April 1, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:Fit or fat?
A number of you have interpreted my remarks about getting fatter to mean that I am in need of weight loss advice.
I thank you for your concern. But while I am no longer the wafer-thin youngster that I once was, I'm still on the lean side; I'm 6'2, and I weigh somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150 pounds. Now, that used to be 135, once upon a time, but most doctors characterise the fifteen pounds I've added as "well needed" rather than "excess". These days, I'm walking upwards of 3 miles a day to save the outrageous fares on the Tube, and while my diet does contain more saturated fat than a truly heart-healthy programme, overall, I'm in pretty good condition.
When you're tall and skinny, talking about weight problems in others can sound pretty cruel. Most people who struggle with their weight tend to assume either that I simply hit the Pick 6 in the genetic lottery, and have no idea at all about dieting; or that I diet like a stylite, and am trying to impose my puritan routine on them. And indeed, a lot of skinny people talking about weight gain in others do sound like this, and I think it can get pretty mean. There's no moral dimension to weight gain, or loss, and if you've never been seriously overweight, lecturing someone else who is on their lack of self control is unwise.
Neither is true for me, however. I have to eat sensibly like everyone else, or I gain weight, and while it takes rather longer for weight gain to show up on a frame like mine, it takes me just as long to lose 20 pounds as it takes anyone else, which means that I have to be careful not to get fat, or else I'll stay fat a lot longer than your average 30-something. It is weird, but true, that most skinny people have to be careful about what they eat, and yet most people prefer to be thought of as naturally skinny, as if this were somehow superior to watching your diet and excercising. (And indeed, I do know people like this. But not many. Most of the women I know who are "naturally" very skinny turn out to be "naturally" living on steamed vegetables and grilled fish). But I am not going to pretend. If I eat too much fat, starch, and sugar, I will get fat. The reason I am not fat is that I try to ensure that I don't eat too much fat, starch, and sugar.
On the other hand, I've never gained more than 20 pounds, and that only when I was sitting in a trailer 12 hours a day at Ground Zero, scarfing free candy from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army with both fists. It is, I assume, harder for me to gain weight than it is for friends of mine who struggle much more; for one thing, every spring and summer I tend to lose interest in heavy foods, and become obsessed with eating vegetables and fruit and lean meat to the exclusion of nearly everything else. That craving is, as far as I can tell, entirely natural, but it also results in my losing the five pounds I gain most winters without any effort.
But as one, quite skinny coworker once said to me, "You know, I say I can eat pretty much whatever I want, but I seem to have trained myself to want--an apple." I grew up in one of the most weight-conscious subcultures in the world, and the fact is that I don't know whether what I eat is what I naturally want, or whether I, and the girls around me in school, simply trained our bodies to want apples instead of donuts, asparagus instead of french fries. On the other hand, my mother is skinny, my father is skinny, and neither of them grew up with much pressure at all to stay thin. So maybe I did hit the lottery, though not the Pick-6; more like one of those scratch-off games.
I'd also point out, to all those superior skinnies, that it's a lot easier to stay skinny than to get that way. For one thing, to stay skinny, you have to eat 1800-2000 calories a day; to get that way, you have to eat, like, 1200 calories a day, which would certainly make me grumpy. For another, fat has weird effects on the endocrine system, pumping out hormones that tell your body to produce more fat. Also, your body has what's called a "set point" that tells it how much it wants to weigh; this controls appetite and so forth. It only takes 6 months of being overweight for most people to reset their set point upward; it takes more than three years of weighing less to reset it downwards again. And of course, the more you diet, the more aggressively your body, which thinks you're in the middle of a famine, tries to hold onto calories. So lecturing someone on how they'd be just fine if they'd just eat less and excercise more is a little bit rich.
Anyway, what I was trying to do with that throwaway line ("I'm getting fatter") is to point out that I, too, am engaged in the struggle to eat healthy and stay fit. But perhaps this was a little dishonest, because I'm not struggling the way people who are overweight are; I'm struggling the way relatively lean people who want to live to be 100 despite a family history of heart disease are. Which is really not the same thing at all.
On the other hand, the underlying message that I was trying to send--that I don't think that fat people are somehow morally or mentally lacking--is true. Keeping fit is hard, even for someone with a good genetic and environmental start. For someone who doesn't have those things, I imagine it must be very difficult indeed.
Posted by Jane Galt at April 1, 2005 1:56 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"Keeping fit is hard, even for someone with a good genetic and environmental start. For someone who doesn't have those things, I imagine it must be very difficult indeed."
Of course, this is true of any aspect of a person's life. People who go to private school in NYC, for example, as you have said you did, of course, have all manner of advantages over other people. I hardly think your living in "one of the most weight-conscious subcultures in the world" is cause for concern. What is a cause for concern is those that don't live in weight conscious cultures. Those who grow up with the message that being fat is a sign of hale health are the ones who will pay the price.
Further, I don't think there's much wrong with a diet consisting of steamed fish and vegetables.
That's better than what most people eat.
I think that was the point.
I also think 6'2", 150 is still on the thin side - when you're tall, the cube/square law is not your friend.
I'm 5'10" and 200 lbs. When I graduated high school I weighed 150. Huh.
6'2" and 150lbs isn't wafer thin? Do you have special extra-thin wafers in NYC prviate schools?
I'm 6' (male). When I was in high school and on the rowing team, I weighed 165 and while I didn't have a 6-pack I wasn't too far from it and by was most standards thin, though presumably more muscular than you are now. 6'2" and 150 lbs, unless you've somehow gotten all of your muscles to atrophy to nothingness or have eggshell thin bones, just can't be anything but very thin; or are you making a distinction between wafer-thin and gramm-cracker thin?
(This isn't quite as off-point as it might otherwise be, since it does have bearing on how to interpret all of your relative descriptions in these posts, even if that is stretching a bit to be on-topic.)
Still, a person has to look out for themselves; I'm 215lbs now, so I'm not interested in people defining thin down. :-)
Ctl-
Women have smaller frames than men, even extremely tall women like Jane, who probably doesn't have a 32 or so inch waist like you did. Women, unfortunately, have thinner bones, and narrower legs, etc. As Jane has kindly offered the occasional photograph, long-time readers will know she's neither thin nor fat.
If I may offer a weight-loss tip, I recommend a new diet sweeping the nation, called "the flu." I lost six pounds in three or four days, mainly because I wasn't interested in eating. Now that I'm better, I've merely continued my new-found habit, and have lost three more pounds. So if you see someone sneezing and coughing, go say hi.
Megan, your 3 mile walking commute brings up the "fit or just thin" point which was raised on some other recent posts.
Just out of curiousity, did it take long to adapt to the long walks? You've only been over in London for, what, a couple of weeks? I'm wondering if your lifestyle when in Manhattan keeps you fit, or just thin.
I ask because I was working in NY for an extended period about two years ago. I usually stay with my mom when I'm up there, so I've got a half mile walk to the LIRR, 30+ minutes on the train, a bit more walking at Penn, 20+ minutes on the IRT, and then a ten minute walk to the office (this company was way downtown near South Ferry). I was there about 4 days a week, about 3 weeks a month. After a couple of months, I felt in much better shape than I had in years, and going home could run from the subway to the LIRR train when it seemed prudent (ie, to avoid waiting 30 minutes for the next express).
I only lost around 10 pounds (and my doctor would like to see me lose more like 50), but I think I was closing in on "fit". By contrast, I weigh about the same now as then, but spend lots of time commuting by car, so am nowhere near as fit. My appetite then was more tuned to fruits and dinner and a cookie; now I find the "75% off all Easter candy" sale at CVS to be way too attractive...
I don't find it hard to walk 3 miles a day. I live in Manhattan and I have a dog, so I'm used to walking at least a mile or so a day. I'm covering my commute a little quicker now, after a few weeks, but it doesn't make me tired or anything. (Plus I only walk a little over a mile and a half one way).
I too find that the more I excercise, the more I prefer healthy foods to fattening ones. I don't know if this is psychological ("I'm not blowing all that hard work by eating a bowl of ice cream!") or if one's body just reacts to excercise by trying to make itself leaner to lighten the load. But excercise definitely makes me eat better.
As someone who had a close relationship with Jane when she was younger, I'd like to just make the following comments. Jane indeed has what you could consider a delicate bone structure - her bones are small, but long. She looks, if you haven't seen the photos, like Catherine the Great should have looked. Elegant, regal, and thin. (granted, she also looks Irish as hell, but I have always been under the belief that Russia would have been better off if ruled by an Irish Tsarina). She looked like that at 21, and she looks like that now.
Having met Ms. McArdle during her entirely-too-brief sojourne in Los Angeles, I can attest to the fact that, at least at the time, she was invisible when viewed in profile: not wafer-thin. Cigarette-paper thin. Count me in the "6'2" and 150 lbs. isn't wafer-thin?" community.
I'm male, 5'9, currently 205 lbs. By the BMI, that makes me obese. When I was a teenager, I weighed 145, which was too little. I could certainly stand to lose a few (tens of) pounds, but I don't think of myself as being seriously overweight.
I did recently try Mike W's diet, and it worked very well indeed, but a trip to New Orleans replaced most of the missing fat.
"It only takes 6 months of being overweight for most people to reset their set point upward; it takes more than three years of weighing less to reset it downwards again."
Jane,
This is interesting. I have never heard this. Do you have a reference for this? Or was it just a guess based on experience?
Mike
There's one way you can eat pretty much anything you want and not gain weight:
Train for a marathon.
Running 25-30 miles a week puts you up in the 2500-3000 calorie per day range. You'll either eat more or lose weight, garaunteed.
Of course, if you're sensible you won't load up on too much fat, too much cholesterol is still bad for you. But if you feel like a second helping, you'll be free to go for it. Yes, it does take some time out of your week, but only five or six hours. If you count drive time, lots of people spend that much going to the gym.
Train for a marathon.
Running 25-30 miles a week
25-30 miles a week is a fine fitness regimen, but woefully inadequate training for a marathon...
If you're looking for the Pick 6, it's probably me. I exercise maybe a few hours a week (although I get in some walking going to classes every day). Since I'm eating dorm food, I really pig out--typical meal is a hot dog, as many french fries as I can pile on a plate without them falling off, then, sometimes, go back for a second such plate. Before I got to college I ate just as much, though there was more meat and fewer fries (a full rack of ribs, say, with a side of fries). I'm 5'9 and 160; I've been eating like this or worse since ninth grade, when I was 150. And the maybe three hours' worth of exercise I get is the most I've gotten in years.
On the other hand, I almost never eat dessert or snacks. This is hard, because I'm always starving when I go to bed at night--I'm not sure that I'm eating enough.
What has always bothered me is the perceived impropriety of commenting negatively on someone's weight if they are overweight, but for someone who is skinny it is fair game. I'm a 6' male and until about 5 years ago I never weighed more than 115. I can't tell you how many derogatory comments I've had to endure because of my thin frame. I'm secure and confident enough that it didn't affect me much, but the idea that it's socially acceptable to do so but taboo to call someone fat perplexes me. This is not really an issue for women, but as a male not many days went by when I wasn't belittled or treated like less of a man because of my size (probably exaggerated because of the blue-collar environment I was in at the time). The irony is, it is far easier for someone who is overweight to lose some than it is for me to gain weight. There's only so many calories you can eat in a day, and so much weight training you can do (not to mention that with more exercise I need even MORE calories, it's an endless game of catch-up) and at the end of the day, it just doesn't stick. A lot of people would say I'm lucky, but when it means you have to put up with constant belittlement just how much of a blessing is it? To hear someone chastise another for making comments about a person's weight and then in the next breath say, "Oh my god, you're so skinny!" is a double-standard I've witnessed countless times. OK, I'm done ranting now.
'Neighbourhood'? Have we Yanks lost you already? :•)
Jane
Glad to hear you're walking. If your journey takes you through some of the lovely parks, all the better.
As for the 'expensive' tube I'd generally recommend using the buses instead, especially as we head into summer - if there's a convenient route.
It is hard to stay slim and svelte in London. The winters are too long, summers too short, the gyms are expensive, and there is far too much high cal processed food around. Sandwhiches from places like Pret a manger and the other chains are very high cal, loaded with mayo and other crud. And the Brits eat very little fruit or vegetables (only expats eat salads, it seems).
Still, all that aside London, is a great place. Enjoy!
On the other hand, I almost never eat dessert or snacks. This is hard, because I'm always starving when I go to bed at night--I'm not sure that I'm eating enough.
You eat a diet almost exlusively consisting of simple starches and fats, and then wonder if you're eating enough because you get hungry later? If that's really an accurate description of your typical diet, then you're probably eating way too much of the wrong thing, and thus either forcing your body to metabolize a lot of essential ingredients indirectly (grossly depletes any vitamin/mineral stores you've built up at other, more healthful meals), or passing most of it into the lavatory can because you haven't given your body the tools it needs to properly metabolize the rest.
Knock the fries back by half, add a large salad (garnish it however you will but use dark-leaves if possible), and put a piece or two of fresh fruit on the side. If still hungry at bedtime, keep oatmeal on hand for an evening snack. The fiber limits your appetite because it stays with you longer, and your cancer-free colon will thank you in thirty or so years.
For one thing, to stay skinny, you have to eat 1800-2000 calories a day
No, no, no. I eat 3000 cal a day and stay skinny. I just happen to eat the correct 3000 calories for my body.
That would be about 2800 calories worth of really, really, really good fat and some protein plus about 200 calories of really good carbs.
Each body is different (as hard as that may be to believe given the current scientific orthodoxy). What works for me may not work for you. But there are principles that explain these things. You just have to be willing to dig beyond that which is readily available.
I suspect that nutrition is much like finance. The information that is promulgated in the media is not particularly helpful if you are trying to create a healthy body/get rich.
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