Latest Alleged Key to Thinness: Fidgeting

Oh, pul-leaze!

I'd have answered this post sooner, but I was picking at a scab.

"Valuable exercise"??? Maybe I'd be even fatter if I didn't fidget so much.

I had heard that before, and as I am rather fidgety, I assumed that I would be even fatter if I didn't. I had read about this in the context of trying to get people to gain weight and finding they fidgeted enough to burn off the extra calories. It was actually mentioned, I believe, in Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin. And in Fat Politics the author actually made the case that some people are naturally more langorous and they happen to be fatter. Or some such thing.

I am not fidgety necessarily, but I tend to rock back and forth a lot, especially after eating. I only recently noticed that my rocking tended to be be post-prandial. If I am having trouble sitting still, I end up contracting muscles and doing isometric exercises. Sometimes I have legs that are so restless that it is hard to sit and I find the tensing and relaxing helps. In church I manage to sit still but I do different little exercises while I'm sitting there. Plus I twiddle my thumbs I happened to look around the choir loft one Sunday and found about half the people were fidgeting one way or another, bouncing their legs, moving their hands, some sort of movement. And about half of them were fat.

This is simply stupid.
I'm the most fidgety person I know, to the extent that I always sit in the back row for our temple services, and some of my friends refuse to sit near me because I distract them!

Is grasping at straws another form of "exercise" that keeps people thin? If so, maybe THAT'S the real difference...

Or maybe it's jumping to conclusions....

Or running to the latest fads...

I can't sit still to save my life. It's one reason I'm exceptionally bad at watching television.

But I do think the term "diet-induced obesity" is really interesting. Because, for a lot of people, it might be quite accurate. If someone who is trying to lose a few pounds gains those pounds back plus a few more and repeats the cycle enough.... Diet-induced obesity. I was put on my first diet when I was 7, and I am intimately familiar with the cycle of loss and regain and the term really kind of speaks to me. Of course, the context is bullshit since, as several other people have mentioned, fat people fidget, too.

As always with these "we've found the gene!" moments, I'm left with the question of what, exactly, do these people plan to do with this information, assuming it's even remotely accurate? I daresay pharmaceutical companies are drooling all over themselves trying to figure out how to switch off this gene or eradicating this other gene. And who cares if, after taking the resulting concoction, we all have to travel with several pairs of underwear "just in case" or our heart valves take an unscheduled detour or we can't eat anything more solid than air. We'll be thin and they'll be richer than they were to start with, so it's a win-win situation, really.

I foresee lobotomies on offer to save us from our fat selves in the future.

I've heard about this before; there was an article about it somewhere, but I don't remember where I found it. I still think it sounds like the people who came up with this theory have way too much time on their hands—no pun intended!

so THAT's why I'm fat, eh? I'll blame in on the nuns in my parochial school that used to constantly yell at me, "STOP THAT FIDGETING!" lol...

There are plenty of fat fidgeters and fatties toing and froing.

They just start off with the premise that they must know better and off they go.....

I've also heard this before. It's totally ridiculous, along with some other winners for weight loss tips. My (not!) favorites:
Park further away from the store (so you walk a few more steps!)
Eat a lot of fiber (so you get filled up!)
Drink a lot of water and always drink water before a meal (ditto)
Stop before your'e full (because you are so going to know that)
Spied just the other day: brush your teeth! (Because that icky post-toothpaste taste just kills the flavor. Hey! Why not walk around eating a tube of toothpaste all day!)
Don't eat standing up (even if you're dutifully fidgeting?)
Put fork down between bites (uhh...who uses a fork? Just kidding!)
Post motivational photos on fridge (In all sincerity: Noooo! That is the single most destructive thing you can do to yourself. Why, why this promotion of self-hatred?)
What it boils down to: Be "good." Be "better" than others by rigidly controlling your life and punishing yourself for any lapses. Ugh.
Now, I've got to stop fidgeting so I can post this.

I only fidget when I'm premenstrual and having problems with anxiety. Maybe I'm wrong but most of the "fidgeters" I know are anxious people too.

So, if they develop a fidgeting-promotion drug (to make us all lose weight), does that mean it will have the side effect of anxiety?

Been there, done that (not every month but about every third month), really don't need the t-shirt.

I'll take being fat, thanks.

I have fidgited since I was classified as hyperactive when I was a kid, it never stopped me from being "overweight". As a matter of fact, no amount of exercise has ever made any difference in my weight...only starvation diets ever worked, and by the time I ever reached a "healthy" weight, they left me feeling tired and foggy-headed.

Fidgeting cannot be "valuable exercise." The value in aerobic movement comes from the sustained movement of large muscle groups which allows for an increase in oxygen intake, which pushes the heart and lungs to work harder and become stronger, along with the muscle groups that are working. In anaerobic movement, the effort exerted is too intense to be fueled by oxygen, so the body relies on stores of glycogen in addition to oxygen to fuel the effort. Fidgeting is neither sustained at an aerobic level, or intense at an anaerobic level.

My guess is that fidgeting is a low level release of energy, which some people have a need to do more than otheres. There's nothing wrong with it. But for fidgeting to be labeled beneficial as an exercise doesn't make much sense to me.

The first time I heard of it, Tony Randall's "Felix Unger" was used as the example.

well, actually, this isn't ridiculous. One study I've quoted before that was a locked-ward study in, I think, Canada, that followed something like 20 fat women (200 pounds) and 20 thin women (120 pounds) for a month found that::

the self-selected calorie intake was the same between the two groups
the self-selected exercise time was the same
no body weights had changed by the end of the month

and the ONLY difference the researchers found, observing the women 24 hours a day, was that thin women fidgeted more. But in no sense were the calories burned through fidgeting responsible for a 80-pound weight difference (in the old, wrong, 3500 calories equals a pound theory). There aren't that many fidgeting hours in a day.. They thought it was interesting but didn't suggest any sort of causation.

There may BE a "fidgeting gene" that is associated with one "thinness gene." But like thinness, if you don't have fidgeting, there's no instruction to take from this. It'd be like finding that, oh, redheads tended to be thinner. So what? If I dye my hair red, will I wake up 80 pounds lighter? Don't think so.

And no, sorry, I have no idea where I read about or heard of that locked-ward study, though it may have been in The Famine Within, a good film on eating disorders in women. (IF not, it was something I read about the same time the movie came out.)

So what's "valuable" about the exercise these guys say I get from fidgeting? I'm healthier because I tap my fingers on the table and tap my heels and toes on the floor while I'm sitting and shift my weight around when I'm standing still? Exactly what benefit am I deriving here?
I distrust doctors because of this type of bogus science. As well we all should. Does it all boil down to our deification of the medical profession? Reminds me of the movie "The Loved One," which had a character who went out and bought everything the TV ads told her to.
People complain about the changeability of public statements from the medical profession. Eggs are good, eggs are bad, hormone replacement therapy is good, then it's bad, then it's good again. So confusing when you want to do everything the doctors tell you to do and they keep changing their minds. When the so-called medical authorities finally appear to agree on something--such as that body fat is a killer--people can at least rally around that with confidence. Right? Right? Come on, fat people. Let's get with the program and go jump off a cliff and make everyone else feel better. Or at least get on a "sensible" diet (oxymoron) and lose that weight and never gain it back and become poster children for how to live well.

Or, we can go about the business of living our own lives as we choose to.