two-week progress point and a digression

I had a good scale reading today -- that was certainly a mood-upper -- 7.5 pounds lost in two weeks.  My measurements haven't improved much (only waist and hip are recorded in the PPC) -- in fact, the RATIO has gone the wrong way a little.  Just shows, i lose fat off my backside faster than off my middle.  A little disappointingly, my (subjective) overall health improvement score is a flatline; perhaps a 0-3 reporting range is too narrow for small-but-perceptible changes?

But my progress isn't what's gotten me excited this morning.  I was just reading the blogs that have been updated since i stopped reading last night, and found something noteworthy from Dr. Sharma (linked on the right side of this page):  a colleague of his, also lecturing at a special event, explained the weight-defending homeostatic system in a way that ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE. 

The argument goes, of course, that in pre-industrial ages, fat storage was valuable for sustenance in times of famine.  (It's also valuable in illness --perhaps you've noticed, when you're feverish, and you don't really feel like eating ordinary fare, you weigh less when you get better.  Problem is these days, sickness is frequently a time when people eat anyway -- treats like ice-cream and snacks!)  So the hedonic system encouraged our ancestors to pig out when they came across something like fruit, which would pack on the pounds in fall, so they could "eat" their own fat tissue all winter when food would be harder to come-by.

Dr. Colmers explains that the weight-defending homeostatic system has been at work all our lives, as we go from infant to child to adolescent to adult, making sure we don't slip backward into a pathological wasting-away of what we so arduously gained (think about primitive people, here -- gaining is hardly arduous in Western society).  It's logical to me, NOW.  Some people explain a HELL of a lot better than other people.

I never thought the idea of the body defending an ever-increasing fat mass to be particularly logical.  Oh yes, i know about leptin-resistance: that contributes, without a doubt.  Is it alone enough to tip the scale (pardon the pun) toward detrimental quantities of fat gain, or does mitochondrial inflexibility start now?  (Does this work the same way with bodybuilders who add freakish quantities of muscle?)  I'm going to have to review what i've read about these points....

Currently, the Drs. Jaminet are formulating an hypothesis on quality of lean tissue being the goal of the brain's drive to keep us big or make us bigger.  I'm extremely eager to see what their ultimate argument will be.

So much information out there, and lots of mental collating to do.  "We" know so much, and yet average people, even doctors, know so little.  Wow....