From Chunk to Hunk

From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man
© 2003 Fred Anderson
242 pages

Fred Anderson had an epiphany while munching on snack cakes and watching TV; as he witnessed the amputation of a diabetic man's leg, he realized: this is my future.  Horrified at the thought of losing mobility, and frustrated by not being able to play with his daughter, Fred began watching what he ate and exercising daily. Two years later, he was down over a hundred and fifty pounds. From Chunk to Hunk is his record of that time, a journal doubling as a fitness coach to readers. Its focus is mental;  Anderson makes no dietary claims beyond Pollanesque observations that if a foodstuff needs a tv commercial, it's probably no good for you; instead, he preaches throughout on attitude adjustments, on how to form new habits, how to change attitudes towards food and exercise, and so on. In this two-year account, Anderson not only sheds a man's weight worth of fat, his health-focused lifestyle frees him from diabetic treatment. He doesn't forth a dietary or exercise regimen, maintaining that people are sensible enough to recognize "real" -- healthy -- food. The challenge is consistency, both in eating well and exercising. Anderson begins by treading water,  but shifts to daily intensive walks and adds in weight lifting, eventually alternating running days with weight-lifting and cycling days. Persistence is his motto: it doesn't matter if he makes the odd mistake, he exercises every single day, aside from a once-weekly rest day, and eats well the overwhelming majority of the time.  He isn't a puritan about coveting or abhorring one element or another;  he instead makes his ally Time, by simply making the same good choices every day.  Aristotle observed that our character is the sum of our actions; excellence is achieved by habit.   Anderson's candor, and the absence of a program being sold, make this a refreshing weight-loss account, one that doesn't pretend to nutritional wisdom. It's a bit on the preachy side -- despite not being religious, Anderson often quotes from the Bible and uses the same communicative tropes as some folksy preachers --  but this is forgivable, as is the sometimes too personal details he includes sporadically. I read this primarily to see how his journey paralleled my own -- both of us, in the twilight of our twenties, had a wake-up call and lost over a hundred pounds, with no magic except daily, vigorous exercise and moderate eating of natural foods.   I haven't embraced weight-lifting or running as enthusiastically as he have, but I very well may..

Paleofantasy

Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Says about Sex, Diet, and How We Live
© 2013 Marlene Zuk
328 pages

Despite its name, Paleofantasy is not a deliberate debunking of arguments for a 'paleo diet' and a paleo lifestyle.  Although Zuk does take aim at paleo proponents time and again, her argument approaches the same ideas from a different tack. Rather than assume that people ought to live the lifestyle our bodies evolved to expect, and then look for the science that informs that lifestyle, Zuk first asks:  what does biology tell us about the way our ancestors once lived, and can that information be used to help us today?  Subsequent chapters are a brief survey of the evolutionary heritage of our diet, our sex and childrearing practices, modes of exercise, and health.  The essential point of Paleofantasy is that evolution is an ongoing process: humanity is not a finished product, nor a monolithic species. What is true for some populations doesn't necessarily hold for others.  Thus, studying the lifestyle of our ancestors isn't particularly helpful, because they had different lifestyles depending on their local climate, and each made micro-adaptions in its own way.  Two populations of mountain-living people ,in Tibet and the Andres, both adapted to living in such thin air -- but in two different evolutionary ways. Her message to those interested in paleo living is this: don't get carried away.  By all means, don't overeat and get in a lot of exercise -- but do it because it makes sense now, not because the ancestors starved and were active.

Although the book will probably succeed in cooling the jets of the moderately interested, for more ardent practitioners, she will doubtless fall short, and not just because of defensiveness on readers' part. A staple of paleo nutrition is that grains are of the agricultural devil. Zuk's is response is to point out that look, we've evolved a gene that lets us process starch.  We've adapted! Evolution in action.  She does not, however, address the concern of anti-grain readers that while we can eat grain, we shouldn't because of its insulin-spiking effects and the subsequent relationship with diabetes and obesity.  To borrow an example from her book, also used in Sean Carroll's The Making of the Fittest: while there are snakes who can survive eating poisonous toads,  that doesn't mean they should turn poisonous toads into the bedrock of their snake food-pyramid. Likewise, she doesn't address the rationale that palo-fitness people use in pushing for short, intense workouts, namely that a high level of stress for a short time is better at building bone and muscle than a marginal level of stress done for long intervals.  She simply says "Hey, there are people who have adapted to running really long times."

Paleofantasy doesn't necessarily impress, but it does offer a moderating voice to those who can get carried away by the prospect of living like our ancestors to the point of going to bed with a Sounds of the Nighttime Forest CD playing, because that's what our brains expect.

Related:
Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (which includes a section on high-stress short-term exercise)
Wheat Belly, William Davis;  Good Calories Bad Calories, Gary Taubes (on the problems of the modern diet)
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made us Human, Richard Wrangham
Sex on Six Legs, Marlene Zuk.

Beginning Runner's Handbook

The Beginning Runner's Handbook: The Proven 13-Week Walk-Run Program
© 1999 Ian MacNeill
168 pages

As mentioned prior, I committed myself to an active lifestyle back in late August or early September, and began  a daily habit of exercise, choosing to go for brisk walks in the morning and evening.  I've been increasing the length and intensity of my 'walk-outs' steadily until this week, so my legs have been growing in strength and I'm so filled with energy that I wish to RUN -- but I can't. I've had to cut back a bit on my mileage because of runner's knee: my joints simply aren't ready for the intensity of running. Even so, I keep thinking about it and as a way of preparing myself and running vicariously, I decideded to check out The Beginning Runner's Handbook, a thorough guide that includes a transition plan for walkers to condition themselves into becoming runners.

The Handbook reminded me in part of the Complete Guide to Walking in that it stressed the need for the exercise, the ease of taking up running, and devoted sections to gear, stretches, and so on. However,  its chapter on nutrition is more thorough than the Guide to Walking, and it contains information on common running injuries, their treatment, and their prevention. MacNeill also encourages cross-training, along with strength training, but the Runners' Handbook isn't written as much toward a goal of "total body fitness" as the Guide to the Walking. MacNeill's strength-training exercises mostly target those muscles used in running, and cross-training is introduced as a way to keep active during running rest periods or injuries.  Because running is a more intensive activity than walking,  his schedule reccommends running three times a week and using the other days to rest and cross-training.

Altogether, a strong introduction to the subject. For those interested, I would reccommend both the Complete Guide to Walking and this Handbook: the walking guide is more thorough for fitness overall, but the running handbook is more detailed in nutrition needs and medical care.  Unfortunately, I can't evaluate the program just yet, but it has received high praise on Amazon.

This Week at the Library (25 October)

Oh, dear, oh dear. The number of books I need to review but haven't gotten round to doing yet keeps increasing. Reviews outstanding: The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan; At Home in Mitford, Jan Karon; The Beginning Runners' Handbook by Ian MacNeill, and Active Living Every Day are all owed reviews.  That last one doesn't lend itself well to a full review, though, so I'll just say here that it was written for people who are completely inactive and who need encouragement in just getting started.  While walking is the easiest activity to begin,  it isn't the only one mentioned. The authors encourage complete couch potatoes to start stealing two minute walks whenever they can, work up to ten, and continue working up to an average of thirty minutes a day. That's easier than you might think, because exercise can be enjoyable. When I'm 40+ minutes into my walking in the morning, I feel like I could conquer the world.

  At Home in Mitford is also hard to review, because it doesn't have...a plot, as such. Not that it's harmed by this: it just follows the life of some people in a charming little town for a year and a half. It's...utterly beguiling -- cozy, "home"y.   I also finished reading a book last night I've not yet reviewed, called The Rapture Exposed, and it proved to be most interesting and useful.  More later!

Today at the library I picked up..

• God has a Dream:A Vision of Hope for Our Time, Desmond Tutu.  Last night I was invited to join a book club, and the November read is this. So I'll read it this week, take some notes, and hopefully remember having read it a month from now. 
• Clash of Wings: World War II in the Sky, Walter J. Boyne.  I have mentioned Boyne on this blog before, having used his The Influence of Air Power Upon History in many term papers. I owe a lot of my academic success to the man, frankly, and when I saw a Boyne book sitting in the library I had to check it out.
• Sharpe's Company, Bernard Cornwell. 
• The Astral, Kate Christensen. On display, this novel's cover caught my attention. I'm not committed to it, but some of the characters sounded interesting. A poet is kicked out of his apartment when his wife realizes some of his older poetry reveals he had an affair in his youth, and he loses everything and isn't quite comfortable with his lesbian daughter and cult-following son. My guess is he learns to stop taking things seriously and learns to love his oddball kids for who they are.

I have that history of math/science book I picked up last week still waiting my attention, and I'm struggling (!) to get into The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The opening story in this volume isn't nearly as enticing as the others.

In addition, I finished The Age of Reason Begins last night, so...that is joining the stack of books I've yet to review. I'm going to take a week-long break from the Story of Civilization series because frankly, I'm a little tired of reading about European wars. Two centuries of Catholics and Protestants frothing at the mouth, and burning each other's homes has taken its toll on me...and that's not even counting the 30 Years' War. Oy.  But next week I'll probably start The Age of Louis XIV.

Complete Guide to Walking

Walking Magazine's Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight Loss, and Fitness
© 2001 Mark Fenton
261 pages

In late August or early September, I woke up early one morning, donned my wide-brimmed straw hat, and set off for an early-morning walk around my neighborhood. I found the jaunt an excellent way to wake up in the morning, and since I needed to get active, I made the morning walk a routine of mine. Now, over a month later, I'm walking well over five miles a day and am enjoying much stronger legs and an abundance of energy. Since I anticipate making this a lifelong activity, I decided to see if there was any literature on the subject. Walking Magazine's Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight Loss, and  Fitness is as complete and enjoyable an introduction to the subject as I can imagine, and a definite recommendation to those interested in becoming more active or in losing weight.

Author Mark Fenton begins by explaining the benefits of walking as an exercise: it's easy to do, it can be done anywhere, and it requires essentially nothing in the way of special equipment, only a pair of sensible shoes and the will to do it. Walking is a fundamentally natural exercise, so it's easy to start and maintain. Fenton takes the reader through a year in the life of a walker, beginning with weekly program of ten minutes per day and slowly ramping up to a desired average of thirty minutes per day.  A few weeks in, Fenton dedicates a chapter to walking for weight-loss, and explains the basics of metabolism. One of the best points he makes in the book is that diet alone is not a sustainable way to lose weight: as your weight decreases, so do the amount of calories that you need. To keep losing, the dieter must cut out more and more calories from their diet, which is unsustainable given the basic needs of the body -- and the sheer distastefulness of not being able to eat anything. Those who eat moderately and exercise can continue to lose weight  or maintain a healthy weight throughout their life simply by increasing the intensity or length of their workouts. I can attest to this, because I have been consistently losing weight every week in the past month+ since I started walking, without drastic changes to my diet. (Although, I lost a lot less that week I enjoyed a piece of my friend's fresh out-of-the-oven cheesecake...) Although weight loss will be a side effect of a healthy walking habit, Fenton's goal with this book is broader than that. He aims toward total body fitness, and so also advices strength-training exercises. In the early months, these are introduced to strengthen one's "core" to complement the walking, while exercises in the latter half of the book are intended to work muscles that aren't active through walking alone.  A few months into the habit, the author suggests it may be time for new shoes -- and dedicates a chapter towards useful walking gear, like how to dress for inclement weather. He also advocates cross-training, and ends with a chapter on "racewalking".

I give the book high praise for its organization and presentation: Fenton is a passionate, thorough, and useful guide. Visually, it's quite appealing, though I found the fact that all of the pictures featured fit twenty-something females in flattering attire rather amusing. I suppose that's proof to this being the product of a magazine, as is perhaps some mild product-placement in the gear section.  I'll be referring to this book in later months when I do more strength training.