What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [98]
On balance, if short-term attractiveness is your overriding goal, diet. But be prepared for the costs.
Health. If I diet, I am probably at increased risk for death. Losing and regaining weight probably increases my mortality risk, perhaps more than staying overweight or even allowing myself to gain more weight gradually. No one has ever shown that losing weight will increase my longevity.35
On balance, the health goal does not warrant dieting.
Zest. If I diet, I will have less bulk to carry around. I should be able to run and swim faster. But this advantage will vanish when I regain the weight. In addition, my metabolism will slow down in defense of my natural weight, and this is often manifested as lethargy. Worse, I may still be lethargic after the diet ends and the weight is regained. I now wonder if my lack of zest as I have gotten older isn’t the consequence of dieting, not a consequence of the extra pounds. Is it possible that the celebrated “chronic fatigue syndrome” may stem in part from a history of dieting? My desire for more energy will probably not be well served by dieting.
Control. I want to be in control, but the second dessert tells me I am not. Wrong. I have simply been too quick to condemn myself on this score, because I didn’t know the facts. I thought that my weight was under my control. But now I see that for thirty years my vacillating willpower has been pitted against an unceasing biological defense of my natural weight.
I would get a lot more done if I could sleep only six hours a night. But when I try this and find that I feel exhausted two hours earlier the next evening, I do not feel ashamed or weak of will. I know it is just my body insisting on making up the two hours’ lost sleep. For many people, getting to an “ideal” weight and staying there is just as biologically impossible as going with much less sleep. This fact tells me not to diet, and defuses my feeling of shame. My bottom line is clear: I am not going to diet anymore.
Of course, there is something other than dieting that can help you achieve your goals.
Advice to the Overweight
Fitness vs. fatness. I just returned from my daily half-mile swim. I am really proud of myself today because I was able to sprint the last fifty yards. I have been swimming laps religiously for about a year. I have not lost any weight (in fact, I’ve gained a few pounds). But my hips are slimmer, my mood is less irritable, I sleep better, and I have more energy. I have also read the scientific literature on exercise. Achieving fitness is clearly more sensible than fighting fatness.
A surprisingly small amount of exercise may lower death risk significantly. In one study of ten thousand men and three thousand women, the least-fit 20 percent were shown to have far and away the highest death risk. Moving out of the least-fit fifth markedly lowered risk. This suggests that even modest exercise, as opposed to becoming fanatical, will produce the biggest reduction in risk. Confirming this, the death rate of the sedentary men in the Harvard alumni group I mentioned earlier is 30 percent higher than that of the men who exercise moderately. Statistically, moderate exercise—burning off 2,000 calories per week—produces two extra years of life. (Perhaps God does not subtract the time spent exercising from your allotted time on earth.) “Moderate exercise” translates into an hour of normal walking or a half hour of slow running or a half