A History, Biology and Math Lesson

I am growing increasingly certain that weight gain and weight loss are hugely complex processes with deep physchological, emotional, and spiritual components. Who was the first idiot to distill it down to the simplistic formula of calories in/calories out? Even on a purely mathematical level, it belies the intricacy of the human body. For example, the proponents of calories in/calories out would say that if you eat 1500 calories in food, you need to expend more than 1500 calories to lose weight.

But what about the body's capacity under deprivation conditions to become MUCH more efficient at energy conservation? (An ingenious biological mechanism, incidentally, that served our hunter/gatherer ancestors during times of famine to survive.)

The weanies whose bodies followed the calories in/calories out gurus of the Pleistocene Era (I made that name up... so if my historical knowledge of pre-civilization eras is inaccurate, I just want to say: Why in the heck do you have useless trivia like that cluttering your brain?)... where was I before going off on that rabbit trail?... ahh, yes, the weanies... the weanies died off. And their genetic material died with them. Without a mechanism to eek super-efficiency from the meager fare available during winters or droughts, they simply devolved off the biological landscape. Damn. I would LOVE to have some of THAT genetic ancestry in my double helix.

Instead, my ancestors seem to be the ROCK STARS of survival. I can picture my
Great-Great-Great (and so on, but I'm too lazy to type "Great" 7683 times)Grandmother greeting her hairy man (my great, great, great... Grandfather) as he returned home from a hunting expedition: "Honey, any man can bring home a wooly mammoth to his family. It takes special cunning and prowess to kill a vole. Why I can take that little ol' vole, a turnip, and a handful of herbs and we'll eat like (insert something here... they didn't have Kings and Queens back then, but you get the idea).

And, so they would add a little liquid each day to the stewpot (which was really the convex clavicle of the wooly mammoth her ferocious hunter brought down the previous winter when times were better)and they lived for 67 days, quite nicely, thank you very much, on 27 calories a day.

I lament that that my family's genetic code hasn't undergone a spontaneous mutation in the ensuing generations. Would that a cystocine replaced a guanine somewhere during transcription (that instead coded for burning 2000 calories for every 1000 consumed, instead of burning 57 for every 1000 consumed).
Genetecist Readers: Pipe down. I know I'm butchering the little bit of freshman year genetics that still rattles around in the cobwebby recesses of my brain. Do you really have to be so pedantic and let everybody know they aren't as smart as you! sheesh.)

And so, I'll go happily about my day today, consuming my 800-1000 daily calories in Medifast meals which should yield 2-5 pounds lost per week (according to their literature)(Wah! I WANT THOSE ANCESTORS!) and I'll content myself with the 0.2 pounds each week and be satisfied that 38 years from now at 87 years of age, I am gonna be one svelte, healthy and sexy old broad when I finally triumph over thousands of years of survival genetics. Mathematicians: For Pete's sake. These aren't real calculations. They were illustrations... do you people have to take everything so literally? sheesh