I'm Hungry!

You've all seen it. The SNL skit with David Spade and the late Chris Farley, they're dressed up like 'Gap' girls, noshing on a bit of lunch and sharing some gossip. Spade tries to take one of Farley's fries and he snaps in a wicked voice, "Lay off Me! I'm STARVING!"

Why is it even funny? I'll tell you why, it's because dieters everywhere are crammed into their Spanks and summer skirts and we are trying to act all happy about waiting for our lunch to be served and frankly, we are so damn hungry that we can't even see straight. Inevitably, it will be our skinniest friend who will have the will power not to order such a figure-destroying lunch, and yet will have the audacity to attempt a side-seat takeover.

It's funny because it's true. It's how we really feel.

I want you to know that I too, for years have exercised and tried eat right, but at the end of the day, I'M STILL STARVING!! It makes me crazy. Am I the only that feels so hungry that I could chew my own arm off if it were dipped in Almond Butter (see, I've even given up REAL peanut butter). If I had a nickel for every time I've thought to myself, "but if I exercise I will just be even more hungry than I am now!"

AND THEN I READ THIS:

Holy Hell o' Mighty! Mr. John Cloud where have you been for the last 10 years! Cloud's article made the front page of Time Magazine this month with the outlandish claim, Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin, I must admit that at first I huffed at the notion (Time's articles have been pushing it for me lately). But I have to say that this article answered some of the questions I have had for sooo long. Turns out, I might not be as crazy, or weak, or just destined for a life of elastic waistbands after all.....turns out that I REALLY AM JUST HUNGRY!

Here are some highlights: (but do yourself a favor and read the whole article HERE)

In 2007 the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association issued new guidelines stating that "to lose weight ... 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity may be necessary." That's 60 to 90 minutes on most days of the week, a level that not only is unrealistic for those of us trying to keep or find a job but also could easily produce, on the basis of Church's data, ravenous compensatory eating.

...a pound of muscle burns approximately six calories a day in a resting body, compared with the two calories that a pound of fat burns. Which means that after you work out hard enough to convert, say, 10 lb. of fat to muscle — a major achievement — you would be able to eat only an extra 40 calories per day, about the amount in a teaspoon of butter, before beginning to gain weight. Good luck with that.

Many people assume that weight is mostly a matter of willpower — that we can learn both to exercise and to avoid muffins and Gatorade. A few of us can, but evolution did not build us to do this for very long. In 2000 the journal Psychological Bulletin published a paper by psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister in which they observed that self-control is like a muscle: it weakens each day after you use it. If you force yourself to jog for an hour, your self-regulatory capacity is proportionately enfeebled. Rather than lunching on a salad, you'll be more likely to opt for pizza.

So to my crazy, get-in-shape, super-fat buster workouts, I bid you good day.

I'm going to get back to walking my kids around the block, mowing the lawn, and bringing the laundry up from the basement.

P.S. I won't miss you at all. Didn't ever like you to begin with...