I've already posted this article
over in the media forum, but felt that it would be a good idea to post it here as well as I think it makes a great discussion piece for the maintenance forum:
Quote:
From The Sunday Times
London, UK
24 July, 2011
Sorry, science says once you get fat, you will always stay fat
Investigation concludes that your body will attempt to return to its original size no matter how hard you try to keep the weight off
Frustrated dieters have long suspected it and now science has confirmed it: almost nobody who cuts down their calories can keep the weight off for long.
Scientists have found that once people gain weight their body will almost inevitably return to its former size — no matter how much they try to exercise or diet.
Their research showed that, even though more than 12m Britons go on a diet each year, fewer than 10% succeed in losing significant amounts of weight. Most of those who do succeed put the weight back on within a year.
The finding does not mean dieting is pointless. People trying to lose weight tend to eat better and exercise more, which can increase fitness and lower blood pressure.
The Medical Research Council’s National Survey of Health and Development has followed 5,362 men and women since their birth in 1946, and 20,000 people born in 1958, measuring their weight and blood pressure and assessing their lifestyles.
Rebecca Hardy, the council’s programme leader on body size, said: “Both groups began increasing in weight in the 1980s and since then people have been increasing in mass all through life.
“For men it goes up steadily through life. For women it starts slowly and accelerates in the mid-thirties. Once people become overweight they continue relentlessly upwards. They hardly ever go back down.
"A few lose weight but very few get back to normal. The best policy is to prevent people becoming overweight.”
The latest Health Survey for England shows that in 2009, about 14% of all children and 25% of adults were obese. Another 14% of children and 36% of adults were overweight.
Excess body fat leads to a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and cancer. Industry studies suggest the average British woman starts three diet regimes a year and spends £25,000 on diet and fitness aids in her lifetime.
Professor Nick Finer, an endocrinologist at University College London hospital, suggests evolution is partly to blame for the difficulty in losing weight.
“It is unlikely that man would have evolved with mechanisms to counter obesity, which has only become a problem in the last 30-40 years,” he said. “For most of human history storing fat would have been an advantage.”
One emerging idea is that humans have a “set point” for weight that our bodies try to stick to. However, becoming overweight can reset this to a high level.
Coleen Nolan, a presenter on ITV’s This Morning and former member of the Nolans, said her weight had fluctuated between 9 and 14 stone (126lb and 196lb). “I have never found it difficult to lose weight but I have found keeping it off very hard,” she said.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto...ticle675755.ece
|
So my question, and hence the title of the thread, is
how did we become successful weight losers and maintainers?
What have we done that is so special that we've succeeded where the majority have failed? What can others do to lose weight and keep it off as we have managed to do?
IMO, many people view dieting as a means to an end, rather than look at it as a permanent change. That usually means that all the good habits they picked up along the way, from making the right food choices, exercising, regularly weighing themselves etc., fall to the wayside as soon as they've reached their goal.
It stands to reason that if your old eating and exercise habits are what made you overweight in the first place, then resuming those ways will cause the weight to creep back on.
To me, understanding how to maintain weight loss is just as important as the actual method used for the weight loss. For some reason many people make the mistake of forgetting all about the maintaining weight loss once they lose the weight. Either that, or they are just not prepared to continue with the hard work that is required to maintain that loss. Others, I feel, become complacent and slowly but surely the pounds start piling on again.
That's definitely what happened to me the first time I got to goal. I became complacent, took my eye off ball, and ended up regaining all the original weight lost and more. This time, I had to fundamentality change my attitude towards food, realise that exercise needed to be a lifetime experience, and that strategy is far more important than willpower. So far, it seems to be working.
Remember that old adage
'nothing tastes as good as thin feels', well the way my body feels when it is fed, exercised and looked after properly is worth far more to me than falling head first into a pile of junk and stuffing my face. I also know that on those days where I really don't feel like it, that once my workout or whatever is finished, I'm going to feel great.
Am I perfect? Absolutely not! But I know what I can and can't do, and plan for success.