How you can gain weight while burning calories

As you may or may not know, in addition to being a student of physics, I worked for two summers at a weight loss camp. And so it was that I thought to apply thermodynamics to what was happening to my campers.

Some campers would lose weight steadily; others would have slow and fact points; in the long term, they all improved dramatically. And yet, when you use weight to try to measure your fitness, things tend to fall flat a little more often, and you see quirks.

As BMI measures it, I hit the "overweight" marker at 184 pounds - at which point my body fat percentage is still quite healthy. If I drop to 170 pounds (BMI 23, still in the upper half of "normal") my body fat percentage is dangerously low. I would probably drop dead before hitting the "underweight" BMI (136 pounds).

The quirk here is lean body mass. I have a relatively high lean body mass; my campers, universally, were increasing their lean body mass as well, strengthening muscles they didn't know existed, drinking plenty of water, etc. And at the most extreme end of it - you can be burning through calories and still adding just a little bit of mass as you reshape your body. I've seen it; I've also seen, on weighing day, how terribly discouraged campers get when they discovered they lost little to no weight that week.

Hidden in that news is the amazing improvements they made in their fitness. They can now hike further, lift more, swim more quickly, and they may even have lost an inch on their waistline. And when we're worried about our appearance, it's that - not the proxy of total weight - that makes the difference when people look at you.

So if you're working out hard and watching your diet, and yet you just don't seem to be losing weight, cheer up. You're still probably improving your health and appearance.

Fat and sexuality and society

Consider this an idle rumination, if you would.

Not terribly long ago, a study came to my attention. It noted that among women, lesbians tended to be heavier than bisexuals who in turn tended to be heavier than straight women. This was curious to me, as also, I have seen many studies over the years that seemed to indicate that straight women seem to care more about a partner's body fat percentage than straight men did, and anecdotally, it seems to me that gay men appear to care the very most about it.

Lo and behold, Google provides a study suggesting that yes, gay men worry more about weight than straight men. And I am tempted to say there are two factors - being male, and being interested in males - that both somehow become a driving force, and if straight women care more about body fat than straight men, then being interested in men would be the stronger fashion.

Nevertheless, it strikes me as very odd, and it would bother me very much more if I thought this phenomenon was more biological than social.

Your meat problem

Why cheese is my guilty pleasure

The average American eats about two hundred pounds of meat every year, and this is a problem for everybody. I've personally been a vegetarian for almost two decades now, but as a rule, I don't tell people they need to become vegetarian themselves. However, what most of us can and should do is cut back on animal-based consumption.

I'm still not saying that you need to become a vegetarian like myself, or go all the way to vegan. It's not a lifestyle that everybody is willing, or able, to embrace. I'm just saying that if you're used to centering every meal around what meat is in it, you should probably take it a little easier. Shy away from large cuts; concentrate on quality, rather than quantity.

My meat-loving friends tell me that with meat, quality makes oh so much of a difference in the pleasure of eating it. A lot of them are fans of pricier grass-fed beef over the cheaper grain-fed beef they find in the market; I wouldn't know myself, but I can say that it makes more economic sense in the long haul. Brings us to our first concrete reason of the day.

Traditionally, cattle-using people have come from areas with soil and climate ill-suited to plants that humans can eat, and while grass grows just fine on land that won't grow wheat, land that can grow feed corn can also grow crops that humans can eat directly. Depending on who you ask, it takes four to six pounds of grain to manufacture a pound of pork, two to two and a half for a pound of chicken, and a whopping seven to thirteen pounds of grain go into each pound of beef (1,2 - plus some hay and other fodder) - naturally, on beef, vegetarian activist groups say sixteen pounds, while industry sales groups claim two pounds, but I trust academic references more than advocacy groups.

A pound of cheese, my personal favorite animal product (since I actually eat it), tends to take about three and a half pounds of grain (plus six pounds of other fodder) to make - not as much as beef, but still plenty. It's simply less efficient, and with food prices spiking, that in and of itself is a problem. (So is fuel ethanol, which is just ill-advised, period, but also competes with food in the arable land market).

This year, I've been following my own advice on cheese - reduce the quantity, focus on quality - and I have to say, life is better that way. And speaking of life being better, excess consumption of meat (especially processed meat) is strongly linked to a wide range of health problems. Most of the people in this country would become healthier by cutting their meat consumption to no more than half of what it is now.

I suppose if fewer agricultural subsidies went to feed grain, the increase in the price of meat might just spur a shift in the American diet, but I have my personal doubts on that account. Consumption patterns are highly social, and it takes a great deal to push consumption patterns around. Then, of course, there's a carbon impact intrinsic to meat that's greater than the carbon impact of vegetables, but you already knew that, right?

So, quality over quantity. Think about it.