THE ARTICLE
As our waistlines grow larger and larger, so does the quantity of “helpful advice” about how to lose weight. Both governments and the fitness industry promote diet and exercise strategies they are sure will work if applied properly and with discipline. Scientists, however, say the problem of obesity may be more complicated than any diet or exercise plan can easily address.
It’s not that diet and exercise don’t matter. They definitely do. However they are not the only factors influencing how much we weigh. Body composition is also a function of DNA and is something that is monitored by the brain in individual ways. Overcoming those systems cannot necessarily be done with diet and exercise.
Now there are calls to add warning labels to sodas, similar to those on cigarette packs. Public schools are beginning to ban junk foods and vending machines, and major cities like New York are putting calorie information on their menus. Many people are nostalgic for “how we used to eat” as if our nutrition over the years has gotten significantly worse. It is true that empty calories have been on the rise since food processing practices have become commonplace around the globe. But is poor diet really the culprit? McDonalds has been selling billions of burgers since the mid 1960’s, and generally meals from previous generations weren’t exactly low-fat or low-carb.
Dr. Barry Gassner, a sociology professor at the University of California notes,“The meals we romanticize in the past somehow leave out the reality of what people were eating. The average meal had whole milk and ended with pie.... The typical meal had plenty of fat and calories.”
“Nostalgia is going to get us nowhere,” he added.
In fact, some experts believe that the recent increase in the numbers of obese people has far more to do with sedentary lifestyles than with dietary practices. However, it has been hard to follow the ever-changing government recommendations on exercise, and no particular recommendation seems to have led to real change in our waistlines. The first recommendations in the 1970’s and 80’s were for 20 minutes of exercise, at least three times a week. That was upped to 30 minutes per day, and then in 2005 the recommendation skyrocketed to 60 to 90 minutes a day, something that most people said was unrealistic.
Part of the problem with exercise recommendations is that people still struggle to lose weight, even when they exercise. Twenty minutes of walking burns about 100 calories, which is the equivalent of two small cookies. We consistently overestimate the calories we burn while exercising and underestimate the calories we consume each day. For example, many of us know that there are 7700 calories in a kilogram. So if you walk 20 minutes per day, you should lose a kilogram every 77 days, right? Unfortunately, it never works out that way, because we can’t precisely maintain our calorie intake from day to day. Restaurant meals and packaged meals all vary in size and we don’t usually stick to the portion sizes we see on the labels. Calorie counting is a very imprecise art.
Compounding the problem is that our bodies have a set range in terms of weight, and it is nearly impossible for us to deviate significantly from that range. This range is genetically determined and spans perhaps 15 kilograms. When we try to go below our range, we become increasingly hungry and our bodies will do everything possible to maintain us within that range. Why we are more easily able to exceed that range is not yet clear, but it may have to do with physiological hunger versus psychological hunger. Maintaining our weight above a minimum range has to do with “real hunger”, which is tied to our physiological needs for food and energy. Once we exceed our range, we probably don’t feel true hunger, but we keep eating out of loneliness, boredom, distraction, stress, or other psychological reasons.
Interestingly, research is also showing that our tendency towards fatness is affected by something entirely out of our control: our mother’s health habits. Pregnancy conditions seem to affect how fat offspring are as adults. Women who eat little during pregnancy more often have children who grow into overweight adults, as do women who smoke during pregnancy. The mechanisms behind these outcomes are still unclear.
So shall we simply throw up our hands and give up in our quest to lose weight? Absolutely not. Enough research has shown that, in terms of our health, losing weight and exercising may be the most important things we can do to extend our lifespan and improve our quality of life. We shouldn’t however, underestimate the challenge we are taking on. This means that quick-fix diets and fads, celebrity “cleanses” and 7-day herbal remedies simply aren’t going to do it for us. There are many forces at work impeding our ability to lose weight, so a coordinated effort with your personal trainer, a physician or nutritionist, family and friends, and anyone else you can recruit to help you in your effort, will be more successful than any single product or strategy on the market.
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