No New Tale to Tell

212.4lbs. Keep on swimming, keep on swimming. Actually, if the pool were operational out back, I would be. Something seems very appealing about being able to consume 12000 calories a day like Michael Phelps and expend an exponential rate of calories just by being in cold water. Twisted, eh? A cruel part of me wants to see how fat Phelps would get if he were nowhere near a pool.

Okay if you have not read the blog for long you are now at a complete loss, what the hell am I talking about? What does Michael Phelps and pool water have to do with weight gain or loss? It has been a well known secret in medical circles over the past few years that your body has beneficial fat, brown fat. There was a medical consensus that held for years that there was no such thing unless you were a mewling infant. Well science changes all the time and now we know that we do have a small amount of brown fat and it does a very weird thing when it is running on all cylinders: it burns the obnoxious white fat on our bodies that makes us , well, fat. It does so by increasing the rate of calories you burn, in some studies it works out to almost 3X as much.

How do we turn on this magical brown fat in our bodies? We must be colder, temperature wise. Just leaving a 5% tip at your local restaurant with 5 kids under the age of 4 in tow, will not work. Kicking the homeless or posting dirty pictures of your ex on the internet seem to have no effect, believe me I've tried. You have to be physically cold. Just drinking 5-6 ice cold beverages can burn an extra 10 calories a day. You say, meh, so what, 10 calories? Well that 10 calories will equal a pound in a year. Just small changes make a world of difference.

Now if you add this new cold effect you just learned about with a brisk walk outside in the winter, you magnify the effect. That's why Michael Phelps can only expend about 4500 calories on a really busy day but burn 12000. It's the cold water. The colder the better without hitting hypothermia, it's really really bad for your body and your heart works harder than normal. That's why you hear about folks dying shoveling snow.

Even as we speak, top men are working to put this effect in pill form. What men? TOP men.



Here is an article about brown fat which tells me that if I ever turn to cannibalism, some of you will be tastier than others - it's medical fact: Brown Fat and Weight Loss - The Future of Fat.




"You cannot go against nature because when you do, go against nature, it's part of nature too."