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January 30, 2015
When Public People Regain Their Weight
by Barbara Berkeley, MD

Quote:

One of RTR's most visited blogs is the one I wrote about Mike Huckabee's weight re-gain. There is no question that we are all fascinated by public persons who lose weight, proclaim that they have found the permanent answer, then re-fatten before our eyes.

Kirstie Alley is the poster child for public regain, followed closely by Oprah. Unknown-13 The cover image to the left appeared in January, 2009 just as my book was being published. Despite many calls to Oprah producers, I could never interest the show in having a discussion about weight maintenance and why it differs so greatly from weight loss. Oprah was single handedly responsible for the near-demise of OPTIFAST in the 1980s. An excellent meal-replacement for weight loss (we still use it in our clinic), OPTIFAST was pilloried when Oprah lost about 80 pounds using it and then regained her weight. Unknown-14

The well-known image to the right shows Oprah pulling a wagon full of fat onto the set of her TV program. Little did she, or we, know that this presaged the first of many regains she would suffer through publicly. OPTIFAST was not the culprit, but the body's strong desire to regain was.

Here's the crucial piece of info that dieters are never told:

Weight loss is not a slide downhill. It is not a journey that lands you in a new and different land. It is not a happy progression to a healthy place. It's not necessarily a cause for celebration. This is what it is.

Images-12Weight loss is a gradual triggering of the body's desire to regain. The more you pull, the more the body wants to return. My personal hypothesis is that this occurs because our bodies are completely unaware of how much weight we accumulate. On the other hand, our bodies respond strongly to weight loss and perceive it as threatening. These two characteristics fit with our ancient genetics. Humans evolved over millions of years during which fatness was impossible, so likely did not develop programming to combat it….or even measure it. By the same token, loss of weight from starvation or illness would have been highly threatening, so programs to reverse the process would have been vital. It is this programming that is causing the problem we face in the modern environment.

My friend Debra SY sent me this link about Biggest Loser contestants this morning. Are any of us surprised that they have regained? No. But we might tend to blame the methods used by the show. It's commonly believed that rapid weight loss has a bad outcome. I would argue otherwise. Although I think the Biggest Loser is a very bad model for weight loss, the contestants who regain are simply another casualty of the bodily push to reverse the loss. Their stories are more poignant, because they play out in public.

The tendency of public people to lose weight and put it back on is the strongest evidence that weight maintenance is a largely unexplored, poorly understood skill. No one wants to get fat in the public eye, particularly if they have proclaimed themselves "cured". The forces for regain must be strong ones indeed.

As I've said here since 2008, our efforts surrounding weight should focus almost entirely on learning about the regain process. Dieting and losing weight are already well understood and can be achieved by simply starving the body in one way or another. But this has nothing--zero, zip---to do with opposing the sling shot force that comes next. If you are new to this blog, access the posts under the category "general maintenance strategies" to learn more. Most importantly, treat your maintenance as a science experiment that requires thoughtful and creative interaction with yourself. Observe yourself and your weight, be highly vigilant, and seek out other maintainers for inspiration and knowledge.