Sunday Confessional

My lovely sisters gave me publishing rights on this blog and I never post anything. Until now.  I don't post things as this is not my preferred method of encouraging myself to be more healthy.  However something that does speak to me is Mathematics.  I recently read an article that mathematically explains the issue of obesity today.  Being an applied mathematician I found this article fascinating.  I would draw your attention to some of his ending remarks:

Any practical advice from your number crunching?

One of the things the numbers have shown us is that weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. All diets work. But the reaction time is really slow: on the order of a year. 

People don’t wait long enough to see what they are going to stabilize at. So if you drop weight and return to your old eating habits, the time it takes to crawl back to your old weight is something like three years. To help people understand this better, we’ve posted an interactive version of our model at bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov. People can plug in their information and learn how much they’ll need to reduce their intake and increase their activity to lose. It will also give them a rough sense of how much time it will take to reach the goal. Applied mathematics in action!

Article from the NY Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html

The simulation is interesting and not too complicated to use so try it out.  And remember you are using a beautiful thing called mathematics.

On a less serious note I've had a song stuck in my head almost all weekend.  The chorus says "My body tells me no, but I won't quit 'cause I want more."  It makes me think of my delicious pasta salad I made this weekend. I guess I'll have to dance around to the song a few more times to burn off those extra calories.