Lose Weight Program > The Simple Arithmetic of Reducing

Mathematics is a beautiful science, if you happen to like it. But it has discouraged a lot of us from making an effort at girth control. It has been bruited about that "going on a diet" involves careful calculations in trigonometry, algebra, differential calculus, and celestial navigation.





Be assured that all these scare stories are false. If you can do simple addition, you can do major subtraction - the latter in the form of "too, too solid flesh" - really, just grease.

And always you have a simple and infallible means of checking up on your reducing arithmetic: If your bathroom scales show that you are losing weight, then your arithmetic is perfect. If they show no weight loss after a reasonable time, or even a gain, then you know that you arrived at the wrong answer and that all you have to do is to subtract another hundred or two calories from your daily quota.

The next couple of paragraphs deal with that disturbing term, "basal metabolism." You can skip this dissertation if you wish, with our assurance that you are missing nothing but culture.

To take your basal-metabolism test, you go witbout eating for twelve or fifteen hours, lie on a cot, breathe in and out of a bag, and pretty soon your physician arrives at a plus or minus figure that is something like the score on a speedometer: The speedometer tells you how fast your car is going, and your basal-metabolism figure tells you how fast your body is living. To be a little more precise, it tells the rate at which your body exchanges energy just to keep alive.

Taking a b. m. test is always more fun for the physician than for you, so as a normal, healthy person you might just as well figure that all that basal metabolism means to you is that you burn from 1,400 to 1,700 calories per day before you do a lick of work.

If you are a woman weighing 125 pounds (or if that is your ideal, not necessarily your actual weight), the 1,400-calorie figure applies to you. If you are a man (or a woman) weighing close to 160 pounds, the 1,700-calorie figure applies. In-between weights have in-between values. These are close enough for all practical purposes because it is true that the basal metabolism rates of obese persons do not ordinarily differ much from normal. If anything, they are much more likely to be a little higher than average because a fat person has more skin surface from which to radiate heat.

To those basic calories you are entitled to add those representing energy consumed in working, walking, playing, singing in a barbershop quartet, or persuading your husband to wear his rubbers. In fact, all of your daily activities except your favorite one of engaging in profound thought require a considerable number of calories for their continuance. Thinking takes a few calories, too: The calories provided by one peanut will keep your brain fired for, two hours' concentrated thought. Wrinkling the brow uses up more calories than thinking.


Continue to Metabolism Table

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