Background:I’m wearing a weighted vest to simulate the feeling of 50 pounds (23 kg) of weight gain and loss. The plan is to wear this vest for about 20 days, for as much of the day as is practical. I started with zero weight, and will increase it in 5 pound (~2 kg) increments daily to 50 pounds, then decrease it by 5 pounds daily until I’m back to zero weight.
So far, the main challenge of this experiment has been social. The weighted vest looks like a bulletproof vest, and I’m a 6′ tall white guy with a buzzcut. My girlfriend laughed just imagining what I must look like (we have a long-distance relationship, so she hasn’t seen me wearing it). My housemate’s girlfriend gasped when I walked in through the door.
As much as I’d like to wear this continuously as planned, I just don’t know if I it will work to wear this to the lab or to classes in my graduate school. If the only problem was scaring people, I could mitigate that by emailing my fellow students and the lab and telling them what I’m doing and why. However, I’m also in the early days of setting up my MS thesis research in a big, professional lab that has invested a lot of time and money into my experiment. I fear that I would come across as distracted, and that this would undermine my standing in the lab.
Today, I’m going to try wearing a thin elastic mountain-climbing hoodie over the weighted vest. This might make it look like I have some sort of a bomb strapped underneath my shirt, but it doesn’t seem as immediately startling to look at.
Other things I’ve noticed:
The vest makes you hot, not just heavy.
It does restrict your breathing somewhat, because the weight is squeezing in on your ribcage.
The weight creates backaches and shoulder aches where I don’t usually experience them.
I tried wearing the fully-loaded vest when it first arrived, and it feels significantly less difficult carrying 50 pounds on the vest than it does carrying 50 pounds in your hands.
One of the psychological sensations I wasn’t expecting, but that seems relevant, is the displeasure I get in putting it on. I see this as somewhat analogous to how a person who weighs more than they’d like to might feel on a bad day looking at their body in the mirror. The sense that you don’t get to look or feel the way you’d like to seems like an important part of the experiment.
Overall, these early impressions make me think that the weighted vest exaggerates the discomfort of weight gain. However, I think it is still a useful complement to the scientific knowledge and anecdotes that people share about the effects of weight gain and loss. It makes it visceral.
I also think that the weighted vest offers an experience similar to a chronic illness. When you get the flu, you can usually receive some accommodations on the expectation that you’ll be better soon. Chronic health conditions may require you to curtail your long-term ambitions due to the constant negative impact they have on your capacity to work. Wearing a weighted vest is similar. It makes you have an experience of “how would it affect your capacity to work if you were more physically burdened for the long term?”
Perhaps it’s a little like becoming poorer or less free.
In response to this, I notice my brain becoming more interested in taking control of this aspect of my health. It provokes a “never again” sort of response.
There are many ascetic practices that involve self-inflicting states of discomfort in order to create a spiritual benefit. This seems to be getting into that territory. One of the differences is that these spiritual practices are often done communally, and the suffering is given meaning through the spiritual practice.
By contrast, our materialistic culture emphatically does not imbue obesity or other physical and mental health challenges with spiritual significance. This experiment replicates part of that aspect: it singles me out as individually “worse” than other people, and the experience is basically meaningless on a social level. Indeed, worse than meaningless—I fear that I would be perceived as scaring my classmates and that I’d irritate my boss at the lab.
It seems useful on some level to put yourself through that experience. What if you were individually impacted by a health issue that simply made your life worse and led to other people treating you worse? Would you be angry at the world? Would you get depressed? Would you muster your powers to do anything you could to get better?
Simulated weight gain experiment, day 2
Background: I’m wearing a weighted vest to simulate the feeling of 50 pounds (23 kg) of weight gain and loss. The plan is to wear this vest for about 20 days, for as much of the day as is practical. I started with zero weight, and will increase it in 5 pound (~2 kg) increments daily to 50 pounds, then decrease it by 5 pounds daily until I’m back to zero weight.
So far, the main challenge of this experiment has been social. The weighted vest looks like a bulletproof vest, and I’m a 6′ tall white guy with a buzzcut. My girlfriend laughed just imagining what I must look like (we have a long-distance relationship, so she hasn’t seen me wearing it). My housemate’s girlfriend gasped when I walked in through the door.
As much as I’d like to wear this continuously as planned, I just don’t know if I it will work to wear this to the lab or to classes in my graduate school. If the only problem was scaring people, I could mitigate that by emailing my fellow students and the lab and telling them what I’m doing and why. However, I’m also in the early days of setting up my MS thesis research in a big, professional lab that has invested a lot of time and money into my experiment. I fear that I would come across as distracted, and that this would undermine my standing in the lab.
Today, I’m going to try wearing a thin elastic mountain-climbing hoodie over the weighted vest. This might make it look like I have some sort of a bomb strapped underneath my shirt, but it doesn’t seem as immediately startling to look at.
Other things I’ve noticed:
The vest makes you hot, not just heavy.
It does restrict your breathing somewhat, because the weight is squeezing in on your ribcage.
The weight creates backaches and shoulder aches where I don’t usually experience them.
I tried wearing the fully-loaded vest when it first arrived, and it feels significantly less difficult carrying 50 pounds on the vest than it does carrying 50 pounds in your hands.
One of the psychological sensations I wasn’t expecting, but that seems relevant, is the displeasure I get in putting it on. I see this as somewhat analogous to how a person who weighs more than they’d like to might feel on a bad day looking at their body in the mirror. The sense that you don’t get to look or feel the way you’d like to seems like an important part of the experiment.
Overall, these early impressions make me think that the weighted vest exaggerates the discomfort of weight gain. However, I think it is still a useful complement to the scientific knowledge and anecdotes that people share about the effects of weight gain and loss. It makes it visceral.
I also think that the weighted vest offers an experience similar to a chronic illness. When you get the flu, you can usually receive some accommodations on the expectation that you’ll be better soon. Chronic health conditions may require you to curtail your long-term ambitions due to the constant negative impact they have on your capacity to work. Wearing a weighted vest is similar. It makes you have an experience of “how would it affect your capacity to work if you were more physically burdened for the long term?”
Perhaps it’s a little like becoming poorer or less free.
In response to this, I notice my brain becoming more interested in taking control of this aspect of my health. It provokes a “never again” sort of response.
There are many ascetic practices that involve self-inflicting states of discomfort in order to create a spiritual benefit. This seems to be getting into that territory. One of the differences is that these spiritual practices are often done communally, and the suffering is given meaning through the spiritual practice.
By contrast, our materialistic culture emphatically does not imbue obesity or other physical and mental health challenges with spiritual significance. This experiment replicates part of that aspect: it singles me out as individually “worse” than other people, and the experience is basically meaningless on a social level. Indeed, worse than meaningless—I fear that I would be perceived as scaring my classmates and that I’d irritate my boss at the lab.
It seems useful on some level to put yourself through that experience. What if you were individually impacted by a health issue that simply made your life worse and led to other people treating you worse? Would you be angry at the world? Would you get depressed? Would you muster your powers to do anything you could to get better?