Thursday 9 June 2011

“The Experiment” Part 1

For those of you that don’t know me that well, I have spent the last 7+ years in post-secondary education trying to learn new and interesting things about the human body and in the process getting a few letters after my name. I’m a published scientific author and am currently completing my MSc. in exercise physiology, although my research is primarily focused on the physiology of obesity and weight loss (which encompasses all those buzz words like ‘metabolism’, ‘hormones’ and ‘appetite regulation’). I’m also a competitive athlete in my spare time and have drawn upon my knowledge and experience to help improve my own performance. The whole point of this blog is to bring some of the latest research and science on weight loss into the mainstream. I figured that it’s better to try and make a positive difference rather than sitting on my cynical ass and complaining about all of the garbage that’s being put out with the sole intent of putting large holes in the wallets of people just trying to make a difference in their lives on their quest to battle their own biology. I believe that it’s the unwritten duty of my colleagues and I to be able to translate and disseminate our research to the general public.


Yep, science still rules.


Since I love science, specifically the physiology of weight loss, I figured that it was appropriate to begin this epic journey through blogging by performing an exercise related experiment on myself. For those of you that have had the displeasure of knowing me for an extended period of time, you know that I myself have gone through some drastic physical changes. Before I get into the summary of my magical journey through body composition fluctuations, I want to briefly go over some important concepts in weight loss science.

1)  When someone gains fat, they will typically see both an increase in size of the fat cells as well as the number of fat cells. If you want to play the part of the pretentious intellectual jerk, slap on a pair of leather elbow patches and tell your overweight friends that their chronic positive energy balance has led to both the hypertrophy and hyperplasia of adipocytes. That’s a fancy way of saying that too many wings, nachos and beer has mysteriously led to the disappearance of one’s feet. Why is this concept important? The short answer is that even after weight loss, these fat cells may remain in the body, sitting there like hungry birds in the nest waiting for their mother to come back and feed them. Short of  good old liposuction, there’s really no easy way of getting rid of them. Luckily, we're not completely doomed as there are some biological mechanisms that may reduce the number during caloric restriction/negative energy balance (eat less and move more) (3)but the general advice is to not gain weight in the first place. This information may have been a lot more useful to me years ago, although perhaps like many other pieces of knowledge we accrue in our lifetime, it may have just as easily been ignored. 

The mysterious 'missing foot syndrome'.


2) Previous research (1, 2) as well as work from our own laboratory has indicated that the amount of energy our body burns may be depressed after gaining weight and then losing it again. As an example, if you took two identical twins (an ideal scenario in clinical research) forced one to gain weight and then lose it all (the experimental condition) while the other twin remained weight stable (the control), then the one that gained and lost weight would theoretically burn less energy in a day, assuming they performed the exact same tasks. This may be one of the reasons why so many people go through the ‘yo-yo diet’ phenomena and gain back weight after putting so much time and effort into losing it. I’ll go through it in more detail on another blog, but it seems that losing weight is a battle against our own biology.

So that being said, you’ll see that these two factors may play a role in my own personal physical history.

 In brief (sort of), here’s a third-person summary with some visual aids to keep you interested.

A young skinny immigrant boy arrives in Canada and begins to face the wrath of both his culture and the accompanying parenting which measure affluence through food intake. Years of a pallet riddled with guilt in conjunction with a decent medical system and some genetic assistance result in both large vertical and horizontal growth. The fondest memory in third grade was stepping on the scale and reading 99.5lbs, quickly running downstairs and gorging on some rice, running back upstairs and feeling a sense of accomplishment after reading three digits for the first time. This was also his first crude lesson in how thermodynamics applies to obesity research.

Social stigma and a fear of getting bullied in high school force the pre-teen to start running laps around his neighbourhood. He loses a substantial amount of weight by eating what amounts to a few apples a day and excessive exercise. He realizes that the appearance of his spine through a shirt whenever bends over and a really sad mother isn’t worth the hassle of looking like a Hollywood boy toy (6’2”, 130lbs).

 His rapid interest in football and some highly positive influences in the form of high school teachers resulted in him combining his love of food and lifting heavy weights. New surging pubescent levels of testosterone assisted in substantial muscle growth in addition to some newly accrued fat deposits. (~200lbs).

A football culture which encourages that ‘bigger is better’ results in large but gradual gains in fat and muscle. At 240lbs, he’s now a good size for a lineman in high school. The new possibility of playing college football results in a very brief but exaggerated weight gain, 6 month and 35lbs later. The composition of this weight was sadly not all muscle.

"Training for football" at the buffet with my brother and father as coaches.


       After a few years of college football and some other strength related sports on the side that involve wearing a plaid skirt, he’s reached a peak weight of 320lbs! Again, positive influences inform him that being able to block a large opponent may not necessarily be more important than preventing diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Additionally, he witnessed the paradox of a bunch of men his size referring to themselves as athletes and being unable to walk up a flight of stairs without groaning, making loud whistling noises through their nose or taking a breath after 5 steps and having to ice their knees afterwards.
For times when you can't afford to take chances, you can count on Immodium.
"Does anyone feel that draft?"

      ~200 concussions later and a month of constant vertigo, he decides that a future in football may not be in the cards for him. He joins two of his very close friends (who happen to be the ‘voices of reason’) in competing in weightlifting and actually focusing on school. In 8 months time, lifting heavy things for almost 20 hours a week and eating a little better results in a new weight of 255lbs and the provincial weightlifting title in a thin (ha!) pool of superheavyweights.
Concussions can lead to severe symptoms, like frequent and uncontrollable impractical nose picking.


Due to external factors and the lack of a training facility, he is forced to stop weightlifting. Without any sport in mind, he just ends up biking a lot to and from work (50km/week), working out and eating a low amount of calories relative to his weight. He weighs in at 215lbs at his lowest weight. In 1.5 years, he’s lost over 100lbs. He walks around campus and gets frustrated when his own friends the year before don’t recognize him or say hello. They claim it was because he had lost weight, be he secretly thinks that they’re just assholes looking for a way out of the friendship.

Not only did I lose weight, but I lost clothes as well.  I had to battle the evil Skeletor during my quest to find my pants. 
       He continues lifting weights, briefly competes in shot put and concentrates on hammer throw since he’s realized that individual sports are a lot more appealing to him than team sports. Maintaining a steady bodyweight of 220-225lbs, he decides that he wants to try and get much stronger and throw farther for his sport (even though his coach keeps insisting that strength is one of his only strengths in the sport and he needs to work on that whole ‘technical thing’... pffft). He hits a peak weight of 260lbs and is strong. The hammer travels farther.

Warning: Getting strong and beefy may result in doing  silly things like letting your significant other straighten your hair before work.

Graduate studies began to seep into his life along with his financial obligations. Training hits the backburner. The good news: He’s still 260ish lbs and strong. The bad news: The weight has been displaced on his body and the hammer isn’t going very far anymore

So, that being said, with my MSc. on the finishing block and my future PhD not yet commenced because, well, it’s not the future yet, I figured that it was an opportune time to try something a little different from all of the previous trials and tribulations. I have a lot of tools at my disposal including my knowledge/experience as a researcher/athlete/personal trainer as well as the new gym I work at called PhysXtreme which specializes in athletic training and has all the modern bells and whistles to make you a better athlete and manage your anger accordingly (sledge hammers, tires, chains, ropes, kettelbells and techno music... we’re still working on the last one).
Puking: Not a good weight loss strategy, but hilarious when your friends do it.




Stay tuned for PART 2 of this blog where I start outlining my nutty plan (nutrition, training) and hit you with a little bit of science here or there as well as some really bad jokes.









REFERENCES
 (Yup, you just learned something!)


1.            Astrup A, Gotzsche PC, van de Werken K, Ranneries C, Toubro S, Raben A, and Buemann B. Meta-analysis of resting metabolic rate in formerly obese subjects. Am J Clin Nutr 69: 1117-1122, 1999.
2.            Rosenbaum M, Hirsch J, Gallagher DA, and Leibel RL. Long-term persistence of adaptive thermogenesis in subjects who have maintained a reduced body weight. Am J Clin Nutr 88: 906-912, 2008.
3.            Sjostrom L and William-Olsson T. Prospective studies on adipose tissue development in man. Int J Obes 5: 597-604, 1981.