After several days of being inundated by New Year’s resolution advertising and programming, I opened up the New York Times this morning to see that the NYT Magazine’s cover story was on weight loss and entitled “The Fat Trap.” I knew then that I was in for some fun.
Now I’ve read it, I’ve mulled it over for a few hours, & I’m still not sure what all I want to say on it, but I want the discussion to get going, at least beyond the random lay-persons in the Twittersphere.
The basic gist of the article is that losing weight - in significant amounts and keeping it off - is really damned hard. This “duh!” statement is backed up by a profile of an early-retirement-aged couple who have fought - and continue to fight - the war for weight loss. Aside: they’re, like me, Davis, CA residents, and they are so damned quintessentially Davis. There are also references to various studies about weight loss that further back up the “this shit is hard” statement, as well as ones that indicate that there are heavily influential genetic factors that alter just how easy or hard weight goes on or comes off between different people subjected to the same stimuli. Nothing surprising, right? Then it trots out the old “most people who lose weight will gain it back” thing - *yawn*.
But there are a couple of things about the article that get me…
- All exercise mentioned in the article, in anecdotes or in the studies, is low-intensity, sustained steady-state aerobic activity. We’re talking cycling around town (a town near sea-level with no hills, mind you), water aerobics, *recumbent cycling*, and walking. NO MENTION of strength training, *anywhere.*
- All “diet” discussion from the authorial or expert end focuses on “low fat.” More fat-phobic language ensues. Then they talk about people who’ve lost weight and are trying to maintain that weight loss experience problems with hunger while avoiding fat like the plague. And but one, horribly-deemphasized mention of protein.
- When discussing post-weight loss difficulties & the struggle against weight re-gain, vague references are made to research showing that during weight loss, muscle-fibers shift to slow twitch, thus resulting in reduced caloric requirements, which then require even greater caloric restriction for continued weight loss/maintenance. See number 1: might this have something to do with the type of exercise being prescribed?
So, anyway, if this article was from a random blog, I wouldn’t be that concerned, but seriously, this in the New York Times? Oy vey…
This is the type of thing that makes my job harder.
