An unusual way to lose weight

[gntlmn]

Several years ago, I happened to meet up with a friend at the library whom I hadn't seen for a few months. He's a big guy. My guess is he weighed about 300 lbs (approx 135 kg) the last time I saw him. He had lost a lot of weight,

"Hey, you look like you really lost a lot of weight."

"Yeah, I've been on the north slope" (an area in Alaska north of the Arctic Circle)

"But don't they serve prime rib, king crab, everything all you can eat? Wasn't it hard to diet around all that gourmet cooking?"

"I ate it all, as much as I wanted all the time."

"But how did you lose all that weight."

"This might sound funny, but it was from breathing."

"What?"

"You heard me, breathing. The air is so cold up there that even with all of your arctic gear on, you lose a lot of heat out of your lungs from breathing. I wasn't even moving very much, but I was outside for 12 hours a day. The weight loss is because even with all that tremendous amount of extra food up there that I was eating, I couldn't consume enough to keep up with the heat loss, not that I wanted to. I'm glad to have lost weight. I lost 70 lbs (approx 32 kg) in 3 months."

That got me thinking. Hey, that sounds like an interesting way to lose weight. I remember reading a story in the newspaper while I was in Fairbanks, Alaska a number of years ago about a guy that walked the Iditarod trail after the world famous Iditarod Trail sled dog race had already gotten underway. The trail had been freshly plowed for the race, and he just walked the entire distance of the trail, 1149 miles (approx 1850 km). I remember reading accounts of the roadside tavern owners having served him meals when he stopped along the journey. He would eat like 4 or 5 chickens at one sitting. At the end of his walk when he reached Nome, Alaska, he had lost 40 lbs (approx 18 kg). It didn't really dawn on my at the time that the most of his caloric intake was going out in heat loss through his lungs. When I heard from my friend at the library, I made the connection.

I have been cross country skiing for the last couple of days at about -18 C to -12 C. This is not nearly as cold as the weather on the slope (about -51 to -32 in the winter), but it sure makes a difference if you stay in it for several hours. I have been eating a lot, and I know I have already lost weight. I can see it on my face already.

I plan to drop a lot of weight this winter with this method by doing a lot of skiing and staying out in the cold for hours even if I don't ski hard the whole time to get down to my true riding weight by spring.

Anybody else have stories about cold weather weight loss?

 

[photovirginia]

It sounds like you're freezing your ass off!

 

[oberlaenderm]

This method doesn't sound too effective for Floridians like me. Anyone got thought on whether you can lose weight by doing the opposite -- just breathing in the hot weather? Just curious.

Better you than me on freezing your extremeties, however.

 

[yamaha_mike]

Originally posted by gntlmn
...
"This might sound funny, but it was from breathing."
...
Anybody else have stories about cold weather weight loss?

It sounds contrary to mammalian adaption, although I couldn't argue with big exercise adventures even in cold weather.

I tend to get at my best during the summer, although this is probably psychologically driven since I have a big desire to be out more.

Speaking of motivation, whatever works to keep your body and mind active, go for it! Good luck this winter.

 

[octagon]

Its all true, people loose weight in cold conditions, particularly dramatic amongst meembers of antarctic survey teams, who gorge on several meals daily and waste away like supermodels. intuitively, as warm blooded animals, we need to maintain our core temperature at a happy 37.4 degrees. if its colder than this outside our corpus, we shivver (itself energy expending) and divert blood flow away from the extremities. to a certain extent, although not 100% efficient, this enables us to stay fairly warm, and to conserve most of our energy. at critically low temperatures, however, the nomally efficient energy transfer processes become non-viable, and uncouple. thus the muscle tension in blood vessels in the skin fails, a process called cold vasodilation, and we loose heat much more rapidly. heat is, of course, tranfer of energy, and a product of inefficiency. Babies and bumble-bees have specialised energy efficient fatty tissue which deliberately uncouples energy transfer, resulting in heat being generated, at the expense of the energy substrate, which is effectively food. for further demonstrations i suggest placing a lighted flashlight in the freezer and seeing how long the batteries last compared to batteries in normal conditions.

 

[anneslam]

I heard that the only way that you would experience buring more calories in cold weather is if you are indeed shivering all the time, which means you are cold, and probably on the way to hyperthermia. I am not sure if this can be done by just breathing. Anyone have more scientific input to this?
I would think that this guy had a lot of excess lbs to lose and that by being outdoors for hours everyday he was limiting his caloric intake by not snacking or eating between meals, and
perhaps eating healthier, less caloric meals with all the seafood. I think we need to look at all variables because I highly cast my doubts on losing weight due to cold weather.

 

[JohnO]

Shivering is only the extreme end of the spectrum. Long before your body hits the panic button and starts spasms, it will have elevated metabolism levels in a less noticable fashion to maintain body temperature.

 

[gntlmn]

Originally posted by JohnO
Shivering is only the extreme end of the spectrum. Long before your body hits the panic button and starts spasms, it will have elevated metabolism levels in a less noticable fashion to maintain body temperature.

Originally posted by JohnO
Shivering is only the extreme end of the spectrum. Long before your body hits the panic button and starts spasms, it will have elevated metabolism levels in a less noticable fashion to maintain body temperature.

Yes. I know this to be true. When you get adjusted to cold, your body somehow generates more heat without shivering. Perhaps more thyroid hormone is generated. Maybe there are other hormones involved. If you're eating way more without shivering and you don't feel cold, clearly the body is metabolizing energy at a higher rate. It's easier to imagine this non shivering if you consider that you have extremely warm clothing on head to toe and none of the skin is exposed to the cold, not even the face. You can have a neoprene mask on your face. The energy exchange is mostly through the lungs. You breathe in air at -40 C to -55 C on the north slope, and you expel it at perhaps not quite body temperature, but a lot warmer than you breathed it in. This is where the heat loss goes. It goes to warm up the air you breathe in and fill it with steam. I don't think the lungs shiver. I'm not sure how I might identify this, but I have been at - 55 degrees for hours on end and do not seem to experience any shivering in the lungs.

 

[mfallon]

Originally posted by gntlmn
Several years ago, I happened to meet up with a friend at the library whom I hadn't seen for a few months. He's a big guy. My guess is he weighed about 300 lbs (approx 135 kg) the last time I saw him. He had lost a lot of weight,

"Hey, you look like you really lost a lot of weight."

"Yeah, I've been on the north slope" (an area in Alaska north of the Arctic Circle)

"But don't they serve prime rib, king crab, everything all you can eat? Wasn't it hard to diet around all that gourmet cooking?"

"I ate it all, as much as I wanted all the time."

"But how did you lose all that weight."

"This might sound funny, but it was from breathing."

"What?"

"You heard me, breathing. The air is so cold up there that even with all of your arctic gear on, you lose a lot of heat out of your lungs from breathing. I wasn't even moving very much, but I was outside for 12 hours a day. The weight loss is because even with all that tremendous amount of extra food up there that I was eating, I couldn't consume enough to keep up with the heat loss, not that I wanted to. I'm glad to have lost weight. I lost 70 lbs (approx 32 kg) in 3 months."

That got me thinking. Hey, that sounds like an interesting way to lose weight. I remember reading a story in the newspaper while I was in Fairbanks, Alaska a number of years ago about a guy that walked the Iditarod trail after the world famous Iditarod Trail sled dog race had already gotten underway. The trail had been freshly plowed for the race, and he just walked the entire distance of the trail, 1149 miles (approx 1850 km). I remember reading accounts of the roadside tavern owners having served him meals when he stopped along the journey. He would eat like 4 or 5 chickens at one sitting. At the end of his walk when he reached Nome, Alaska, he had lost 40 lbs (approx 18 kg). It didn't really dawn on my at the time that the most of his caloric intake was going out in heat loss through his lungs. When I heard from my friend at the library, I made the connection.

I have been cross country skiing for the last couple of days at about -18 C to -12 C. This is not nearly as cold as the weather on the slope (about -51 to -32 in the winter), but it sure makes a difference if you stay in it for several hours. I have been eating a lot, and I know I have already lost weight. I can see it on my face already.

I plan to drop a lot of weight this winter with this method by doing a lot of skiing and staying out in the cold for hours even if I don't ski hard the whole time to get down to my true riding weight by spring.

Anybody else have stories about cold weather weight loss?

That's interesting but I suspect there might be more to it. I've lived in Paris, Alaska, New York, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. I can sure tell you that there was a significantly larger number of overweight people in the North than there is in the South. Maybe it's because they don't get out in the winter at all but there is definitely a difference. I've been in Texas the last 20 years and there are a whole lot more fit people here.

Whatever happened to just plain eating right and exercising?

Matt

 

[vonteity]

Originally posted by oberlaenderm
This method doesn't sound too effective for Floridians like me. Anyone got thought on whether you can lose weight by doing the opposite -- just breathing in the hot weather? Just curious.

Better you than me on freezing your extremeties, however.

Have any buddies that own a local restaurant? Go stand in their walk-in freezers for a few hours each day.

 

[gntlmn]

Originally posted by vonteity
Have any buddies that own a local restaurant? Go stand in their walk-in freezers for a few hours each day.

I have a friend who is a meat cutter and spends a lot of time in the freezer. He is lean, but then again, meat cutting probably requires quite a bit of exertion too.

 

[Cheryl]

High fat and high protein meals can make you lose weight. I wonder how many carbs he was eating? I've lost weight eating high fat/protein - low carbs. It's not good for the kidneys though.

 

[gntlmn]

Originally posted by Cheryl
High fat and high protein meals can make you lose weight. I wonder how many carbs he was eating? I've lost weight eating high fat/protein - low carbs. It's not good for the kidneys though.

I have had luck avoiding starches. I don't try to avoid the non starchy high carb foods. This way, you still get a lot of fruits and vegetables. My bmi is now below 25, but I am trying now to get to 22.

 

[gntlmn]

Originally posted by mfallon
That's interesting but I suspect there might be more to it. I've lived in Paris, Alaska, New York, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. I can sure tell you that there was a significantly larger number of overweight people in the North than there is in the South. Maybe it's because they don't get out in the winter at all but there is definitely a difference. I've been in Texas the last 20 years and there are a whole lot more fit people here.

Whatever happened to just plain eating right and exercising?

Matt

You're right about the higher weights. Alaska people are heavier than the rest of the country. I think it's because most people here don't get outside much in the winter. They would rather stay inside where it's warm: TV, bar, etc.

 

[octagon]

well it kind of stands to reason that people want to be fat when its cold. it works well for whales, acting as an insulator, and therefore helping to regulate core body temperature more efficiently. as autofeedback entities we feel hungry when we use more energy, so despite using energy more quickly in cold circumstances, those of us with fully working hypothalami (?hypothalamuses?) just eat more to compensate.

 

[gntlmn]

Originally posted by octagon
well it kind of stands to reason that people want to be fat when its cold. it works well for whales, acting as an insulator, and therefore helping to regulate core body temperature more efficiently. as autofeedback entities we feel hungry when we use more energy, so despite using energy more quickly in cold circumstances, those of us with fully working hypothalami (?hypothalamuses?) just eat more to compensate.

But there does seem to be a disconnect between the body's mechanism to compensate for energy loss. This is why couch potatoes are more likely to be overweight than very active people. Also of interest, if you are very active, for example riding maybe 60 miles (approx 100 km) per day, your body seems to stabilize at a lower body weight than say if you only ride maybe 6 mi (10km) per day.

Of particular interest is when you take a day off when you normally ride 100 km per day. Virtually all people will eat way more on the off day than they usually do when they ride the 100 km. You may have never paid much attention to this, but try it. I've asked several people to monitor this, and they all tell me the same story: they eat much more.

So something is happening during long distance activity to depress the appetite. This is why you see long distance endurance athletes very lean. My guess is that when you spend very long periods of time in the cold, perhaps the same appetite suppressing mechanism is at work to permit the weight loss. Perhaps this is a throwback to cave man days when man needed to cover long distances on the hunt and consumed much of the food while sedentary. Appetite suppresses for the hunt and increases while at rest for the feast.

 

[octagon]

well the answer to why couch potatoes seem to get fatter and athletes stay thinner is both hormonal and metabolic. essentially speaking, being muscular and athletic is less efficient than being skinny. muscles are relatively inefficient tissues and having a higher muscle bulk probably equates to having a higher metabolic rate (one reason why weight training does play an effective part in slimming programmes, wheras aerobic excercise, using relatively little energy for most gym enthusiasts does not) there are, of course provisos. being very fat is aslo energy intensive, because you have to lug lots of weight around, albeit that muscle has a higher density than fat. furthermore, sustained hihg level of blood glucose, as seen in the less athletic amongst us, tend to cause rises in insulin levels. insulin, as well as moderating blood sugar by allowing glucose to pass into the intracellular tissues, also favours the deposition of fat (as all atkins dieters know, fat can be made from carbohydrates and proteins) and inhibits the release of growth hormone (good for muscle deposition). prolonged exposure to high levels of insulin decreases the body's response to insulin (type 2 diabetes) which is a bad thing.

either way, considering the initial hypothesis about body tempdrature it is important to remember that all energy processes occuring in the body essentially involve chemical reactions transferring phosphates and oxygen from one chemical to another. all chemical reactions occur at optimal speed and efficiency at a given temperature, and we've evolved to be selective as to which temperature we are most optimal at.

 

[Geonz]

It's just the mass of all those snot rockets -- proteins that have to be replaced. Energy, Schmenergy.

 

[trekrider4315]

Originally posted by vonteity
Have any buddies that own a local restaurant? Go stand in their walk-in freezers for a few hours each day.

HAHAHA thats actually pretty smart compared to walking the idatrod trail, eh?

 

[adamholck]

Originally posted by octagon
Its all true, people loose weight in cold conditions, particularly dramatic amongst meembers of antarctic survey teams, who gorge on several meals daily and waste away like supermodels. intuitively, as warm blooded animals, we need to maintain our core temperature at a happy 37.4 degrees. if its colder than this outside our corpus, we shivver (itself energy expending) and divert blood flow away from the extremities. to a certain extent, although not 100% efficient, this enables us to stay fairly warm, and to conserve most of our energy. at critically low temperatures, however, the nomally efficient energy transfer processes become non-viable, and uncouple. thus the muscle tension in blood vessels in the skin fails, a process called cold vasodilation, and we loose heat much more rapidly. heat is, of course, tranfer of energy, and a product of inefficiency. Babies and bumble-bees have specialised energy efficient fatty tissue which deliberately uncouples energy transfer, resulting in heat being generated, at the expense of the energy substrate, which is effectively food. for further demonstrations i suggest placing a lighted flashlight in the freezer and seeing how long the batteries last compared to batteries in normal conditions.

By "breathing" I think this man expressed his rare experience of actually being active and having his heart rate up. Maybe not, though. Breathing does promote healing. Try tying your hands behind your back, tying up your ankles and jumping into the deep end of a pool. This forces a person to exhale so that he can reach the bottom to propell himself toward the surface. Once you surface, breathe a big breathe and slowly release until you reach the bottom again. Do over and over. This was something we had to do in the Marines for advanced combat swimming. Most people were uncomfortable doing this. I still use this method of forced breathing for relaxation and meditation. It is very powerful and promotes healing, this includes losing weight. Anyway......................