On Another Scale

A few years ago the unexpected tightness of my jacket (I seldom wear business or semi-formal jackets anymore) alerted me that I had allowed my weight to exceed my previous record high. So, I aimed to drop 40 pounds (18 kg) to get back to my old 1990s level. Though discipline in these matters is not normally my forte, over the next two years I slowly shed more than 30 pounds (14 kg) but found the final 10 pounds above my target weight to be stubbornly resistant. Then covid struck early last spring. Those 10 pounds vanished in little more than a week. Best diet ever? Not really. I would trade the covid for the pounds and consider it a great bargain. The week-long illness itself wasn’t bad (I’ve experienced worse colds) but the aftermath was awful. I felt fine if just sitting or standing but was exhausted and nauseated by even minor exertion. This loss of stamina lingered for months. Things got better week by week, but the effect lasted to some degree all through summer. Only in the past month have I felt fully normal again.
 
During the past several months I ignored the bathroom scale and forewent any calculated calorie restriction while rebuilding strength. So, it was with some trepidation this morning that I took a breath and stepped on the scale to assess the damage. I stepped off and stepped on again but the result was the same. Not even a single kilogram change since last spring. Those last 10 pounds shaved off by covid remained off – OK, 9 pounds stayed off, but that is close enough. The challenge now is to keep them off without the unwelcome assistance of a viral infection.
 

fat cells

Weight is a challenge to people around the world. Far more people today are overweight than undernourished. This is, of course, far better than the reverse, which was the case for most of human history. Hunger hasn’t vanished by any means, but the reduction of it deserves noting and celebrating. Nonetheless, the flip side to that achievement is that The World Health Organization calls obesity a global epidemic. It is not contagious in the usual sense – you will not catch obesity from a fat man who sneezes on you – yet it is socially communicable: an oft-cited study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that your friend-group affects your weight. A friend becoming obese increases your risk of doing the same by a whopping 57%. Oddly, the effect (though present) is much less among family members than among friends. It is speculated that friends tend to copy each other’s eating and exercise habits while contributing to one’s notion of what is or isn’t fat.
 
The usual definition of obesity used by both the WHO and CDC is a Body Mass Index (BMI) of more than 30. (Merely overweight is a reading over 25 but under 30.) The BMI is calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters. BMI is a rough and ready tool for describing people of average fitness or when comparing populations. It has some obvious problems when applied to any one individual. For example a 5’10” (1.76 m) person weighing 210 pounds (95.45 kg) has a BMI over 30 and is therefore obese. Yet, those numbers could describe either a tautly muscled body builder or a flabby couch potato: the BMI is the same for either even though it is silly to call the former obese. Those anomalies cancel out however when studying a lot of people, so it has statistical utility anyway.
 
There are always articles and news items about this or that in the environment “causing” obesity, for example the “significant” hormonal effects of chemicals in certain plastics. The news articles (in popular publications anyway) rarely point out that the correlations (not necessarily causes) are statistically significant (i.e. unlikely to be due to chance) rather than significant in the sense of large. In fact, most such effects are tiny in actual weight. Somewhat better-known risk factors for obesity include lack of sleep and a non-optimal mix of gut bacteria.
 
Ultimately, however, we gain weight when we eat more calories than we burn. (We’ll put to the side the question of what foods are healthier in ways other than calories.) According to the Department of Agriculture adult Americans consume 23% more calories per capita than in 1970. (I remember 1970 and we didn’t starve ourselves then.) It’s hardly surprising that we weigh more. We lose weight when we eat less and exercise more. We all know this. We don’t like to hear it. I don’t like to hear it. It’s a bummer.
 
So, I’ll continue to reconsider second helpings. Maybe I’ll even catch up on some sleep.  What I will not do is seek another round of covid. I’d rather regain 10 pounds.
 

A ditty from a less “body positive” era:

The Andrews Sisters – Too Fat Polka