Isn't this exactly what you would expect? If you drop say 25% of your body weight, would it not follow that your BMR would go down around 25% as well? You are now a smaller person, likely more healthy too, so your body just needs less energy than it did before.
Again, I'm just making up numbers and I'm sure the correlation is not linear, but I think it makes sense that your BMR would go down as you lose weight.
Yes, but as the article states, those metabolic rates are out of whack with the expected rate for their weights now.
I'd love to see some stats of the long-term history of a populace's BMI over time. If this is a biology thing, we shouldn't be getting fatter as a population, but it sure doesn't look like that's the case.
I pretty much blame it all on the food we have available these days. So much oversugared, process garbage. We don't have a chance.
Also, seems to me if you stop drinking your calories you'll have a hard time eating enough food to reach your caloric limits. Oversimplification, sure, but if people stuck to that one rule I think they'd be amazed at what they see, on average.
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There is a show on tv where the trainer gets fat and then works off the extra weight with the obese client. Kind of a way of supporting and understanding the difficulty of weight loss.
I bet 90 percent of the obese people re-gain the weight and the trainers maintain theirs. Cause both will be back to their own habits.
That article itself mentions these guys fighting temptations, eating a whole bag of chips etc. Not surprised they gain weight. But at the same time I can't discredit that study, there may be something to it.
I hope you guys did read the article, i know its one of those TLDR but your over simplification of the issue seems to suggest you didn't.
In your specific example having a trainer who's fit gain weight to then lose weight with someone who's been overweight for presumably some time, enough so that their metabolism is much lower than the trainer, a lack of a key hormone in the stomach, as well with any myriad of powerful urges and cravings built up over time of bad eating habbits... vs a fit trainer, well its just quite ridiculous. The only apt trainer to help understand what the person is going through is a trainer who was once obese, got fit and kept it off. I know of one such trainer in Iceland and he is an outstanding guy.
The comments people make, usually with good intent "calories in, calories out, easy" "lifestyle change not diet" are not helping our discourse. It hints or as often comes out people suggest the problem is with the person and their weak willpower, aka lazy people are simply to blame.
Ignoring the powerful effects of hormones, damaged metabolisms, sometimes genetic issues, and a host of psychological issues that often come part and parcel with obesity. Depression for example is very common among the obese, and its a double whammy for them as it drains them of energy to begin with, making it that much harder to get themselves going or to stick with changes they make.
When people make simplistic comments that don't take in to consideration of how complex this issue really is, and the immense struggle people face, its hard not to get frustrated as someone who actively tries to communicate what the reality of this all is. I just today had 2 interviews for 2 newspapers in Iceland about Biggest loser, fat shaming, etc.. One is an english language paper here, I'll be sure to share when it comes out.
But ultimately for obese to listen to people who have never had to deal with this difficult problem, feels like someone who has never had a drinking problem walking in to an AA meeting and lecturing them on how simple it is, just only drink a few beer and stop. That would be ludicrous, yet when it comes to obesity people are almost gleefully happy to make harsh judgments and tell people how they need to do it, while never having been in their shoes or clearly not understanding the incredibly hard road they are on.
Often its just empathy thats lacking, and certainly online and in society today that is in short supply.
I would never write this stuff anywhere but CP forums, and my own FB wall, because at least here most of the people I interact with are good, decent folk, whom I can disagree with but know they are not outright just trying to be cruel.
Changing how people view this epidemic will help a lot in our battle to turn things around, you would never shame people with a host of other afflictions, but when it comes to food and obesity its so often a point of jokes and insults. I see that changing, albeit slowly, even in Iceland which has a long tradition of people "speaking their minds."
__________________ Allskonar fyrir Aumingja!!
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I'd love to see some stats of the long-term history of a populace's BMI over time. If this is a biology thing, we shouldn't be getting fatter as a population, but it sure doesn't look like that's the case.
I pretty much blame it all on the food we have available these days. So much oversugared, process garbage. We don't have a chance.
Also, seems to me if you stop drinking your calories you'll have a hard time eating enough food to reach your caloric limits. Oversimplification, sure, but if people stuck to that one rule I think they'd be amazed at what they see, on average.
Well there are a bunch of docs you guys could check out if anyone is interested. But short version, we made a huge mistake in the late 80s with fat, the low fat, no fat movement was a horrible horrible mistake. This started us down the road with sugar and sweeteners taking over where fat was found in foods.
We are more sedentary, certainly, but the biggest culprits of the growing obesity rates world wide, are sugar, processed foods, and people with less free time to cook good meals. We have turned in to fast food nations, where quick food is all we have energy to do anymore, people are overworked, over-stressed, and quick and easy food which is often very bad for you becomes routine.
I HIGHLY recommend taking a look at this terrific doc on sugar and the changes in our food supply that are leading to more horrible outcomes. I think sugar will become the next big tobacco once people see the harm of what has been happening, Yoni Friedhoff was invited recently to speak at a Pepsi and Coke sponsored summit with Health Canada to discuss how to tackle obesity, their answer is move more dummy! Yoni loathes health Canada and regularly takes them to task.
If you guys can find a way to see this, its absolutely eye opening on the state of our food supply and the amount sugar has been incorporated in to more and more foods, many where you least suspect it.
I've gotten to know him a fair bit on FB, he's one of those 1 out of 1000 obese people who lost the weight and kept it off. I have a ton of admiration for the guy, the sheer amount of willpower and struggle he has to go through to have made it past 5 years is incredible.
I think its safe to say for him it was finding a passion for running, of which he does a lot, and that passion has to be a key factor keeping him healthy.
I honestly don't know enough about the subject, but is it the sudden weight loss that's largely to blame? Would a more sustained and gradual program cause the same results. At my heaviest I was 225 lbs and probably close to 25% BF. At my leanest I was 165 and around10-12% BF. Currently I'm sitting at around 173 and 14-16% BF. I've found from personal experience that crash dieting is just terrible but that I can get myself into pretty good shape if I exercise hard enough (two a day training) and mildly restrict my caloric intake, and that I only really start to gain weight if I gorge and stay sedentary. I'm not saying that there aren't biological factors at play. With my body type, getting into the sub 10% range is pretty much a pipe dream and I'm at peace with that but is there way for people to get into a range that's healthy compared to where they're at even if it's not what we would traditionally define as fit?
I sort of have very similar numbers- was around 230 about 4 years ago, lost 60 in the span of 6-7 months, and have thankfully kept it off since. I recall dieting at around 1700-2000 calories, but was incredibly active in that time, either at the gym or golfing almost every day and did not really cheat until it was done.
I think even the 10lbs/month I lost was way too fast, and would probably recommend a little slower with this new research into metabolic damage in mind. The diets some of these people are on are way crazier though- less than 1000/day plus working out... they are losing all kindz of gains.
Isn't this exactly what you would expect? If you drop say 25% of your body weight, would it not follow that your BMR would go down around 25% as well? You are now a smaller person, likely more healthy too, so your body just needs less energy than it did before.
Again, I'm just making up numbers and I'm sure the correlation is not linear, but I think it makes sense that your BMR would go down as you lose weight.
What is missing here is that if you want to keep a healthy metabolism going, weight or resistance training needs to be added to the mix. Muscle burns more calories than fat, and your body tends to burn calories post exercise repairing and rebuilding muscle tissue.
The stigma around weight lifting needs to be removed as well.
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What is missing here is that if you want to keep a healthy metabolism going, weight or resistance training needs to be added to the mix. Muscle burns more calories than fat, and your body tends to burn calories post exercise repairing and rebuilding muscle tissue.
The stigma around weight lifting needs to be removed as well.
Yeah, that was the biggest change for me. Thought it had to be all cardio all the time. My favorite analogy was that burning calories was like paying off debt, while building muscle was like building equity in a mortgage.
I might be wrong, but wouldn't the initial suggested caloric intake for very obese individuals, starting a reasonable diet, still be considerably high? Accustomed to consuming 5000 calories a day, but cut down to 3500-4000 sort of thing? I wouldn't think a doctor would suggest they immediately cut down to 1000-2000 calories overnight. For the sake of production times, I am guessing these shows are cutting down the participant's calories by 80% overnight for an extended period of time- and that is where the damage is possibly coming from. I wouldn't think that the average person on a diet (fairly strict but not extreme) would need to worry about metabolic damage, but I am just speculating.
Last edited by Flabbibulin; 05-30-2016 at 03:40 PM.
The results, the researchers said, were stunning. They showed just how hard the body fights back against weight loss.
“It is frightening and amazing,” said Dr. Hall, an expert on metabolism at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. “I am just blown away.”
It has to do with resting metabolism, which determines how many calories a person burns when at rest. When the show began, the contestants, though hugely overweight, had normal metabolisms for their size, meaning they were burning a normal number of calories for people of their weight. When it ended, their metabolisms had slowed radically and their bodies were not burning enough calories to maintain their thinner sizes.
Researchers knew that just about anyone who deliberately loses weight — even if they start at a normal weight or even underweight — will have a slower metabolism when the diet ends. So they were not surprised to see that “The Biggest Loser” contestants had slow metabolisms when the show ended.
What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.
Mr. Cahill was one of the worst off. As he regained more than 100 pounds, his metabolism slowed so much that, just to maintain his current weight of 295 pounds, he now has to eat 800 calories a day less than a typical man his size. Anything more turns to fat.
__________________ Allskonar fyrir Aumingja!!
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Diets don't work. Lifestyles are what you need to change.
More specifically, the lifestyles of your kids.
I think it's pretty obvious that the best way to fight obesity is to never get obese in the first place, otherwise you're fighting an uphill battle for life. Even if its too late for many adults, parents need to make sure to never let children get to that stage, as clearly it becomes a massive struggle to lose weight once you get to adulthood.
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I think it's pretty obvious that the best way to fight obesity is to never get obese in the first place, otherwise you're fighting an uphill battle for life.
This. Until we figure out how to make it so the body doesn't fight weight loss to the point it's almost impossible, TONS of effort should go into prevention.
When treatment has single digit or less success rate even if all the recommendations are followed... Obesity should be viewed and avoided more like Ebola than a cold.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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Obesity is basically an addiction to food. Addictions are notoriously hard to break, and as with any addiction, your body will fight. Whether it's drugs, alcohol, food or anything, your body goes through severe withdrawals.
The fact that you get 80% recidivism is most likely in line with people that have tried to quit smoking. In fact, I'd argue that it's probably better than people trying to quit smoking.
The main point is that, yes, the body will fight you, it's an uphill battle, one that will take probably 5 years for your body to A) lose the weight, B) "reset" your metabolism to a reasonable state.
Crash dieting or Biggest Loser-esque regiments is just like going cold turkey off smoking. It just doesn't work. There's a reason that nicotine patches and other aids exist, and even then, it takes months if not years of discipline and willpower to fully get off of the addiction.
The key, in the end, is that it's completely possible. Couch to 5k, or 10,000 steps or whatever people do to slowly wean themselves off of an unhealthy lifestyle into one that's a lifelong dedication to fitness and health are the aids that will help, but no doubt that obesity/addiction to food would be one of the hardest addictions to break.
I don't think weight loss should be that hard. Calculate your TDEE, start resistance training, cut out junk food, and start calculating how much you are eating, what your TDEE is, and what you SHOULD be eating. Go back 500 calories, and stick with it.
If you aim for 1lb per week weight loss, plus have added resistance training, your metabolism will be fine.
But if you're going to cut back below 2000 calories, something is wrong for most overweight people. Someone who is over 250lbs will have a TDEE of almost 3000 calories per day.
