Why is it that losing weight too fast will result in gaining it all back?
Altagracia220
Posts: 876 Member
How does this work? I am losing weight rapidly (while eating enough daily, in my opinion) but don't want to gain it back when I hit my goal weight. How does one avoid this? All opinions and thought appreciated, thank you.
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Replies
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I think the theory is that if you lose quickly due to severely depriving yourself of food, you will be more likely to return to your old habits. I know the times I've lost by barely eating I quickly went off the diet by binge eating.0
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It doesn't always but chances are if you are losing fast because of a big deficit you have cut out a lot of food that you love and when you start eating that food again you will gain it back.
Or
You are exercising a lot and can't keep it up long term
Or a combination of both
In other words how you lost the weight is not sustainable...
Avoid this with a reasonable deficit, exercise if you want but eat those calories back (if using MFP method) lose weight at a reasonable pace while learning new habits that become ingrained and do it in a sustainable fashion..
For example for me I started in 2013...hit my goal in Summer of 2014 and ate chocolate everyday, drank by drinks, ate my bread, cheese, cream in my coffee, exercised etc...60lbs later I have a good grasp on how much I can eat for my movements...no weigh gain per say0 -
It won't unless you eat it all back.0
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exactly what others have said. if you lose it in a way that is not sustainable, youll gain it back. i eat whatever i want, just much smaller amounts. if you lose by restricting items (carbs, eating out, shakes only, no foods you love, etc) then you are destined for failure.0
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Well it really doesn't. Gaining it all back happens because people who lost weight fast went on a calorie deficit program of eating that's too extreme for them to sustain for the rest of their life. It's usually a 180 switch from how they used to eat (say high calorie foods and eating out) to "clean" eating and dumping just about everything high in calories that they liked to eat. For many, it doesn't last that long. That's why only about 10% of people who do it are successful at keeping it off.
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Also, the more extreme you are with your caloric deficit, the more your hormones will compensate to keep you alive. Whenever you quit starving yourself, your body will be more effecient at storing bodyfat.0
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Ditto what others have said. You have to look at this as a life changing process and not a quick loss diet. In the process you need to learn new eating habits. If you drastically cut your eating to an unsustainable level and lose really quickly you won't learn the habit. Then when you quit, you return to your existing habit that hasn't changed and you return to your old weight or gaining more. I've done this myself. This time I've taken a year to lose what I've lost and understand that I can enjoy food without overeating. Now I just have to take the time to undo the damage I did in the past. It took me 25 years to gain this weight, why should I expect to lose it in months?0
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If you always do what you always did.... Then you will always get what you always got.0
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I'll slightly disagree here because the body is already very efficient at storing body fat. One doesn't have to be starving to gain a significant amount of body fat. Regular people who just overeat more than they need to gain fat on a daily basis. Hence the reason that over 60% of the US population is overweight/obese.Also, the more extreme you are with your caloric deficit, the more your hormones will compensate to keep you alive. Whenever you quit starving yourself, your body will be more effecient at storing bodyfat.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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Doing extreme things to lose pounds quickly doesn't teach a person how to eat properly to maintain their goal weight. Most people who lose really fast gain it all back because they didn't learn how to maintain their goal weight once they reached it. They go back to eating the way they did before they started their "diet" and the weight goes right back on.
In my mind, I think that's the most important thing that MFP teaches us. Also as we're losing weight the lighter we get, the less we can eat. It helps us to understand the relationship between the calories we eat and what we burn and how it affects our weight.0 -
herrspoons wrote: »
However, if you go back to eating like you did before you will.
This^^ is why people regain in general.
You didn't gain the weight by accident. You gained it for a reason, because of something that you did. If you do not find what that was and find a sustainable way to do it differently, you will regain without fail, every time, because it's already been proven beyond doubt that your "pre-weight-loss" habits made you gain weight. (Bar the obvious health issues and medications, but even then, if you want not to gain weight, you will need new habits that work with those conditions).
So if you can change your habits and forever balance calories in with calories out (not necessarily by counting them), you will keep it off regardless of how fast or slow you lost it. That would require the same level of dedication in planning how to maintain the weight as you gave to the weight loss phase, possibly more because it must be done longer (for life).
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How does this work? I am losing weight rapidly (while eating enough daily, in my opinion) but don't want to gain it back when I hit my goal weight. How does one avoid this? All opinions and thought appreciated, thank you.
It doesn't...
One avoids putting the weight back on by developing healthy eating and exercise habits.
Also, rapid weight loss will generally result in the loss of more muscle mass to fat ratio than most people really want.0 -
I'll slightly disagree here because the body is already very efficient at storing body fat. One doesn't have to be starving to gain a significant amount of body fat. Regular people who just overeat more than they need to gain fat on a daily basis. Hence the reason that over 60% of the US population is overweight/obese.Also, the more extreme you are with your caloric deficit, the more your hormones will compensate to keep you alive. Whenever you quit starving yourself, your body will be more effecient at storing bodyfat.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
But one can't discredit the effect on hormones that a large caloric deficit creates. Total thyroid ouput can decline and T3 will reverse. Testosterone will also drop, sometimes severly depending on how big the deficit. It takes a bit after eating higher quantities of food before these hormones get back to normal. That was my point.0 -
It doesn't. Let's face it - anyone willing to eat cabbage soup for that long clearly doesn't have willpower issues. This is an issue of not knowing how to stay at a lower weight.
Maintenance is not the same thing as dieting.0 -
Lrdoflamancha wrote: »If you always do what you always did.... Then you will always get what you always got.
Deeeep!0 -
They key word is sustainability.
Of course, we all have to eat at a calorie deficit to lose weight. But because I ate at a smaller deficit while I lost weight and didn't eliminate any foods from my diet, transition to maintenance was pretty easy. All I had to do was keep eating what I normally ate and bump up my calorie intake 400-500 calories. I lost 86 pounds over a period of about 20 months, and I've maintained my weight for almost 5 months now.
So, if you're eating and exercising in a way that you would feel comfortable maintaining for the rest of your life (with a little tweaking), then your chances of maintaining your weight loss are pretty good.0 -
This is just another one of those bits of "conventional wisdom" that are passed along and sound plausible, so people don't question it. I wonder if it has ever actually been tested.0
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I think it's an issue with over generalization and causality issues. People who lose weight quickly don't gain it back; people who make themselves malnourished trigger binging, people who follow extreme diets become miserable and seek comfort in old habits, etc etc. And mostly, as has been said a bunch of times already, people who go back to the way they lived pre-weight loss will end up at their old weights. But it's not because of the rate at which weight is lost, it's because of the methods used and/or the follow-up behavior.0
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cwolfman13 wrote: »
Also, rapid weight loss will generally result in the loss of more muscle mass to fat ratio than most people really want.
This is actually a very serious issue if you think about it, and well worth slowing down for. Because if you sacrifice lean mass for speedy results, you will find yourself with possibly lower calorie needs than the last time you were at that weight, so it will be even easier to gain eating like you did before, or harder to maintain new habits that have you eating less than you could if you had maintained the lean mass. Definitely worth thinking about...
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You are grossly mistaken, OP.
OVEREATING gains it all back.
It doesn't matter how quickly you lose it - if you don't overeat, you never gain it back.0 -
SergeantSausage wrote: »You are grossly mistaken, OP
How can she be grossly mistaken when she is apparently confused if it's true and what if any is the logic behind it? She is asking questions, not making statements about how weigh loss and maintenance function. Unless you mean she is grossly mistaken to post a question? i don't think she is, because she is getting answers and sparking a thoughtful discussion.
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Awesome, lots of good advice and opinions here. Things make a lot more sense now. Thank you all.0
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Wiseandcurious wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »
Also, rapid weight loss will generally result in the loss of more muscle mass to fat ratio than most people really want.
This is actually a very serious issue if you think about it, and well worth slowing down for. Because if you sacrifice lean mass for speedy results, you will find yourself with possibly lower calorie needs than the last time you were at that weight, so it will be even easier to gain eating like you did before, or harder to maintain new habits that have you eating less than you could if you had maintained the lean mass. Definitely worth thinking about...
This ^^^ it's a biggie. And it will suck to find yourself in this position.
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Agreed. It can become even more serious for yo-yo dieters. It becomes this vicious cycle as one loses weight, loses muscle, metabolism slows, gains weight, loses weight, loses more muscle, metabolism slows further.... I always thought that our metabolism naturally slowed as we got older. I came to realize that was largely because our lean muscle mass decreases over time, especially if the yo-yo dieting is a factor. That's why, this time around, I'm lifting heavy.Wiseandcurious wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »
Also, rapid weight loss will generally result in the loss of more muscle mass to fat ratio than most people really want.
This is actually a very serious issue if you think about it, and well worth slowing down for. Because if you sacrifice lean mass for speedy results, you will find yourself with possibly lower calorie needs than the last time you were at that weight, so it will be even easier to gain eating like you did before, or harder to maintain new habits that have you eating less than you could if you had maintained the lean mass. Definitely worth thinking about...
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Wiseandcurious wrote: »SergeantSausage wrote: »You are grossly mistaken, OP
How can she be grossly mistaken when she is apparently confused if it's true and what if any is the logic behind it? She is asking questions, not making statements about how weigh loss and maintenance function. Unless you mean she is grossly mistaken to post a question? i don't think she is, because she is getting answers and sparking a thoughtful discussion.
The thread title *explicitly states* her grossly mistaken premise. Read it.
She starts with the premise that - yes Virginia - losing weight fast is what causes one to "gain it all back". It's stated right there in the title. She assumes it to be true and wants to know why it works that way... and asks how to avoid it like it's a guaranteed event.
"...losing weight too fast will result in gaining it all back..."
HINT: It doesn't. The premise is flawed.0 -
Actually there is emerging research showing that losing weight more rapidly can be associated with keeping the weight off long term (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20443094). It's counter intuitive to what many of us have thought, but it's interesting for sure. I think it partly depends on what is considered fast and slow weight loss. In the study, "fast" was considered 1.5 lbs or more fat loss per week, "moderate" was 0.5-1.5 lbs a week loss, and slow was 0.5 or less. The study concluded that "fast" group was able to lose the most weight in 6 months (not surprising) and also have the greatest weight loss a year after the diet modification (somewhat surprising).
Rapid weight loss does have a very high long term failure rate. The thing is, so does slow or moderate weight loss. People are quick to point that losing weight quickly has a proven track record of less then promising results, but they fail to acknowledge that slow and moderate weight loss do too. If this study can be improved upon and repeated, we may learn that losing weight quickly will result in the best chances of long term success, even if those chances are still small.0 -
Lrdoflamancha wrote: »If you always do what you always did.... Then you will always get what you always got.
Freaking brilliant. I think that I will turn that into an inspirational poster:
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Because people look at weight loss as a finite process that has an end. Then they stop whatever diet and exercise they were doing to get there.
Then of course, thier old habits produce the old result.
Weight loss that is successful is a lifestyle change. There is no "finished".0 -
Agreed. It can become even more serious for yo-yo dieters. It becomes this vicious cycle as one loses weight, loses muscle, metabolism slows, gains weight, loses weight, loses more muscle, metabolism slows further.... I always thought that our metabolism naturally slowed as we got older. I came to realize that was largely because our lean muscle mass decreases over time, especially if the yo-yo dieting is a factor. That's why, this time around, I'm lifting heavy.Wiseandcurious wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »
Also, rapid weight loss will generally result in the loss of more muscle mass to fat ratio than most people really want.
This is actually a very serious issue if you think about it, and well worth slowing down for. Because if you sacrifice lean mass for speedy results, you will find yourself with possibly lower calorie needs than the last time you were at that weight, so it will be even easier to gain eating like you did before, or harder to maintain new habits that have you eating less than you could if you had maintained the lean mass. Definitely worth thinking about...
Do you think the mantra of "weight loss is 80% diet, 20% exercise" is harmful in this context?
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Actually there is emerging research showing that losing weight more rapidly can be associated with keeping the weight off long term (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20443094). It's counter intuitive to what many of us have thought, but it's interesting for sure. I think it partly depends on what is considered fast and slow weight loss. In the study, "fast" was considered 1.5 lbs or more fat loss per week, "moderate" was 0.5-1.5 lbs a week loss, and slow was 0.5 or less. The study concluded that "fast" group was able to lose the most weight in 6 months (not surprising) and also have the greatest weight loss a year after the diet modification (somewhat surprising).
Rapid weight loss does have a very high long term failure rate. The thing is, so does slow or moderate weight loss. People are quick to point that losing weight quickly has a proven track record of less then promising results, but they fail to acknowledge that slow and moderate weight loss do too. If this study can be improved upon and repeated, we may learn that losing weight quickly will result in the best chances of long term success, even if those chances are still small.
The fast group did have the greatest regain though from what I can see? It would be really interesting to see more long-term studies on this topic.
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