Friday, February 7, 2014
Wild
I just
finished reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I liked it, but found it a little hard to get into her story when I didn't really like her as a person. Not the point. In it she
mentions that in general, men lose more weight hiking the Pacific Crest Trail than women: “I’d lost
weight too, just not as much as the men – an unjust pattern I’d observed across
the board in the other male and female hikers I’d met.” This is the
same general pattern that happens in the Peace Corps: men tend to loose weight
while women tend to gain weight. This is simply not fair, but sadly mostly true.
A couple of girls in my training class have gained over 10 pounds since
arriving in Guatemala while some of the boys are noticeably skinnier. I lost
weight in training (mainly because I was sick/having intestinal problems for
the majority of it). However, since then I have gotten back to where I was before I left.
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The weight gain for women vs. the loss for men in the PCG group is hard to explain, though it could just be a random quirk in a small group. The difference in weight loss for men and women hiking can just be a matter of size: A 6 foot 200 pound male who loses 5% drops 10 pounds. A 5'4" 120 pound women who loses in the same proportion sheds only 6 pounds. It also may have something to do with body fat variations in men and women. Do you think Strayed is being serious when she call it "unjust" or is the context that she is speaking tongue in cheek?
ReplyDeleteRelated to this, perhaps, the FDA this week admitted that men and woman have different body chemistry and metabolize drugs, for example, differently. The FDA now says that drug doses should be tailored for men and woman.
Do you think the guys are counting their tortillas more accurately?
ReplyDelete