Strange Poll Results on Weight

When you look at yourself in a mirror, or sit down to eat a meal, what is it that you really see? If you're active and eat well most of the time, why are you doing that? Is it because you want to lose weight and get in shape and look better, or is it because you want to lead a healthy lifestyle to ward off sickness and other ailments? Or is it a little bit of a combination of both?

I've been meaning to blog on this story for awhile but I had to read it a number of different times because I found it somewhat confusing.

It involves a poll conducted by AP and Ivillage and here are some of the findings:

Half don't like their weight, even 26 percent of those whose body mass index or BMI — a measure of weight for height — is in the normal range. But just a third don't like their physical condition, even though being overweight and sedentary are big risk factors for Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other ailments.

I've read that paragraph a half dozen times and it still doesn't make sense to me. Half don't like the weight that they are at and a third don't like their physical condition. I guess it depends on how you're defining "physical condition" because it seems to be that if half don't like their weight, that those same people don't like their physical condition.

More from the article:

"People can't see the damage that's being done inside their body," says Goldberg. "If you increase your fitness but don't lose as much weight, you still have a lower heart disease risk than someone who is obese and sedentary."

Okay fine, being overweight but continuing to exercise is going to reduce your risk of heart disease but, it would reduce it even more if the excess weight was taken off (yes, I know that might be easier said then done but, it's doable).

Now here's a quote that really bothered me:

"Someone who is fat or even overweight can be healthy if they have a balanced diet and are physically active," Kwan says. "Our culture really does put a lot of pressure on women to look a certain way," taking precedence over health measures.

Maybe I'm just not looking at this correctly but, if our culture puts a lot of pressure on women to look a certain way (skinny, model type), then why are two-thirds of women overweight or obese? I remember that was the common theory back 10-20 years ago (and earlier), but does it really hold today, in 2009? Beauty pageants that involved women that were so skinny if they turned sideways you probably wouldn't know they were even there, have lost a lot of popularity over the last decade to the point that they aren't even shown on the major networks anymore.

If anything, I think what people have started to realize (and the article states as much) is that getting to a point where you look like this:



Not only looks better (and even men will tell you as such), but is more healthier than looking like this:



But again, I just don't see how there's that much pressure out there anymore to even look like either of those two pictures due to the fact that two-thirds of us are not even close to being able to see our abs.

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The Biggest Loser Gone Bad

Reality TV shows. It's been a very long time since I watched one. I remember way back in the day watching the very first season of The Real World. I actually kept up with that show for a couple of seasons. But then it occurred to me: How real is this? A bunch of young adults being put into a house/apartment to live FREE, don't really need to have a job, and just sit around and argue with each other all day (although, I'm guessing a lot of what is filmed is just plain boring and all we get to see is the fights, romance, etc.). Is that what really happens in "the Real World?" Once I answered no to that question, I pretty much stopped watching further seasons of that show and have never really watched another reality TV show since then.

Earlier this week in this post, I talked about how it was amazing that some of these contestants that were on the show The Biggest Loser had lost so much weight in such a short period of time.

Well, there's some contestants it didn't work out so well. In this article, it talks about how the contestant that won season one had originally weighed 330 pounds before going on the show, got his weight down to 208, and is now currently back up to 300 pounds.

In fact if you flip through all of the seasons that are listed in the link to the people that they show, most have put back on weight. Some within 10 pounds of what they weighed after the show, some, well, more than that.

Which again pretty much shows that the "realitness" (I just made that word up) of reality shows is not very real. Very simply television is there for entertainment. 99.999999% of us are never going to be put into a situation where we'll be locked up in a house, with a trainer badgering us from sunrise to sunset about our workouts and eating for 3-4 months.

The aftermath of where the contestants went with after the show was over is going back into the REAL "real world" where they have jobs, family, obligations, etc. and they are not able to focus 100% of their time on food and exercise.

But, what the show has done is inspired a lot of people to go out and lose weight WITHIN their normal environment such as stories like this.

In a way, this reality show has inspired more true reality than could ever be scripted on a set.

Thanks to Chris Standish for the link.

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Alcohol and Weight Loss

So you sit down one night and grab a low carb beer to drink, thinking “hey, it’s low carb and it’s just under 90 calories. This won’t have any effect on my fat loss progress.”

Well, think again.

First, your body is always burning fat for energy. Sometimes it’s burning a lot of it in order to recover from a workout, and other times it’s not burning much at all. At the same time, you may be storing some body fat because you are taking in excess calories. But, the cycle continues, your body at some level is always burning fat.

Alcohol though, throws a little curve ball into this.

When you drink alcohol, in the end it turns into a substance known as acetate. When this happens, your body uses the acetate for energy before using any body fat, carbohydrates, or protein. In other words, your natural fat burning metabolism has shut down and won’t start back up until all that acetate is moved out of the system.

Another problem with alcohol is that it tends to increase your appetite. Admit it, you start drinking and the next thing you know your ordering potato skins, cheese sticks, nachos and whatever else is on the appetizer menu. So now not only are you not burning fat because your body has to use the acetate as energy first, but, you’re now taking in a ton of inefficient calories that will end up as body fat.

Alcohol also has an effect on testosterone levels. When you drink alcohol, the body increases the release of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that breaks down muscle. So by increasing cortisol and also decreasing your testosterone levels by drinking alcohol, you end up with muscle being eaten away. This is the reason why you see a lot of heavy drinkers who have bigger waists and at the same time, smaller muscles.

Does this mean that you should avoid alcohol all together? No, not entirely. Having a few drinks on special occasions isn’t going to hurt, you just need to make sure you don’t go overboard.

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The Perfect Diet

So what's the perfect diet to be on to lose body fat?

Turns out, there isn't one. This article talks about a recent study that shows that the type of diet that people were on came out with basically the same results in the end.

From the article:

The kind of diet doesn't matter, scientists say. All that really counts is cutting calories and sticking with it, according to a federal study that followed people for two years. However, participants had trouble staying with a single approach that long and the weight loss was modest for most.

So the key seems to be not the type of eating your doing (low carb, low fat, carrot diet, etc), it's that you stick with it. That's where I think we run into some issues as it seems to me that's the hardest part for people: sticking to it for more than a couple of weeks.

I had written back a while ago here on how the number of diets out there are really making it confusing for people.

I'll admit, in the past I've been a pretty ardent supporter of low-carb diets because they've worked for me. But, I've loosened up a bit lately and opened up to other possibilities that work just as well, and it seems that a study like this is helping me realize that even more.

Bottom line, try out a couple of diets and see which one works for you and stick with it. Or, maybe an even better route is to take a few diets and cycle through them. Do one diet for a month, then another diet for another month, then another one a month after that, and then swing through all three of them again. That way you keep the variety going and you don't get bored (because chances are, when you start getting bored with a diet, that's when the trip through the candy aisle occurs).

A final note that should be mentioned about the study that I think is really important was that the people on the diets got social support throughout the study. Meaning, you're going to have more success losing that weight when you work with others. Don't try to do this alone. Get together with some friends and do it together and look up a nutritionist to consult with on a recurring basis.

On that same note, I'm currently using myself as a guinea pig on a new diet I found. Although it's really not a diet. More to come on that in the following weeks so stay tuned.

Have a good weekend.


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