Jeremy Scharlack's Blog: Fitness blog #11

August 11, 2003

Fitness blog #11

Weight: 164lbs
Has been fairly stagnant this week but I am happier than ever. Let me explain.

My pants (size 38” mostly) are way too loose, but I have been putting off buying new ones until I had lost all the weight I wanted to. I frankly couldn’t afford it and I wanted to take the opportunity to get a hip new wardrobe anyway. But the clown pants were driving me nuts. So I stopped by Filene’s Basement today and tried on some 34” pants. They were too loose. That’s right too loose. Not only that but the ones that fit were 32”. 32” was my pants size from puberty until late college, when I wasn’t fat. 32” is my goal waist size. I am a 32” now and they aren’t even tight. Woo Hoo!

So I got some nice Calvin Klein pants which are fashionably worn out. They look quite hipsterish. They are much tighter than any pants I have worn in a while but are quite comfortable. I like ‘em tight; no more pleats for me.

No I am certainly not done yet by any means. I may fit nicely into these pants, but my gut still spills over them. I am also still technically overweight (although that seems to matter little).

Jim, who just came up to my town, links to the Sizing Down Clothing Exchange (via Jessica Grieves), which aims to be a place where people loosing weight can get intermediate sized clothing for less money. It would have been perfect but it is alas only for women’s clothes.

In other diet news Kuro5hin had an article about low carb dieting. The comments attracted the usual arguments on both sides, but I did find out something very interesting there: Atkins was hardly the first low carb diet. There was a popular diet in the 19th century called the Banting Diet. Harvey Banting came under similar criticisms that Atkins has come under from the medical establishment and others. But it worked and gained quite a following; Dieting was even referred to as “Banting” for a while. People have been ignoring the benefits of a low carb diet for a lot longer than I though.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:13 PM | Link | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Also note as part of the low-carb lineage the diet instructions of food philosopher extraordinare Brillat-Savarin (see opening moments of Iron Chef). He lays out his own Atkins-type plan in The Physiology of Taste published in 1825.
To wit: "Now, an anitfat diet is based on the commonest and most active cause of obesity, since, as it has already been clearly shown, it is only because of grains and starches that fatty congestion can occur, as much in man as in the animals; in regard to these latter, this effect is demonstrated every day under our very eyes, and plays a large part in the commerce of fattened beasts for our markets, and it can be deduced, as an exact consequence, that a more or less rigid abstinance from everything that is starch or floury will lead to the lessening of weight.
...Be reasured; I shall map out a diet for you, and prove to you that there are still a few pleasures left for you here on this earth where we live to eat."
He goes on to describe a plan pretty much identical to Atkins. The main differences being a prohibition on eggs, the insistance that one drink exactly 30 bottles of Seltzer over the course of every summer, and the assertion that all efforts are wasted unless a snug man-girdle (or "Antifat Belt") be worn 24-7 in order to train the organs back into their proper place.
So, top-notch pedigree for the whole undertaking.
Very exciting news about the pants.

Posted by: molly from here at August 12, 2003 04:06 PM | link

6 inches off your pants size, Jeremy, is absolutely fabulous. We all, though, need to keep in mind that a 32" pant size today is not a 32" pant size from when we were in college. Modern off-the-rack clothiers lie. I'm in 32s, but I'm sure I couldn't fit in 32s made in the 1980s. (I don't have any pairs left, alas, though I can comfortably wear a t-shirt I bought on my honeymoon in 1991.) So if you don't feel done yet, keep going. An open question is, just what is the "fudge factor" in contemporary pant sizes. With the Target house brand my guess is 2-4".

Posted by: Jim Henley from here at August 14, 2003 08:42 PM | link

I am not measuring to an absolute 32" but relative to the 32" pants I was wearing in high school (in the early 90s, probably later than Jim's college years). I am still not there though; while I fit nicely into Calvin Klein's 32" jeans, Levi's are still tight at that size.

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