Weight loss confusion
Like many folks, I have dealt with weight gain and weight loss since I was in high school. Generally, I don't stress out too much about my weight because I've lost significant weight (30-70 pounds) at various points in my life (1. Running cross country freshman year highschool, when I went from about 230 pounds to 200 pounds, 2. Rowing senior year of high school, when I went from 250 pounds to 195 pounds [and was ripped], 3. A few months of daily working out on my rowing machine during grad school before I met Toukan81 ;-), when I went from 270 pounds to 240 pounds ). In other words, I don't stress out because I've done it before and can do it again.
In my experience, the only thing that works for me is exercise. I've found that diet is relatively meaningless, meaning that I've pretty much continued my usual eating habits during each of the 3 periods of exercise. The only time I did change my diet was during 3., when in addition to daily exercise, I cut out all carbs for dinner. My reasoning was that carbs are bits of energy that are not being used when I sleep, and therefore turn to fat if I don't burn them. What this translated into was more rice and bread for breakfast and lunch, and way more sausage and meat for dinner, with a lack of rice and pasta (the lack of rice was particularly hard because I love cooking different rice dishes and grew up eating rice at every dinner). The result was about 30 pounds of weight loss in a few months, and a dramatic increase in my triglyceride level. This was the only time cholesterol was a concern for my doctors and it went away when I met Toukan81 and went back to my normal eating habits, which resulted in a lowering of my cholesterol and a raising of my weight to unprecedented levels.
I am now in a more protracted period of weight loss (4.), which began last year when I started my current job. I reached a high of about 278 (a waist size of 44 or 42 snug), and have been going back and forth between a low of about 263 and a high of 275 since then (with a waist size of 42 or 40 snug). The reason for the long time with little result is that I haven't been able to dedicate the time to do rigorous daily exercise like I did during 1-3. Before Toukan81 and I flew out to look for houses for a week, we had been exercising three times a week or so, and I had managed to get down to 263 doing that. However, that trip was a week that disrupted our workout routine, and it took us weeks to be able to get back into a routine. I've been working out almost daily since two weeks ago, and am currently at 266 (I didn't have the guts, excuse the pun, to check to see how much I gained until yesterday, so who knows how high I got). I should say that during the past few months, we have been trying to eat healthier by trying one of every meat per week for dinner (in one week there would be one meal with beef, one with pork, one with turkey, one with chicken, and sometimes bison substituted for beef) with a meat-less pasta meal and a meatless vegetable/tofu meal interspersed. Of course, we also minimized our eating out, which had much to do with finances as well (after our one week disruption, we went back to eating out more).
I'm happy with our current routine, and am confident that I'll lose a fair amount of weight until the next week-long disruption. As I said before, I don't really stress out about my weight. For curiosity's sake, this time I've been thinking more about calories. Health experts say that ultimately what matters is calorie flux: if the total flux in is less than the total flux out, you will lose weight (I call this the Flux Model). So, I checked out a couple of online tools, for example an online calorie calculator and an online list of the nutritional information for many foods. From what I can tell, if I don't exercise, for my age, height and weight I require 2681 calories to maintain my weight, and 2144 if I want to lose weight. If I exercise daily, my maintenance limit is 3267 and my weight loss limit is 2614. I've also learned that when I eat breakfast (which is rare), I eat about 100 calories, and my daily packed lunch is about 500 calories. As with many Americans, my main meal is dinner. If I eat the most unhealthy meals I ever eat (KFC, half of a large Pizza Hut Supreme pan, In and Out number 2, or even 1 pound of cooked ground beef [which I used to do]), my caloric intake for dinner is about 1500 calories. So at my unhealthiest, my total daily caloric intake is about 2100. Bearing in mind that I rarely eat that unhealthily every day, I'm being conservative by saying that my daily caloric intake is about 2400 (I've added 300 calories for the occasional non-cola soda or blended coffee beverage).
The confusion alluded to in the title of this post is the observation that at my unhealthiest, my caloric intake of 2400 is still less than my maintenance limit of 2681 (when not exercising regularly), and yet if I don't exercise, I gain weight. I realize that 2400 is above the 2144 weight loss limit, but it is certainly below the 2681 weight maintenance limit. Once again, I'll point out that I don't eat 1500 calorie dinners everyday. So, why doesn't the flux model work for me?
Hypothesis 1: the flux model doesn't apply to everybody in the same way.
In particular, I imagine that different people process calories differently. For example, I understand that as women get older, their bodies increasingly store calories as fat, making it very difficult to lose weight. In particular, pregnant women or women whose bodies think they're pregnant due to birth control pills tend to store energy as fat in preparation for the youngin or hypothetical youngin.
In my family, we seem to take carbs and store them as fat. Period. Indeed, I said carbs and not calories because both my father and I (during 3.) have lost large amounts of weight by cutting out carbs while taking in larger amounts of fat and calories from fat. The thinking behind the Atkins diet is that the flux of fat in actually fluxes out through our digestive system (yes, as fatty poop), retaining only a small fraction of the calories ingested. Carbs, on the other hand, are thought to stick around as fat, according to the Atkins model. I'm not advocating these carb methods because of the very serious cholesterol side effect, but empirically, in my family anyway, they seem to contradict the Flux Model.
Hypothesis 2: During periods of weight gain, the math looks different.
The daily caloric intake I outlined above is based on my current habits. The calorie gap of about 300 calories that should be keeping me from gaining weight is easily breached if I have alter my breakfast or lunch pattern. For example, one greasy breakfast instead of cereal, or one hamburger or burrito-based lunch instead of a packed lunch could easily add 1000 calories to that total, putting me in the weight gain field. Of course, when our schedules get such that we don't have time to workout, we usually won't have time to shop or cook either, making it likely that we'll eat out for lunch and dinner, solving our little math problem (albeit not in the way I'd hoped).
I think a combination of Hypotheses 1 and 2 are at work here, and that I am indeed waging a constant war of the fluxes. According to the exercise machines I use, my workouts burn about 500 calories. I often hear that these machines overestimate, but when you consider my weight and the energy it takes to cool my body (your body heat increases as a function of your volume, which increases as a cube, but your body's ability to dissipate heat through your skin's surface area increases as a square, thus taking a lot of energy to cool a big guy like me, as evidenced by the gallons of sweat I produce) I'd say that these machines underestimate my caloric flux out. I burn 450 on the machines, and then do some other more anaerobic activity such as racquetball, basketball or soccer (sports with lots of sprinting) to give me the other 50 calories (a gross underestimate if you ask me). I'm not even counting the extra flux out due to walking to the rec center or soccer fields.
Given the scary math I'm working with, those 500 or more calories I burn by exercising go a long way. The math is scary because there are so many unknowns. Did I eat out for lunch? Did I have that mocha frap? The truth is, sometimes I want to be able to answer "yes". I like burgers and fraps, and once a good while, some nasty KFC fried chicken. In other words, in order to keep the math simple and reliable, I have to be more disciplined in my diet than I want to be, leading me to think that I'd rather just not do the math. So, in the end, I'm back where I started, the only thing that works for me is exercise.
In my experience, the only thing that works for me is exercise. I've found that diet is relatively meaningless, meaning that I've pretty much continued my usual eating habits during each of the 3 periods of exercise. The only time I did change my diet was during 3., when in addition to daily exercise, I cut out all carbs for dinner. My reasoning was that carbs are bits of energy that are not being used when I sleep, and therefore turn to fat if I don't burn them. What this translated into was more rice and bread for breakfast and lunch, and way more sausage and meat for dinner, with a lack of rice and pasta (the lack of rice was particularly hard because I love cooking different rice dishes and grew up eating rice at every dinner). The result was about 30 pounds of weight loss in a few months, and a dramatic increase in my triglyceride level. This was the only time cholesterol was a concern for my doctors and it went away when I met Toukan81 and went back to my normal eating habits, which resulted in a lowering of my cholesterol and a raising of my weight to unprecedented levels.
I am now in a more protracted period of weight loss (4.), which began last year when I started my current job. I reached a high of about 278 (a waist size of 44 or 42 snug), and have been going back and forth between a low of about 263 and a high of 275 since then (with a waist size of 42 or 40 snug). The reason for the long time with little result is that I haven't been able to dedicate the time to do rigorous daily exercise like I did during 1-3. Before Toukan81 and I flew out to look for houses for a week, we had been exercising three times a week or so, and I had managed to get down to 263 doing that. However, that trip was a week that disrupted our workout routine, and it took us weeks to be able to get back into a routine. I've been working out almost daily since two weeks ago, and am currently at 266 (I didn't have the guts, excuse the pun, to check to see how much I gained until yesterday, so who knows how high I got). I should say that during the past few months, we have been trying to eat healthier by trying one of every meat per week for dinner (in one week there would be one meal with beef, one with pork, one with turkey, one with chicken, and sometimes bison substituted for beef) with a meat-less pasta meal and a meatless vegetable/tofu meal interspersed. Of course, we also minimized our eating out, which had much to do with finances as well (after our one week disruption, we went back to eating out more).
I'm happy with our current routine, and am confident that I'll lose a fair amount of weight until the next week-long disruption. As I said before, I don't really stress out about my weight. For curiosity's sake, this time I've been thinking more about calories. Health experts say that ultimately what matters is calorie flux: if the total flux in is less than the total flux out, you will lose weight (I call this the Flux Model). So, I checked out a couple of online tools, for example an online calorie calculator and an online list of the nutritional information for many foods. From what I can tell, if I don't exercise, for my age, height and weight I require 2681 calories to maintain my weight, and 2144 if I want to lose weight. If I exercise daily, my maintenance limit is 3267 and my weight loss limit is 2614. I've also learned that when I eat breakfast (which is rare), I eat about 100 calories, and my daily packed lunch is about 500 calories. As with many Americans, my main meal is dinner. If I eat the most unhealthy meals I ever eat (KFC, half of a large Pizza Hut Supreme pan, In and Out number 2, or even 1 pound of cooked ground beef [which I used to do]), my caloric intake for dinner is about 1500 calories. So at my unhealthiest, my total daily caloric intake is about 2100. Bearing in mind that I rarely eat that unhealthily every day, I'm being conservative by saying that my daily caloric intake is about 2400 (I've added 300 calories for the occasional non-cola soda or blended coffee beverage).
The confusion alluded to in the title of this post is the observation that at my unhealthiest, my caloric intake of 2400 is still less than my maintenance limit of 2681 (when not exercising regularly), and yet if I don't exercise, I gain weight. I realize that 2400 is above the 2144 weight loss limit, but it is certainly below the 2681 weight maintenance limit. Once again, I'll point out that I don't eat 1500 calorie dinners everyday. So, why doesn't the flux model work for me?
Hypothesis 1: the flux model doesn't apply to everybody in the same way.
In particular, I imagine that different people process calories differently. For example, I understand that as women get older, their bodies increasingly store calories as fat, making it very difficult to lose weight. In particular, pregnant women or women whose bodies think they're pregnant due to birth control pills tend to store energy as fat in preparation for the youngin or hypothetical youngin.
In my family, we seem to take carbs and store them as fat. Period. Indeed, I said carbs and not calories because both my father and I (during 3.) have lost large amounts of weight by cutting out carbs while taking in larger amounts of fat and calories from fat. The thinking behind the Atkins diet is that the flux of fat in actually fluxes out through our digestive system (yes, as fatty poop), retaining only a small fraction of the calories ingested. Carbs, on the other hand, are thought to stick around as fat, according to the Atkins model. I'm not advocating these carb methods because of the very serious cholesterol side effect, but empirically, in my family anyway, they seem to contradict the Flux Model.
Hypothesis 2: During periods of weight gain, the math looks different.
The daily caloric intake I outlined above is based on my current habits. The calorie gap of about 300 calories that should be keeping me from gaining weight is easily breached if I have alter my breakfast or lunch pattern. For example, one greasy breakfast instead of cereal, or one hamburger or burrito-based lunch instead of a packed lunch could easily add 1000 calories to that total, putting me in the weight gain field. Of course, when our schedules get such that we don't have time to workout, we usually won't have time to shop or cook either, making it likely that we'll eat out for lunch and dinner, solving our little math problem (albeit not in the way I'd hoped).
I think a combination of Hypotheses 1 and 2 are at work here, and that I am indeed waging a constant war of the fluxes. According to the exercise machines I use, my workouts burn about 500 calories. I often hear that these machines overestimate, but when you consider my weight and the energy it takes to cool my body (your body heat increases as a function of your volume, which increases as a cube, but your body's ability to dissipate heat through your skin's surface area increases as a square, thus taking a lot of energy to cool a big guy like me, as evidenced by the gallons of sweat I produce) I'd say that these machines underestimate my caloric flux out. I burn 450 on the machines, and then do some other more anaerobic activity such as racquetball, basketball or soccer (sports with lots of sprinting) to give me the other 50 calories (a gross underestimate if you ask me). I'm not even counting the extra flux out due to walking to the rec center or soccer fields.
Given the scary math I'm working with, those 500 or more calories I burn by exercising go a long way. The math is scary because there are so many unknowns. Did I eat out for lunch? Did I have that mocha frap? The truth is, sometimes I want to be able to answer "yes". I like burgers and fraps, and once a good while, some nasty KFC fried chicken. In other words, in order to keep the math simple and reliable, I have to be more disciplined in my diet than I want to be, leading me to think that I'd rather just not do the math. So, in the end, I'm back where I started, the only thing that works for me is exercise.