Taking the Belsen train

Two people now have said to me that their doctors once told them "There were no fat people in the Nazi camps." (Did they have the same doctor?) Although true, it can't really count as a model for systematic weight loss, because the basic principles involved are forced labour and restricting diet to sub-subsistence level, and we in the civilised countries just don't do that any more. But I still found myself thinking, what exactly was the point behind those doctors' comments? I have been pulling together some scattered ideas that I came across during the past fifteen months, for which the significance, which escaped me at the time, has just begun to emerge.

For instance, when I first began to cycle in the evenings for thirty minutes, I was talking about the problem of getting fit from an unfit starting point with my brother in law. He was a PE instructor in a prison for a while. He explained to me that there is an elevated heart rate, above the normal resting rate, and the body behaves differently according to which side of this elevated rate it is working at. Above the elevated rate, the body builds muscle, but below the rate, it burns fat, providing it is working faster than the resting rate. He did mention to me the way in which this elevated rate could be calculated for each individual, but since I had no way of measuring my heart rate whilst exercising I didn't bother to remember it.

Then, there was the intriguing article Busting the Great Myths of Fat Burning I found on the web, an excerpt from "Cross-training for Dummies". It addressed the question "which type of exercise was best for burning fat, light exercise, or hard exercise?" To answer this, it first of all described the two types of fuel that we can burn, carbohydrates, and fat. Carbohydrates convert very rapidly into energy, but can only be stored by the body in limited quantities and only in certain places, typically the muscles. They provide rapid energy for the muscles when we exert ourselves. Fat, by contrast, can be stored in much larger quantities everywhere, but takes longer to convert into fuel and does not provide for bursts of power. Carbohydrates are essential for hard exercise, while fat is more suitable for light work.

What did stick in my mind when I read this article was the statement that athletes can switch from burning carbohydrates to burning fat much earlier than unfit people, and can perform better when burning fat than unfit people. Some of that ability might be peculiar to the person (explaining why some people are born sprinters while others are born marathon runners), but some of it must come from rigorous training. The summary, I understood, was that carbohydrates were essential for rapid bursts of activity which couldn't be sustained for long, while fat allowed a steady but lower level of energy to be used for a considerably longer period. They were almost parallel to anerobic and aerobic behaviour, short burst activity using the oxygen already in the blood, and longer-term energy requiring a regular supply of oxygen to replenish the blood supply.

That then got me remembering a strange little book by Hunter S Thompson, called "The Curse of Lono", which he wrote when he took a trip to Hawaii to cover the marathon there for the magazine for which he was sports columnist. He described how some contenders would gorge on pasta close to the start of the race, to get as much quick energy inside them as they could, in order to get as far as possible before they started to slow down and settle into the grim slog that is the last half of every marathon. Some sports, such as marathons, triathlons, boxing, and Tour-de-France style cycle-racing, would seem to demand a control of stored resources such that the most successful athletes can switch from carbohydrates to fat for a while, then switch back to carbohydrates for a sudden burst of energy, then back to the fat, preserving that precious carbohydrate reserve.

As a side-note, the opponents of the Atkins diet often claim that the brain can only function on energy derived from carbohydrates, and that going on low-carb diets to force the body to only burn fat is starving the brain of fuel. They also claim that the body, whilst in this state of ketosis, will rob the muscles of all the stored glucose in order to keep the brain supplied with sufficient fuel, and consequently the Atkins diet causes significant damage if not carried out under strict supervision. (Such as in a Nazi concentration camp? "We have ways of making you fast", or, "For you, the waist is over.")

That rang another bell with me, because shortly after I posed the question Why does Peanut Butter rot your teeth?, I found the answer. The body needs calcium in order to properly digest the food you eat. If there is insufficient calcium in the diet, the body turns to its stored supply, and takes calcium from the bones and the teeth. That explained to me why, after a few weeks living on a subsistence diet of bread and peanut butter, I had problems with fillings coming loose and abscesses forming under the roots. The inmates of the camps began to show diseases not seen since the Middle-ages, when nutrition was poor for many of the underclasses.

But before we get back to Belsen and subsistence diets while doing forced labour, let's just pop back to that bit about light exercise versus hard exercise. The Dummies Guide concluded that, although light exercise burnt more fat than vigorous exercise, the amount of calories consumed was less than the amount burnt in vigorous exercise. Based on that, it recommended that people stick to the fashionable 30-minute workout rather than walk steadily for an hour, because it would be better for them overall. Most people, it assumed, didn't have the time to walk for long enough to burn off the fat.

Theoretically, you could lose weight by not eating, if you could keep the body functioning effectively enough for it to turn the stores of fat into fuel. In practice, as hunger strikers have shown, the body needs a certain daily intake of food and water in order to function. Drop below this level, and the body starts to shut down, no matter how much stored fat it has. You need a certain amount of food each day in order to be able to turn your stores of fat into energy. For example, fat is converted into fuel by the liver, and the liver requires a certain amount of water to do this. Water has to be drunk, which requires some muscular activity, the muscles performing this activity, plus those in the heart and lungs, function better on carbohydrates, and so (allegedly) does the brain.

Back to Belsen, where the inmates were made to work all day long and were fed on a meagre diet of bread and cabbage water and potato soup. Devotees of the Atkins diet might like to note that this was almost the opposite of a low-carb diet, it was practically all carbohydrates, no fat or protein worth mentioning. The first thing that sprang to my mind was that it was a cheap diet, the Germans were preserving their limited stocks of meat and fish and dairy produce for the troops and the civilians involved in vital work. The thought that has subsequently crept slowly into my mind is that someone high up in the group setting policy for the prison camps knew exactly what they were doing: they were feeding the prisoners just enough carbohydrates to allow the body to function on its own stored fat. Each prisoner came with their own supply for food for a few months, which the camps cunningly extracted by supplying them with cheap low-grade food that would not be suitable for the fighting men and skilled workforce.

The prisoners lost weight not so much because they were on a meagre diet, but because they were working at a slow pace for many hours each day, and their bodies switched into fat-burning mode because they had no choice. They dug, they mixed and poured concrete, they hauled rubble and earth away from a site or hauled it in to another; they did all the things that you would normally use machines to do, but the Germans had very limited supplies of fuel, on which the war machine had first call, and they had all these conquered people wandering around with stored body fat available if it was treated in the right way. As I said earlier, I think someone with good medical knowledge proposed the concept to the top authorities and got their pet project accepted.

So, coming back from Belsen yet again, what is the relevance to us, today, with our national obsession with obesity? Are we going to turn into a nation crying out to be mistreated for the good of our health? Or should we lock the overweight into forced-labour camps and make them pick up litter or mend potholes in the roads all day while living on a Gillian McKeith diet of pitta-bread, seaweed and couscous, on the premise that by being cruel to them we are actually saving them from themselves? Take for example, the ethical question of a chronically overweight man who is likely to die within a few months unless he can shed a significant amount of weight. As things stand at the moment, curtailing his liberty to eat what he chooses and forcing him to do manual work is against our principles, but letting him die is not. And it has happened, I posted about it a while ago What goes up...: In memory of a fat man, just after I tried a low-carb diet to get over a long spell with no significant loss of weight despite regular short spells of hard exercise.

Of course, exercise is already known to be the best way to control weight, much to the annoyance of the legions of spammers who would rather the only exercise you got was unscrewing the bottle tops of the weight-loss pills they would like you to buy. But the government seems to be determined to follow up the program of eating your way to a healthy state with one to get you up and out and around and about. Perhaps the poor attendances at the polling booths might not be due to apathy after all, a large proportion of the non-attending voters are either too unfit to get to the polling stations, or too fat to fit in the booths?

All the signs to me are that we've been sold yet another story. Hard on the heels of 'fat is bad for you' comes 'exercise is good for you'.

You've snorted derisively at that sentence, haven't you? What is this idiot waffling about? Fat is bad for you? Of course it is. Exercise is good for you? Of course it is.

Let us take this one step at a time. Fat is bad for you, and so you go looking for low-fat alternatives. Of course you do. Those often turn out to be tasty carbohydrate-rich foods. Eating too much nice-tasting carbohydrates can lead to the insulin positive-feedback loop, thus:

Eat carbohydrates, the body produces insulin, which causes the body to store the carbohydrates as fat. Insulin, in turn, stimulates the appetite. Ok, so eat some more of that nice-tasting good-for-you low-fat carbohydrate food, and go back to the start of this sentence and read it again.

And now, exercise is good for you, so go and do thirty minutes workout in the gym, dressing up in fashionable pastel shades, and really get that sweat running. Assuming that you really try, and the machines are not set up for pussy-wimps, in that thirty minutes the body is working fast, and the heart is up above that figure we mentioned earlier, building muscle. Burning carbohydrates. So, after your thirty minute had exercise, what happens? You've depleted your carbohydrate stores, you've built up a healthy appetite, and you can, (justifiably), eat well, because you know you've done the hard work, and your body is desperate for more carbohydrates. So you eat plenty of protein, and plenty of carbohydrates, and guess what? It's time to go back to that previous paragraph and read it again. (The one that begins "Eat carbohydrates..."). What little weight you lost in the exercise goes back on again as the body, quite naturally, tops up the depleted reserves.

I haven't, till now, mentioned the final bits of information and observation that helped me put these pieces together and come up with a more coherent idea of where I've been going wrong in the weight-loss program. (And some of you as well, I'm not the only fat bastard apart from Alexei Sayle in this world).

Firstly, earlier this year, I made sure that I got plenty of exercise when I started my new life away from the keyboard. I got up early and went out each morning for a twenty-minute jog through the woods. I got out the bike each evening and went out for a thirty-minute ride. I lost weight slowly, and I found that limiting the amount I ate became harder and harder. The harder I exercised, the hungrier I became.

When I resurrected Albert Ross and started going out for longer bike rides at a more sedate pace, the weight suddenly fell away. I lost six pounds in a single week. That wasn't the week of the infamous trips to Stourhead and the East Somerset Railway, it was the previous week, when I went out for longer rides, double the distances I had previously been riding, but at a slower pace. I also noticed, that week and subsequently, that when I returned from the bike rides, I was not immediately hungry. I was thirsty, and had to drink copious amounts of water, but I could often wait an hour before having something to eat.

I have put together a working hypothesis to explain why I didn't feel hunger until some time after a longish bike ride. Bear in mind that is all it is, an hypothesis, and I'm going to be the first one to amend it as soon as any other information comes to light that suggests another solution.

If the body is exercised at a slow but steady rate, such that it is sustainable for a long period without requiring high energy output, the body switches from burning carbohydrates to burning stored fat. This process takes a little time to get going, and similarly, takes a little time to shut down. While the body is in that state, it switches off the hunger mechanism, because it is consuming stored fat while conserving carbohydrate reserves, and does not need any extra food intake. All it requires is adequate water for the liver to do its job and convert the fat.

Keep the exercise up for too long, or suddenly change pace and increase the demands on the body, and body produces hunger signals to try and get the depleted carbohydrate reserves replenished, to keep the muscles and the brain working properly.

And the reason for this mechanism? Simply that, since there is a mechanism by which the body stores surplus carbohydrates as fat for future use, there has to be a second mechanism to make use of that stored fat. There is no point having the first system without also having the second one.

It is a very simplistic picture, but it does seem to fit the observed facts. It also has caused me some grief in my discussions with Little Petal, because she has often likened us two to the Hare and Tortoise, me dashing about enthusiastically, she plodding along with dull determination. She is now claiming that her slow pace is being vindicated by my discovery. I, rashly, responded to that with "If that's true, how come I weigh three stone less and have a waistline six inches less than you?"

That didn't go down very well at all.

Afterword: My fascination with Belsen.

I grew up reading accounts of survivors from the German and Japanese camps. I was amazed that so many people did last till the end of the war, and how ingenious and determined some of them were in finding ways to keep going despite the odds against them. I remember the account of one woman who concealed a broken rib because she knew that there would be no hospital treatment for her, no rest and recuperation; she worked, or she died, and she was determine to survive. For that reason, I chose to keep on working with my bruised ribs. I have used this method several times in my life, when confronted by a problem that initially looked to be too big for me to handle; to ask myself, if this was a life or death decision, how would a determined survivor in Belsen react ?