Strategic fat accumulation

[guitarplayer]

Anyone here ever thought about accumulating fat strategically? Maybe @theanimal when up in Alaska?

I have a friend (well I know him, we used to study at the same uni and hang out occasionally) who does expeditions of the type of cycling across Baikal (north to south, so the long way), and from what I remember he sometimes actively puts up weight in order to burn the fat while adventuring.

I wonder how this could be applied in other contexts.

[Dream of Freedom]

Well, bodybuilders cycle from bulking phases to cutting phases. Although the point isn't to put on fat the net effect of getting bigger is you put on fat. These people know this and plan to get bigger and take the fat off.

Intentionally putting on fat just seems risky to me though, because once you do it it's a challenge to take it off again.

[guitarplayer]

Yes I read about cycles of bodybuilders.

I see what you mean about taking fat off possibly being challenging, or this is definitely the mainstream vision of fat on body, that it is easy to put on and difficult to take off.

I am thinking, in the same way people nowadays do family planning, hence harnessing the biological impulses to procreate to fit their life plans, maybe it would be possible to do a sort of 'energy planning' with the most fundamental store of energy that is someones fat tissue and hence harness the biological impulses to put on weight.

I am trying to think of contexts when this would make sense, but so far they are mostly scenarios of severe food scarcity (like hunter gatherers or adventuring in Siberia in wintertime) or part of a plan of bodybuilding which you have mentioned.

Just a curiosity that popped up.

[Jean]

I always call my belly fat "strategic reserves", and describe my weigth by how far i could walk without food. Right now, it's about Minsk.
In practice, it allows to plan hikes, without taking extra food in case i take more time than planed.

[guitarplayer]

In practice, it allows to plan hikes, without taking extra food in case i take more time than planed.

I see what you mean with this. I wonder what's the variability of the psychological component of the act of eating or the psychological component of a food input to the stomach. When DW goes on a long run with me without any food eaten, her heart rate can easily start racing to over 90% MAX HR sometime after 10k and she cannot run anymore. It does not affect me this way, I can go and run a marathon, then eat afterwards.

[Dream of Freedom]

I guess if you had a reason to get to abnormally low body fat you would want to plan to raise it again. Too low of fat messes with your hormones. Men get low testosterone and women lose their periods. So maybe performers such as actors or dancers?

[Sclass]

A ways back I read an article interviewing some trainers for a special forces group.

They said they had a game where they’d make bets on the cadets order of dropping out. One thing they mentioned was the really muscular low body fat guys should have had a big sign on their back saying they’d drop out. They said odd things like “whoa he looks so good I’m sure he’ll drop out in a week.” Apparently the super fit looking cut cadets had trouble with the storage and release energy demands that the training schedule put on them. It was counterintuitive but those who looked like sculpted supermen were first to quit. They’d crash. Somehow it had to do with how your body was accustomed to storing and releasing energy on demand was out of sync with getting dropped in the ocean, forced to crawl long distances, run for miles etc. for days on end.

It was kind of counterintuitive because I remember seeing champion marathon runners who looked like stringy muscle over bone. I knew a triathlete with a lean build who looked like he could be in delta force but maybe he couldn’t keep the pace up for more than a single race. It may have to do with the duration of the camp that wears down a lean body type over several weeks.

[7Wannabe5]

Could be a good tactic if you want to break up with somebody, but you are afraid they might go stalker. OTOH, if you are fairly confident of most attractive disbursement of gained adiposity then might be useful for opposite strategy.

As personal survival strategy, limitation is rate at which body can make use of stored reserves. Humans have starved to death while still overweight. As multi-generational survival strategy, it works great and that is why most attractive disbursement is highly correlated with IQ of offspring and later menopause.

[Jean]

One thing they mentioned was the really muscular low body fat guys should have had a big sign on their back saying they’d drop out. They said odd things like “whoa he looks so good I’m sure he’ll drop out in a week.”

I can confirm this. When i did the special forces selection process, the fattest were the more at ease. No one was obese, but the lean ones either couldn't keep up with the pace and quit, or injured themselves.


@7w5
I imagine some condition could make one unable to use stored reserve (maybe if you eat so often that you never burn any fat), but from experience, a fast walking pace can be sustained by burning stored fat. A fast biking pace cannot. I'm currious about your source on fat people starving. I don't believe it is normal.

[guitarplayer]

@7w5 yes a bit what @Jean said about overweight people starving to death, this is pretty surprising for me to read!

@Sclass this intuitively makes sense to me.

Somehow what comes to my mind is this: if you try to largely detach your thinking from the social aspect of being skinny/ripped/overweight etc, as well as from all the multitude of stigma, opinions or dysfunctional reasons for anorexia or bulimia, and look at it from the energy point of view, then carrying around a few kilo of fat on you is analogous to carrying food in your rucksack or panniers, but more handy and without any packaging. So this can be seen as a resource, but it is not easy to unlock because does not burn as easy as carbs and is more suitable for moderate effort rather than excessive, what @Jean said.

But it could be used in a strategic way. The most straightforward would be what @Jean and @Sclass say about physical activities. But then I am thinking about people who are in flow, forget to eat and come up with a novel idea, or those who fast for several days and come up with some insights they would not have come up with otherwise. So basically along the lines of food being a distractor because consuming food consumes attention / makes one sleepy / hard to focus / etc. In such scenario, it could make sense to use some stored energy to be able to focus on something else of choice.

Like in ERE, some people 'work in bulk' in order to sort out the money issue so that they can concentrate on other stuff. Then some people cook in bulk in order not to cook too often so they can concentrate on other stuff. So continuing this train of logic eating itself can be also done in bulk, either once a day or eating more in a period of time and then less in another period of time, in order to concentrate on something else.

Surely there will be individual differences just like there are in, for example, people who work high paid job for a short time vs intermittent jobs, and other.

[7Wannabe5]

Obese humans only derive approximately 5% of their energy needs from muscle protein during starvation, as opposed to approximately 15% for lean humans. However, depending upon initial proportions, even 5% rate of muscle depletion towards energy needs can eventually lead to death prior to loss of all body fat, usually through weakening of heart function.

When bears are hibernating, they stop urinating and thus eliminate nitrogen loss.

[Jean]

So if I understand correctly, you'de need to be very fat, but very unmuscular (so basicaly immobile during your accumulation phase) for it to happen?

[white belt]

A few thoughts on this:

1. You are operating under the assumption that the body would utilize excess fat stores first in a caloric deficit situation. This is not necessarily the case and can be influenced by a number of variables including the severity of caloric deficit, the duration of the deficit, nutritional composition, activity level, and individual genetic makeup. The common nutritional recommendation for athletes who are aiming to lose body fat while maintaining lean body mass is to not exceed a rate of 1% of bodyweight lost per week. Going higher than that risks losing lean body mass as fast or faster than your fat stores. You will also see athletes in a deficit eating high quantities of protein in an effort to retain lean body mass.

2. I fail to see the practicality of this in anything but a crisis/survival situation. Your friend who gains fat to go on long bike rides also requires his body to expend more energy to move him since he is now heavier. He's also creating the perfect situation to lose lean body mass by combining low impact steady state cardio with a large deficit for days at a time.

3. Anecdotally, I've spent quite a bit of time in extreme military training situations including various forms of selective schools. I would not say bodyfat is an accurate predictor of success at all. I've seen many muscular guys who thrived in arduous conditions and I've also seen guys skinny as a rail who thrived in such situations. Every school is going to select for the specific traits it wants, but for a typical course with lots of endurance events (long ruck marches, etc), aerobic capacity and physical fitness is going to be much more critical than bodyfat percentage. I know of multiple people who tried the route of gaining fat before a specific course, and many of them were unsuccessful because rapid weight gain affects balance (important for obstacle courses), makes moving more difficult, and puts more stress on joints that are already under a lot of stress. Many of these courses are really selecting for mental toughness and resilience whereas the physical aspects can just be thought of as a baseline requirement.

4. Most people outside of the bodybuilding or serious athlete community are way off in their self-assessments of bodyfat. Unless you already have a well-defined six pack, you are not close to the point of being lean enough where it might start to affect hormonal and basic body functioning*. If you want an idea of what basic general population bodyfat percentages look like from the perspective of a professional coach, check out one of these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAM24s-inLs


*= this is a bit of an oversimplification because it is possible to have diet fatigue and completely throw your hormones out of wack by losing weight too quickly and/or for too long without having a period of maintenance to allow your body to reset.

[theanimal]

I have not employed this strategy and have been at or under 10% body fat for the past decade or so. I'd rather just use more clothes or wood. It's easier in both the short and long term (physically, financially and health wise).

There is a show called Alone where participants are dropped off individually with 10 items in wilderness locations. Last one out wins something like $500k. For most seasons, the winners have been those with the most fat to lose and were able to withstand longer periods because their body was able to feed off their reserves. The lone exception is one of the more recent seasons where the winner was able to kill a moose and live off of that.

It should also be noted that in many designed lifestyles it is almost impossible to put on excess weight. I eat clean and am active by necessity and choice everyday. It would be very difficult to accumulate additional fat unless I made changes to my life more towards the stereotypical sedentary urban person.

[Sclass]

I forgot all the details. Maybe the ocean swims put stress on smaller skinnier guys who lost heat faster. Or maybe they didn’t float as well. One of my friends went through (and quit) the training and said he was dropped out of a helicopter repeatedly off the California coast for swim training. It sounds pretty harsh and they don’t give you a lot of downtime to recover. I suspect they wear you down.

[C40]

I guess if you had a reason to get to abnormally low body fat you would want to plan to raise it again. Too low of fat messes with your hormones. Men get low testosterone and women lose their periods. So maybe performers such as actors or dancers?

In my personal experience, the supposed drawbacks of low bodyfat are far overblown. I felt the best in my life when my bodyfat was the lowest. IMO the problems likely only start at very extremely low levels, and pretty much no-one is getting that low except for some extreme cases, so it is not worth worrying about.

I do at times think that it is a reasonable idea to get a little fat 'now'.. and then lose it later. In reality, it hasn't made sense for any situations I've been in. Recently I was eating a lot of ice cream and getting fat, thinking that since i will soon be motorcycle touring and not cooking/eating well, I should just eat a bit less for simplicity and run a slight caloric deficit. Probably not worth the effort though as managing this effectively would be difficult unless I was in very good control of my eating details (which, I won't be)

[Dream of Freedom]

IMO the problems likely only start at very extremely low levels, and pretty much no-one is getting that low except for some extreme cases, so it is not worth worrying about.

In retrospect I should have used a stronger word than abnormal. I was just mentioning niche uses because I really don't see a use for ordinary people.

[Frita]

The connection that I have to this discussion is that it seems like fat storage for post-menopausal females. Nature has designed this into some of our human population already. Perhaps it’s handy if starved or giving others in the tribe food or only having access to low-calorie forage.

Based on managing this dynamic in my own body, I cannot imagine purposefully adding fat. I wonder what people living in or from developing countries (or certain segments of the industrialized nations’ populations, such as street people, mountain folk, etc.) think.

[ducknald_don]

I wonder how much weight hunter gatherers put on in good times and lost in lean times. My guess is not very much compared to the strategic reserves most modern people seem to accumulate.

[Gilberto de Piento]

The TV show Alone seems relevant here but I dont have any more specific thoughts about it.