NPR Story about Weightloss plateau

jhc7324

I caught this on the radio this morning and looked up the article later on.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/07/29/202655878/how-to-escape-the-diet-plateau

When I heard this part:

Even a weight loss of 10 pounds will set the body up to fight back. Ravussin says. Any significant weight loss means the body is smaller and needs less fuel to walk, go up stairs, jog or get out of a chair.

And less fuel burned means fewer calories needed. So if you've been on a diet of 1,500 calorie a day, perhaps your slimmer body now needs 300 calories less per day. That means you have to decrease your daily caloric intake — perhaps by as much as 300 calories, down to 1,200 calories a day — if you want to continue losing weight.

I was a little excited thinking the story was going to move into discussing the benefits of strength/weight training to build muscle and increase your BMR, instead, this was the take away:

"If you want to get below the new set point, you need a different approach added to the diet and exercise program you're already on," says Kaplan. "We call it speed dating obesity therapies," he says. "If one approach doesn't work, we try another one. We try a different diet. We add exercise or change the type of exercise. We encourage better sleep health. We encourage decreased stress."

Inadequate sleep and lots of stress often increase appetite and getting these things under control can help, Kaplan says. "We try to find the best therapies for each individual," he adds, stressing that everyone is different and may respond differently to various approaches.

But pretty much everyone agrees that exercise works for most people. That's because bigger stronger muscles burn more calories, says Kaplan. "If you're on the treadmill every day, you may burn a couple of hundred calories a day from being on the treadmill, but you may burn 600 or 800 extra calories throughout the rest of the day when you're not on a treadmill, because bodies with healthy muscles work better."

Even though it slightly missed the point IMO, the article is a halfway decent start.