I recently found myself in a friendly argument over the origins of the obesity epidemic. It (the argument, not the epidemic) started with a post on my Facebook page (scroll down to January 2), which itself came from this article on weight loss in the New York Times Magazine.

The argument was over how much of the rise in obesity can be attributed to genetics vs. environment. Anoop Balachandran, a fitness professional studying for his Ph.D. in exercise science, argues that it’s virtually all genetics, and makes his case on his blog in this post and this one. His biggest point is that the people who are obese today are the people who would’ve been obese anyway, and what we call an epidemic is a rise in their weight, not an overall fattening of the entire population.

No one in my position wants to accept genetics as the final answer. To paraphrase Lt. Aldo Raine, “We ain’t in the excuse-makin’ business. We in the killin’-fat business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’.”

In the past I’ve worked hard to show that genes are part of the problem (in this Men’s Fitness article from 2005 I’m on the record saying it’s 40 percent), but that environment and lifestyle choices still matter. And, for a variety of reasons, our environment has become substantially more fattening since the late 1970s.

For example, take a look at this picture of my siblings and me from the 1970s, and guess how many people in that photo have struggled with their weight. (The answer: five.) Now guess how many ended up obese. (Three.) What do you see in that photo that suggests any of those fit, tanned, and healthy-looking people will end up gaining substantial amounts of weight that they will subsequently struggle to lose? That’s my own family, where everyone played sports, everyone worked out, and everyone has gone through life with a higher-than-average concern about his or her personal health.

But here’s the wild card: Our father (as I’ve mentioned in almost every book and several magazine articles) was extremely fat for his generation. If he was in a room, chances are he was the fattest guy there. Our mom was the opposite: skinny and so focused on weight that several of us worry when our kids are within earshot. She’s said terrible things about some of them, including my son when he was a roly-poly infant whose entire diet consisted of breast milk. What were we supposed to do, deny him the left breast so he’d learn to settle for whatever he could get from the right?

As I said, five of my siblings have inherited my father’s predisposition to easy weight gain, while for two of us, weight control has been relatively easy. Was it all just the luck of the draw? Or was there a range of possibilities for each of us?

Thanks to this paper from a journal called Disease Models & Mechanisms, we have an answer. (Huge thanks to Mike Nelson for the heads-up.) The authors are an international who’s who of veteran weight-loss researchers. Their goal was to explain why conventional explanations of obesity, like the set-point theory, are flawed, and what might provide a more durable model.

If obesity is all or mostly a genetic phenomenon, then the set-point theory would explain it. We all have a weight and a body-fat percentage that our bodies want to maintain, and any challenge to that set point will trigger mechanisms that make weight loss impossible to sustain. There might be a small range — perhaps 5 to 10 percent of body weight — that we can control. The rest was genetically determined at conception, more or less.

The authors poke these holes in that argument:

Why are the most affluent members of poor societies, but the poorest members of affluent societies, most prone to obesity? Why are children who watch more TV most susceptible? Why do people gain weight in specific circumstances (college, marriage, or upon moving from Asia to the U.S.)? I love this quote:

If the set point changes in response to our social class, our marital status, or whether or not we watch TV, then it is not a ‘set’ point.

To replace set-point theory, the authors offer the dual intervention point model. Each of us has an upper and lower intervention point. Your body won’t allow your weight to sink below the latter, or rise above the former. The range between my floor and ceiling seems to be relatively small, which is why my weight rarely goes below my current 180 pounds or above 190. But for someone else, it might be huge.

To quote the authors:

Within the gap between upper and lower intervention points is the space where environmental effects on energy balance hold sway. … More broadly, the model can explain the obesity epidemic as a consequence of increased food supplies driving up food intake, while also explaining why only some people become overweight and obese in this obesogenic environment.

So how much of your weight is determined by genes? According to the authors, our current best guess is 65 percent. The rest depends on the life you live and the choices you make.

I love working out in December. The January newbies are long gone. Even the novices who work out with the gym’s trainers have mostly given up. It’s easy to get to the equipment I need, and to find space to use it. There’s an easy camaraderie among those of us who lift 52 weeks a year. Even if we don’t know each other by name, we know the woman to the left won’t try to step over the bar we’re about to lift off the floor, and the guy to the right won’t bump into the arm that’s pressing a 70-pound dumbbell.

But it’s January now, and January is different. January is when you see people you’ve never seen in your gym before, some of whom are there for the first time. Most of them will be gone by St. Patrick’s Day. Some won’t last to Valentine’s Day. The odds of any of them working out next to you in late December are too small to contemplate.

All the more reason to treat them with courtesy and respect, argues Robin Owens, a moderator at the menshealth.com fitness forum:

It’s trickier than it sounds. Gym culture is odd and mysterious to people who aren’t part of it. If you try to help someone, there’s a chance he’ll take it the wrong way, like you’re big-dogging him or pulling rank.

Besides, where do you begin to point out mistakes to someone who’s doing everything wrong? He’s using the wrong equipment, or blocking equipment she’s not using, or doing something distracting or inappropriate, or just wandering about cluelessly, forcing you to worry about her safety when you should be focused on your form.

That’s why I was struck by Robin’s advice. Most of us don’t consider ourselves to be part of any elite. We’re regular people with regular families, muddling along from month to month and year to year. But those of us who show up to lift the first Monday in January because we also showed up to lift the first Monday of every other month are the inner circle of gym culture. We’re the ones who wear the knurling off the barbells, and have the calluses to show for it. We’re the ones who use the weights on the bottom row of the dumbbell rack. And, without meaning to, we’re the ones who can make people feel even more lost and intimidated than they’d otherwise be.

We don’t have the power to turn January newbs into lifelong gym rats, like us. It’s not our job to teach them what we know. All we can do is go about our business. If someone’s paying attention and learning from our example, so much the better.

The first to come after you when you turn 50 is the AARP. Nonstop pressure to join, nonstop pressure to buy useless crap while you’re in, and nonstop pressure to rejoin when you quit because you’re sick of the AARP selling your address to every company that wants to make a quick buck off people who’re slipping into dementia. The second is the healthcare industry, which give you the full-court press for a colonoscopy.

I have nothing against diagnostic procedures in general, but I have a real problem with procedures that require an empty stomach. That’s why I minimize blood tests. I’m as concerned about my HDLs as the next guy; I just don’t want to have to fast 12 hours to get a reading.

A colonoscopy requires a full 24 hours without food, about 6 of which are spent on the toilet. Looking at the bright side, I figured I’d come out of it lighter, leaner, and totally not full of anything that would earn this post a PG-13 rating.

So here’s what happened as I went a day without food for the first time in my life when I wasn’t sick:

• I got hungry almost immediately, and stayed hungry the entire time. I never felt not hungry.
• I felt cold most of the day, until I realized I could drink chicken stock. A few cups of that warmed me up.
• I felt distracted and lethargic. I never got that burst of energy you’re supposed to get on a fast.
• I skipped my workout. I can’t train on an empty stomach.
• I drank so many fluids that I felt bloated.

I was allowed to drink clear liquids that have calories, so for the first time in memory I had apple juice and Gatorade. Since I never have sports drinks, I didn’t realize that 32 ounces of Gatorade has just 213 calories. Add in 3 cups of apple juice, and that’s another 350 calories. I don’t know how many calories are in the chicken stock, but I’m going to guess I got a week’s worth of sodium.

I wish I would’ve weighed myself before I started. Late in the day, when I was in full bloat, I weighed 195, which is 10 more than normal. This morning, fully depleted, I was at 184.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I reached the “lighter and leaner” goal. Maybe not a lot lighter, but this morning my stomach looked flatter than it has in months.

I’d also be lying if I said it was anything short of a miserable experience. I’ve been eating 4 to 6 small meals a day for so long that my body and brain just don’t function without them.

I understand my 24 hours of nutritional hell wasn’t an actual fast; I never went more than a few hours without some calories, and the 600 calories’ worth of carbs, without any protein or fat, is among the worst meal plans imaginable for a health-conscious person.

As soon as I got my release from the butt-probing center, Kimberly and I went to Perkins for a refeed. It was hard to sit up at first — they pump you full of air during the procedure, and it’s up to you to deflate on your own schedule — but once I got used to it I was able to put away an omelet, 2 pieces of toast, a glass of orange juice, and one of Kimberly’s pancakes. (They’re even better than I remember, and as soon as I had one I wanted the rest … which is why I stopped eating them in the first place.)

I’m back to my small-meals-throughout-the-day plan. It may not work perfectly, but it sure beats the alternative.

I first heard about intermittent fasting a few years ago, while interviewing a nutrition researcher for a magazine article that never ran. The article was about the cleansing craze, particularly the crazy idea that we’re loaded with toxins that can only be purged with prolonged administration of juices and enemas.

The researcher noted in passing that her preliminary studies of intermittent fasting showed promise. I filed the information away but didn’t pursue it. I’ve been recommending four to six small meals a day for as long as I’ve been writing books. If fasting works better, I have a lot of backtracking to do.

All of which is a long way of introducing Experiments with Intermittent Fasting, a new, free book by John Berardi, Krista Scott-Dixon, and Nate Green of Precision Nutrition. I’m about halfway through, and my overwhelming thought is that I’m glad John tested all these diets so I don’t have to.

John’s biggest, most relatable point is this: Weight loss depends on your ability to create an energy deficit. There are lots of ways to do it. The more overweight you are, the more options you have. But John wasn’t overweight when he started his fasting experiments. He was a very solid 190, with 10 percent body fat. His goal was to get down to 170 to compete in master’s-level track.

If you’ve ever been in a room with John, you know you’re in the presence of a physically superior being. There’s a combination of genes, training, and discipline that maybe occur in 0.01 percent of humans. He’s a truly nice guy, so you don’t hold it against him, but you sure wouldn’t want to put yourself in a position where you’re compared. You’d lose, and it wouldn’t be close. Taking 20 pounds off a physique like that calls for something beyond “eat less and exercise more.”

You can jump right to the end and see how it worked. (Executive summary: “really damned well,” as you can see from the photos above.) But that’s only half the story, and not even the most interesting half. Throughout the book, John, Krista, and Nate give lots of reasons why fasting may not be a good idea for you. I especially like this passage from Chapter 4:

I know it’s gratifying to think: “I’m gonna do my research, learn everything I can, adopt the perfect plan, and then I’ll crush this.” But that’s just your ego talking. And its eyes are much bigger than its stomach.

Under these conditions, people rarely ever crush it. Instead, here’s how it usually plays out:

You waste a lot of time reading books and “researching” on the internet. You’re looking for the perfect program and after precious days, weeks, months of inaction, you finally find it. Hurray!

You create a massive, all-encompassing, awe-inspiring action plan and begin to implement it. Out of the gate, you’re a total champ. You’re 100% disciplined and committed. Nothing can stand in your way. Cue the Rocky training montage.

After a few weeks, maybe a month, you notice tension developing. At work, at home, in your relationships – something’s happening. You’re having trouble sticking to the program you created. You lower your head and tell yourself, “It’s just for a little longer.”

By now, you’re either panicking or have succumbed to apathy. Your self-talk is on the decline. “I guess I’m not cut out for this. Maybe other people can do it, but they must not have a life. Me, I’ve got a job, a family, responsibilities. This is impossible.”

You can’t figure out what’s going wrong. Eventually, something’s got to give. The quest ends prematurely. (Or, in some radical cases, it doesn’t end, and you end up jobless and homeless, living in an old VW bus in Santa Monica, California.)

The sad truth is that it never had to happen this way. If you had taken the smallest, simplest action step available to you – even if it wasn’t the “perfect” one – you could have built some positive momentum. You could have built this new change into your life.

That applies to everything we do in the fitness biz. If you aren’t training at all, it’s better to start training now, rather than wait for the perfect program.  You don’t have to wait for the perfect meal plan to start eating better. You can do that now. My favorite emails from readers are the ones that tell me they look forward to starting the program in the latest book, as soon as they finish the program they’re on now.

So what about you? Have you tried fasting? If so, did it work better than something else? Worse? About the same?

“The New Science of Weight Loss” (Men’s Health, January-February 2004) was among my first attempts to explain why almost everything we think we know about weight control is probably wrong.

“The All-Star Diet” (Men’s Health, October 2010) is a much more straightforward look at sports nutrition, focusing on the things we know that are pretty clearly correct.

“13 Ways to Maintain Your Weight Loss” (Men’s Health, May 2011) is one of my all-time-favorite short magazine articles. It focuses on the issue of weight-loss maintenance, which involves a different approach from whatever you did to lose the weight originally.

These somewhat recent blog posts were popular with readers and got some interesting responses:

“Running for Weight Loss: Does It Ever Work?”

“Weight Loss in the Age of Magic”

“Nutrition: What Do We Know, and How Do We Know It?”

“Weight Loss, Part 1: Flab Management Made Easy”

“Weight Loss, Part 2: When the Weight Is There for a Reason”

“Weight Loss, Part 3: You Can’t Always Be Closing“

“Death by Exercise” (Men’s Health, July-August 2003) was part of a package of articles that won the 2004 National Magazine Award in the Personal Service category.

“How to Reach Your Max” (Men’s Health, September 2011) looks at the brutal process of pushing your body as far as it can go. After “Death by Exercise,” it’s probably my second-favorite fitness article in nearly 20 years of writing about the subject.

“The New Rules for Sculpting Abs” (The Santa Clarita Signal, January 20, 2011) is a profile of my coauthor, Alwyn Cosgrove, for his local newspaper. And, of course, it’s a blatant plug for NROL for Abs, which had just been published. I include it here because, even though I started out in newspapers, I can’t remember the last time I actually published an article in one.

Many of my blog posts cover training issues; there are far too many to list here. But I’ve always been proud of two articles I wrote early in my tenure at Men’s Health that don’t fit neatly into any particular category.

“Seeing Is Believing” (Men’s Health, November 1998) is the story of my LASIK eye surgery, which allowed me to see without glasses for the first time since third grade.

“A New Fix for Old Injuries” (Men’s Health, November 1999) is the less dramatic story of getting ART treatment on a bum shoulder that I originally injured playing high school football back in 1972. (It was the first tackle I ever made.) At the time, just being able to use my shoulder again without fear of it dislocating felt like a miracle.

“The Juice Is Loose” (Men’s Fitness, March 2005) jumped off from Barry Bonds’ desecration of baseball’s record book, and offered some harsh truth about the influence of PEDs in professional sports.

“The Amazing Transformation of Tim Collins” (Menshealth.com, April 4, 2011) is the antithesis of the Bonds story. It’s about a little guy who worked his way to the top, defying expectations every step of the way.

Some blog posts I enjoyed writing:

“How to Fix Baseball” offers one man’s solutions to some of the nagging problems of his favorite sport. The big one: use the DH in both leagues. As a lifelong National League fan, it took me a long time to come around to this view.

“Youth and Sports: America’s Blind Side?” asks if we put too much emphasis on the games our kids play.

“In Praise of Minor League Baseball” combines two obsessions: baseball and movies about baseball.

“A Not-So-Super Story” tells the story of Steve Little, a placekicker for the NFL Cardinals, back when they were still in St. Louis. The night he got cut from the Cardinals — a big deal, since he had been a first-round draft pick — Little drank with my coworkers and me at a bar downtown. He wrecked his car on the way home and would spend the rest of his short life in a wheelchair. It’s one of my most-read blog posts ever.

“Stupid Elite Athletes” is a two-for-one special: I reveal the secrets of service journalism while also railing on journalists for getting the story of PEDs wrong more often than not.

“10 Most Influential Muscleheads” (T-nation, December 20, 2006) was a response to the Atlantic Monthly‘s list of the 100 most influential Americans. It ranked the 10 figures who most influenced the way we train, or the fact that we train at all. The article itself was just my opinion, and in the comments, you’ll see some terrific responses.

“Testosterone Muscle: The 10-year Anniversary” (T-nation, December 2, 2008) is a different kind of history article. I had joined the staff of T-nation a few months before (they changed the name to Testosterone Muscle early in my tenure, before changing it back), and wondered why they hadn’t celebrated 10 years of continuous publication — a rarity for any contemporary magazine, on- or offline. Since I’d been an avid reader since the beginning, I figured I was in good position to explain its influence.

Many of my blog posts over the years have touched on my fascination with history. A few examples:

“Who Was America’s Fittest President?” looks at presidents from Washington to Obama.

“Happy Lupercalia!” goes a bit deeper into history, looking at the origins of Valentine’s Day.

“… and He Has his Father’s Occipital Bun” goes even deeper into history, reflecting my occasional fascination with Neanderthals and the role they did or didn’t play in human evolution.

I like to think that some of my best and most personal work appeared in print in the pre-Internet days, and now gathers mold in the archives. But I’m sure some of my worst work is in those same boxes and file cabinets, and I dig that stuff out at my own peril.

Here are some of my Internet-era magazine articles about my family and me:

“Daddy’s Little Helper” (Men’s Health, April 2001) detailed my discovery that I have ADHD.

“Lost Boys” (Men’s Health, September 2004) looked at the sudden rise in autism, including my son’s diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. It’s always been one of my favorite articles, mostly because it’s so personal, but also because I was appropriately skeptical about the idea that children’s vaccines cause autism. The autism-vaccine link would soon reach the mainstream media, and even today has currency in some circles. But the research refuting the link has only gotten stronger, and I’m happy to have gotten it right from the beginning.

“Third Time’s a Charmer” (Fit Pregnancy, June-July 2005)  is a Valentine to our third child, Annie, the only person in our household without a diagnosis.

“Not-So-Great Expectations” (Fit Pregnancy, December-January 2007) riffs on my lifelong sports anxiety, and how surprised I was to discover that our middle child, Meredith, was pretty good at them without having any real passion for them.

Some of my favorite posts about family life:

“Lifting While Old” isn’t about my family, but has a fun picture of me with hair.

“Sports, Spelling, and Genes” begins and ends with a story about Meredith at her middle school spelling bee.

“In Praise of Mediocre Parenting” defends our decision not to tiger-mother our kids.

“Coach Your Way to Fitness” is a flimsy excuse to talk about coaching Meredith’s soccer team. “Coachzilla!” covers some of the same territory. This post has yet another look at youth soccer, this time from my perspective as a dad watching from the sideline.

“Things Break,” about an unexpected trip to the emergency room, is among my personal favorites.

“Nuts, Cracked” reveals that the solution to any problem is to watch your daughter dance in The Nutcracker.

Finally, there’s this one, about turning 50 and renewing my vow to not be anything like my father.

Conference season ended with a bang.

After The Fitness Summit in May and Perform Better in early June, I wasn’t sure what to expect at the International Society of Sports Nutrition conference in Las Vegas last weekend. I knew I’d get to hang out with the smartest people I know — you can’t spit at ISSN without hitting a Ph.D, M.D., or doctoral candidate — but I wasn’t sure how much I’d get out of it. In previous years some of the presentations have been way over this bald head of mine.

Lucky for me that I got to eat some bugs.

Daniella Martin, host of a show called Girl Meets Bug, gave a presentation on the case for eating more insects. Some of them are seriously high in protein and calcium, and in some parts of the world people derived much of their daily nutrition from bugs. Daniella focused on Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire, which was built on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. In a couple hours a guy could catch enough bugs to feed not only his family, but his neighbors as well.

The lecture was followed by a quick cooking demo, which was followed by a bug buffet. I got to try some toasted insect larvae spinkled over strawberry yogurt and sauteed cricket with salsa on a corn chip. Both were tasty (as you can guess from the photo), which was no surprise; just about anything tastes good when you cook it with garlic, olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt.

The familiar taste was a feature, not a bug. (Give me a break on the pun. It’s Monday morning, and I’m still recovering from a Saturday night redeye from Vegas.)

If all I’d gotten out of the conference was a few minutes as a bug-eatin’ moron, I’d probably have enjoyed it. Fortunately for me, the conference was a 48-hour educational experience. Just about every waking hour, I was either listening to a lecture or chatting with people I typically only speak with when I’m interviewing them for an article.

After the final lecture of the conference, late on Saturday afternoon, I found myself in the back of the lecture hall in a wide-ranging conversation with Lonnie Lowery, Jayson Hunter, and Mike Nelson. Lonnie is a combination nutrition professor-bodybuilder and host of the Iron Radio podcast. Jayson is research and development direction for Prograde Nutrition. Mike is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota who’s also a personal trainer with a background in engineering.

We sat back there for an hour, shooting the shit about everything from obesity to epigenetics to alcohol and diabetes. I had to stop them every now and then to get help on an acronym (IRB = Internal Review Board, the group that approves a university-sponsored study involving human subjects), but otherwise it was a rare experience for a journalist. Usually people like me call people like them to ask specific, closed-ended question. This was a chance to hear what people who study nutrition talk about when no one sets the agenda.

The oddity of it only occurred to me when I sat down this morning to go through my notes. It was Saturday evening, the end of a two-day conference jam-packed with scientific and practical presentations. More to the point, it was Saturday night in Las Vegas. And there we were, sitting in an empty lecture hall, eating protein bars and talking about how many millions of Americans have Syndrome X, the clusterfuck of mostly self-induced metabolic deviations that lead to type 2 diabetes.

Sometimes, for the good of all of us, what happens in Vegas really shouldn’t stay in Vegas.