Starvation, diets etc. for no good reason

I wanted to post something that's occupied everyone's mind at one point or another: losing weight. How does it work, this whole fat burning thing? How much fat is good, how much is bad? I'm not professionally educated in this domain, but that's not important since a lot my criticisms come from simple assumptions. Recently I read an interesting statement from the e-book 'Experiments with Intermittent Fasting' by Dr. John M. Berardi:

the standard North American diet is often hyper-energetic – we eat more than we burn – which leads to weight gain over time.

A good test to see if a statement makes any sense is to declare the opposite and see what comes out. In this case I came up with "A non-standard North American diet is often hypo-energetic – we burn more than we eat – which leads to death". If I had to choose sides, the former certainly looks healthier than the latter.

Even more interesting was that Dr. Berardi goes on to claim that intermittent fasting (in his definition not eating for 20-odd hours) can reverse these 'problems':

Intermittent fasting can be helpful for in-shape people who want to really get lean without following conventional bodybuilding diets, or for anyone who needs to learn the difference between body hunger and mental hunger

Unfortunately this makes no long-term sense: if you burn more calories per day than you eat, eventually you will die. This is not science; it is simple logic. For even a slight negative imbalance your fat reserves will deplete, which could take years, but at some point the reserves run out.

Another week in Hali

I've been living in Halifax now for 11 days. So little time, but busy nonetheless. I ran in Lunenburg two weekends ago. The week was busy with work, predictably. Work is the real reason I'm here in the first place. Re-learned some unix and fortran: Emacs, grep, rm *, ifort, et al. By Friday night I had my first plot of 'real' data. Not a good plot, but it's a start. The plot will thicken.

The little running I did was lots of up and down, just the way I like it. Halifax has nary a flat spot and that's great when you're taking it easy. I discovered Frog Pond lake Thursday night.

This weekend was also busy, running-wise. Saturday I felt antsy for more mileage. So in the morning I discovered Long Lake park. Pretty scenic, and it's only 45 minutes (of running) away. In the evening I found time for my first track workout here. Must be something in the air as I did 5x2km in 6:15 apiece, about 5 seconds faster than I expected. It felt pretty good. Most importantly it meant I was ready to do a 10 km race at the same pace. Or maybe even a 10 mile race. Hmmm.
 
I ran with the Halifax Running Club Sunday. Great group. I was given a two-tour of Dathmouth and before I knew it had covered 28km and finished with bagels and coffee. I'm sold. But I may have slightly overdone it; I think ran 60k in two days. Borderline silly. Resting today.

In Halifax (and Lunenburg)

I said before I would write less often once I moved to Halifax and began work. Lo and behold I have.

I landed in Hali on Thursday, felt homesick for Montreal on Friday, then felt a little better Saturday. I was running a little here and there around the city to keep myself from losing all my familiar habits. Also it helps to get one's bearings sorted out. Went for a couple tours of Point Pleasant Park (home of many unleashed dogs and alliteration...). With a new job, new place, new city all at the same time I was glad for something usual.

Asics 2140s hacked!

I just bough a new pair of running shoes, the New Balance 890 V2s. I felt a bit like a collector as they're the brand new 'limited edition' Canadian version. More importantly I really like how they feel. Comfy but flexible; the cushioning is noticeable but stays out of the way. The forefoot isn't too wide either (I've had shoes where the laced sides almost touch).

Most importantly here's the flex in the 890s:

 Notice how they flex right through the arch area. This is different from earlier versions of padded shoes, which tended to have a rigid, non-flexible arch (no company in particular, they all did it). Of course all minimal shoes show flex in the middle. It's only the most recent training/padded stuff that's doing the same thing.

Muscles in training

I like this graph. It says a lot about why 'real' sport and sport science don't quite agree. I don't have access to the original paper (Darn McGill U access isn't good enough...). I found the image from this presentation outline: Neural mechanisms are the most important determinants of strength adaptations, which as a thesis statement I wholly agree with. I like the little off-shoot of steroids, clearly implying they work for big muscles. If big muscles are not an option though, going that way is a complete waste.

 

Original paper: Moritani T and deVries HA (1979) Neural factors versus hypertrophy in the time course of muscle strength gain. American Journal of Physical Medicine 58(3):115-130

Senna

Most sport documentaries try to tell you the hero's life story. They begin long ago, with how he or she got that way, what they were like as a kid, or how an early childhood experience changed their life. In short, the movie's goal is to explain why they, and not somebody else, became a world-class competitor. The film Senna knows better. There are no simple answers to these questions. Certain individuals seem destined for great things. It is unclear what makes them special at so young an age besides their  intuition and drive.

Shit Gladwell says

Here is an interesting choice for an introduction to a collection of endurance running stories: Malcolm Gladwell wrote the forward to a book called Why I Run, edited by Mark Sutcliffe. Gladwell reveals his run-loving self peaked at age fifteen, which is tragic but typical. This book is about people who did not give up so easily. Perhaps Sutcliffe meant Gladwell to play the part of devil's advocate. Below are some excerpts I find quite revealing:

I remember my [high school] coach asking me if I liked running, and I was utterly bewildered by the question. I had won, hadn't I?...that was always my answer.

to this day [I] regard races at lengths greater than ten kilometers to be acts of lunacy.

Hockey players don't wonder whether they like hockey. Of course they like hockey. Hockey's great virtue is that it is inherently likeable. Running is not.

that a fully grown adult can go out and run continuously and happily for 45 minutes is something that - every time I do it - never ceases to astound me. [emphasis mine]

There you have it. Gladwell has lived his life thus far with idea that running is about winning, not inherently likable (unlike hockey) and doing more than 10k of it is crazy. I worry about this guy. Is he surprised to learn there are people who run for more than the empty promise of a gold medal? Does he really believe there are no hockey players who participate solely due to peer (or parental) pressure? As a teenager did he never meet a single high school runner who said they would rather run than play other sports*? Can anyone besides Gladwell live with this level of naïveté? I suspected Malcolm has spent most of his life playing catch up with the rest of the world; he admits now, at last, that some individuals (including adults) actually enjoy running. Once again Gladwell's writings reveal to me a man young at mind, old at heart.




*I, for one, hated as much as pick-up hockey as a kid but liked running since I was 14. Hell, I liked it before I even knew I liked it. It was necessary to run in the off-season during my cross country skiing days, so at first I resisted running because it sounded like an order. But for me it sure beat playing hockey, baseball, soccer, basketball, volleyball,...
I understand that other people love these sports, and can even see why as I watch them play. To be surprised that not everyone thinks the way you do is, well, true lunacy.