Daily Archives: April 9, 2008

Diet and Exercise

If you’ve ever had a weight problem the title of this post might be the full extent of the advise you got from your doctor:

“Mr. Gordon, you’re overweight. For the sake of your health, you should drop some pounds.”

“Agreed. Any suggestions on how to do that?”

“Sure. Watch what you eat and get more exercise.”

I’ve had nearly that exact conversation three times with three different doctors in the last 15 years. They say, “diet and exercise” and smile as if they’ve revealed some great secret.

To be fair to doctors in general I should mention that Phil has had a different medical experience. Last year he lost weight under a doctor’s supervision. He chronicled that experience here at The Speculist.

And to be fair to my doctors specifically, “diet and exercise” isn’t bad advise. Certainly, getting bad advise is a possibility. Doctors could prescribe amphetamines or (in the recent past) the heart-damaging drug Fen-Phen. They could also recommend surgery that for most is not a good idea.

Of course most adults know that diet and exercise is the best way to lose weight. And yet we’re fat. If “diet and exercise” was all the information we needed, there wouldn’t be an obesity epidemic in this country. The problem is that not every diet and exercise program is equal. So, what works best?

What follows is my best answer.

The Tower Lions

toweroflondon.jpg

At some point between the reign of Edward I (1272-1307) and and that of Richard II (1377-1399), two lions lived in the Tower of London. They were part of a Royal Menagerie that was kept at the Tower for some 600 years, until the animals were moved to the London Zoo in the 19th century. There are a couple of reasons that these medieval lions are particularly interesting. First, they were part of a population of Barbary lions — a north African lion subspecies known for their long, dark manes which has been extinct in the wild since the 20th century. And second, their skulls were recovered during an excavation at the tower’s moat in the 1930′s.

lionskulls.jpg

These skulls have recently been subject to carbon dating, which identified them as coming from the era mentioned above, as well as genetic testing, which may prove to be of great benefit to some lions in the future.