Hapless
Horizon completely crapped out of Atkins’ analysis
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3416637.stm
I’m a grumpy old git,
getting on geriatric even, so maybe that’s why I’m increasingly irked by Beeb
blunders across the board and especially Toady tossers (meldrewisms below) but
Hutton excepted ~ I’m with 90% on the whitewashed side of that fence! Horridzon
22jan04 was as appalling as any endured for potty punditry soft-sold as
showcased pseudoscience. Nutritionists admittedly aren’t noted for
thermodynamic insight but abusing the First Law by failing to distinguish
between closed and open systems is so exceedingly erroneous that even the
weakest of first year engineering students would be embarrassed by such an
elementary exception!
I just googled the
transcript and sure enough there’s not even a hint of awareness that energetic
openness of the digestive process must be upwards 50%. It must be because as I
recall the linchpin factor for design of sewage plants is 80 gram dry weight
crapped per person per day, or (at least) 250 gram (10 ounce) wet weight
(sounds about right, largish juicy steak) ~ so with 100Cpo (Cal per ounce)
being an adequate approximation of energisability from fatty / sugary foods
that means around 50% of a sedentarily sensible daily intake (2000Cpd) goes
straight down the pan. As back-checksum (sadly dying if not dead doodle in
today’s teaching / training) note that 100Cpo carries over to carbonaceous
energisers like fuel ~ consider that 100kW engine at 100kph burns it at 10Lph
(10kpL) and 10kWh/L approximates to 10Cpg = 250Cpo “dry” weight, same as for
energetically carbonaceous food / fuel.
This simple sensible starter
(cf Beeb blather) suffices to show that crap variability alone accounts for
most / much of the weight variability seen in the population ~ moreover is
nicely consistent with old adages like “goes straight through” and “never
touches the sides” although god forbid the Beeb would ever risk its scientific
credentials by adopting adages when anecdotes are inadmissible to their high
priesthood of philosophical pointlessness. I have no idea what is the actual
variation in crappability but recalling biological fickleness (I was once into
biotech games) can well believe it won’t be less than 50% (5 ounces) either
way, meaning 500Cpd either way which almost alone explains excursions in
obesity.
Thermodynamically then, if
it ain’t dumped it’s accumulated at about same rate and 5opd is 10 pounds
monthly. Probably no coincidence that slimming clubs pitch their pupils at a
safe target of a few pounds weekly, also in same spirit that problems portrayed
in gross obesity need many months to restore proper proportionality via
starvation supply. If 2000Cpd intake suffices for sedentary style of 50%
crappers (ie net 1000Cpd stable state utilisation), then a 33% crapper gets fat
on anything more than 1500Cpd whilst on the other side a 66% crapper needs
3000Cpd just sitting still! Mind you dumping 2000Cpd means crapping 20opd and
that really is a panful ~ but only to be expected from greedy gorging, seeing
as an extra 1000Cpd equates to a 10 ounce steak or 5 pints beer and that a
daily top-up! Everyone knows someone on either side of this lavatorial fence ~
indeed, my two kids are on opposite sides of it although thank god not 33-66
extremes.
Okay, so crapping holds the
key and it’s no coincidence that anorexics endure gruesome ghastlies like
intestinal irrigation in search of skeletal slimness ~ shovelling the stuff out
surely stimulates its passage so there’s less left for fat formation. Moreover,
kinetics must also play their preordained part in this process ~ meaning
mechanistically (thermodynamically even!) that sharpening of productive
gradients invariably increases productive fluxes always in accordance with the
Second Law even! Kinetics can’t be ignored, indeed they probably dictate why
carbohydrates are so crucifying because sugary stuff is metabolised much
quicker than crap is created, so it probably also catalyses conversion of slower
stuff ~ indeed as implied also by the unarguable achievements of Atkins’ own
code which so strictly prohibits one and promotes t’other.
Of course it’s all
substantially subtler than this simple schema, plausibly with sugary stuff
stimulating stomach enzymes whilst possibly also sourcing secretions than slow
transit into the intestine. Sophisticated speculation is unsuited to my amateur
approximation but there’s no denying that realities are reflected in the simple
sums above and there really isn’t any challenging conundrum nor expert
explanation needed to explain obesity or Atkins’ attrition of it. The tagline
is a tough one though seeing as sensible strategies should select for
crapability and its pro-motion! Loading up your linings with laxatives sounds
savagely scouring, almost as awful as intestinal irrigation. Fibres may be fine
for a few but their advocates are almost always pungently puritanical, often as
not ex-smokers obsessed with castigating unreformed addicts (like me).
Exercise of course accesses
an effective but excruciating escape, certainly if it entails sustained
sacrifice of 30 minutes daily “brisking” as ardently advocated by Bliar-babe’s
tedious Tessa ~ I bet she doesn’t do it daily because of busyness, or rather
busybodyness on coercive correctness campaigns making up meaningless mantras
like “smoking kills”, “speed kills” with perhaps “life kills” pipelined to
appear as terminal truism. Anyway, that’s all from me for now by way of
introductory insight on crap is a credible closure on the consumption side of
the eating equation ~ although I can’t resist adding closing comments
evaluating exercise in similar style on the expenditure side.
Again we need a sensible
starter and for me (as an ex-aeroman as well as ex-bioman) cycling supplies the
easiest estimator to set these scales. As premise then suppose 20mph (10m/s) is
about as much as a racer can stand for extended intervals (eg TdF) so with drag
area about 1m2 that means about 500W sustained output. Upwards of
30mph pushes the power to 1500W or so which Olympians can maintain only for
shortish intervals ~ unsurprising as it’s about 2HP and that’s a fit horse!
Dropping to 15mph brings the power down to 200W or so, manageable by fit club
cyclists for substantial periods.
So that’s my metric then
deduced on the basis of a cubic power law for cycling, sufficing also to draw
distinction between burst capacity of 100Cal or so (1Wh=1Cal or so; below) as a
matter of minutes at 1500W or so against stamina capacity of a few 1000Cal as
hours of agony at 500W, this in turn around 4 times as much as mere mortals
might manage to maintain (100W over 10h for 1000Cal or so) if fundamentally fit
(ie healthy but not athletic). For simplicity round these numbers to 1600W,
400W and 100W as ambulatory equivalents in sprinting, running and jogging ~
sustainable say for endurances corresponding to miles in about 3, 6 and 12
minutes, say roughly Olympian to 1500m, County to marathon and sustainable
jogging or what I used to know as Scout’s pace, alternate running and walking
over I think 400 yard intervals.
Crude of course and note
also utilises quadratic power law meaning aero drag neglected compared with
heart-lung-muscle work. But at least it sets a scale for exploring exercise
energy in same spirit as above for eating energy, about 1000Cpd net for
standard sedentary style crappers. By a quirk of unitary definitions (4200 J/C,
3600 sph), 1W = 1Cph for present purposes and accuracy, so making a 10% inroad
on 1000Cpd intake needs energy expulsion of 100C daily and that’s a heck of a
lot of exercise at least at first sight. Tessa’s 30 minutes of brisking, maybe
18 minute miles say 50W or so in the present portrayal, extracts only 25Cal and
so hardly scratches the standard surface never mind denting it. Worse still it takes
½ hour every day and that’s unaffordable, at least according to how we (are
taught to) think about time ~ although of course if East-Enders is unmissable
for 25% of the population (would you believe it?) then the real reason ain’t
busyness but more likely boredom, traffic, pointlessness or a blend of these
and other excuses, most definitely excuses so long as E-E remains unmissable
although god forbid I should ever expose myself to that brain-blocker.
Even 100W (12 minute miles)
jogging doesn’t help much unless it’s done for an hour and even gut-wrenching
200W (9 minute miles) still needs that impossibly elusive ½h. In any case this
street scene stuff will always be too embarrassing for other than extreme
extroverts to embark on public performances of personal persecution, certainly
when starting from scratch and probably puffed to oblivion in a matter of
minutes ~ nightmare recollections of hordes of geriatric widows wending their
ways along the breakfast boardwalks on Miami Beach ~ ugh! ~ and me likely no
better than them on endurance! So if privacy is paramount and / or biking just
not on as an accelerant alternative to jogging (reasons above) that leaves not
much more than a gym or gear at home, neither serious solutions for an
introverted old meany like me ~ the gym being about as public a persecution as
its possible to perceive!
Then I had my Eureka event
on this side of the equation ~ or rather it was reawakened from an era long
since gone when I exercised at home as prelude to skiing holidays shared with
all those fit gits who played rugby ten times a month or more. Step-ups,
repetition routines of singles, were always about as good as anything else in
getting me moving enough to survive 8 hours a day en piste, including even
madness moments on black runs so as not to disappoint my lad as an
impressionable kid. What makes step-ups so effective of course is vertical
elevation working against weight and in the present perspective particularly
pertinent in possessing proportionality between energy expenditure and excess
availability from flab! Lifting 100kg through 20cm twice a second expresses
400W, nominally 8 times more than brisking but more like 12 (600W) taking into
account the rapid locomotion itself ~ so only 3 minutes is needed to extract
upwards of 30Cal and 10 minutes to shoot 100 Cal in 3 or 4 such sessions.
Busyness can’t ever excuse
escaping 10 minutes torture (the agony maybe but not the time), not for anyone,
but even so this simple discipline still eluded me until I hybridised into a
prerequisite precursor to peeing and made it a tad less tiresome by shifting
its setting to the stairs ~ in my case at home, my base since being
academically amputated as a recalcitrant refusenik on stealthed simplifications
to the syllabus simply so as to sustain slush from foundation fodder. As an extra enticement I found that doing
the 15 of them in arithmetic regression (15, 14,13, etc) in all 120 up and 120
down, each trip targeted on 2 minutes and invariably achieved for fear of
peeing my pants! Within a week it became a routine ritual in a way that
brisking or jogging never had or could have been and over the past month (yes
it was a ridicule resolution prompted by rude remarks about compression in a
compact car) it’s dawned on that I’m puffed to puking not so much because 25Cal
or so is actually my current capacity but rather that my thermodynamic
efficiency is probably only 25% or so of an Olympian doing his 1600W thing for
about the same time as I can manage my 400W thing.
And that’s entirely
plausible as a back-checksum ~ his overall thermodynamic efficiency is no more
than 40% (burning carbonaceous fuel is never better ~ 2nd Law again)
whilst mine is probably no more than 10% sadly rather less than James’ Watt
managed 200 years ago! However if my ticker can take the trick it’s doing a
deal more for my pipes than any amount of brisking or jogging because doing 120
stairs in 120 seconds stimulates 120 beats per minute staying up thereabouts
for another 120 seconds or so after each exertion ~ key point being that whilst
it’s up there I’m burning big-time calories on internal combustion even though
I’m standing still peeing into the pan!
And this musing meander has
helped to hammer home the massive margin between burst and stamina exertion or
primary and secondary internal combustion ~ the former typified by Olympian
burst capacity to around 100Cal (1500W for 4 minutes), the latter by Olympian
stamina capacity significantly exceeding 1000Cals (400W for 2½ hours). Brisking
done in substantially sub-stamina mode never even begins to tickle capacity
thresholds whereas stairing done substantially into burst-mode actually hits
the limit after rescaling for impaired relative efficiency, lifting 20 Cal
nominal or so to upwards of maybe 80. Hence my own mantra now ~ 120 in 120 for
120 prior to peeing down the pan persisting at 120 for 120, always aiming for
three or more and never escaping less than two. It’s been the best bet I ever
encountered for effective escape from sedentary sloth and it could be the
answer for all actively able-bodied amateurs.
Of course I can’t actually
advocate anything for fear of falling foul of compensation claims from clowns
who will inevitably take a tumble and I can vouch from firsthand familiarity
that a top-to-bottom wipe-out adds to the excitement every bit as much as a
black-run booboo ~ oh yes, or suffer cardiac arrest not yet, hopefully not
ever. And if you who got far then don’t forget that I also rationalised Atkins’
for its impact on obesity whereas the Beeb merely blundered and bluffed without
ever getting any grip on the crappy core of their conundrum. Thanks for staying
with me ~ maybe more to come, maybe not, and not for sure if I make the wrong
move whilst in motion although peeing isn’t a problem except for pointing percy
properly at the porcelain whilst puffing and panting!
PS Just as I’m about to
consign my commentary as webbage what’s arrived down my fax but an unsolicited (yet another despite all that privacy protection
publicity) pitch to pay for a “Diet When You Can”! Well, well ~ timely, topical
and trashy as befits our perniciously promotional postmodernism! As another
afterthought, it’s also occurred to me that extreme exercising can catalyse
crapping, at least in my case I’m up from 1dpd (dump per day) to 2 and even 3 after
excess eating. So now I’m toying with thought that this thinning trick may well
owe more to its teasing out double / treble whoppies than actual energy expenditure.
After all, enhancing expulsion by only 20% (200Cpd) exceeds anything ever likely
to be routinely removed in stomping stairs ~ so although the agony would still
be unavoidable, having it act as an accelerant would enormously amplify its
acceptability! Just another mechanistic meander that the experts should surely have
explored and evaluated had they produced a professional portrayal for Percy Public
~ and like all else, it’s amenable to elementary examination for correlational
confirmation.