Rethinking Thin, by Gina Kolata

Why are some people fat? Why do they stay fat or regain weight after losing it?

In Rethinking Thin, Kolata doesn't have the absolute answer to those questions but she takes us a lot farther than most. We've all heard various "facts" about obesity and dieting over the years, so often that many of us don't question their truth. Kolata asks different questions and gets surprising answers from controlled studies, which she summarizes here. Her investigation is hung on a frame: the story of real people who are subjects in a two-year study that compares two different types of diets: Atkins and a standard low-fat alternative.

Do you want to know which diet comes out ahead? That's the wrong question and Kolata knows it. The fact that huge research centers spend all their time on this type study is one indication of how the so-called science of weight loss has failed us.

When I was working in various offices my co-workers invariably included many who wanted to lose weight. These people kept looking for the right diet, and those who were succeeding in losing weight would dispense advice about how they did it. During part of that time I had been "successful" and was managing to maintain a healthy weight, so people would ask me for advice too. One thing I knew: it is possible to lose weight many different ways. The real problem is keeping it off. And on that front I had no magic answers. I only said that for now I was managing, I was keeping on top of it, my mind was in the right place, but I had no idea why or whether that would remain so. I have since "slid". I have regained much of that weight, and it happened much as a balloon once filled with air more easily takes air the second time.

A few interesting facts:

* when naturally thin people force themselves to gain weight (or gain weight because of some unusual situation) and fat people lose weight and both groups weigh the same (lower for the fat, higher for the thin) it takes fewer calories for the fat people to maintain the same weight as the thin.

* normal people who are forced to lose weight (like in a concentration camp or in a controlled study in the military) they become obsessed with food. They dream of recipes, they buy kitchen equipment. When they get freed to eat as they like again they eat enormous amounts, much more than they would have if they had never dieted.

* hunger is a drive that is far harder to resist for a fat person than a thin one. It is totally distracting and almost impossible to resist.

* there does appear to be a "set point" for most of us. Usually we waver somewhere within 30 pounds of that set point, regardless of how we eat. Thin people who say they maintain their weight with constant vigilance, that if they gave in to their urges they would become huge, are actually not correct; they would gain maybe ten pounds, maybe a bit more, and then stop, and it would not be difficult to go back to where they were. I have long noticed that the diet companies are clever to focus on those who are naturally thin who might have gained five pounds over a holiday - these folks won't have a problem losing the weight or keeping it off.

* some people are born without a hormone - I think it's a hormone - that regulates food intake. They are always hungry and gain weight rapidly and will eat anything. There are examples in the book of some who have been helped by regular injections of this chemical, and the help has been amazing. There was an episode on House recently that featured a young woman who had always been fat. House actually found a medical condition that explained it, and when corrected she lost that weight. There are, in other words, some medical conditions that do cause people to gain weight.

* fat people really do have more fat cells than thin people. When we fatties lose weight we do not lose fat cells. Instead, they become starved, wanting to be filled again.

* when sodas were removed and healthier foods added to cafeterias and increased exercise required in some studied schools, these changes made no statistical difference in body mass of the students.

* here's a kicker: people who are very thin or very fat have a mortality rate higher than the normal. Those who are overweight but not in the "morbidly obese" category actually have the edge on living longer. Fat people do experience medical conditions, like diabetes or arthritis, that are more debilitating than thin people, but statistically these diseases do not affect longevity. In other words, obesity is not as dangerous as you thought.

Kolata suggests that perhaps we are all born with a certain possible top weight. Because of the food available to us, many of us have reached higher weights than ever before. She concludes that it takes an enormous amount of so-called willpower to stay on a rigorous diet and exercise program for a long period, and that it takes a great deal more will for a fattie than a thinny, given that it takes fewer calories to maintain the same level in the fattie and that hunger is a more powerful drive in the fattie.

I read somewhere else that it is possible to change the set point, through regular exercise. I managed to keep weight off and to exercise regularly for a long time but that did not save me ultimately. When I was forced to rest because of an injury I seemed to have a brief "grace period", when I could maintain my weight, but then the pounds started creeping back on again. And now that I am fat again and faced with debilitating arthritis I am finding it much more difficult to get in enough exercise to cause a reduction in pounds.

This book is important for sorting out what's true and what isn't, what we know and what we don't. It is a quick read, interesting and informative, and perhaps most importantly it skewers the weight-loss industry. The folks who are getting rich off our heavy backs, who find it in their best interest not to tell us the truth.

I am hoping that further research into the areas that matter will take place and that someone like Kolata will let us know about it.

book rating: 4.5 out of 5

The Water's Lovely, by Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell creates main characters who are not always on the right side of "right", who for their own peculiar reasons (some easier to understand than others) sometimes behave rather badly. I have read other books of hers and for that reason I don't expect everything to turn out all right nor do I expect the protagonist (it's usually a woman) to make her way honorably at all times. Another characteristic of Rendell's novels is the mystery. We might guess but do not know crucial information. Thus some reviewers call her a master of "psychological thrillers" - but don't take that as a comparison to writers of mass market "thrillers" or even fine mysteries. These stories stand on their own plane.

Thus The Water's Lovely spins on a mystery that maybe isn't one, really. The main character, Ismay, a young woman living with her sister Heather, holds onto a secret that only her sister shares, the secret of how their stepfather drowned in the bathtub. The two, however, have never actually talked about this secret, so Ismay is not entirely sure she's got it right. She wonders: did Heather murder him? If so, she thinks she knows why. And she worries about what Heather might be driven to do in the future.

A rather large cast of characters enters into the story, each one somehow connected to Ismay or Heather, each one somehow affected, unknowingly, by this secret. Ismay and Heather's mother Bea has gone "mad" and given to pronouncements from the bible when she is not tucked close to her radio. Their aunt Pamela, who lives with Bea, pursues the opposite sex through online and newspaper ads, even venturing into "speed dating" and something called "romance walking". Ismay falls for Andrew, a self-centered lawyer whose privileged background seems to keep him from taking an interest in anything not he. Heather falls for Edmund, a kind and thoughtful nurse at the hospice where she works, a young man whose mother, Ingrid, is a first-class hypochondriac who also majors in guilt trips. Flitting about through all of these lives is Marion, a tiny 40-something single who jumps and skips and dances from place to place, while thinking about the many ways she can cheat others of their money and belongings.

For me, the novel is like a feast where all of the courses are perfect, unexpected, delicious. The flawed characters, and all of them are somehow flawed, are so finely drawn that at times I thought Rendell must have known people I know, or taken parts of my own character and used them in her characters' thoughts and deeds. So tasty, so nutritious, so excellent. It all finishes with some answers, but we are still left wondering.

One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson

One Good Turn is wonderful! From the very first sentence I was entranced by Atkinson's use of words and her terrific low-key sense of humor. I was surprised to find that the book is actually a mystery, but there is nothing genre-like about it, no standard investigation or even single investigator. I was further surprised to find that it makes use of characters first developed in another of Atkinson's books, again a genre technique. It doesn't matter as we learn what we need to know from this book alone.

The story begins with a "road rage" incident in Edinburgh involving a suspicious name-changing character and a beefy guy who wields a baseball bat. The incident draws together an interesting group of characters, but the story reads rather like strings spreading further and further apart, or perhaps more like a web built by a spider. Each chapter develops the story for one or two of the characters, and only near the end do the paths intersect, in a crazy, hilarious episode, rather like the punchline in a shaggy dog story.

The writing is superb. The insights into character are well-informed. The humor is delicious.

Digging to America, by Anne Tyler

Two families wait at the gate in the Baltimore airport for the same flight, which is carrying their newly-adopted Korean babies. One family, fully American, has made an event of it. Everyone is wearing labels ("Mom", "Grandpa") and the family is filling the waiting area, almost forcing out others, making a party of it. The other family is transplanted Iranian and has made no fanfare of the arrival of their new baby.

Bitsy, the American mom, eventually invites Ziba, Iranian mom, to join an invented "arrival" celebration of the two infants, and the two families are thus joined. The differences in the families pricks at the edges of each encounter, with members of both families trying - or not trying - to understand the other. Throughout the book the individuals seem unable to keep from generalizing, the Iranians finding the Americans laughable, crude, at times overbearing, the Americans finding the Iranians stiff, sometimes unresponsive, perhaps "too good" for them.

Ziba's mother-in-law, Maryam, is perhaps the most reluctant Iranian. She was at peace with her widowed existence, her proper life, and she has no need for the sometimes overwhelming assault of well-meaning friends. She is proper and polite, often seeming cold because of her reserve, so she does join the parties because it would be rude to refuse.

Although we get into the minds of almost all of the many characters, ultimately it is Maryam who takes center stage. Through her thoughts and actions we begin to understand how difficult it must be to live in such a foreign culture, unable to join it. She admits to herself, though, that she had differences in Iran as well, and we begin to grasp that it may not be so much the differences in cultures that affects these clans so much as the differences in individuals.

The book is so easy to read that it is easy to miss its complexity, its quiet effects on our thinking. I felt at times that there was too much generalizing but those who read carefully will see that the generalizing came from individuals rather than from Tyler herself.

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell

Black Swan Green is a funny, insightful book about a 13-year-old boy, told in the language of a 13-year-old in England in 1982. The book spans one year of Jason's life, through the Falklands war and within the Reagan-Thatcher years, into a dip into the pond of "girls" and the unintended viewing of a coupling in the countryside, in the village of Black Swan Green (a village where there are no swans, black or otherwise).

Jason is addicted to contractions the like of which, the extent of which, I have not seen before. We go way beyond "could've" into "...our marines'll..." and "...with any luck, my strategy'd clear some spaces..." and "..the talk'd shifted..." and so much more. The contractions alone had me laughing right from the first page.

Jason, like so many adolescent boys (and girls), struggles most of all to fit in. He hides his propensity for writing poetry, turning in poems to a local magazine under a pseudonym, which later leads to his making strange and secret visits to an elderly woman living in the vicar's quarters, who offers advice about life - and poetry - that ultimately Jason takes to heart. Jason gets sorted this way and that from his mates, from bullies, from teachers and his parents, as he tries to find his place, and somehow emerges a little wiser and ready to be fourteen.

At first I found the book simply funny, and that was enough. Over time, though, I was won over by the compassion and sense of realness Mitchell gives to his hero. It's a lovely slice of England. And of adolescence.

After This, by Alice McDermott

After This is a beautifully written book. It begins and ends in a church, and takes us from the marriage of Mary, a 30-year-old woman, through the birth and growth to adulthood of the four children she has with her husband John. The working-class family lives on Long Island during the middle-to-late decades of the twentieth century, riding out the storms of change in the culture, their lives, and in their church.

Although religion is a big part of their lives, I wouldn't call this a "religious" book. Rather, McDermott shows how the church and the family's beliefs affect - or do not affect - how they live. Mary in particular takes her church's teachings to heart, lighting candles during the two wars she experiences, attending mass regularly, insisting that the children attend Catholic school. We watch, too, as John lies in bed with a slipped disk, thinking of how his life might end, how it might not be as he had imagined, in bed, tended by a priest, but may be as unexpected as falling down dead in the street.

We see segments of each family member's life in vivid color, with light sketches in between phases. Thus we are treated to details of a dinner conversation or a night with a lover and then we may not hear much of that person until he or she is much older. Yet it works. I didn't feel cheated. Many of the moments are deeply moving by themselves, the more so because the moment is not over-labored.

I couldn't help comparing this book to a couple I read recently by Anne Tyler, both of which covered much of the same era in our history. Tyler's books seem, to me, more mocking, more like throwing a veil between the writer and the subjects, while After This is more intimate and touching.

And what is "after this"? From early on I suspected it was "after life". What then? After all that Mary and her family has done and gone through, what then?

The Collected Stories, by Amy Hempel

This book is Amy Hempel’s life work. Of course there is the odd story here and there that did not get in here but essentially this is it. In 404 pages she tells her own story in the form of short fiction, 49 stories in all. Most are shorter than most short fiction, one consisting of just one sentence and another just one page.

In this way, and in the language itself, these stories are much like poetry. All of them distill moments and thoughts economically, making much out of few words. Character is sketched in a phrase, and that’s all that is needed. Because of this depth it may take longer to read these seemingly simple stories than you might expect.

The elements also repeat themselves in a way similar to the film “32 short films about Glenn Gould”. We read about the lover of an artist, an artist who perhaps has many lovers. We hear about time in an institution. We read about dogs and cemeteries. Not once but many times, slid in between lines or used as the whole, layers or whole pies. I am sure that these elements come from Hempel’s real life, although the incidents probably did not happen to her exactly as written. In their way, skewed or direct, they tell us about this writer and the way she sees. It’s a beautifully-written book, full of images and feelings.