
Why You Can’t Lose Weight on a Diet - steve_w
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/why-you-cant-lose-weight-on-a-diet.html
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xlm1717
This has seemed a little suspect to me since it started making the rounds
earlier this week. Does the set point not work in reverse? What I mean is, the
article states "starts at 300 lbs", but no one starts at 300 lbs, people get
there through poor diet. So, why doesn't the set point push them back to 200
lbs? It seems to me set point is not the complete story when it comes to
weight.

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AstralStorm
Sadly, or biology is hardwired to be thrifty. It's better to be reasonably
overweight than starved, especially if life expectancy was short.

Case in point: Once you exceed the set point enough you get leptin resistance.
This means that suddenly your organism is more sensitive to any drop in
general energy store state as it is transmitted via leptin system with
additional inputs from insulin and amylin.

So, the right way to diet might be to actually diet while supplementing leptin
or a leptin receptor agonist and only very, very slowly reducing it over time.

