What role does metabolism actually play in weight loss?
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In terms of being off in logging and activity, that's extremely possible. For BMR, being 250 calories above the mean would still put her a bit high. If the average BMR is 1500 (just a complete guess on my part), with 2 deviations being a 10-16% difference (from examine.com link earlier in thread), you're looking at 240 calories, so that would place her in the top 2% of the population. That number becomes even more odd when you throw in she's a woman who doesn't appear particularly tall.stevencloser wrote: »
Well, it would only be 250-ish above what the calculator told her. It was 1 pound per week when she wanted 0.5. That's still worlds more plausible than the constant "I'm eating like 800 calories and exercising 2 hours daily but not losing anything" posts.tincanonastring wrote: »Asher_Ethan wrote: »tincanonastring wrote: »Asher_Ethan wrote: »honkytonks85 wrote: »Asher_Ethan wrote: »So I'm clear - There is no such thing as fast metabolism/ slow metabolism? I ask because I've always thought I had a pretty fast metabolism. Even before I started CICO I was on the sidelines of, "normal weight/overweight" on the BMI chart and I swear I was eating over 3k calories a day. I started doing CICO and set it to lose .5 pounds a week and I averaged over 1 pound a week for 16 weeks and I always thought it was because I had a faster than usual metabolism.
Some people have a higher or lower BMR which is basically your 'metabolism'. Factors that influence this are lean muscle mass, height, age etc. So if you feel like you have a faster metabolism it may be you're young tall and lean.
Let's look at 2 case studies:
If you are MALE, 175cm, 95 kg, 25 yrs your BMR is about 2079 calories
If you are FEMALE, 163cm, 60kg, 25 yrs your BMR is about 1414 calories.
That's a difference of 665 calories. That's a lot more food you can eat.
I don't believe this is correct. You may have misunderstood me. What I'm saying is, I found what calculators said was my BMR or TDEE and what I'm suppose to lose eating 1800 calories (sometimes more) a day and I have lost double more than I was suppose to. I feel I actually do have a fast metabolism than I took advantage of for too many years.
Given all the factors that go into creating a calorie deficit, it's much more likely that your counts are off in the number of calories you're eating, your activity level, and/or your exercise calories than it is that your have a metabolic rate which deviates significantly than the general population.
Entirely plausible that I'm off somewhere in my calculations.
With all the issues I see on here with other people logging, weighing, measuring and how easy it is for me to accidentally lose twice as fast as I wanted to... Isn't that entirely plausible to say I MAY have a faster metabolism?
I don't think we have enough information to make that determination. I can't even see your diary to check how well you log or if you weigh your food, I don't know what your exercise burns look like or how much of them you eat back, etc. Even without that information, I still think it's more likely your calculations are off than you have a significanty higher metabolic rate. Or maybe you have a tapeworm.0 -
I can say from personal experience that someone who weighs 200lbs and exercises and eats back there exercise calories and stays at the same deficit as someone who weights the same and eats at the same deficit but doesnt exercise will lose at a slower place. Keyword: lose and slower.0
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Hard to imagine a scenario in which one person's 500 calorie deficit results in different loss than someone else's 500 calorie deficit. At least not a fictional scenario.I can say from personal experience that someone who weighs 200lbs and exercises and eats back there exercise calories and stays at the same deficit as someone who weights the same and eats at the same deficit but doesnt exercise will lose at a slower place. Keyword: lose and slower.
Well, maybe if one is really fat and one is really lean so that the deficit is causing muscle loss instead of fat loss.
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Depends on how correct the exercise calories are, and if the exercise has been routine long enough to not cause water weight.I can say from personal experience that someone who weighs 200lbs and exercises and eats back there exercise calories and stays at the same deficit as someone who weights the same and eats at the same deficit but doesnt exercise will lose at a slower place. Keyword: lose and slower.0 -
DeguelloTex wrote: »Hard to imagine a scenario in which one person's 500 calorie deficit results in different loss than someone else's 500 calorie deficit. At least not a fictional scenario.
Well, maybe if one is really fat and one is really lean so that the deficit is causing muscle loss instead of fat loss.
In my senario, i had been 200lbs more then once and each time i got to 200 and decided to lose 50 pounds it got easier and took less time. I always kept the same deficit but increased my exercise as my cardio had improved as the years went by. Its pretty obvious exercise increases your metabolism and is why most very active people have high metabolisms and are usually skinny.
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If you increased cardio then you didn't have the same net deficit.0
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DeguelloTex wrote: »Hard to imagine a scenario in which one person's 500 calorie deficit results in different loss than someone else's 500 calorie deficit. At least not a fictional scenario.
Well, maybe if one is really fat and one is really lean so that the deficit is causing muscle loss instead of fat loss.
In my senario, i had been 200lbs more then once and each time i got to 200 and decided to lose 50 pounds it got easier and took less time. I always kept the same deficit but increased my exercise as my cardio had improved as the years went by. Its pretty obvious exercise increases your metabolism and is why most very active people have high metabolisms and are usually skinny.
Exercise has an inherent recovery period during which the body continues burning calories. This isn't normally factored into our calorie burns (it's just a pleasant side benefit), but that doesn't mean our metabolic rate has increased.0 -
DeguelloTex wrote: »If you increased cardio then you didn't have the same net deficit.
If you ate back your calories you would. What Werk2Eat is seeing, if he was eating back exactly what his cardio burned, is the recovery burn.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »But certainly I think food is the bigger part, but that's because I think that most humans don't have a natural stop mechanism when it comes to food
This hasn't been my experience at all - I don't want to eat once I feel full, and I do feel full, once I hit my macros/calorie targets (and did long before I knew what they were, i.e. by eating intuitively. I leave stuff on my plate all the time, always have). My "natural stop mechanism" only fails when what I'm eating is chips. I think it might hard to reach satiety with some ratios or foods. But when I'm eating an even roughly "healthy" diet, I get full at a certain point and stop there.
I don't mean to overstate it, but I think the intuitive eating idea is that people will eat the amount needed to avoid gaining--that they won't overeat. There's no real benefit to that evolutionarily, and I don't see any evidence that most people are calibrated that way, which is why in conditions of surplus, without natural restrictions on how much we eat (like cultural ones), the majority of people seem to become overweight, unless they impose the restrictions themselves.
I'm not talking about eating after you feel full, but my idea here is that fullness often does not kick in until after you've consumed more than ideal calories.
And obviously there are exceptions (even in the US something like 30% aren't overweight, and some portion of them seem to naturally stay thin without thinking about it much, especially when younger and more active), so maybe you are someone who does more naturally regulate your food under normal circumstances. The evidence seems to me that most humans aren't such people.
I'm not -- and I'm not complaining about this, once you understand it it's not that tough to deal with. Even eating a healthy balanced diet I can easily overeat if I don't do things like eating only at certain periods of time and watching portion size.
Oh, to elaborate on this a bit, it's not like you have to eat hugely excessive amounts to gain. Just eat an extra 100 calories a day and it adds up over time. I gained lots of weight (fast) by going from very active to sedentary and basically eating the same diet for some time, and it was a healthy diet.0 -
OneHundredToLose wrote: »Ok, so new question relating to metabolism. If it's true that metabolism has very little to do with weight loss / gain, why is it that older people seem to have a much harder time losing weight or getting in shape? Is this just another societal myth, or do they really find it more difficult due to a slowing down metabolism? Or are there other factors of which I'm unaware?
A bigger factor beyond natural variations in metabolism (BMR) is likely activity, and older people commonly become less active and have a longer history of habits to overcome.
That said, I lost weight in my early 30s and mid 40s and didn't find it tougher in my mid 40s.0 -
If he ate back exactly the increased calories to keep a 500 net deficit in both scenarios then, again, it's still hard to imagine a meaningful difference in weight loss. Recovery burn, if you're talking after after burn, probably doesn't outstrip the error inherent in measuring eating and burning.tincanonastring wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »If you increased cardio then you didn't have the same net deficit.
If you ate back your calories you would. What Werk2Eat is seeing, if he was eating back exactly what his cardio burned, is the recovery burn.
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lemurcat12 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »But certainly I think food is the bigger part, but that's because I think that most humans don't have a natural stop mechanism when it comes to food
This hasn't been my experience at all - I don't want to eat once I feel full, and I do feel full, once I hit my macros/calorie targets (and did long before I knew what they were, i.e. by eating intuitively. I leave stuff on my plate all the time, always have). My "natural stop mechanism" only fails when what I'm eating is chips. I think it might hard to reach satiety with some ratios or foods. But when I'm eating an even roughly "healthy" diet, I get full at a certain point and stop there.
I don't mean to overstate it, but I think the intuitive eating idea is that people will eat the amount needed to avoid gaining--that they won't overeat. There's no real benefit to that evolutionarily, and I don't see any evidence that most people are calibrated that way, which is why in conditions of surplus, without natural restrictions on how much we eat (like cultural ones), the majority of people seem to become overweight, unless they impose the restrictions themselves.
I'm not talking about eating after you feel full, but my idea here is that fullness often does not kick in until after you've consumed more than idea calories.
And obviously there are exceptions (even in the US something like 30% aren't overweight, and some portion of them seem to naturally stay thin without thinking about it much, especially when younger and more active), so maybe you are someone who does more naturally regulate your food under normal circumstances. The evidence seems to me that most humans aren't such people.
I'm not -- and I'm not complaining about this, once you understand it it's not that tough to deal with. Even eating a healthy balanced diet I can easily overeat if I don't do things like eating only at certain periods of time and watching portion size.
Personally, if I keep my sugars and starchy carbs on the low side I feel full at maintenance levels.
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DeguelloTex wrote: »If you increased cardio then you didn't have the same net deficit.
If you read my initial post i had mentioned that i ate back the exercise calories. I included exercise on both diets but it got easier and faster to lose because i was able to exercise more as the second time around my cardio had got better. I still had the same deficit but had more exercise daily.
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Which, again, wouldn't meaningfully impact weight loss at a given, constant deficit.DeguelloTex wrote: »If you increased cardio then you didn't have the same net deficit.
If you read my initial post i had mentioned that i ate back the exercise calories. I included exercise on both diets but it got easier and faster to lose because i was able to exercise more as the second time around my cardio had got better. I still had the same deficit but had more exercise daily.
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DeguelloTex wrote: »
If he ate back exactly the increased calories to keep a 500 net deficit in both scenarios then, again, it's still hard to imagine a meaningful difference in weight loss. Recovery burn, if you're talking after after burn, probably doesn't outstrip the error inherent in measuring eating and burning.tincanonastring wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »If you increased cardio then you didn't have the same net deficit.
If you ate back your calories you would. What Werk2Eat is seeing, if he was eating back exactly what his cardio burned, is the recovery burn.
Oh, I've no doubt that's the far more likely scenario, but I had moved on to a more hypothetical situation.0 -
tincanonastring wrote: »
Exercise has an inherent recovery period during which the body continues burning calories. This isn't normally factored into our calorie burns (it's just a pleasant side benefit), but that doesn't mean our metabolic rate has increased.
This is possible to some extent, but my HR monitor has a calorie burn feature that calculates age, weight, height and activity level that you input your daily routine and how many days you exercise a week and the time.
I always left the HR calorie meter going until i reached resting heart rate in which i calculated by setting a timer with the HR belt on so i got my HR when i first woke up.
I would say my results were pretty accurate but there is always room for error i suppose.
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goldthistime wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »But certainly I think food is the bigger part, but that's because I think that most humans don't have a natural stop mechanism when it comes to food
This hasn't been my experience at all - I don't want to eat once I feel full, and I do feel full, once I hit my macros/calorie targets (and did long before I knew what they were, i.e. by eating intuitively. I leave stuff on my plate all the time, always have). My "natural stop mechanism" only fails when what I'm eating is chips. I think it might hard to reach satiety with some ratios or foods. But when I'm eating an even roughly "healthy" diet, I get full at a certain point and stop there.
I don't mean to overstate it, but I think the intuitive eating idea is that people will eat the amount needed to avoid gaining--that they won't overeat. There's no real benefit to that evolutionarily, and I don't see any evidence that most people are calibrated that way, which is why in conditions of surplus, without natural restrictions on how much we eat (like cultural ones), the majority of people seem to become overweight, unless they impose the restrictions themselves.
I'm not talking about eating after you feel full, but my idea here is that fullness often does not kick in until after you've consumed more than idea calories.
And obviously there are exceptions (even in the US something like 30% aren't overweight, and some portion of them seem to naturally stay thin without thinking about it much, especially when younger and more active), so maybe you are someone who does more naturally regulate your food under normal circumstances. The evidence seems to me that most humans aren't such people.
I'm not -- and I'm not complaining about this, once you understand it it's not that tough to deal with. Even eating a healthy balanced diet I can easily overeat if I don't do things like eating only at certain periods of time and watching portion size.
Personally, if I keep my sugars and starchy carbs on the low side I feel full at maintenance levels.
For me it's not about feeling full vs. not feeling full. I rarely feel especially hungry or especially full and I don't fool myself that I overeat because of true hunger, because I don't. But it is much easier for me to overeat on something like fattier cuts of meat or cheese than on a starchy carb. I've overeaten pasta because it was on my plate and I didn't have a good sense of portion size (although typically the reason I wanted to keep eating was the fats and protein included in the meal), but once I started understanding and being careful about portion sizes I never found it hard to stop at a portion (or less) of pasta or potatoes, etc.
I'm not talking about feeling compelled to keep eating (which isn't really my experience) but accidently or without thinking ending up eating well over maintenance in a day. I can easily avoid that now that I know what my maintenance is and generally what the calories and portion sizes of foods are, but if I just let myself graze -- even on healthy stuff and even low carb -- all day, I'm sure I'd eat more than maintenance on enough days that I'd gain weight. If some people have a mechanism where they just stop feeling able to eat or that food would be enjoyable if they've gotten their maintenance calories, good for them, but that's not me. It's not hard to eat at maintenance or below, but it's not something I would do without thinking about some. (And the evidence seems to me to suggest that more people are like me than not.)0 -
tincanonastring wrote: »
Exercise has an inherent recovery period during which the body continues burning calories. This isn't normally factored into our calorie burns (it's just a pleasant side benefit), but that doesn't mean our metabolic rate has increased.
This is possible to some extent, but my HR monitor has a calorie burn feature that calculates age, weight, height and activity level that you input your daily routine and how many days you exercise a week and the time.
I always left the HR calorie meter going until i reached resting heart rate in which i calculated by setting a timer with the HR belt on so i got my HR when i first woke up.
I would say my results were pretty accurate but there is always room for error i suppose.
Recovery, from a calorie burn perspective, isn't how long it takes for your heart rate to return to rest.
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You're talking about, maybe, more or less 100 calories a day. So, about a fifth of a pound a week, if you exercise like that seven days a week.tincanonastring wrote: »
Exercise has an inherent recovery period during which the body continues burning calories. This isn't normally factored into our calorie burns (it's just a pleasant side benefit), but that doesn't mean our metabolic rate has increased.
This is possible to some extent, but my HR monitor has a calorie burn feature that calculates age, weight, height and activity level that you input your daily routine and how many days you exercise a week and the time.
I always left the HR calorie meter going until i reached resting heart rate in which i calculated by setting a timer with the HR belt on so i got my HR when i first woke up.
I would say my results were pretty accurate but there is always room for error i suppose.
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tincanonastring wrote: »Recovery, from a calorie burn perspective, isn't how long it takes for your heart rate to return to rest.
Not going to claim i know everything about losing weight and exercise, but other then the increase in exercise i cant think of any other reason the same amount of weight came off quicker. I did not get taller and getting older should not make it any easier. Only other reason i could theorize is my body was use to extreme weight loss?
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tincanonastring wrote: »Recovery, from a calorie burn perspective, isn't how long it takes for your heart rate to return to rest.
Not going to claim i know everything about losing weight and exercise, but other then the increase in exercise i cant think of any other reason the same amount of weight came off quicker. I did not get taller and getting older should not make it any easier. Only other reason i could theorize is my body was use to extreme weight loss?
There are several more variables in the CO equation once you add exercise in the mix, and some of them may be completely impossible to account for with any reasonable degree of accuracy. I know you don't want to hear it, but the exercise was burning calories you weren't accounting for properly.0 -
lindsey1979 wrote: »Well, I guess one of the differentiations I take into account are what drives people to eat. For example I have two twin nieces -- they're growing up in the same environment and they have vastly different body types. Most people think that they're 2 years apart rather than the exact same age. One is probably in the 80+ percentile for weight and one is probably in the lower 20+ weight. And you started seeing significant differences around age 1.
Undoubtedly the bigger one eats more than the little one. But why? What has driven that? They have the exact same parents, grow up in the same household, eating the same things (though obviously one has always eaten more)?
There is at least one theory out there that it has to do with absorption of nutrients in food and/or the combination of so much of our food not being as nutrient dense as it used to be (at least in comparison to its caloric density). So, some eat more to get more nutrients because their body isn't absorbing/digesting them as effectively and along comes the extra calories. I don't know if there is any truth behind it, but definitely interesting to think about.
I guess I've just seen too many people like my twin nieces in the world to think it is as seeming simple as vismal posits. Yes, the heavier people are eating more -- but why? What is going on to shift to so much on an overall population level? The rates of obesity now are greatly higher than they were 50 years ago but there hasn't been that much change in lifestyles and activity in 50 years. Yes, perhaps some, but not really that much. We have a heck of a LOT more fat kids now than we did even 20-30 years ago. My guess is something is going on in our food chain that is significantly shift this. I know there has been a significant increase in sugar consumption, but it's hard to believe it's just that.
There's been an incredible change in lifestyles and activities just since I was a child back in the 70s and 80s. Back then kids played outside as a matter of course, and all the games were physical. We only ate at mealtimes, and second helpings (at least for most of the families in my family's income level) weren't a thing.
Now kids have a multitude of electronic devices and games, and when they are getting together to play, they aren't doing a lot of physical gaming. There's a reason the NFL had to start their 'Play60' initiative. I honestly had to laugh the first time I saw that - the idea children actually have to be told to get 60 minutes of physical activity per day. My generation - you couldn't have held us back to 60 minutes per day.
And eating? Today's kids are shown that eating is another part of socializing. It's advertised as part of every social event. Not only are they not playing phsyically, they're snacking while they are sitting around. Kids didn't do that even 20 years ago, not to mention 50.
It's not the food chain.
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lemurcat12 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »But certainly I think food is the bigger part, but that's because I think that most humans don't have a natural stop mechanism when it comes to food
This hasn't been my experience at all - I don't want to eat once I feel full, and I do feel full, once I hit my macros/calorie targets (and did long before I knew what they were, i.e. by eating intuitively. I leave stuff on my plate all the time, always have). My "natural stop mechanism" only fails when what I'm eating is chips. I think it might hard to reach satiety with some ratios or foods. But when I'm eating an even roughly "healthy" diet, I get full at a certain point and stop there.
I don't mean to overstate it, but I think the intuitive eating idea is that people will eat the amount needed to avoid gaining--that they won't overeat. There's no real benefit to that evolutionarily, and I don't see any evidence that most people are calibrated that way, which is why in conditions of surplus, without natural restrictions on how much we eat (like cultural ones), the majority of people seem to become overweight, unless they impose the restrictions themselves.
I'm not talking about eating after you feel full, but my idea here is that fullness often does not kick in until after you've consumed more than ideal calories.
And obviously there are exceptions (even in the US something like 30% aren't overweight, and some portion of them seem to naturally stay thin without thinking about it much, especially when younger and more active), so maybe you are someone who does more naturally regulate your food under normal circumstances. The evidence seems to me that most humans aren't such people.
I'm not -- and I'm not complaining about this, once you understand it it's not that tough to deal with. Even eating a healthy balanced diet I can easily overeat if I don't do things like eating only at certain periods of time and watching portion size.
Oh, to elaborate on this a bit, it's not like you have to eat hugely excessive amounts to gain. Just eat an extra 100 calories a day and it adds up over time. I gained lots of weight (fast) by going from very active to sedentary and basically eating the same diet for some time, and it was a healthy diet.
I see, yeah. I mean, I agree that intuitively consuming the things that are immediately available in most sedentary adults' environments will for sure lead to overage on cals. I think though that if people somewhat constrain themselves to certain ratios/foods (whichever works for them, I know not everyone's easily sated with lower carb [e.g. 100 g/day], some get more out of higher volume/higher carb), it's less difficult to feel satiated without looking at amounts, and not gain.
At least, the last two years of maintenance, I had no trouble whatsoever staying at my weight within a 4 pound margin, without counting calories, on a diet of 80% meat, whole grains, dairy, veg, nuts, etc, and 20% McDonald's and beer (etc., lol. Not just McD's and beer, whatever things I'd ordinarily have to portion off if just counting cals). It's true that I was active/burning, but not like a crazy amount, probably just at or even under NASM's guidelines for the general population.
Also, growing up, I ate as much as I wanted (of all kinds of things, including pizza) and was at a normal weight. All the trouble started in my mid-20s
(with the kind of work i did then, plus ginormous carrot muffins) 0 -
I didn't eat fast food or lots of junk food when I gained weight. I actually ate more of that stuff when I was average weight without thinking about it (until my late 20s). But the difference is I was active and -- and for me this is important -- I ate only at meal times or maybe a dessert or irregular snack. Food wasn't available at all times and it wasn't assumed you'd eat outside of meal times. (And I was more active -- I always seem to maintain fine when I'm active.)
But again, saying I have to think about it some doesn't mean it's tough to maintain weight. I maintained for 5 years after I lost before and would have said it was quite easy to do so. But once I stopped caring it was also really easy to regain, without changing my diet away from the same sorts of foods (which never included much packaged stuff or fast food, as I don't like that stuff).0
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