Thoughts?

psychod787

I sure most people here have read this article, but I am interested on the takes on this ladies maintenance.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2012/01/06/tara-parker-pope-do-you-have-to-be-superhuman-to-lose-weight

kommodevaran

Very long? I have had no discernible trouble keeping off the 50 pounds I lost 2013-14. It has taken a lot of changes to habits and attitudes, though, and I feel I'm closer to Yemi and Anne-Marie here than to the average Weight Control Registry member, who does and says the things I too held for true and important during previous weight management attempts.

elisa123gal

what caught my eye is that they conducted a fad crash diet..optifast. that taints my view of the entire article..of course you gain weight back when you don't really learn how to eat full meals made with good foods ..prepared ina healthy tasty way.

i do realize most people regain their weight..so, i'm not arguing with that. but, i'd like to see them study a group of people who lost weight eating full meals of the right food. not a shake and two cups of vegetables a day

psychod787

elisa123gal wrote: »

what caught my eye is that they conducted a fad crash diet..optifast. that taints my view of the entire article..of course you gain weight back when you don't really learn how to eat full meals made with good foods ..prepared ina healthy tasty way.

i do realize most people regain their weight..so, i'm not arguing with that. but, i'd like to see them study a group of people who lost weight eating full meals of the right food. not a shake and two cups of vegetables a day

I was actually speaking about the lady, Janice's story of her maintenance....

CarvedTones

It's a lot of work. She is able to exercise 100 to 120 minutes pretty much every day; not everyone can. Even if they have the time, not everyone will.

Maintenance calories that seem to work for me are low. I also don't log all my exercise. I was successfully maintaining in a pretty tight window for a couple of months. I decided to take it a little lower to give me more room above my range and below my scream weight. I expect to be logging and frequently weighing for a long time. It is difficult to stay disciplined. Yesterday, I allowed myself to go over at my son't graduation dinner and it was largely with dessert. It was kind of spooky how much I enjoyed that and wanted more. I have been eating treats while I diet but it is usually "metered" and small amounts. Yesterday, it was a big piece of pie with a little ice cream and I didn't have a rule that said I had to stop. I was still somewhat disciplined. I went light on breakfast and lunch and really didn't go all that far over. But that ravenous feeling was a little scary.

try2again

psychod787 wrote: »

elisa123gal wrote: »

what caught my eye is that they conducted a fad crash diet..optifast. that taints my view of the entire article..of course you gain weight back when you don't really learn how to eat full meals made with good foods ..prepared ina healthy tasty way.

i do realize most people regain their weight..so, i'm not arguing with that. but, i'd like to see them study a group of people who lost weight eating full meals of the right food. not a shake and two cups of vegetables a day

I was actually speaking about the lady, Janice's story of her maintenance....

If I did the math right, she lost at a rate of about 15 lbs/month, which is incredibly aggressive. I don't doubt she messed up her hormones. And she supposedly works out for up to 2 hours a day to maintain, but no mention of calories. A lot of information lacking there, but I don't think you could call her experience typical.

There's just too many variables to make sense of most weight loss studies, IMO. But when I see articles like this about long-term effects on hormones & metabolism, it always seems to involve aggressive dieting, and I suspect that's not a coincidence.

CarvedTones

I should have mentioned, a couple of posts up, that the reason I think my low burn is relevant is that I didn't always do it the mfp way. 4 years ago, I lost 60 pounds pretty much in freefall on a crash diet. This time I started with a crash diet and then got on mfp and got educated, slowed up by eating adequate calories and then came in slow. What I did at the end and what I am doing now is sustainable, but at the beginning, I lost 32 pounds in 64 days. I lost the weight 4 years ago at nearly the same rate. I can certainly believe I may have done some damage to hormones and metabolism. Starvation mode is bro-science, but adaptive thermogenesis is very real. It is very possible that I burn a couple of hundred less calories a day that I did before the big crashes.

psychod787

I think that metabolic adaptation may hit women harder than men. I think it might have something to do with reproduction. Just a theory i heard somewhere. I think I remember reading a study that talked about rate of regain or odds of regain were the same even if the loss was slow. I guess the media might also report on the extremes. I see her husband did not give his info. The article states he wants to keep it private, but I wonder if that was intentional by the author.

AnnPT77

Not enough information to evaluate (Janice's maintenance specifically).

Even if I suppose horrifying metabolic adaptation is real and universal (P.S. I don't), there's some intake and activity level that will maintain weight. It would just be harder, because the calorie level would be lower. But there are ways to drive the calorie requirement higher (exercise for sure, but not just exercise); these apply to us as weight maintainers just like they do to anyone else.

So, if I - making up numbers - have to eat 200 calories less daily than someone my size who never lost weight, I can strive to introduce more activity into my day to burn 200 more calories (a couple of hundred calories of NEAT is a realistic stretch goal for some/many people). I can also work on improving body composition (build muscle) in order to require more calories (only a few, and only slowly improvable, I know).

Personally, I think bigger factors (as compared to "hormones" or to "metabolic adaptation" at the RMR level) are (1) habit, (2) an ingrained sense of what's "normal", (3) downregulated NEAT, (4) body composition, and (5) the problem of deferred gratification.

We had habits for, typically, a long time, that led us to become fat. Those were comfortable habits, for a variety of reasons. Without a rigorous way to monitor what we're doing, we tend to revert to those habits, in whole or in part.

Those habits we had for a long time, often habits that our families had as we grew up, seem "normal". We go on a "diet", but slowly revert to (or at least toward) what we see as "normal" life.

The habit and "normal"-ness factors are especially likely to kick in if other life issues start consuming our mental bandwidth, like a difficult project at work, or an illness of a family member, or a break in routine due to surgery/injury, etc.

As far as downregulated NEAT, it's pretty easy to subtly slow our daily activity while in a calorie deficit, especially if we stay in a deficit for a long time. I'm talking about things like not doing energetic home improvement projects as often, cooking simpler meals, reducing energy-draining errands, etc. These become habits that persist into maintenance, and result in a lower TDEE than we would've had if we hadn't calorie-restricted. Most humans' RMR runs pretty close to demographically-matched population averages; NEAT and exercise vary widely.

Body composition, I suspect, can be a more common problem with maintenance calorie requirement among women, though it's potentially a problem for anyone. When we lose weight, especially if we use extreme calorie deficits, we lose lean mass alongside fat. If we eat insufficient amounts of protein while in a calorie deficit, we lose even more lean mass. If we do insufficient amounts of the right kinds of exercise while in a calorie deficit, we lose still more lean mass. Some of this lean mass is muscle. While muscle burns only a tiny number more calories daily than fat, it's still calories.

I feel like women, especially, are more likely to have gone through through years of failed yo-yo diets (extreme deficit with muscle loss, regain mostly fat), to avoid muscle-sparing exercise (wouldn't want to "get bulky"), and to eat too little protein as a overall life habit and especially while "dieting".

Deferred gratification is about that standard human tendency to value today's immediate happiness over long-term future happiness. It's at the root of many modern problems, not just obesity but (for example) some financial problems (e.g., retirement planning). We want that ice cream sundae now, and it's cheap and delicious - how bad could it be? The fact that future self will be fat again if we do that often . . . that seems improbable and remote, in the moment of decision. After all, it's just one sundae!

Are hormonal fluctuations part of what's going on, under the covers? Maybe. Who cares? The behavior is what matters, and we can control the behavior if we really want to. The hormones are mostly about the urges and cravings.

So many articles about this issue of "metabolic adaptation" - like this one specifically - are written in such a way that they encourage us to think we lack control over the situation, it's not our fault, we're at the mercy of our biochemistry, so we should expect to fail (statistically, "everyone does" ), and to not feel like it had anything to do with our choices when we do. Not helpful.

The rhetoric isn't that different from what I see said about how we can't lose weight when we're aging, or post-menopausal, or hypothyroid, or whatever. The swell thing about "metabolic adaptation" is that anyone can use it as a reason for regain, while those others require you to be older, post-menopausal, hypothyroid, etc. (I'm all those listed things, BTW.)

Call me cynical.

jennifer_417

There may be some merit to studying the metabolic and hormonal processes, but the bottom line is that no one is forcing them to overeat.
Also, with the VLCD up front, the person experiences the satisfaction of losing weight, but they don't have a chance to fully prepare, nor are they able to focus on habits necessary to develop lifelong habits in order to keep the weight off.

try2again

AnnPT77 wrote: »

We had habits for, typically, a long time, that led us to become fat. Those were comfortable habits, for a variety of reasons. Without a rigorous way to monitor what we're doing, we tend to revert to those habits, in whole or in part.

Those habits we had for a long time, often habits that our families had as we grew up, seem "normal". We go on a "diet", but slowly revert to (or at least toward) what we see as "normal" life.

The habit and "normal"-ness factors are especially likely to kick in if other life issues start consuming our mental bandwidth, like a difficult project at work, or an illness of a family member, or a break in routine due to surgery/injury, etc.

This is basically what I was thinking as well. I don't discount the idea that extreme and yo-yo dieting have negative effects, but most of us who have regained at some point have just fallen back into old habits or have become less diligent & fallen victim to portion creep. Janice's example in the article reminded me of all the threads saying, "I work out every day and haven't lost any weight" with no mention of calories or how they are tracking their intake. So what if the people who had been on the 500 calorie diet were "counseled" to exercise more & eat more vegetables... what did they actually do? How many calories were they actually eating? How do they know?

CarvedTones

It seems like I have to eat less in maintenance than someone my size/weight/age who was a little more sensible/patient about losing weight. Well, boo effing hoo - that's reality and I have to get over it and burn more and/or eat less to maintain. I may have made it a little harder, but it is doable and it doesn't require more discipline and commitment that the next person IMO. I don't get to be a martyr if I am able to maintain and my excuse is no better than the next person's if I don't.

psychod787

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Not enough information to evaluate (Janice's maintenance specifically).

Even if I suppose horrifying metabolic adaptation is real and universal (P.S. I don't), there's some intake and activity level that will maintain weight. It would just be harder, because the calorie level would be lower. But there are ways to drive the calorie requirement higher (exercise for sure, but not just exercise); these apply to us as weight maintainers just like they do to anyone else.

So, if I - making up numbers - have to eat 200 calories less daily than someone my size who never lost weight, I can strive to introduce more activity into my day to burn 200 more calories (a couple of hundred calories of NEAT is a realistic stretch goal for some/many people). I can also work on improving body composition (build muscle) in order to require more calories (only a few, and only slowly improvable, I know).

Personally, I think bigger factors (as compared to "hormones" or to "metabolic adaptation" at the RMR level) are (1) habit, (2) an ingrained sense of what's "normal", (3) downregulated NEAT, (4) body composition, and (5) the problem of deferred gratification.

We had habits for, typically, a long time, that led us to become fat. Those were comfortable habits, for a variety of reasons. Without a rigorous way to monitor what we're doing, we tend to revert to those habits, in whole or in part.

Those habits we had for a long time, often habits that our families had as we grew up, seem "normal". We go on a "diet", but slowly revert to (or at least toward) what we see as "normal" life.

The habit and "normal"-ness factors are especially likely to kick in if other life issues start consuming our mental bandwidth, like a difficult project at work, or an illness of a family member, or a break in routine due to surgery/injury, etc.

As far as downregulated NEAT, it's pretty easy to subtly slow our daily activity while in a calorie deficit, especially if we stay in a deficit for a long time. I'm talking about things like not doing energetic home improvement projects as often, cooking simpler meals, reducing energy-draining errands, etc. These become habits that persist into maintenance, and result in a lower TDEE than we would've had if we hadn't calorie-restricted. Most humans' RMR runs pretty close to demographically-matched population averages; NEAT and exercise vary widely.

Body composition, I suspect, can be a more common problem with maintenance calorie requirement among women, though it's potentially a problem for anyone. When we lose weight, especially if we use extreme calorie deficits, we lose lean mass alongside fat. If we eat insufficient amounts of protein while in a calorie deficit, we lose even more lean mass. If we do insufficient amounts of the right kinds of exercise while in a calorie deficit, we lose still more lean mass. Some of this lean mass is muscle. While muscle burns only a tiny number more calories daily than fat, it's still calories.

I feel like women, especially, are more likely to have gone through through years of failed yo-yo diets (extreme deficit with muscle loss, regain mostly fat), to avoid muscle-sparing exercise (wouldn't want to "get bulky"), and to eat too little protein as a overall life habit and especially while "dieting".

Deferred gratification is about that standard human tendency to value today's immediate happiness over long-term future happiness. It's at the root of many modern problems, not just obesity but (for example) some financial problems (e.g., retirement planning). We want that ice cream sundae now, and it's cheap and delicious - how bad could it be? The fact that future self will be fat again if we do that often . . . that seems improbable and remote, in the moment of decision. After all, it's just one sundae!

Are hormonal fluctuations part of what's going on, under the covers? Maybe. Who cares? The behavior is what matters, and we can control the behavior if we really want to. The hormones are mostly about the urges and cravings.

So many articles about this issue of "metabolic adaptation" - like this one specifically - are written in such a way that they encourage us to think we lack control over the situation, it's not our fault, we're at the mercy of our biochemistry, so we should expect to fail (statistically, "everyone does" ), and to not feel like it had anything to do with our choices when we do. Not helpful.

The rhetoric isn't that different from what I see said about how we can't lose weight when we're aging, or post-menopausal, or hypothyroid, or whatever. The swell thing about "metabolic adaptation" is that anyone can use it as a reason for regain, while those others require you to be older, post-menopausal, hypothyroid, etc. (I'm all those listed things, BTW.)

Call me cynical.

No more cynical than me ann. Still jealous of your back!

hesn92

The idea that a person burns fewer calories directly after losing weight than a typical person of the same size and age makes sense to me. I would say there’s a good chance that bit is true. When you are restricting calories for an extenddd period of time, your body probably fights against that doing whatever it can (involuntarily) to use less energy. Like maybe you don’t fidget as much as you used to, or you don’t pace as much etc. and once you start giving your body the calories it needs it probably takes a while to get used to it. Just my thoughts, I have absolutely no scientific proof to support that.

cheryldumais

Interesting read. I have seen a similar thing in my own journey. I maintain 145 pounds at 61 years old and 5'5" on about 1300 - 1400 calories a day. If I eat more I gain. I'm not happy about it but the alternative is to regain the weight. At least now I know why. I also think that I probably have lost some muscle mass over the years with yoyo dieting. One of these days I'm going to do a recomp and try to build some muscle. Maybe that will help?

ryenday

cheryldumais wrote: »

Interesting read. I have seen a similar thing in my own journey. I maintain 145 pounds at 61 years old and 5'5" on about 1300 - 1400 calories a day. If I eat more I gain. I'm not happy about it but the alternative is to regain the weight. At least now I know why. I also think that I probably have lost some muscle mass over the years with yoyo dieting. One of these days I'm going to do a recomp and try to build some muscle. Maybe that will help?

Been doing weights since October, I haven't seen any help in my calorie allotment thusfar. I'm a bit shorter and younger than you, and around 142 pounds but the same 1300 to 1400 limit or my weights starts up. It is very frustrating and I find that much of the generic advice on the forums just doesn't apply when maintenance calories are that low. (When one piece of cake for instance is a meal's worth of calories the forum 'wisdom' that you don't have to give foods up to lose (or maintain) weight is laughable. Yes, I do have to give up some foods if I don't want to gain weight!)

elisa123gal

Been doing weights since October, I haven't seen any help in my calorie allotment thusfar. I'm a bit shorter and younger than you, and around 142 pounds but the same 1300 to 1400 limit or my weights starts up. It is very frustrating and I find that much of the generic advice on the forums just doesn't apply when maintenance calories are that low. (When one piece of cake for instance is a meal's worth of calories the forum 'wisdom' that you don't have to give foods up to lose (or maintain) weight is laughable. Yes, I do have to give up some foods if I don't want to gain weight!)


[/quote]

This is why i choose not to calorie count..i too - don't believe that people are eating everything they want and just fit it into their calories. Too many people are stuck eating low calories forever when they have a restricted diet for so long. It is like your metabolisms are shot. '
Also.. most who state that they eat whatever they want are very overweight and get large calorie allowances. my husband is one of them. He gets to eat 2100 a day and is losing. i don't have the heart to tell him that as he loses he'll end up being lucky to eat 1600. i don't know if he'll be able to make it that far..but i'm just happy he is losing and going to keep the reality to myself.

try2again

ryenday wrote: »

cheryldumais wrote: »

Interesting read. I have seen a similar thing in my own journey. I maintain 145 pounds at 61 years old and 5'5" on about 1300 - 1400 calories a day. If I eat more I gain. I'm not happy about it but the alternative is to regain the weight. At least now I know why. I also think that I probably have lost some muscle mass over the years with yoyo dieting. One of these days I'm going to do a recomp and try to build some muscle. Maybe that will help?

Been doing weights since October, I haven't seen any help in my calorie allotment thusfar. I'm a bit shorter and younger than you, and around 142 pounds but the same 1300 to 1400 limit or my weights starts up. It is very frustrating and I find that much of the generic advice on the forums just doesn't apply when maintenance calories are that low. (When one piece of cake for instance is a meal's worth of calories the forum 'wisdom' that you don't have to give foods up to lose (or maintain) weight is laughable. Yes, I do have to give up some foods if I don't want to gain weight!)

Yes, the "forum wisdom" is intended for the majority, not the outliers.

Still don't think that means a person has to give anything up. Maybe have a lot less than they would like, or make it a rare indulgence, which admittedly would be a bummer.

CarvedTones

elisa123gal wrote: »

Been doing weights since October, I haven't seen any help in my calorie allotment thusfar. I'm a bit shorter and younger than you, and around 142 pounds but the same 1300 to 1400 limit or my weights starts up. It is very frustrating and I find that much of the generic advice on the forums just doesn't apply when maintenance calories are that low. (When one piece of cake for instance is a meal's worth of calories the forum 'wisdom' that you don't have to give foods up to lose (or maintain) weight is laughable. Yes, I do have to give up some foods if I don't want to gain weight!)

This is why i choose not to calorie count..i too - don't believe that people are eating everything they want and just fit it into their calories. Too many people are stuck eating low calories forever when they have a restricted diet for so long. It is like your metabolisms are shot. '
Also.. most who state that they eat whatever they want are very overweight and get large calorie allowances. my husband is one of them. He gets to eat 2100 a day and is losing. i don't have the heart to tell him that as he loses he'll end up being lucky to eat 1600. i don't know if he'll be able to make it that far..but i'm just happy he is losing and going to keep the reality to myself.

My maintenance is not much more than I was losing quickly on a few months ago, though I am not sure I have really figured out what it is yet. I lost 65 to get here and I lost the early part of it too quickly. 4 or 5 years ago I lost almost this much and lost the whole amount too quickly. I have some adaptive thermogenesis going on. I think my lazy day (no exercise) burn is in the 1600-1700 range. mfp calculates over 1900. I maintained in a pretty tight window for a couple of months using 1700 + less than half the estimated calories for exercise. Then I dropped back to 1600 and left exercise out entirely or logged just a little to get further from the maximum. Now I am doing 1700 + only part of the exercise again. I eat a lot of things I want, but it does still feel like dieting.

psychod787

cheryldumais wrote: »

Interesting read. I have seen a similar thing in my own journey. I maintain 145 pounds at 61 years old and 5'5" on about 1300 - 1400 calories a day. If I eat more I gain. I'm not happy about it but the alternative is to regain the weight. At least now I know why. I also think that I probably have lost some muscle mass over the years with yoyo dieting. One of these days I'm going to do a recomp and try to build some muscle. Maybe that will help?

Lifting weights is a great thing, but as far as adding muscle to increase rmr or metabolism... I do believe muscle adds 6 cals a pound to rmr, but the other benefits are amazing. It helps ward off osteoporosis, maintain muscle mass, the repairing of the muscle causes a 75-150 increase in rmr for 48 hrs, also might burn a few cals lifting. The big one for me is, it give me a goal. Walking and a few sprints is cool and all, but nothing like hitting a pr.You don't need heavy weights, I have seen people recomp using resistance bands. As long as you push for another rep, or a slight increase in resistance will cause progressive overload.

nowine4me

I don’t have anything to add on the science. But I can say for certain that I would rather weigh 130 and eat 2,000 calories a day than weigh 220 and eat a whole bunch more. It’s my new reality and I’ve made peace with it.