Hunter Gatherers Didn't Harvest Fritos

Hey, where the Fritos at?

Take the breadth and depth of all nutritional advice over the years, and you will have one hairy, contradictory stew. Eat no carbs, just protein and fat! But fat makes you fat! Too much protein gives you cancer!  Sit ups will flatten your tummy! It is impossible to non-surgically target fat! Drink 64oz of water a day! Drink only when thirsty! Well, another assumption about fitness & nutrition bites the dust, and the exercise industry isn't going to be happy. Y'know how exercise "revs up" your metabolism, so when you work out like crazy, your body becomes a FAT BURNIN' MO-SHEEN?!?! Nope. Nah gonna happen.

Gonna happen? Nah.

The popular assumption is that we're getting fat because we're sittin' around watchin' TV & eating Frito's. That is perhaps half right. Back before refrigeration and indoor plumbing and drive-thru fast food restaurants and Brawndo, poppa had to get out of the cave and do some high-energy hunting, while momma had to strap on Baby Bambam with some furs and vines and do some intense gathering. All that working out must have kept them thin and trim. They must have been moving around harder than Richard Simmons at Fatty Disco night.

So some scientists took it upon themselves to find some hunter-gathers in Tanzania, members of the Hazda tribe who keep it seriously old school. (Excuse me, srsly old skool.) They must be all skinny n' shiz because their metabolisms must be supercharged from working all day to get fed, right? Nope. After precise measurements involving observing walking via GPS and special drinking water that could mark energy expenditure and metabolic rate in each and every pee pee, the scientists found that the Hazda's metabolism were pretty much the same as the average American.

These findings upend the long-held assumption that our hunter-gatherer ancestors expended more energy than modern populations, and challenge the view that obesity in Western populations results from decreased energy expenditure. Instead, the similarity in daily energy expenditure across a broad range of lifestyles suggests that habitual metabolic rates are relatively constant among human populations. This in turn supports the view that the current rise in obesity is due to increased food consumption, not decreased energy expenditure.

It's not the TV, it's the Frito's. The Hazda's aren't hunting Big Macs, and they ain't gathering french fries. It what Michael Pollen has been banging on about for a while now: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Because a buffalo is a lot harder to hunt than an eggplant is to gather.

A wild Fritobeast, freshly killed and yet to be cleaned and gutted.

In the NY Time's commentary on this study, they go a bit further:

Close mathematical scrutiny of past studies of exercise and weight loss shows that that happy prospect (that if you exercise, your metabolism won’t drop as you lose weight or will even speed up) is, sad to say, unfounded. One of the few studies ever to have scrupulously monitored exercise, food intake and metabolic rates found that volunteers’ basal metabolic rates dropped as they lost weight, even though they exercised every day. As a result, although they were burning up to 500 calories during an exercise session, their total daily caloric burn was lower than it would have been had their metabolism remained unchanged, and they lost less weight than had been expected.

I lift weights twice a week and get in a long bike ride once a week, and on the face if it this time-consuming, inconvenient habit may directly be interfering with my quest to get slim. However, no one is saying don't exercise, as it still has many benefits. It makes you feel good, it builds muscle, it strengthens silly little things like lung capacity, reduces bad cholesterol, and builds bones. Just one of those benefits is not a huge reduction in weight. More precisely, you may lose weight, but not on a 1-to-1 ratio. All this time that people have marvelled at me for riding my bike so much but not losing weight, well, SCIENCE! For every 2,200 calories I burn on a long bike ride, the final effect after adjusting for slowing metabolism might be 2/3 of that.

All said and done, the current research still points to the same main way to lose weight: simply eat less. No special miracle machines, no magical foods, no exceptional way of  timing or combining foods. I would love to see a study of all weight-loss plans from the past 40 years and compare participant's success along the data which shows if they reduced calories or not. I suspect there would be a very large correlation. There is no harm in a Richard Simmons dance-a-thon if it makes all involved feel good and work towards controlling diet, even if cavemen didn't have access to his deal-a-meals way back when..

THE COUNT: 2320
Very sore this morning, particularly under my arms towards my back: pull-up muscles. When I did that successful negative pull-up yesterday, I got so excited I did it two more times, then increased my reps from 5 to 6 through my routine.

Very hungry in the evening, hard to not eat a snack and go over budget. Oddly enough, instead of watching TV, I cooked to keep busy. Having a dinner party Saturday night and B will be out of town, so want a homemade meal that takes minimal work to serve. So I made whole wheat ravioli from scratch, the filling with veg I picked up from today's CSA (squash, onion, Italian peppers, a jalapeno) with some good yogurt, a little egg and a handful of dried spices and salt. Did the math, the tiny little buggers are 21 cal/ravioli. (Yes, I did taste the mix for seasoning, but really, it had to be under 10 cal for the sampling...)

AM SNACK: 6:45am, iced green tea, 25 cal

BREAKFAST: 8am, steel-cut oatmeal, 375 cal

LUNCH: 11:45am, Quarter Pounder, fries, diet coke, 890 cal

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, momma salad, 80 cal

DINNER: 7:15pm, whole wheat pasta with turkey meatballs, homemade sauce and sauteed spinach, 7oz diet coke, 950 cal

EVENING SNACK: 9:15pm, 7oz diet sprite, 0 cal