Weight loss woo keeps getting worse.

Options
1…5678911»

Replies

  • ladyreva78
    ladyreva78 Posts: 4,080 Member
    Options
    Sairzie wrote: »
    iamthemotherofdogs wrote: »
    I have a patient who came in here letting us know how she lost her weight by just cutting out anything but leafy greens, citrus fruits, and hot tea.

    She tried to give me a print-out about it. I wish I'd taken it.

    Don’t you love getting expert advice from patients? Had a extremely overweight gentleman yesterday who INSISTED he had put on 6 pounds since I last saw him because he has been going to the gym once a week to use the treadmill for half an hour....so must have gained 6 pounds of muscle (in three weeks) from his brisk walking!

    Sad but true: the nutritionist I went to for a while a couple of years ago came up with the same reasoning when my weight stagnated for a couple of month.

    "Oh, you started exercising again. It's all muscle!"

    I've learned my lesson now... nutritionist does not = registered dietitian...

  • French_Peasant
    French_Peasant Posts: 1,639 Member
    Options
    aeloine wrote: »
    French_Peasant wrote: »
    walktalkdog wrote: »
    Sharon_C wrote: »
    Pinterest is so frustrating because you have to sort through the woo to find anything worthwhile. Then I get mad because so many people want to believe the woo.

    THE WOO IS NOT REAL, PEOPLE!

    What does "woo" mean? I'm so bad with all these acronyms.

    Short for woo-woo, which as far as anyone can tell, comes from the spooky music in a sci-fi show, or maybe from ghosts, or maybe just the noise made by a self-styled-shaman hippie dancing naked around a camp fire at the full moon summoning his spirit animal.

    Haha not quite!

    It's either woo like "yay! woo-hoo!" or woo like "diet-woo" which is sometimes a way to show that you disagree with what was said.

    I like yours a LOT better though!

    She was asking about the actual word under discussion in the thread (which she was mistaking for an acronym), not the button. Just defining how the button is used is not helpful for understanding the broader problems caused by belief in pseudoscience, whether related to diet or something else, like medicine.

    http://skepdic.com/woowoo.html
  • collectingblues
    collectingblues Posts: 2,541 Member
    edited November 2017
    Options
    mmapags wrote: »
    aeloine wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    aeloine wrote: »
    stanmann571 wrote: »
    ugofatcat wrote: »
    The one I can't wrap my head around is "starvation mode". The only thing that will make you lose weight creating a calorie deficit, which is typically done by eating less. Yet somehow eating less will make you gain weight? I am dumbfounded how anyone can buy this logic.

    I guess it is because people weigh themselves in the morning, eat healthy for 6 hours, weigh themselves, the scale goes up 2 pounds, so their body must be hoarding fat. It couldn't possibly be a full bladder or the fact they just ate, obviously it is fat.

    There's bad woo on both sides of adaptive thermogenics.

    On the one hand you have the above.

    On the other you have the assertion that someone who has lost 200 lbs and now weights 187 lbs can and should maintain that weight with approximately the same calories as someone who hasn't lost 200 lbs.

    Adaptive Thermogenics and metabolic damage are real things and can take months or years to recover.

    Is this what that "refeeds and diet breaks" post was about?

    In part but more than just that. Go in a take a look. There is a wealth of info and links in that thread.

    I know.... but it's also waaaay above my head for the most part. I haven't had a chance to watch the video but got the cliff notes from some of the early responses.

    I'm really glad it cropped up, though. I think it addresses some of what I've been going through lately.

    Yes, the very short answer is calorie deficit alters hormones that affect fat loss. This happens more dramatically for women. Taking a diet break and eating at maintenance every 6 to 8 weeks, for women, is beneficial to reset hormones and facilitate continued fat loss and avoid stalls. Some will do 2 days per week at maintenance, refeeds, and find it helpful. There are studies and articles that support both.

    And, what gets ignored a lot in the forums is this hormonal role. Like, cortisol. Specifically cortisol. ;)

    Teal deer ahead. But in short: Yeah, there's a lot of woo even here.

    I totally side-eyed a previous therapist when she pointed out that my -- at that point, almost 20 years of on-and-off-but-mostly-on restriction (at the worst, regularly going from <1000 calories to binge/purge cycles, and at the best, just simply purging through insulin withholding and overtraining) -- were likely doing a number of my cortisol levels which was going to give me the opposite reaction of what I wanted. I thought she was full of it, and that she was simply trying to get me to eat more.

    And then this past May happened.

    I'd been losing with fantastic regularity, and then broke a toe and ran a half marathon on said broken toe. I dropped my calories back significantly, because I figured that well, I wasn't training, so it was totally OK to skimp on food.

    I've generally stalled since then, and have gained 5 percent since where I was before the half -- which is "only" six pounds, but it feels like a lot.

    I keep meticulous journals. I weigh everything I eat *and* drink (my scale does liquid ounces and mL). I had some marginal calorie increases when I was upping my running over the summer once I was back to training, but I was also back to training at full force -- and certainly burning more than what I was intaking. When I say training at full force, this is what the week looked like: 20 MPW running, two-to-three barre sessions per week, and another mile swim. Each week.

    And while it then evened out, it stalled. Nothing. Certainly not back to my sub-120s that I was maintaining before the race. I haven't gained. My measurements are actually smaller. But I've done no strength training -- just my usual barre, spin, running, and swim.

    My new dietitian asked me to have RMR testing done, so that we could see if I was indeed dealing with some adaptive processes due to the years of restriction + overtraining. She suspected it would be lower than predicted. I wasn't sure what to think.

    The reality was that it was about 30 percent higher than expected, and 20 percent higher than what my Apple Watch says I should burn.

    I then took all of the numbers to her -- my average daily intake, my average daily burn, and what my weight had done.

    She pointed out that in that first month of May, my weight was actually *flat* from beginning to end. It weaved around over the summer, but the only months I saw a loss was when I actually reduced my deficit. She accurately noted that even though she wasn't working with me in May, she suspected that I'd cut, and then not restored fully when my body was most needing and wanting it after the half, and when I increased training again.

    Enter cortisol. She now wants me to gradually start increasing my calories (we're working on increasing sodium first, since I tend to restrict sodium, and then feel like I disproportionately react when I suddenly eat more of it -- which she explained as the "well, when your body thinks it's not going to get more, of course it's going to hold on" phenomenon), and I've started doing that to a degree now when I'm out, or if I'm just hungry. And sure enough, on those weeks where I've maintained a more "normal" deficit to my actual TDEE, I see some of the weight drop off.

    (And, unfortunately, considering that when I went to my GP with some breathing concerns, he'd simply told me I was out of shape -- only to have that correctly diagnosed by another doc as exercise-induced asthma -- I'm not keen on going back to him for cortisol testing.)

    Turns out that first therapist wasn't full of it.

    But here? I'd posted in other threads asking for advice, and was told that no, I must be recomping, or I must be inaccurate. Except that you have the same people saying that recomp can't happen without strength training. And I don't do strength training.

    People don't like to accept when outliers exist, and refuse to acknowledge that hormones can and do play a role and can do a fantastic job masking weight loss for extended periods beyond "oh, it'll straighten out in six weeks."

    I said to my therapist that I know that *my* expectations aren't realistic right now. The dietitian told me to expect at least four weeks for the sodium thing to settle out, and I know that I'm also expecting a quick fix to 20+ years of restriction + purging.

    Basically, I'm now avoiding most threads except for this and the refeed thread, because I'm so not dealing with broscientists who can't accept situations exist outside their experience realms.
  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    edited November 2017
    Options
    kristen8000 wrote: »
    I've talk to 2 people "in the wild" about weight loss this week and got a bunch of woo back...it's out there and it's rampant...

    Convo 1:
    Bartender: Wow, you look great, how did you lose the weight?
    Me. Ate less consistantly over 3 months, logged my food
    Bartender: Oh. I started working out more and have gained weight too - I thought if you worked out you lose weight?
    Me: Well, no. If you are eating at a surplus for you, you'll still gain.
    Bartender: Well my hours make it so I eat at weird times of the day, I think that's it.
    Me. No. Meal timing is irrelevant. If you are gaining fat, you are eating too much.
    Bartender: Blank stare like I'm a moron.

    Convo 2:
    Hair Dresser: Oh wow, you look great. What have you been up to?
    Me. Ate less consistantly over 3 months, logged my food
    Hair Dresser: Really, that's it, you didn't spend hours in the gym, or eat clean?
    Me: Yep
    Hair Dresser: I started having AVC in the morning with a glass of water, I think it's working.
    Me: **oh good lord, get me out of here***

    The most important things for weightloss are really the same as for anything you want to accomplish. A reasoned plan, conviction to stick with it and willpower.
  • kristen8000
    kristen8000 Posts: 747 Member
    Options
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    kristen8000 wrote: »
    I've talk to 2 people "in the wild" about weight loss this week and got a bunch of woo back...it's out there and it's rampant...

    Convo 1:
    Bartender: Wow, you look great, how did you lose the weight?
    Me. Ate less consistantly over 3 months, logged my food
    Bartender: Oh. I started working out more and have gained weight too - I thought if you worked out you lose weight?
    Me: Well, no. If you are eating at a surplus for you, you'll still gain.
    Bartender: Well my hours make it so I eat at weird times of the day, I think that's it.
    Me. No. Meal timing is irrelevant. If you are gaining fat, you are eating too much.
    Bartender: Blank stare like I'm a moron.

    Convo 2:
    Hair Dresser: Oh wow, you look great. What have you been up to?
    Me. Ate less consistantly over 3 months, logged my food
    Hair Dresser: Really, that's it, you didn't spend hours in the gym, or eat clean?
    Me: Yep
    Hair Dresser: I started having AVC in the morning with a glass of water, I think it's working.
    Me: **oh good lord, get me out of here***

    The most important things for weightloss are really the same as for anything you want to accomplish. A reasoned plan, conviction to stick with it and willpower.

    Of course it is. Usually when I find someone making a ton of excuses, I say "it's like any other goal, it takes work, a plan and patience". I too have had various excuses why I can't/don't want to do something (heck, I've been saying I'll get my Masters next year for the last 15 years, LOL), but to use "woo" as a reason/excuse, I'll never get.

    In that 3 months that I lose 17lbs, I may have "worked out" 5 days. All I did was adjust my diet enough to get results. Honestly, it wasn't hard. But people find "woo" easier. Woo works...
  • alteredsteve175
    alteredsteve175 Posts: 2,716 Member
    Options
    Tacklewasher wrote: »
    If I was trying to do this without the math, I'd be lost and probably chasing some of the ideas this thread is about.

    Amen. Do the math. Logging my food forces me to be honest with myself about how much I eat and drink. And that gives me control and a guide for adjusting consumption to meet my goal.
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
    edited December 2017
    Options
    https://dailysalida.com/products/lilia-weight-loss-anti-cellulite-leggings

    And here's a link to an ad for them on Facebook. The comments are depressing.
    https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=151491492155058&id=113186785985529

Categories