolism?

Bother.

[quixotic-goat.livejournal.com]

But it will drop your resting heart rate...
That said, more studies are showing that some strength training is important in it's own right. By no means am I talking about getting huge, just doing some light to moderate weight with at least moderate reps. It helps you build some muscle mass and has some different denefits than just raw cardio. I also find that I have less aches assciated with my mostly desk job when I'm doing at least a little strenght training. I read an article to that extent that I can't find now. Made sense to me, one of the couple of reasons I've actually tried to get to a gym a little more since I currently sit in front of a computer for 12+ hours a day. If gyms are a no go, you could probably accomplish most of it with a couple dumbbells, or even one of those sets of elastic tubing you stick in a door or over a bedpost and pull. Resistance/weight training, at the level we're talking I don't know how much of a difference there is.

[jazzfish]

Bleh. I can just about get myself to get out and go running, because I feel like I'm doing something other than Getting In Shape. I have some sort of mental block to spending time and money on a Gym. Probably a variant of "i should be able to take care of this nonsense on my own."

[quixotic-goat.livejournal.com]

.."i should be able to take care of this nonsense on my own."...

I feel the same way sometimes, and it often gets me in trouble. It generally means that it whatever IT is has a better than 50/50 chance of never getting done.

I just have a problem doing some stuff at home, things like this among them. If something bestirs me enough such that I get out and about, I'll go go go, but otherwise, I seem to be something of a homebudy (read lazy), so once I'm home, I start vedging very easily...

[selki.livejournal.com]

I'm convinced that the reason I was able to lose a lot of weight in 1998-1999 was because I was doing weightlifting along with some exercise and dieting.

Didn't keep up with it, hence the attempts of my doctor to scare me into taking up the big struggle again last month. I'm sad with myself, but I try to keep in mind the stuff about how almost everyone gains it back -- not for fatalism, but just so I don't yell at myself so much.

[jazzfish]

First off, good luck with the weight stuff.

Thanks! After hearing from jadelennox above, I'm less worried about it. I think. I'm mostly upset that what I thought was the result of Good Honest Work may well have just been my body reacting to stress.

Speaking of, the stress-related changes are probably simple ones. Stress < elevated heart-rate. Lack of sleep < more caffeine < elevated heart-rate. Stress < digestive oddities + loss of appetite < fewer calories.

Third: I've heard those two things myself. Just need to keep them in mind. Particularly that second one.

[absolutliz.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. I think about this a lot. I recently lost 35lbs...over the past 18 months. It started with using my food diary to cut my calorie intake (smoking helps too). I found I do best in a) warmer months, b)when I am smoking a decent amount of cigaretts (4-6 per day) and c)when I am horrifically unhappy/disturbed by something, usually a romantic relationship going/gone horribly arwy.

I like volleyball and all, but the stress diet seems to be the most effective. I also had lost 20 lbs after my divorce without "batting an eyelash" as it were. After the holiday binge, I am going to try losing more weight...this time while being happy and smoking less, or not at all. I'll keep you posted.

Note: Dieting had the effect of making me a)slightly more bitchy due to hunger, and b) I'd spend more money on "discretionary" items. A lot.

[jazzfish]

Oh, definitely easier when it's warmer and my body doesn't decide it's Time To Hibernate and store up reserves for the winter!

Also, I have no real interest in "dieting," because I know that the instant I stop tracking calories / whatever religiously, I'll drop it altogether. I'm trying the 'incremental' approach to food: more veggies, less soda, kind of thing.

In "The Fantasy of Being Thin" that uilos linked below, there's some good stuff about not pretending that Being Thin is a magic wand that'll fix all one's problems. I'm definitely guilty of this myself. I wouldn't say it's where the weight-losing stress came from this past couple months and over summer '06, but it was definitely part of an ugly negative feedback loop.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

http://kateharding.net/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/

http://kateharding.net/bmi-illustrated/

http://kateharding.net/2008/10/24/stress-anger-habit/

http://kateharding.net/2007/11/27/the-fantasy-of-being-thin/

Shapely Prose is good people. It's all from a female-centric point of view (go figure, three female bloggers) and lately they've stalled out some and they have a tendency to wander off topic, but man when they're on topic they're truly awesome.

[diadelphous.livejournal.com]

Oh my God, I love Shapely Prose! I don't know anyone else who read it though.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

I love them, even though I just lurk there. They've done me a world of good - I actually had to tell the nurse at my annual exam that I had no idea what my weight was. I was very proud of that. So of course she wanted to weigh me. Oh well.

[jazzfish]

Thanks for the links. Especially that last one.

Love you.