Incredibly depressing NY Times article on how difficult it is to lose weight and keep it off.

Link

ETA: Thought I'd change that line to 'Incredibly depressing' because, well, it is.

I was reading a blog post not long ago about the study that starts off that article.

Some pages in, the woman who 'kept all that weight off' and is becoming a nutritionist? Note she says she has regained and lost repeatedly. "People don't want to hear that it's hard." Realistically I think what they don't want to hear is that it's impossible -- or that it's relatively easy to lose some weight, but chances are the vast majority of people are going to have to regain and lose that same weight over and over and over and over again. Which has its own health risks.

The article being written by someone overweight clearly requires that she regularly blame herself and attribute calories to her problem since otherwise the whole article would be rejected. It is an unfortunate truth that anybody writing about obesity needs to be lean or they get that response.

PJ

I wonder if low carb diets would change some of the biological processes that increase hunger and reduce metabolism -- what do you all think about that?

No. Unfortunately.

Low carb helps get weight off ('some' weight off, if you're >180# over ideal). Definitely.

There isn't currently any known way to keep the body from doing everything in its power to help you put it back on. Tragically.

PJ

I'm confused about the message of the article. My first impression is that they are trying to discuss the biological underpinnings of weight loss and gain. But the author ends the article with the same tired idea that somehow she should have been able to stop herself from gaining weight. What is the point? It seems like the idea of gluttony and sloth = fat is so difficult to kill. With all the emerging science, the underlying message still seems to be about willpower and virtue. I think the article has a lot to offer, but given the length of it, it could have covered a lot more ground.

Yes, that's what I meant in my comments about the author. Because she is overweight she felt required to take plenty of calorie-laden blame and end on the same note. Someone without that defensiveness would not necessarily have felt the need to list a bunch of evidence for the-body-plots-against-you-and-wins and then still throw in the apologetics.

PJ

The study cited confirms what I think most of us knew all along: that we can't just eat like a thin person does and expect to get thin. Even after we get to the same weight they are, we still can't, or we will regain the weight.

Losing weight for those who are in this predicament (regardless of whether low carb, low calorie, or something else) needs to be a permanent commitment, and not a small one. This is hard for anyone to accept. But accept it we must or we are doomed to fail.

I think a person can commit to anything they want, but a million years of biology are probably going to win in the end. Eventually. Even if it takes years.

PJ

If it takes enough years, we'll be dead of other causes before biology "wins out" in this fashion.

I disagree. It is simply that most "diet" plans of any variety do not emphasize the concept of maintenance. Hell, compared to other things it's rarely even discussed here! Even the successful maintainers are focused on those seeking to lose.

I'm a textbook example. In September 2010, at 185, I started a typical "healthy" low cal, low fat diet. I counted calories. Five months later I had lost around 17 pounds. I didn't really feel any better, and I was feeling stressed out and deprived of good food. In January of 2011, I read Gary Taubes and PP and switched to low carb. By September I had lost another 17ish pounds, and was feeling incredibly healthy, with the added benefit of chronic illness symptoms subsiding.

Part of me wanted to keep going for another ten pounds and reach a dream weight. But I forced myself to shift into maintenance mode. I'm so glad I did.

I have had an incredibly stressful few months. My twin sister fell very sick and died in November. My son is in the college application process. My husband has had to travel a great deal more than usual for work. Talk about a potential recipe for disaster!

But I have managed to maintain. Even being in numerous situations where I have little control over what was available for food, I just did the best I could. Sometimes that meant literally scraping the starchy stuff off of something like Taco Bell. And sometimes it meant forcing myself to make myself a couple of eggs in the AM and toast a slice of low carb bread,when I'm really not a breakfast person. I weigh myself two or three times a week. If I'm a few pounds up, I can easily adjust in a couple of days.

I'm not a scientist or a dietician. Just a regular person. I would love to lose another 10-15 pounds. But I'm making a real effort to forget about that for now. It is my unscientific observation that even slow, continuous weight loss gets to be a real physical drag after awhile. Maintenance is still work. But it is a re-energizing type of thing. And trust me, I'm not one of those "wellness" fanatics. I live in the same real world as you and the folks mentioned in this article. I have simply found it to be do-able. And my body is glad for the break.

There could be a zillion scientific theories for what is going on with my metabolism and wieght. And I know many folks here don't believe in anything like "listening to your body. " But I'm glad i am making an exception here. Confronting maintenance head on.

Thank you for reading. Hope this helps. Best wishes to all!

I agree that dedication matters greatly.

However. (and this is horribly politically incorrect I realize)

The whole point of what the science is saying isn't "maintain what you were doing." Lots of people maintain what they are doing and it may or may not actually suffice to keep weight off them let alone continue losing whatever they have to lose. I know plenty of people who had a diet work great for them, including LC, to later on gain weight at shocking speed under seemingly impossible intake and exercise numbers -- for reasons likely caused or aggravated by the very eating that helped them lose fat in the first place. Then what?

The science results are saying: "Your body will adjust whatever it needs to (there is a long list), sooner or later (the longest study done for this is 7 years and it was still going strong then), to arrange regain (the stats on people who don't regain a good portion of fat lost makes long-term successes (e.g. 10 years) pretty much a freak of nature)."

Obviously the degree of that and the details are likely to vary with the body.

Thinking this is about personal commitment is really the same willpower trap as any other armchair paradigm and it basically ignores everything the research is saying. Today Jane ate because she was upset or it was a wedding or she didn't have sufficient willpower or ... there are a lot of todays between today and forever and the body is determined.

There are people who eat well, lost weight, found they had to reduce calories... then found they had to reduce carbs... and then calories... and then eventually they have such a low BMR thanks to body adjustment that they spend 24/7 hungry and eat so little that they are actually starving for _nutrients_ all the while their body is not losing a pound. That is not "success at outwitting biology." That is doom that ignorance makes one feel blissfully good about in the meantime.

They might stay thin. They might die of cancer or something else avoidable years later due to the cumulative malnourishment, while their reducing BMR got gradually lower and lower; who can say? But, they will leave a somewhat more attractive corpse if so, which I suppose is the point of it all.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming. Avoid carbs, believe in your dreams, and all will be well.

PJ

We're f'ed... we can never be "normal" again. We can get our weight down to normal with long and hard effort but it will be a constant and forever battle to keep it that way, one that will likely become more difficult as we age.

Then again, what are our options? We can let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy that we are going to fail and just give up, or we can soldier on and recognize that the battle will never end.

I read the first page so far and am not too worried. They literally starved people and expected that to end well? Do the study with a good LC program and see what the results are, then I will listen.

I will say, this science may make a good argument for carb cycling so the body doesn't go into starvation mode.

Off to read the rest.

F

After 35 years of yo-yo dieting on low-cal high-carb diets, changing to a very low carb, high fat, moderate protein diet (<10->70-20%) FOR LIFE has worked for me, probably because even during the losing phase I was eating maintenance levels of calories (~1900). I used to think pigging out after a 500-1100 cal diet was a character flaw, but now I think it was the carbs, gluten, casein, soy and processed food additives that were chemically driving me to eat uncontrollably. But my metabolism is not "fixed" - one or two cookies or slices of bread will bring on the old hunger & cravings in less than an hour (even after 11 years of low-carbing). When I stick to my vLC-HF WOE, I feel "normal", with a well-working metabolism, normal body temperature, and rarely thinking about food unless I am truly hungry. On low-cal high-carb diets my average temperature was 96.8F, not 98.6F like it is now, and I always felt cold, tired, slothful and thinking of & craving junkfood all the time, wondering how normal-weight people were able to control the urges (that they didn't have and I don't have if I eat properly for me).

A few quotes from the article:
I've always felt this sort of diet was a recipe for disaster as far as possibly tanking your metabolism. Do I now? In general I do, but there was the recent study done in England that was talked about here lately about people who did this exact same diet - 8 weeks on Optifast plus non-starchy veg - but their diabetes into remission, got off meds, and some of them are still med-free nearly 2 years later. It's certainly made me go "hmm" a little bit about this sort of diet.
Less fat. Sounds like another recipe for disaster to me. That alone would probably keep me from sticking well with the diet too.
Yeah, I would be too, if I had to cut my fat intake. I did that at one time and lost a ton of weight. But yeah, I was constantly hungry and preoccupied with food every single waking minute of the day (and often in my dreams too). I could never have spent the rest of my life living like that. It would have been hell on earth.
I wonder about this too. I've lost 130 pounds so far without gaining it back, and I'm still **slowly** losing - but I'm just about to be heading into my 7th year doing this. That's a pretty glacial rate of loss for someone who started out needing to lose at least 200 pounds just to get to "overweight" status rather than "obese". But every diet I've tried to get weight off quickly with also has always previously ended in regaining it all "and then some" even MORE quickly. Keeping weight off and continuing to lose over a 6-year period is almost unheard of for me. At times I've banged my head against the wall at the slowness of the pace, but do sometimes wonder if that slowness has actually helped keep me on course and helped prevent the regain.