Why I Love Canada: Weight Debate Edition

Today is Canada Day. Yes, it's close to the 4th of July, but it's our birthday and it's today. So Happy Birthday to my wonderful homeland, Canada!

But what does loving Canada have to do with the "great weight debate"? I submit, for your viewing pleasure, the following youtube video. It's a debate between nutritionist/sociologist, Professor Jacqui Gingras (Ryerson University) and Dr. Arya Sharma, one of Canada's and the world's premier voices on bariatric issues (whether you love him, hate him, or you're somewhere in between...) on whether obesity is or is not a disease.

It's a long video--two hours, though you can skip the first twenty minutes or so of introductions and blah-blah to go right to the debate. Dr. Sharma can get a bit overly testy and Dr. Gingras can sometimes stray away from the actual questions, but what makes it such a great video is how Canadian it is: it's so civilized and polite and you get the impression that everyone there--debaters and audience alike--are looking for answers and not just to take the opposite side down.

So settle back, grab a cold glass of water because it's so darn hot out, make sure you're comfortably seated or on your elliptical trainer or whatever and enjoy this quintessentially Canadian discussion of a very hot-button issue.

Brilliant

No time for any personal updates or musings right now. Busy season is in full swing for me.

So just watch this and feel free to discuss it here. This wonderful young woman says it all, as far as I'm concerned.

Observing, Reflecting, Regrouping, Hoping...and Other Stuff

I've been characteristically silent recently and it's been weighing on me, as have all the reasons for the silence.

I am at a crossroads emotionally and work-wise. It has become increasingly clear to me over the past six months or so that I am developing an ever deeper fundamentally pessimistic view of life. I think I've always had a bit of pessimism hidden away in me, but nothing like the way I've been feeling since last fall (and to a lesser extent for the past two years or so). My recent fall off the deep end is linked to several factors, which of course are probably related to deeper and much more long-standing issues that were finally set alight and exploded in the fall of 2011.

Despite the fact that pessimism and catastrophizing seem to be my daily lot right now, I am also a person who cannot sit still and let it all happen without a fight. Tomorrow, I have an appointment with a psychologist who comes highly recommended by a hugely successful business woman I know who herself had some issues that needed tending recently. A few hours later, I've set up a 15-minute introductory interview with a career counselor to see if we should start working together. Then, on Tuesday night, I'll be attending a seminar on mid-life career change for women.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to these upcoming appointments.

On Wednesday, I'm also seeing my hip surgeon to get the results of a recent test to see whether my hip prosthesis has loosened. It's been less than 8 years since my hip surgery and it should be way too early to be thinking about further surgery. But something is definitely wrong with my operated hip and I need to know what's going on. Your good wishes will be greatly appreciated.

Wednesday night, I'm off to Halifax, Nova Scotia for a two-day conference. It's a beautiful city on the ocean, as you can see from the above picture, and I'm hoping that the time away will help me to rest my mind a bit, even though I'll be working at a job that gives me more and more stress and less and less gratification (aside from the paycheque!).

But Where Are the Stairs?

I was at the hospital twice last week. Not to worry (at least yet, lol). My hip surgeon sees all his patients at the hospital. That was visit number one. And then visit number two was to have a test to see if my hip prosthesis is getting loose (yes, that's the potentially bad part--I should know more when I go back to see the surgeon at the end of the month and get the results of the test--but it's no use freaking out, whatever the results are...)

So there I was, at one of Canada's largest hospitals, needing to go up just two floors to get to my appointment and looking everywhere for the stairs. No luck. There was an escalator to go one floor up, and a bank of elevators in plain view, but the stairs? Nowhere to be found. That day, I ended up taking the elevator, first to the appointment with the surgeon, then two floors up to book my bone scan, one floor down to get a blood test, one more floor down to book the follow-up with the surgeon and finally one escalator ride down to get out of the hospital.

Two days later, I was back for the bone scan and this time I was set to do some sleuthing. The bone scan was a two-part affair, so I had some time on my hands and yes, I did find the staircase, which I used several times that day.

But here's what really made me laugh. On every floor, there was a little sign to tell people all about how good it is to take the stairs. I've posted one of them above. It says, "When you go up, your blood pressure goes down." There was a whole series. Great messages, good idea, but if you can't find the stairs, what good will it do?

Maybe the next time I go back to the hospital at the end of the month, I'll try and find someone and ask them to post better signage so people can FIND the stairs!!

Be Honest

In their heart of hearts, isn't this what most people think--even those of us who intellectually believe in Health at Every Size?

I'll admit it. And it doesn't make me happy.

Discuss

But when you think about why people ‘regain’ weight, the story is very different, because irrespective of how you lose weight, the biological drivers of weight regain are pretty much a common denominator for everybody. So, regardless of how I lose weight, my leptin levels are going to drop, my appetite is going to go up, my hunger levels will go up, my metabolism’s going to slow down. All of these common things – which will happen in anybody who loses weight for any reason – are going to drive me back toward my original weight or ‘set-point’.

-Dr. Arya Sharma, April 26 in Dr. Sharma's Obesity Notes (blog post entitled Close Concerns: Stopping the Gain)

I'm posting this as a bit of a follow-up to my previous post on what's "normal". There's been a small discussion going on in the weight-loss world decrying medical professionals who hold out little hope of long-term weight loss maintenance.

I just don't understand the big to-do. Why do people get so hot and bothered about the fact that 95% of people regain the weight? That's just the way it is.

Do what you want, people. If you still think it's worth the struggle and your body and your mind are none the worse for trying, do whatever you want. Just don't talk about normal. Keeping the weight off just isn't normal. Sad, but true. You don't have to take my word for it. You don't have to believe a lowly blogger like myself. Just ask Dr. Sharma.

What is Normal?

Let's do a little pretend game:

You have complicated musculo-skeletal issues.

Here's what you can't do:

-A walking meditation: making minute changes to your gait so that you can be fully tuned in to your body as it moves for 5 minutes will leave you with severe hip pain for 5 days.

-Ride a bike: your knee is so out of alignment that doing so would deteriorate the joint even more rather than build muscle and prevent further deterioration. Not to mention how bike riding would throw out your back.

-Get a knee replacement: your back is too fragile to do rehab on a stationary bike and the stress on your opposite hip during the recovery period would be more than it could take.

-Walk fast: your knee wouldn't react well (see above), the discs in your lower spine would send sciatica pains through your lower back and your hip would exhibit pain that your surgeon has so far been unable to diagnose.

Swim: both your back and your hip would give you dangerous pain signals, that, if ignored could lead to much worse pain (and perhaps surgery).

-Have a colonscopy: moving the probe through a section of your body in close proximity to the lower spine would cause a full-blown case of bulging disc, leaving you in the best case scenario with nerve damage down your leg and in the worse case scenario with a ruptured disc.

- Wear even slightly high heels. Ah, come on, it won't hurt. And you'll barely stand. After all it's a party and most of the time you'll be sitting talking with friends...Um no, just a few minutes and your hip, your knee and your back will remind you of the mistake you made for days to come--and that's if your joints let you off easy. A disc in your back might decide to rupture. Just for fun. So no, you can't wear high heels. Ever.

The funny thing is, you look normal most of the time to the rest of the world. Yet you live a life of musculo-skeletal hypervigilance. Stop being vigilant for a few minutes and ka-pow!--pain for days, the possibility of rupturing a disc, dislocating your hip, more surgery...

Hypervigilance is normal for you. You couldn't keep going without it and even with it, you're never sure what tomorrow will bring. Pretty crazy, right? Does this sound like a "normal" life to you?

Now what does this have to do with weight?

I was reading the blog of a weight loss maintainer recently (I won't go into details because I'm really not trying to call anyone out or criticize how hard this blogger and the blog's readership have worked to lose and maintain their weight loss) and the comments section was full of people talking about how "normal" it is to count every single calorie you ingest, to exercise faithfully and vigorously almost every day of the week, to weigh all your food and to NEVER deviate from the straight and narrow because even slacking off for a day or two can spell the beginning of the end and a return to morbid obesity in the time it takes to say "it's perfectly normal to weigh, count, always keep in mind, never forget, calculate the calories, run/lift weights/do the elliptical for an hour a day without fail, refuse to go out with your friends because eating in a restaurant is dangerous, etc., etc.".

In my opinion, neither the life of the musculo-skeletal basket case nor the life of the weight loss maintainer is normal. These two people have one thing in common: the abnormal lengths they must go to to maintain an appearance that seems "normal" to the outside world.