Buckeye Valley News And Buckeye Review

Eating Big Meal at Noon
By DR. JAMES W. BARTON

© Bell Syndicate.-WNU Service.

A woman, 5 feet 6 inches in height, weighing 225 pounds, consulted a physician regarding the best method of reducing her weight. Before putting herself under his care, she stated that she did not want to eat less food, hated exercise and so would do none of it, and insisted that she be allowed to remain in bed until 10 a. m. each day as at present.

As there are only three ways of reducing weight in the ordinary overweight—eating less food, taking more exercise, and taking less rest during the 24 hours—the physician was about to dismiss the patient with the polite remark that as she would not follow any of the three methods of weight reduction, nothing could be done.

However, close questioning revealed the fact that the lady got a great deal of pleasure out of shopping; her hobby being the spending of every afternoon in the stores of a large city.

The physician then stated that he would allow her to follow her present habits and eat the same amount of food, if she would eat her heaviest meal—dinner—at noon instead of in the evening. She followed this advice and lost 7 pounds the first month, 5 the second month, 3 the third month and 1 the fourth month: a loss of 16 pounds in four months.

Exercise Requires Fuel.

Eating the heavy meal at noon, and the light or lunch meal in the evening caused a loss of weight for 2 reasons: (a) the exercise of walking about the stores actually used up some of the excess fat on the body, and (b) the light meal in the evening was so light or so poor in food value, that after it was eaten, there was not much excess food to be turned into fat during the "rest" period of the evening, and during the 12 hours or more in bed during the night.

The 3 or 4 hours of walking exercise that this patient took every afternoon required extra fuel and the excess fat on her body was what furnished the food or fuel necessary.

Work Requires Energy.

"Muscular work has a far greater effect in raising the energy consumption (using up of fuel or fat) than any other factor." For instance, the average man needs 3,000 calories or heat units of food daily, and the average woman about 2,000. Yet if just an ordinary or moderate amount of exercise is taken, such as walking a mile at a moderate pace, as much as 500 calories of food or body fat may be used up; walking a mile at a brisk pace or at a slow rate of running might easily use up 1,000 to 1,500 calories.

Many professional wrestlers carry ten to thirty pounds of excess fat because they wrestle 3 to 5 times each week (sometimes for an hour or more) and must carry extra weight to prevent going "stale." It is not unusual for them to lose 5 to 10 pounds during each bout, such is the effect of hard exercise in reducing weight.

Nothing Much to It.

It is all very simple. "The fuel for doing work or taking exercise must come from the food eaten or from the tissues of the body; if part of the fuel foods taken in are used up in doing muscular work, the excess food eaten (which would naturally be stored away as fat) will store that much less. When the food intake is too low to provide the energy needed both for maintaining the body and for the work done, the body tissues will be called upon to supply part of the required energy and a loss in weight will result."

However, an important point about exercise in reducing weight is not fully recognized and that is that using the will power to take any exercise is a big step forward. It is no easy matter for the overweight to move the excess weight about; it means so much more effort than for one who is of normal weight. Then as the exercise becomes easier to do because of practice and because there is less weight to move, the overweight individual finds himself or herself gradually increasing the amount of exercise taken daily. A feeling of "lightness," of renewed energy replaces the "heaviness" of moving about not only during exercise but at other times during the day. As it is not much effort to walk short distances, go upstairs or perform household duties more of these little chores are done. This means more reduction of weight.

Of course, just as the reduction of weight by diet, drugs, or gland extracts should be under medical supervision so should the patient be thoroughly examined before taking exercise and at intervals thereafter so that if there should be disturbances of the heart or blood vessels, the exercise may be regulated accordingly.