unlocking the fat trap

i have talked about fat before. but until january 1st, 2012, i had little in the way of stats. below are excerpts from the New York Times' fact-filled magazine piece, The Fat Trap. in the meantime, in my quest to find a decent physician, i had to interview a number of frogs. the one i have in mind is the one who responded to the question as to why he thought so few people kept weight off since losing it. with an expression saying, 'isn't it obvious?' he made it clear: for the same reason they got fat in the first place: they're lazy, and they're not quite honest. these doctors need to be educated.

A full year after significant weight loss, these men and women remained in what could be described as a biologically altered state. Their still-plump bodies were acting as if they were starving and were working overtime to regain the pounds they lost. For instance, a gastric hormone called ghrelin, often dubbed the “hunger hormone,” was about 20 percent higher than at the start of the study.

Another hormone associated with suppressing hunger, peptide YY, was also abnormally low. Levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses hunger and increases metabolism, also remained lower than expected. A cocktail of other hormones associated with hunger and metabolism all remained significantly changed compared to pre-dieting levels. It was almost as if weight loss had put their bodies into a unique metabolic state, a sort of post-dieting syndrome that set them apart from people who hadn’t tried to lose weight in the first place.

Researchers know that obesity tends to run in families, and recent science suggests that even the desire to eat higher-calorie foods may be influenced by heredity.

That experimental binge should have translated into a weight gain of roughly 24 pounds (based on 3,500 calories to a pound). But some gained less than 10 pounds, while others gained as much as 29 pounds.

The research shows that the changes that occur after weight loss translate to a huge caloric disadvantage of about 250 to 400 calories. For instance, one woman who entered the Columbia studies at 230 pounds was eating about 3,000 calories to maintain that weight. Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty, but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600 calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who dieted to get there.

Scientists are still learning why a weight-reduced body behaves so differently from a similar-size body that has not dieted. Muscle biopsies taken before, during and after weight loss show that once a person drops weight, their muscle fibers undergo a transformation, making them more like highly efficient “slow twitch” muscle fibers. A result is that after losing weight, your muscles burn 20 to 25 percent fewer calories during everyday activity and moderate aerobic exercise than those of a person who is naturally at the same weight. That means a dieter who thinks she is burning 200 calories during a brisk half-hour walk is probably using closer to 150 to 160 calories.

How long this state lasts isn’t known, but preliminary research at Columbia suggests that for as many as six years after weight loss, the body continues to defend the old, higher weight by burning off far fewer calories than would be expected. The problem could persist indefinitely.

Tara Parker-Pope

art detective

how i love to play detective. when i first saw the vallotton painting i thought i recognized the print on the wall. finally dug it up, it's by his compatriot, vuillard. i looked too at a similar print (the name of the painter of which i will fill in when i remember it!), but then i was so excited when i remembered which one it was.

the next one, i knew what it was imme- diately, but it took me a while to find it online. it's so cool when artists highlight other artists.



willcox does it again with william nicholson's book. (okay, i changed the cover to red, but why not?)

artists also fea- ture them- selves! willcox fea- tures an image from the book on the cover.


and manuel robbe has a woman perusing another of his own prints.







but what gives me a cool chill is knowing two of my favorite artists, at different times, sat in the exact same spot, and were each moved to paint it.














and this last is just a hoot: which came first, the poster mocking the women or the women mocking the poster?

oh silly me -- the poster is in the photo!

the principles of design

what you probably don't know is that a great many houses in my neighborhood, built as a working-class neighborhood in the early 20s, have a 'batchelder fireplace.' as i said, these were not built for rich folk, and they don't look like they were, but the variety and beauty of the decorative tiles on mantles around here make as least the hearths priceless.

this was all i knew or ever even thought of batchelder, ernest batchelder. until yesterday. i was browsing around as i am wont to do and i came across a design instruction book he wrote, where i found this page.

since he had been kind enough to give us a hint, i was quickly able to find the image to which he referred .

it didn't look anything like the style in his tiles, but it certainly did look like the nicholson (look in the background).

a little more poking around under the name of batchelder, coming across additional samples of his tiles, when i made a connection that made my jaw drop and a giggle come up my throat. as i further perused his book i came across this illustration which, since i had just been dealing with this stuff a couple of days earlier, looked very familiar.

i was amazed at the coin- cidence. at the same time, there was one other of the shunboku images that looked familiar.

i went poking through my back files and found the dow image i was looking for.

(i turned the japanese image sideways and flopped to make it even more obvious, but in any case i think it's clear.)

it turns out, i learn, that batchelder went to study art in boston when he was a young man. there he studied with denman waldo ross, who was a trustee at the MFA in boston dealing with the new and rapidly growing japanese art collection. at his side, though rather his competitor, but also a 'keeper of the japanese art' there at that time was arthur wesley dow. and there in their hands was the treasure from the 1730s: shunboku's book.

there are many sites which feature original or reproduction batchelder tiles; most of them can be found through the links page at the batchelder site. what began as a sort of 'sears catalogue' of fireplace tiles has, as interest in the design from this era grows, become a treasured commodity.

song of ducks

STUDY IN ORANGE AND WHITE

I knew that James Whistler was part of the Paris scene,
but I was still surprised when I found the painting
of his mother
at the Musée d'Orsay
among all the colored dots and mobile brushstrokes
of the French Impressionists.
•
And I was surprised to notice
after a few minutes of benign staring,
how that woman, stark in profile
and fixed forever in her chair,
began to resemble
my own ancient mother
who was now fixed forever in the stars, the air, the earth.
•
You can understand why he titled
the painting
"Arrangement in Gray and Black"
instead of what everyone naturally calls it,
but afterward, as I walked along the river bank,
I imagined how it might have broken
the woman's heart to be demoted from mother
to a mere composition, a study in colorlessness.
•
As the summer couples leaned
into each other
along the quay and the wide,
low-slung boats
full of spectators slid
up and down the Seine
between the carved stone bridges
and their watery reflections,
I thought: how ridiculous, how off-base.
•
It would be like Botticelli calling "The Birth of Venus"
"Composition in Blue, Ochre, Green, and Pink,"
or the other way around
like Rothko titling one of his sandwiches of color
"Fishing Boats Leaving Falmouth Harbor at Dawn."
•
Or, as I scanned the menu at the cafe
where I now had come to rest,
it would be like painting something laughable,
like a chef turning on a spit
over a blazing fire in front of
an audience of ducks
and calling it
"Study in Orange and White."
•
But by that time, a waiter had appeared
with my glass of Pernod and a clear
pitcher of water,
and I sat there thinking of nothing
but the women and men passing by—
mothers and sons walking their small fragile dogs—
and about myself,
a kind of composition in blue and khaki,
and, now that I had poured
some water into the glass, milky-green.

Billy Collins

Poetry (January 1999)

wild swans

THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE

THE trees are in their
autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight
the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water
among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The nineteenth autumn
has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling
in great broken rings

Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon
those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I,
hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams
or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander
where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift
on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes
will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

William Butler Yeats

PASTORAL

If it were only still!—
With far away the shrill
Crying of a cock;
Or the shaken bell
From a cow's throat
Moving through the bushes;
Or the soft shock
Of wizened apples falling
From an old tree
In a forgotten orchard
Upon the hilly rock!

Oh, grey hill,
Where the grazing herd
Licks the purple blossom,
Crops the spiky weed!
Oh, stony pasture,
Where the tall mullein
Stands up so sturdy
On its little seed!

Edna St. Vincent Millay


PIED BEAUTY

Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

(it is interesting to me how easily children's books illustrators adopted so much from what they saw in the japanese prints. and them passed it on, generation to generation, to their students.)