

Study Shows Why It’s Hard to Keep Weight Off - espeed
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/health/biological-changes-thwart-weight-loss-efforts-study-finds.html

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buddylw
This goes back to the flawed notion that calorie restriction is an effective
weight loss tool. The root of this problem is not that you are eating too
much. Eating too much is an effect, not a cause. The root of the problem is
that you want to eat too much. A healthy person with a healthy metabolism does
not want to eat more than their bodies need.

It is true that you will loose weight if you restrict calories, but if you
don't fix the root problem you are fighting a very old (leptin resistant) part
of the brain that wants its fat back.

We evolved an extremely complex and precise energy regulation mechanism over
millions of years (just like all other organisms on earth). So the big
question is, what is breaking this system?

The answer (I believe) is rooted in high-calorie low nutrient junk-foods that
are now ubiquitous (mainly sugar and grain based foods). The emphasis here is
low nutrient by the way, not high calorie.

I dare anyone to gain weight on meat and vegetables alone. If it's even
possible, it's not easy to do.

Over a year I lost 60 lbs (27kg) eating fatty meats and butter drenched
vegetables and outside of the first two weeks or so, I NEVER starved myself
and always ate till I was full.

I feel truly sorry for those that struggle with obesity and try starving
themselves and exercising as I did for the first 25 years of my life.

~~~
silencio
Were you originally eating unhealthily before you lost weight eating that way?
I am REALLY struggling with losing weight at the moment, and it's baffling as
to why.

Exercise - 3x/week 2 hours minimum cardio+weights and pilates, dance. I lost a
lot of body fat and I'm in normal ranges for my age, but I'm just gaining a
disturbing amount of weight via muscle mass to the point that simple BMI
calculations think I'm obese.

Food - My new doctor and personal trainer were both confused at my heaviness
after finding out what I normally ate in a two-week timespan. Whole grains
across the board (brown rice, beans, my favorite quinoa), half my meals were
salads with little to no dressing/sauce (and that was usually just sriracha or
a little vinaigrette), almost always water or green tea for drinking, small
portions spread out with a little fruit across the day. My only guilty
pleasures were the occasional piece of dark chocolate and a glass or two of
wine/beer in a week. All the meat and seafood I ate were cooked pretty
healthily, and things like butter are only touched when we have guests over.
The only time I deviated from any of this was for rare situations, like my
birthday lunch at The French Laundry :)

Nobody could come up with a great diet solution for me that wasn't "eat less"
or "exercise more", given that "eat less" would be sub-2000 calories for a
moderately active person and "exercise more" would be quite painful and make
me less likely to work out. I tried eating less for a short while anyway, and
nearly passed out in the middle of a street. I can't possibly find a healthier
way of eating than what I do now, and the people I talk to only wish their
clients/patients would eat like I did. And yet here I am, looking fat, am
still fat in some areas, weighing enough to be obese, running <10 minute
miles, and still struggling with my weight despite being in pretty good shape.
:(

~~~
buddylw
So, there are a few problems I see in your diet.

1.) Low fat salad dressing is generally a bad thing. You should add olive oil,
butter, or some natural fat source any time you eat vegetables because you
can't absorb many of the vitamins in greens without some type of fat in the
meal.

2.) Regardless of what many people believe, "Whole grains" are really not that
great. The bran of many grains adds nutrients, but when you look at the actual
bioavailability of those nutrients it's very low due to things like phytic
acid. It adds fiber, but it's mostly insoluble fiber which doesn't have all of
the benefits of soluble fiber.

This effectively makes whole grains "empty calories". They aren't completely
empty, but there is a low nutrient to calorie ratio, and that's what you need
to improve. Meat and vegetables have much higher nutrients compared to
calories.

Eliminate grains and sugary items (especially fructose) and eat 'real' foods
(veggies, meats, and natural coconut, olive, or animal fats), and you will
lose weight without starving yourself or counting calories.

------
rottencupcakes
It's hard for me to take something like this seriously.

If, after losing weight, these people are driven to consume more calories than
their bodies are expending, they need to do something to compensate for that,
plain and simple. It could be exercise or it could be gaining muscle mass (and
maintaining muscle mass requires more caloric intake than maintaining fat).

It's an absurdity to believe that these people should be able to lose weight,
then simply go back to being sedentary and eating what they want to eat and
expect to keep it off.

~~~
weirdcat
Note that for a year the subjects were on a "maintenance diet", which most
probably was intended to limit their calorie intake to match their daily
energy expenditure, and still gained some of the weight back.

~~~
nandemo
> Note that for a year the subjects were on a "maintenance diet"

I believe a more exact wording would be: "the subjects were asked to keep a
maintenance diet, and they reported doing so". Without reading the article
(which is not freely available), it's hard to see how they verified the
subjects actually kept the diet for 1 year.

~~~
espeed
Here's the link to the New England Journal of Medicine study
(<http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1105816>).

~~~
nandemo
Yes, I saw it, but of course that's not the full article, it's just a preview.

~~~
espeed
Ok, I thought you meant the New York Times article was behind the paywall --
evidently the NYT now has a limit on the number of articles you can view for
free each month.

~~~
nandemo
Sorry, now I see that "article" is ambiguous, I should have written "study" or
"paper".

