We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Why do people with any fat stores ever feel hungry, or eat anything at all, considering they may have 1-5 month's worth of energy stored as fat? (We term the hunger experienced by overweight people "False Hunger," because it is.) Except in the truly malnourished or extremely fit, low body-fat athletes, hunger is rarely a signal of an energy deficit or of any nutritional need.
Think about it. Even normal-weight (neither overweight nor underweight) people carry 8-10 weeks of energy stored in fat if they can only access it.
You can consider appetite in the pudgy or overweight, not to mention the obese, to be a design flaw based on the hunting and gathering, and, earlier, just plain gathering condition of human existence, same as the other great apes who only become overweight in captivity. Agriculture and food abundance, along with sedentary life, exposed the design flaw for people who overnourish themselves. Of course, physical inadequacy is another side effect.
The idea that government knows how we ought to eat is absurd. Many of us assume that government is stupid, but even your Mom doesn't know.
Nobody can say what a "healthy" nutrition plan is because humans and all higher primates are omnivorous. That means humans can thrive on almost anything as long as it contains sufficient calories to support life. I've seen enough kids grow big and strong enough to play varsity football on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Wonder Bread to be convinced of that.
Because of the ambiguity of being omnivorous, everybody has an opinion about what is best. "Clean diet," paleo diet, low-fat diet, high-fat diet, vegetarian diet, vegan diet, Mediterranian diet, bla bla bla. My advice is to eat moderate amounts of everything. Small meals are best for health, fitness, energy, and mental clarity.
With a few comments:
- If overweight and if you do not want to be, cut the carbs and cut the volume. Don't be a pig. If fat and happy, that's fine with me because I am neither your doctor, parent, or spouse. - If you exercise hard daily, especially with heavy weights, keep daily protein up to around 80-90 gms/day for adequate muscle repair, and eat some sugar - Coke, candy, fruit - before the workout. - If you hate vegetables, take a multivit. If you think fruit is "healthy", show me the data. (There is none. Fruit is dessert or a quick sugar fix.) - If you worry about overly-high bad triglycerides, discuss with your doctor. Bear in mind that elevated cholesterol does not appear to correlate with heart disease (except in diabetes and familial hypercholesterolemia). Your doc knows that.
Since a study came out a few years ago, based on BMI, that heavy people live longer and healthier than thinner people, many heavy people applauded the news.
In fact, it turns out that higher muscle mass correlates with reduced risk of illness and death. (Well, risk of death is 100% but they mean sooner rather than later.)
A meaningful gauge of being overweight for your build and fitness is your Body Fat percentage. The simplest way to do this is to have somebody use the body fat caliper method on you. That does not measure intra-abdominal fat deposits, but it assumes a correlation. Your doctor's nurse knows how to do that. There are other ways too. (An easier way is to study yourself naked in a mirror.)
This site has two charts, one depicting "ideal" fat percentages based on fitness, and the second based on age. As an athletic female, I like to be around 25-30%. Seems disgusting for your body to be 30% lard, doesn't it? It can be fine for a slender lady, though.
Just for fun, no ab exercises will give you 6-pack abs. Killer abs are all about fat. "Good abs" are visible in men at around 8% body fat, and in women around 12%. Those are either highly-athletic (ie well-beyond "fit" percentages) or otherwise verging on anorectic. I will not recommend any %s lower than those, even for models and ballet dancers, and, generally, feel that those %s are too low for regular fit people. 20% is fine for a regular fit male who plays sports and works out.
Below the fold, photos for comparison of men and women with varying body fat percentages.
Since it was a bit of a hiking weekend, I decided to consider the topic from a health and fitness standpoint rather than from a fun and adventure standpoint. What I will say generally applies to all aerobic activities (ie rowing, biking, swimming, etc).
- First off, most articles we search discuss these topics in terms of weight loss and calorie-burning. That is nonsense. Unless you devote several hours/day to these things with a carb-restricted diet, they will do nothing for your fat. Let's take that off the table and accept that body fat is about nutritional choices and nothing else.
- Second, we are talking about things which are often referred to as "cardio" fitness and cardio training. They really are not cardio training without the high heart rate which can not be attained for healthy people through walking or jogging. Similarly for skeletal muscle strength. For general endurance, good. True "cardio training" entails repeated anaerobic sprints of almost any activity (often termed HIIT. You can do HIIT with kettlebell swings, wall ball slams, road-sprints, sprint pool laps, or anything that stresses the heck out of you for 30-60 seconds). 15-20 minutes (including rests) of HIIT accomplishes far more for cardio fitness than an hour of aerobic activity.
Third, recreational hiking, jogging, swimming, biking, rowing are more the happy rewards of fitness than stimuli to increased fitness. I can hike 10 miles because I am somewhat fit, not to become fit. Nonetheless, they are the sorts of things that distinguish an "active" person from a "sedentary". "Sedentary" roughly refers to a person with less than 8-10 hours/week of intentional, vigorous physical activity (not strolling, or housework or easy stuff), or less than 6 hours of high-intensity physical activity/week. A good measure of "high-intensity" is that you are short of breath most of the time.
- Except for newbies, the elderly, or the infirm, the above relatively low-intensity aerobic activities (I hesitate to term them "exercise" because they lack the high exertion component) are just fine for maintaining mobility and endurance for casual activities. They do not increase fitness once you can do them. Any healthy person can walk 10 miles, jog 3-5 miles, or swim a mile of laps. Still, aerobic endurance is a handy thing for life enjoyment.
- Walking and jogging put the same lower-body muscles to use. Both are easy on the hamstrings, which can lead to a muscle imbalance if jogging is your only activity. Anyway, these are not strength-builders or meaningful cardio training (because there is not a high-enough cardio stress once you have adapted to them).
- Jogging on cement or asphalt on a daily basis will come back to your joints at some point. For "long, slow", once/week is enough for a fit person who works out daily in other ways along with recreational physical activities such as sports. Running is speedy jogging with a long stride and sprinting is sprinting.
Magical thinking about food and nutrition is pervasive in wealthy parts of the world where nutrition is over-abundant and biological knowledge minimal. The classic example in the US is Whole Foods - organic non-GMO foods and supplements for the rich. A scam, like this one:
The old idea of the virtue of a low-fat diet is in the dustbin of history. There is no correlation between dietary fats and heart disease. However, there is a high correlation between being overweight and heart disease - especially "pear-shape" (abdominal) fat. Indeed, being overweight or fat correlates with many diseases: heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, several cancers including breast cancer, arterial disease, joint ailments and arthritis, Alzheimer's - the list goes on and on. Humans were not designed for dietary abundance, but for caloric scarcity.
That is about dietary fat. If you are concerned about hyperlipidemia, let your doc treat it if it concerns you. There are many alternatives for that.
To lose body fat, only a low carb diet works. Your body converts all carbs to sugar and then stores the excess sugar as fat. Dietary fat doesn't make people fat. Everybody knows what carbs are: sweets, fruits, dessert, root vegetables, juices, beer, grains, grain products eg pasta and bread, beans, corn, etc. The comfort foods.
To gain or maintain weight, eat plenty of everything including apple pie, ice cream, beer, Big Macs - and 70-100 gms of protein daily if you do heavy exercise (eg weights).
Can you lose weight with an hour of daily exercise? It depends on the intensity of that hour, but it's not a realistic effect for most. Still, it is worth doing for countless other good reasons including mental well-being and energy. Intense exercise tends to reduce appetite, so there's that too.
Rats can do it, but adult humans have no capacity for growing new brain nerve cells (neurons). The idea that humans could do that (with exercise, etc) has been a hot topic for over a decade.
We know many scientific studies are false. But we usually find this out one-at-a-time. This – again, assuming the new study is true, which it might not be – is a massacre. It offers an unusually good chance for reflection.
And looking over the brutal aftermath, I’m struck by how prosocial a lot of the felled studies are. Neurogenesis shows you should exercise more! Neurogenesis shows antidepressants work! Neurogenesis shows we need more enriched environments! Neurogenesis proves growth mindset! I’m in favor of exercise and antidepressants and enriched environments, but this emphasizes how if we want to believe something, it will accrete a protective layer of positive studies whether it’s true or not.
I’m also struck by how many of the offending studies begin by repeating how dogmatic past neuroscientists were for not recognizing the existence of adult neurogenesis sooner...
One might think that there is an epidemic of Alzheimer's deaths, and those who seek funding for Alzheimer's will tell you so. The reality is that the rising deaths from Alzheimer's is a measure of medical success in dealing with the other ailments which have tended to kill people sooner than Alzheimer's.
We'll all die from something. Eventually something gives out, even the brain. Carpe diem, and try not to have a family history of Alzheimer's.
Whether scrawny or pudgy, challenging exercise makes a person more aware of his/her physique by pushing its limits. Yes, a good conditioning class is the best wake-up call for most people, but so is 3-5 minutes of jumping jacks or jump rope.
The scrawny learn that they need to push themselves to build themselves up for strength and endurance, and the pudgy are forced to realize how much their pudge slows them down. Therefore they are motivated to pay more attention to their nutritional habits so they can keep up.
A physiological factor is that an hour of daily exertion tends to reduce appetite in pudgy adults. Exertion means "hard to do." Scrawny people may have to force-feed themselves somewhat. Athletic and physically-active people tend to consume what they need, not so much what they want.
So that is how an hour of daily cardio, calisthenics, and weights helps get people into fighting shape. The exertion itself is a minor factor but it is a motivator. Physical maintenance.
People looking for magic for fat loss and people looking for magic in muscle weight gain are often suckers for magic diets and magic elixirs. Steroids work for the latter, but it's a bad idea.
I have had enough success with patients who want fat loss over the past 12 months with Contrave to feel that it is worth a mention. It's a magic elixir of Wellbutrin and Naltrexone. Both seem to have a measurable effect of reducing cravings of all sorts. No, it's not quite magic but it can reduce greed and take some of the burden from self-restraint.
I have posted in the past about how subjective hunger (aka "false hunger") is common in the overweight who have no caloric needs at all but who tend to desire more intake and to eat more avidly, more rapidly, than normal-weight people. It may have something to do with the loss of satiety signals, or ignoring them. Insulin sensitivity plays a role, for sure, and that is produced by poor or excessive eating habits. Psychological factors too. All we really know is that, if you are overweight and hungry, something is out of whack because you do not really need any food at all.
(As I have asserted in the past, exercise does nothing meaningful for fat loss. I'll make one exception to that: compulsive exercisers who work out for hours daily, but they usually are living on organic lettuce from Whole Foods too. One other factor: for most people, heavy-duty cardio and weights do tend to reduce appetite. People in rigorous daily fitness programs therefore need to follow nutritional programs to make sure their intake is sufficient to support their efforts or they can risk losing muscle while their bodies are undergoing renovation. This only applies to body renovation projects, not maintenance)
The endurance of teeth has to do with genetics, diet, hygiene, and injuries. Due to bad luck, I have ended up with a fine (expensive) bridge which is anchored in (expensive) implants. After all, nobody wants to look like they come from England.
The question du jour is this: What do you do about dental hygiene?
- Once daily or twice? Or, God forbid, after every meal? - Toothpaste, salt, or nothing? (I have read that toothpaste is a useless product of genius marketing) - Regular brush, electric rotary brush, or water pic? (My people recommend the latter, along with an office deep cleaning every 3-4 months. Takes 1/2 hour. I feel sorry for those gals, disgusting but very useful job.
The universality and popularity of general fitness programs is partly because they have nothing to do with physical talent.
Your genetics do determine many of your physical capabilities at advanced levels, but rarely at ordinary levels. Short people can be fine basketball players, for example - but not at a college level. Long-limbed people can do good bench presses and deadlifts, although not as readily as compact people. Everybody can run, swim, and do bench presses. Most people are physically effective but not blessed with special talents. That is why general fitness is popular - anybody can engage in it.
Besides your physique/physical structure, genes determine your ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle fibers, your neuromuscular connections, your brain-neuromuscular responses, eye-hand coordination, your aggressiveness and energy, lung volume, etc.
Not to mention non-genetic factors like drive, training, and practice.
The point I wish to make is that, as with musical talent or intellectual horsepower, everybody has a level at which they can best perform, and few people ever reach those levels. In fitness, your only competitor needs to be yourself from last month.
Of course, we all have varying degrees of competitiveness, but that should never be any obstacle. Not one of our readers will play in the NFL, the NBA, or in the US Open. Or, for that matter, perform in the NYC Ballet.
My advice, to be able to engage in the fullness of life, is to get out and move hard every day with weights, calisthenics, cardio, etc - and to do a lousy job of it if need be because there are no grades. Giving it your all is all that is required.
High- fat diets have no correlation with arterial disease. Being overweight definitely does, but dietary fat does not make you fat.
"... the conclusion of a massive new study published in Lancet that followed 135,335 people in 18 countries on five continents.The study found that consumption of fat was associated with a lower risk of mortality, while consumption of carbohydrates was associated with a higher risk. It found that the kind of fat didn't matter when it came to heart disease, and that saturated fat consumption was inversely related to strokes.
The researchers say, ever so politely, that "dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.""
Want to be fit and trim, attractive, high-energy, light on your feet, and signaling that you have your act together?
You know the popular approaches:
- Low-carb Atkins-like plan. This means fats, protein, and non-root vegetables and greens, with nuts and berries to complete the nutrition. This makes physiologic sense because it trains your body to burn your fat for energy instead of the carbs you shovel into it normally.
- Small but ordinary meals. Eg, a hard-boiled egg and coffee for breakfast, half a sandwich for lunch, a couple of slices of cheese for a snack, and a half-portion of supper. This is a sustainable approach for most people, but it still might not work for you. It works great as a maintenance program for me, but I do not need to lose any fat and I do not have a voracious appetite. By the way, eating "until full" is disgusting and has nothing to do with nutrition. It's just a measure of how much you have stretched your stomach or ignore satiety signals. Normal people eat until satisfied, not until full. "Stuffed" is for the Thanksgiving turkey, or on Thanksgiving.
- Keep a nutrition calendar. Write down everything you put in your mouth. It's even more effective if you include Why you ate that donut. Bored? Tempted by flavor? Anxious? etc. Best idea: When those things happen, do something else as a diversion. If you are overweight, your subjective appetite is a liar because your body is lazy and doesn't want the hassle of burning your fat.
- Exercise is basically useless for fat-burning in any ordinary time frame unless combined with a nutrition program of caloric or carb restriction. However, this is not an argument for a sedentary life. Furthermore, intense exercisers should have a small dose of carbs/sugar before a session to be most effective at pushing the effort.
I have written about the "False Hunger" of the overweight in the past. Paradoxically, the people who least need food experience hunger more than fit people, and consume food more avidly. I think it's usually an effect of being overweight, not a cause, but everybody is different.
Often forgotten: Fruit and fruit juices do not really belong on any fat-burning program. A glass of OJ or apple juice is the same as a Coke. The Big Fruit industry somehow convinced people that there was something "healthy" about fruit. There is not. Fruit is dessert, a treat. Neither do cereals or grains, except minimally, belong on a fat-burning plan.
Let's say you are pudgy or fat and want to commit to a 6-7 day per week serious fitness program (something like the programs we recommend on Maggie's - not simply walking, aerobic swimming, or an hour trudging on a treadmill) to both lose fat and to get into fighting shape in general - high-energy, strong, trim, athletic, and fully-functional for life.
You have competing goals, fat loss and strength-building, which makes it complicated. So what sort of nutritional plan do you need for our programs of weights, calisthenics, HIIT, etc?
As readers know, fat loss is 90% nutritional under ordinary conditions. For sedentary people (less than 5-8 hrs/wk of strenuous physical activity), we recommend a low carb diet - lots of filler vegetables and greens, meat and fat. But if you are committing to an arduous daily exercise program too, you will need some amount of daily carbs and extra protein to sustain your exercise and to build/repair muscles happily damaged by exertion.
Nobody writes about this, but I have the correct advice.
For overweight serious exercisers only, use the scale as your guide. If you lose 2-4 lbs/month in your program, that's fine. If you lose much more than that, up your carbs and dietary volume a bit. If you lose less, lower your carbs and volume.
The reason is that too-rapid weight loss will interfere with your fitness and strength-building goals. If you want both, you have to balance these goals. You have to consider that, if you are doing weight training (which everybody ought to do), a male can actually gain 1/4 lb/month in muscle in the beginning months while losing fat at the same time.
I'd recommend as a starting point for overweight daily hard-exercisers a carb intake of mostly one fruit and a bowl of oatmeal daily, and allow for one or two light beers too, or a glass of wine, for sanity. No dessert, bread, potato, pasta, rice, etc. Then get on the scale after one month of the program and feed yourself accordingly. Never get on the scale more often than twice a month - preferably once monthly. And always at the same time of day.
nb:For relatively in-shape exercisers, the recommendations would be entirely different.
In my view, physical fitness is mainly for full-life functionality, energy, and fun - not to prevent death. Delaying death is fine, of course, if the life before death arrives is full, productive, and physically, mentally, and spiritually engaging.
In civilized cultures, generally your odds are almost 50/50 heart disease or cancer unless you are one of those who just dies from decrepitude, feebleness, and general body rot. What's your preference? Mine is to go via a quick cardiac arrythmia or a stroke while doing something fun, and too far from any medical help that might force me to survive with a nasty disability which would damage my dignity and make me a burden on others.
Everybody in western cultures has some degree of arterial disease after age 40 or 50 whether it is diagnosable or not. It's part of ageing, especially in an affluent society with plenty of good antibiotics available to make sure you don't die of pneumonia.
If you care, this study suggests that stressful aerobic cardio exercise 5 days/week is beneficial for cardiac health. That means keeping your heart rate at around 65-70% of your max for an hour. That is neither easy not comfortable because it means to stay intensely aerobic, ie huffing and puffing and sweating - but at a rate to be able to keep it up. In fact, it's a bitch to do. That's why few do it.
More efficient to do anaerobic HIIT in my opinion. They didn't study that.
Again, a Christmas book only for those who wish to continue or to update their secondary or college educations: Campbell's Biology.
It is the current basic text, and it guarantees a thorough grounding in the basics. If you shop around on line, you can find it for much less than the list price.
A magnificent book, clear and easy to read if you recall some basic biochem. If you took college bio ten years ago, you know almost nothing.
The idea that government knows how we ought to eat is absurd. Many of us assume that government is stupid, but even your Mom doesn't know.
Since a study came out a few years ago, based on BMI, that heavy people live longer and healthier than thinner people, many heavy people applauded the news.
Since it was a bit of a hiking weekend, I decided to consider the topic from a health and fitness standpoint rather than from a fun and adventure standpoint. What I will say generally applies to all aerobic activities (ie rowing, biking, swimming, etc).
A new book
The universality and popularity of general fitness programs is partly because they have nothing to do with physical talent. 
Let's say you are pudgy or fat and want to commit to a 6-7 day per week serious fitness program (something like the programs we recommend on Maggie's - not simply walking, aerobic swimming, or an hour trudging on a treadmill) to both lose fat and to get into fighting shape in general - high-energy, strong, trim, athletic, and fully-functional for life.
Again, a Christmas book only for those who wish to continue or to update their secondary or college educations: