Actually I’m interested in knowing how stable or not stable your weight has been since you’ve been an adult, say starting at 20 years old.

The reason I am asking is because of the concept of ‘set point theory’. This theory assumes that our adult bodyweight is genetically predetermined and that it’s ‘set’ at a certain size. The theory depends on the idea that we are weight stable for our adult life, otherwise what the heck is your set point if you’re not set and stable at it!?

Anyway, from what I can gather most people don’t stay at the same weight their whole life at all but rather they fluctuate quite a bit. I know I have and some preliminary info I have suggests the same for lots of people.

So I’d like to know what your body weight has been since you’ve been an adult. Did you gain weight, did you lose weight, if so how? Did you gain weight from emotional eating? Stress eating? Was it marriage weight gain, kids, a divorce, losing a job, getting a sedentary job, an injury, lack of exercise?

If you managed to lose weight  how did you  do it? Exercise? Diet? Both? Surgery? Drug? All of this stuff? None of this stuff?

If you don’t mind sharing I’d appreciate hearing how your weight has changed (or not) since you’ve been an adult.

You can put your story in the comment section, or if you feel comfortable emailing it instead you can email me at johnbarban (at) gmail (d0t) com

John

The only way to gain weight is to EAT BIG!

If you go to the diet book section of your local book store you’ll find dozens of books with their specific theory on how to lose weight. You’ll find explanation about blood type, parasites, ‘toxins’ (this one drives me nuts…well they all do, but especially this one), glycemic index, hormones, broken metabolism, and all kinds of genetic issues and bad food choices.

So here is an experiment you can do to prove to yourself that weight gain and weight loss is simply calories in vs calories out, and all of this other stuff is meaningless.

If I want you to gain 5 pounds over the next 10 days how would you do it?

Would you?

1) Carefully read through the blood type diet book and eat any of the three blood type diets that weren’t outlined for your type?

2) Read through the book about toxins and parasites and try to get as many parasite infections as possible and fill your body with ‘toxins’ (which by they way they never explain what the eff a toxin is)

3) Try to eat in a specific pattern that wasn’t ‘favorable’ for your fat burning hormones?

4) Try to actually ‘damage’ your metabolism so you were stuck in a mode of storing fat (I can’t even imagine what this would be or how it would be possible)

ORRRRR

5) Would you just eat as much food as possible every day until you gained the requisite 5lbs?

If you answered anything besides 5 please leave this blog and never return, because it’s clear you’ve lost your mind and long since lost your grip on reality.

John

Bodybuilding magazines and supplement marketers will have you believe you can gain a significant amount of muscle mass that will cause your bodyweight to increase simply by working out and eating some special foods/supplements.

Big, Strong, FAT!

If you re-read that sentence the key point is the difference between gaining MUSCLE vs gaining WEIGHT.

Adding muscle to your body doesn’t necessarily mean adding a significant amount of weight.

If if were true that constantly working out with increasingly heavier weights caused you to gain bodyweight there would be no such thing as weight classes in power lifting or olympic lifting.

In other words, if everyone worked out enough and gained enough weight wouldn’t everyone be in the heavyweight category?

Or is the truth that the degree of muscle mass we can carry is limited by our height and somatotype and no matter how much we workout we’ll level off at a very predictable bodyweight for our given height.

To review, here are the weight classes for olympic weight lifting and power lifting. All classes have competitors of similar training experience and age…this is good proof that there are tight limits to the size any of us can get to.

Olympic lifting weight classes for men:

56 kg (123 lb), 62 kg (137 lb), 69 kg (152 lb), 77 kg (170 lb), 85 kg (187 lb), 94 kg (207 lb), 105 kg (231 lb), and over 105 kg;

Power lifting weight classes for men:

Men: 52kg, 56kg, 60kg, 67.5kg, 75kg, 82.5kg, 90kg, 100kg, 110kg, 125kg, 125kg +

The heavier competitors are typically taller and fatter than the lighter ones.

This is also why bodyweight is a rather useless indicator of muscle size.

John