Stomach fat

Karen, I find your report very hard to understand. Assuming you are more or less an average sized woman--somewhere between 5'1" and 5'10"--and you weight from 115-152 lb., give or take, your basal metabolic rate has to be somewhere in the ball park of 1200 + kcals per day. In other words, you need this much just to stay alive, even if you spend 24 hours a day lying around in bed. Now add in the amount of calories burned from exercise, walking around, doing your job, helping your kids survive, etc., and I wouldn't be surprised to find you were burning close to 2500-3000 kcals a day, especially on the 4 hours of exercise days. Maybe even more. Thus, your calories in (1000, or so you say!) are not nearly enough to balance the calories out (2500-3000). Granted, the old chestnut about 3200 caloric deficti = 1 lb. of weight doesn't always apply. But to experience ZERO weight loss during two weeks of this just doesn't make any sense at all. Do you drink coffee? Do you put milk or sugar in the coffee? Is it possible you were getting hidden calories in some other way? How many GUs, for instance, were you taking (those are 100 kcals each). The only thing I can conclude is that you either overstated your exercise dramatically, understated your food intake dramatically, or are a medical oddity that defies all known laws of physics. A famous weight researcher conducted studies on restricted calories and increasing exercise on identical twins. Interestingly, he conducted these studies in the Canadian wilds where there were no vending machines or other sources of food where the volunteers could consciously or unconsciously boost their intake of food. BTW, what he found is that decreasing food and increasing exercise both helped to lose weight--but not in a predictable way. Some people are diet responders, other exercise responders, and some respond well to neither. It seems to be genetic in some regards, because if your twin was one way, you were the same way. High congruence within twin pairs, low congruence between pairs. Not sure about the cortisol business. The sad fact is that weight control is like a vaudevillian set of drawers. You close one, and another pops open to clout you on the shins. We evolved to contend with starvation; we are not well adapted to contend with all you can eat modernity.

Karen, I find your report very hard to understand. Assuming you are more or less an average sized woman--somewhere between 5'1" and 5'10"--and you weight from 115-152 lb., give or take, your basal metabolic rate has to be somewhere in the ball park of 1200 + kcals per day. In other words, you need this much just to stay alive, even if you spend 24 hours a day lying around in bed. Now add in the amount of calories burned from exercise, walking around, doing your job, helping your kids survive, etc., and I wouldn't be surprised to find you were burning close to 2500-3000 kcals a day, especially on the 4 hours of exercise days. Maybe even more. Thus, your calories in (1000, or so you say!) are not nearly enough to balance the calories out (2500-3000). Granted, the old chestnut about 3200 caloric deficti = 1 lb. of weight doesn't always apply. But to experience ZERO weight loss during two weeks of this just doesn't make any sense at all. Do you drink coffee? Do you put milk or sugar in the coffee? Is it possible you were getting hidden calories in some other way? How many GUs, for instance, were you taking (those are 100 kcals each). The only thing I can conclude is that you either overstated your exercise dramatically, understated your food intake dramatically, or are a medical oddity that defies all known laws of physics. A famous weight researcher conducted studies on restricted calories and increasing exercise on identical twins. Interestingly, he conducted these studies in the Canadian wilds where there were no vending machines or other sources of food where the volunteers could consciously or unconsciously boost their intake of food. BTW, what he found is that decreasing food and increasing exercise both helped to lose weight--but not in a predictable way. Some people are diet responders, other exercise responders, and some respond well to neither. It seems to be genetic in some regards, because if your twin was one way, you were the same way. High congruence within twin pairs, low congruence between pairs. Not sure about the cortisol business. The sad fact is that weight control is like a vaudevillian set of drawers. You close one, and another pops open to clout you on the shins. We evolved to contend with starvation; we are not well adapted to contend with all you can eat modernity.