{"id":165,"date":"2006-04-05T10:41:26","date_gmt":"2006-04-05T10:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/05\/thin-kills-1\/"},"modified":"2006-04-05T10:41:26","modified_gmt":"2006-04-05T10:41:26","slug":"thin-kills-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/04\/05\/thin-kills-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Thin Kills?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As someone who has derived a surprising amount of blog traffic from posting about weight loss<\/a>, I feel like I really ought to say something about Alas, A Blog’s case against dieting<\/a> (which I first noticed via a Dave Munger comment<\/a>). It’s a comprehensive collection of data (with graphs, so it must be Science) used to argue that the current weight-loss mania is all a bunch of crap, summarized thusly:<\/p>\n

\n

1) No weight-loss diet has every been scientifically shown to produce substantial long-term weight loss in any but a tiny minority of dieters.<\/p>\n

2) Whether or not a weight-loss diet “works,” people who go on weight-loss diets are likely to die sooner than those who maintain a steady weight or who slowly gain weight.<\/p>\n

3) For fat people (or anyone else) concerned with their health, the best option is probably moderate exercise and eating fruits and veggies, without concern for waistlines. In other words, Health At Every Size (HAES).<\/p>\n

4) The model on which most weight-loss diets are based – in which fat people eat like fat people and must learn to eat like non-fat people – is probably a myth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So, what’s the real story here? Is this just delusion spinning by a bunch of lard buckets, or is Jenny Craig a bigger mass-murderer than Pol Pot?<\/p>\n

(Continued below the fold…)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I often think I’m doomed to remain a C-list blogger by the fact that I’m just too moderate to dedicate myself to posting ideological red meat. Much as I despise our Republican overlords, I can’t see myself as a hard-core Democratic partisan in the Kos mode; while I’m personally irreligious, I find hard-core atheists almost as hard to stomach as religious fanatics; and when the chips are down, I can’t even pick them back up to vigorously advocate fat acceptance.<\/p>\n

I think a lot of what’s written in the Alas, A Blog post is more appealing than the weight-loss orthodoxy, both on personal (I can eat what I want!) and scientific grounds– a lot of the case for<\/b> an “obesity epidemic” has always seemed like crap to me. I can’t really commit to either extreme, though– as with most science involving whole organisms (or, really, molecules more complicated than diatomics), I suspect the truth is messier, and somewhere between either of the convenient extremes.<\/p>\n

This is also a nice illustration of the problems inherent in trying to make public policy on the basis of science that is necessarily incomplete– not only do you have the usual tensions within the scientific community, with different groups advocating their favorite models, but you also get huge political lobbies built up around the question. Even when you’ve probably overexaggerated the problems of “obesity,” you wind up with strong political pressure to not only not loosen current standards, but even make them more strict. It’s a big mess, which is why I don’t want to work with anything more complicated than diatomic molecules…<\/p>\n

Anyway, I haven’t read the volumes of research material on either side of this question, but here’s my personal and idiosyncratic take on the whole issue:<\/p>\n

Anti-Weight-Loss<\/strong>: Using online BMI calculators<\/a>, the upper end of the “normal” range for somebody of my height is about 215 lbs, and the ideal range would be more like 190 lbs (do your own metric conversions). To put this in perspective, I weighed about 190 when I was a senior in high school, playing three sports. In basketball season, I was playing hoops for two to three hours a day, six days a week.<\/p>\n

There’s a picture of me from my high school graduation hanging on the wall in my parents’ house. The first time Kate saw it, she started giggling uncontrollably. I look ridiculous at that weight, and maintaining it, even back then, was extremely difficult. (When I went away to college and started playing rugby, I jumped up to 240 lbs within a year or so, and was much more comfortable.)<\/p>\n

Particularly for tall people, the standards set by the BMI have always struck me as absurd, and they’ve only gotten worse over the years (I think the lowering of the levels is a significant factor in the “obesity epidemic”– people are classified as overweight or obsese who used to fall into the normal range, under the old standards. They haven’t gotten any fatter or less healthy, it’s just the standard that has changed). There’s clearly something a bit off in those standards when, as a commenter pointed out in my earlier post, large numbers of NBA players are technically “obese.”<\/a> (Spiffy graphic here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The responses to any evidence that appears to contradict the standards is also telling. The MSNBC article cites “experts” as saying that the “obese” classification is justified because “athletes tend to keep their high BMI’s after they retire.” That’s a nice little trick, right there– because you’re going<\/strong> to be fat in the future, it’s OK to call you fat now. I’m going to be dead in the future– does that make me a corpse?<\/p>\n

I also liked the response to to meta-study a few years back showing that people with slightly higher BMI had a slightly longer life expectancy than people in the “normal” range. The news stories reporting it were full of complicated justifications about fat cushioning falls and so on, while the simplest explanation– the current “normal” range is both too low and too narrow– was neve brought up. This is no way to conduct science.<\/p>\n

Pro-Weight-Loss<\/strong>: I felt that way before I ever saw the Alas, A Blog compendium of fat-positive research. So why did I set out to lose weight earlier this year?<\/p>\n

It was a combination of things, really, but in the end, it came down to this: I’m 34– climbing three flights of stairs shouldn’t leave me gasping for breath. I decided to lose some weight because I was eating too much and not exercising enough. My knees hurt when I played basketball, and I would get light-headed if I stood up quickly. (Also, some asshole doctor told me that my reflux problems would go away forever if I lost weight… It’s going to take a real effort not to slug him the next time I see him.)<\/p>\n

I complained in that last post about my energy levels and so on after my recent dramatic weight loss, but really, the first ten pounds or so were a clear positive– I felt better all the way around. And even now, some things are clearly improved by carrying around less weight– my knees don’t hurt as much, my lower back isn’t giving me as much trouble, and I can climb stairs without gasping (unless I take them two at a time). When my stomach is calm enough to eat a reasonably normal diet, I even feel reasonably good on the energy level front.<\/p>\n

And, prior to the stomach issues, this did not require a drastic lifestyle modification– I played a little more basketball (and made an effort to run the break more often), took the stairs, and stopped eating junk food at work. This wasn’t a crash diet, and didn’t involve becoming a fitness freak.<\/p>\n

I think that, while the official standards are ludicrous, I was definitely overweight at 280, and I knew it (even though I probably would’ve classed myself as “healthy” there). 190 is completely ridiculous, but 240-250 is prefectly reasonable, and I’ll probably try to maintain that level even after the stomach thing gets sorted out.<\/p>\n

So that’s my take, for whatever it’s worth. I’d love to have some brilliant and insightful summation, but I need to go teach, so I’ll leave off here before I start to sound like one of those tedious fitness Nazis promoting a weight loss scheme on late-night cable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As someone who has derived a surprising amount of blog traffic from posting about weight loss, I feel like I really ought to say something about Alas, A Blog’s case against dieting (which I first noticed via a Dave Munger comment). It’s a comprehensive collection of data (with graphs, so it must be Science) used… Continue reading Thin Kills?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}