Questioning the Calorie

Part of the fat shaming discussed last week is the assumption that losing weight is an easy no-brainer: just eat less and do more, and the laws of thermodynamics dictate you must lose weight. As the writer Will Self noted in taking down the defender of fat people, no one ever saw a fat person leave the Nazi's concentration camps.

Which got me thinking: huh, is this the dawning of the "concentration camp" diet? Simply enter a concentration camp run by Nazis, and sit back and watch the pounds melt away, easy-peasy! So let's set up concentration camps for fat people, we'll be doing them a favor! Right? Right?

I've written a couple of times about the usefulness of calorie counting. Over-consumption is profitable and necessary to have an every-growing economy, and regulatory agencies responsible for nutritional labeling and warning the public are hobbled by business interests. (Profitable because the health care costs generated by obesity are hidden costs, i.e. bore by the government and the tax payer, not Big Food.) "Intuitive eating" is a nice idea to avoid the stress of calorie counting but is easily interfered with by food scientists who hijack our evolutionary drives for survival by appealing to our base instincts for sugar-fat-salt.

Nutrition is a young science, under invested in by an industry that doesn't want to invest in things that lose money and ignored by a political system that profits from going all in on "individual responsibility". Still, evidence is growing that despite the strongest wishes of the fat-shamers who deduce that fat people just eat too much, it's not so. Growing evidence is showing all calories are not created equal.

Nuts are generally regarded as a calorie-dense, energy-dense food group. But David Baer, a researcher at the United States Department of Agriculture, found that our bodies only absorb about 70 percent of the calories in almonds. Same with walnuts and pistachios....Research found that our bodies absorb up to 40 percent more calories from meat, starches and fat when they are cooked....it’s hard to make a conclusion when there are so many variables – from the bacteria living in your stomach to how accurate our food labels are.

Calories are measured by putting a food in a calorimeter -- basically, a furnace that burns the food and measures the units of heat that comes out of it. However, we are not furnaces, but complex acid-engines attached to various systems that interact to give unexpected results based on factors OTHER than personal resolve and how much fat is in that muffin.

Due to research involving gut bacteria and the Internet friendly idea of poop pills and fecal transplants related to IBS issues, it's been found that the billions of microbes living in our gut, set by our parents, environment and first foods we eat, may help determine our set weights. Other research points to the rise of cheap sugar and processed food in the 60s and 70s as tracking with the rise in obesity. What research has NOT found is a rampant wave of laziness and lack of personal responsibility. If anything, it is the opposite. The rise of the diet industry, Oprah's partnering with Weight Watchers and the amount of cash being generated by foods catering to fat people wanting to get skinny have never been greater...or more profitable.

I've swapped out a weekly slice of pizza for a handful of nuts. It's a tiny thing, but real diet change is slow and cumulative, not fast and extreme. I've relaxed on the counting of calories in the past few years. For example, I used to weight every vegetable and fruit in my morning juice, now I just say "160", which is about the average of what it was, day to day. My counting is indeed my personal responsibility, to keep myself accountable, but it is not the solution. It is only a wall against giving in to the temptations of all the delicious food out there that would blow me up like a balloon. I don't have an answer to how to lose weight in the face of a body striving to regain to where it was through hormones and evolutionary habit. I do have the personal fortitude to keep trying, despite what the fat-shamers say, and I have trust that morally-upstanding scientists will point us in the right direction, even if it means an industry will have to suffer a loss of profit.

Obesity has lead to an epidemic of spontaneous decapitations! Good thing fat people are so stupid they actually don't need anything above their necks to continue to live.

WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2840
Too high, but was a weird week, I'll give myself a little slack this time. A few weeks until bike season starts for me...
-----

MONDAY COUNT: 2510
SLEPT: 9:30pm - 5am, 7.5 hrs

AM SNACK: 5:30am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1 : 10:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 1pm, steel cut oatmeal, 450 cal

LUNCH: 2:15pm, beef patty, momma salad, tomato soup, pickles, 550 cal

DINNER: 6pm, grouper, asparagus, poppa salad with dressing, 600 cal

EVENING SNACKS: 8pm, kind bar, handful of animal crackers, popcorn, +/- 700 cal

-----

TUESDAY COUNT: 3340

SLEPT: 9pm-7am,  10 hrs

AM SNACK: 7:30am,  iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 9am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 11am, fruit smoothie,  450 cal

LUNCH: 2:15pm, chicken meatballs, steamed string beans, lentil curry, pickles 700 cal

PM SNACK: 5pm, momma salad, veggie straws, 230 cal

DINNER: 6:45pm, Amy's Pizza, poppa salad with dressing, 1040 cal

EVENING SNACKS: 7:30pm, pocky, 760 cal
-----

BIKE CREDIT: 580
WEDNESDAY COUNT: 2750

SLEPT: 9pm-4:30am, 7.5 hrs

AM SNACK: 5am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 8:30am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 150 mg caffeine, 160 cal

BIKE SNACK: 10:30am, homemade granola bar, 300 cal

BREAKFAST 2: 12:30pm, Greek yogurt with honey, almonds, vanilla,  450 cal

LUNCH: 2:30pm, grilled pork tenderloin, poppa salad with dressing,  600 cal


PM SNACK: 5:15pm, momma salad, cashews, 350 cal

DINNER: 8pm, burrito, diet coke, 920 cal

EVENING SNACK: 9:15pm, 2 pack of pocky, small bowl of cereal and whole milk, 550 cal
-----

THURSDAY COUNT:3040

SLEPT: 11:30pm-5:45am, 6.25hr

AM SNACK: 6am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST 1: 10am, movie popcorn, pickles, momma salad, 480  cal

BREAKFAST 2: 1:30pm, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

LUNCH: 3pm, shirataki noodles with shrimp, poppa salad with dressing, 500 cal

PM SNACK: veggie straws, small amount of chocolate chips and peanut butter pretzels, +/- 400 cal

DINNER: 6pm, spagetti carbonara, polenta terrine, bitter chocolate tart, +/- 1500 cal
Homecooked, not resto.
-----

FRIDAY COUNT: 2560

SLEPT: 9pm-midnight, 2am-6:30am, 7.5hrs

AM SNACK: 8am, iced green tea

BREAKFAST: 10:15am, apple/beet/celery/carrot/cayenne/cucumber/ginger juice, 160 cal

BREAKFAST 2: noon, steel cut oatmeal,  450 cal

LUNCH: 1:45pm, sardine and avocado on wholewheat, momma salad, 600 cal

LUNCH PT 2: 3pm, left over spag carbonara,  chocolate tart +/- 850 cal

DINNER:5:15pm, 1 hot dog, +/- 300 cal

EVENING SNACK: 7:30pm, kind bar, 200 cal