Researchers claiming it's impossible to keep weight off

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  • Iwishyouwell
    Iwishyouwell Posts: 1,888 Member
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    I agree, you will feel miserable, but if you do it right, that misery will pass as your body starts to become accustom to foods with lower calorie densities. If you eat the right foods, you can eat all you want and still lose weight, feel great, and still perform anaerobic exercise (you can't in ketosis).

    There is evidence to suggest that this is not true. The reduction in metabolism from losing body fat may be permanent. The effect has been tracked in people who have kept their weight off for several years. Their metabolisms are still 12% - 20% lower than people of the same weight who were never obese.

    If it became easier over time I would expect to see more people succeed long term, too, which we don't.

    Ah, the beauty of intermittent fasting for weight loss and maintenance. If you can come to enjoy IFing, it could be the answer for this hypothetical metabolic slowdown.

    One or two days of fasting, or very low calorie eating, for 5-6 days of pretty free eating (within reason), might be the answer for a lot of people.
  • lindsey1979
    lindsey1979 Posts: 2,395 Member
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    I agree, you will feel miserable, but if you do it right, that misery will pass as your body starts to become accustom to foods with lower calorie densities. If you eat the right foods, you can eat all you want and still lose weight, feel great, and still perform anaerobic exercise (you can't in ketosis).

    There is evidence to suggest that this is not true. The reduction in metabolism from losing body fat may be permanent. The effect has been tracked in people who have kept their weight off for several years. Their metabolisms are still 12% - 20% lower than people of the same weight who were never obese.

    If it became easier over time I would expect to see more people succeed long term, too, which we don't.

    Ah, the beauty of intermittent fasting for weight loss and maintenance. If you can come to enjoy IFing, it could be the answer for this hypothetical metabolic slowdown.

    One or two days of fasting, or very low calorie eating, for 5-6 days of pretty free eating (within reason), might be the answer for a lot of people.

    I really hope this is the case. I just started IFing via 5:2, and I've found it shockingly easy. In fact, I put off trying it because I thought it was going to be so hard. But, I was shocked to find it so manageable. Throw in things like increased insulin sensitivity and greater cellular repair, and I'm pretty excited about the prospects.
  • sheilaq14
    sheilaq14 Posts: 35 Member
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    Hooray for IF. I have been doing EOD for 4 months now and I love it. I really think keeping a couple days of fasting around fior maintenance will be the key for me.
  • RHachicho
    RHachicho Posts: 1,115 Member
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    Honestly guys saying that 5% of the people who lose weight keep it off isn't really saying much. People do stupid crap like go back to their old ways and start eating rubbish and don't keep track of their weight. You know what I will do if 10lb's starts creeping on me over the course of a year. I will diet for a month or two and remove it again. Before going back to maintenance. I think one of the things a lot of people don't get is that you simply can't eat crap and sit on your couch all day and be healthy. It is simply impossible. And to be honest a lot of people CHOOSE TO BE UNHEALTHY. Yeah I know shocking but they take the deal of not having to count calories or work out in order to enjoy their food and free time a lot more. This is totally cool it's a persons choice. But very often people get deluded and have the mistaken assumption that some day they will just be able to let go and not do stuff to keep themselves healthy.

    Honestly I am very sure I will keep the weight off? Why? Because I love being healthy. For me it had got to the point that I had to strain to get up off the floor. It was horrible everything i ever did was so much more effort. Now that my fitness has improved and I've lost a lot of weight I simply feel 10 years younger .. all the time. Junk food can't really make up for that. So if I have to calorie count and work out 3 times a week for the rest of my life ... so be it. I'm not miserable now and I won't be miserable then. Especially since I will actually be able to eat more at maintenance than I do now. Especially when I'm going to build some muscle.

    I think that so many fail because they don't realize that a serious change to their lifestyle is required for long term success. People who are predisposed to healthy living don't need to lose weight in the first place. And the vast majority of dieters either think that monitoring their health is a temporary thing or try and lose weight without doing any exercise. Which .. I am sorry is frankly doomed to fail. The lesson to take from this article is simply this. If you don't care enough about being healthy to make serious changes in the way you live your life then you won't succeed. Simple as.
  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,725 Member
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    So if I gain weight back even once that permanently puts me in the 95% I'm guessing? On the other hand I lost ~40 lbs and kept it off for the better part of 3-5 years and now I'm on track to drop another 30. Does that put me again in the success column?
  • Iwishyouwell
    Iwishyouwell Posts: 1,888 Member
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    I agree, you will feel miserable, but if you do it right, that misery will pass as your body starts to become accustom to foods with lower calorie densities. If you eat the right foods, you can eat all you want and still lose weight, feel great, and still perform anaerobic exercise (you can't in ketosis).

    There is evidence to suggest that this is not true. The reduction in metabolism from losing body fat may be permanent. The effect has been tracked in people who have kept their weight off for several years. Their metabolisms are still 12% - 20% lower than people of the same weight who were never obese.

    If it became easier over time I would expect to see more people succeed long term, too, which we don't.

    Ah, the beauty of intermittent fasting for weight loss and maintenance. If you can come to enjoy IFing, it could be the answer for this hypothetical metabolic slowdown.

    One or two days of fasting, or very low calorie eating, for 5-6 days of pretty free eating (within reason), might be the answer for a lot of people.

    I really hope this is the case. I just started IFing via 5:2, and I've found it shockingly easy. In fact, I put off trying it because I thought it was going to be so hard. But, I was shocked to find it so manageable. Throw in things like increased insulin sensitivity and greater cellular repair, and I'm pretty excited about the prospects.

    I'm an all or nothing person. I've always, for as long as I can remember, been able to go long stretches of time without eating. I often use to get so busy I forgot to eat. I've fasted plenty of times for religious purposes, and a day of not eating does nothing whatsoever to kill my energy or cause ravenous hunger. So throwing in a day or two of fasting a week for the rest of my life isn't an issue whatsoever.

    Being able to eat freely for the majority of my week, without counting or restriction, is liberty to me. What would absolutely murder my weight management is being expected to count calories, and log, every day of my life. That represents a kind of tedium that I rebelled against before and have no interest in adopting as a long term measure. More power to those who can do it and not want to toss themselves out the nearest window.

    IFing and intuitive eating work well for me. I hope that these are the tools that will carry me through maintenance for the rest of my life. God only knows and we shall see...
  • likitisplit
    likitisplit Posts: 9,420 Member
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    So if I gain weight back even once that permanently puts me in the 95% I'm guessing? On the other hand I lost ~40 lbs and kept it off for the better part of 3-5 years and now I'm on track to drop another 30. Does that put me again in the success column?

    According to these researchers, you need to maintain a stable weight for 10 years. 9 stable years and a pregnancy: you lose.
  • RHachicho
    RHachicho Posts: 1,115 Member
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    So if I gain weight back even once that permanently puts me in the 95% I'm guessing? On the other hand I lost ~40 lbs and kept it off for the better part of 3-5 years and now I'm on track to drop another 30. Does that put me again in the success column?

    According to these researchers, you need to maintain a stable weight for 10 years. 9 stable years and a pregnancy: you lose.

    Wait what? That's a ridiculous standard anyway. Even if you are lucky that's still a full tenth of your entire life. I call bs on the whole study. Who's with me?
  • likitisplit
    likitisplit Posts: 9,420 Member
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    So if I gain weight back even once that permanently puts me in the 95% I'm guessing? On the other hand I lost ~40 lbs and kept it off for the better part of 3-5 years and now I'm on track to drop another 30. Does that put me again in the success column?

    According to these researchers, you need to maintain a stable weight for 10 years. 9 stable years and a pregnancy: you lose.

    Wait what? That's a ridiculous standard anyway. Even if you are lucky that's still a full tenth of your entire life. I call bs on the whole study. Who's with me?

    Actually, since I re-read the article (no link to the study), the standard is either 2 or 5 or 10 years. I call BS until somebody can give me a solid definition of who this 95% group includes and doesn't include.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
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    I don't know if there's any recent research supporting the 95% contention or not but back in 1999 it was questioned by some as being not valid then.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/25/health/95-regain-lost-weight-or-do-they.html
  • tedrickp
    tedrickp Posts: 1,229 Member
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    If you want to learn the basics in a really approachable way, I recommend the book "The Cartoon Guide to Statistics"

    Thank you! Just ordered. Currently reading Thinking Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman) and this will go perfectly with that.
  • hearthwood
    hearthwood Posts: 794 Member
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    Sounds like the researchers have been doing yo yo dieting for quite some time now, and just gave up and decided to write a report to excuse themselves lol.

    Look all weight is--is calories consumed during the day versus calories burned. And since we have sent mankind to the moon and back, it's kind of hard to believe we can't keep track of calories!
  • likitisplit
    likitisplit Posts: 9,420 Member
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    There are some things that work well to support behavior change. Clear and instant feedback is one. I have really high hopes for apps and things like bodymedia/fitbits. Getting clear feedback on your behavior and seeing metrics on how that behavior impacts your long term goals is gold.
  • systemlayers
    systemlayers Posts: 12
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    I feel like too much focus on weight loss is... based around the loss. I do have some sort of an idea/target of where I want to be but I always make sure my first and foremost thought is concrete longterm change. When I describe my weight loss I use "Fit and Healthy" instead of "I want to weigh x pounds". There are so many healthy weights it's silly to focus on an exact number.

    Around me I see the opposite, I live up north and every year when summer rolls around people start fad diets. Two in my office are doing '9 day liquid diets', one is doing something called a homeopathy diet, others are just starving themselves.

    I lost weight 2 summers ago and gained back to my now realized shame but I realized I basically just starved myself and walked a lot, it wasn't sustainable. I've been eating a higher calorie/vegetable diet now and doing strength training and feel 100% better. I never want to feel that sloth like nature again where I fall asleep.

    I'm almost positive most of these 'weight loss' plans don't work because they were never structured for long term success in the first place.
  • MelodyandBarbells
    MelodyandBarbells Posts: 7,725 Member
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    Readily available high calorie food just tastes good
  • Carol_
    Carol_ Posts: 469 Member
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    "Ain't that the truth." Yeah.:smile:
  • enchromaticc
    enchromaticc Posts: 33 Member
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    Until they clearly define this "95%" of people, and where they got it from, I'm calling bs on this too.

    But then again, A LOT of people do regain their weight after a few years That is true. But the problem with this whole article is that it simply does not offer enough solid, concrete evidence of how that works.
  • Iwishyouwell
    Iwishyouwell Posts: 1,888 Member
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    So if I gain weight back even once that permanently puts me in the 95% I'm guessing? On the other hand I lost ~40 lbs and kept it off for the better part of 3-5 years and now I'm on track to drop another 30. Does that put me again in the success column?

    According to these researchers, you need to maintain a stable weight for 10 years. 9 stable years and a pregnancy: you lose.

    Wait what? That's a ridiculous standard anyway. Even if you are lucky that's still a full tenth of your entire life. I call bs on the whole study. Who's with me?

    This isn't a "whole study". Every single study ever done on longer term weight management, regardless of rate of loss, or method of loss, has abysmal success rates.

    Every. Single. One.

    Call it a diet, or call it a "lifestyle change", whatever you call it, it does nobody any good to pretend that the studies are the problem here. These are the odds us formerly fat face and it pays to take heed to what could easily happen to us.
  • tedrickp
    tedrickp Posts: 1,229 Member
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    Can you link some of those studies?

    I don't believe that every study shows abysmal failure rates, but unless you direct me towards them I won't know for sure. It's also impossible to judge the methodology used in said studies.

    Doing my own search through studies - i haven't found a) the paper mentioned in this news article b) the abysmal failure rates.

    You could save me a lot of time by linking the ones you mention with abysmal failure rates, thanks.

    Edit:

    This study classifies successful weight maintenance as one year so results aren't totally applicable to this conversation: (~20% for the record)
    http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/1/222S.long

    BUT, I found this mention to be interesting...

    Only a few studies have followed participants for longer intervals; in these studies, ≈13–20% maintain a weight loss of 5 kg or more at 5 y. In the Diabetes Prevention Program (9), ≈1000 overweight individuals with impaired glucose tolerance were randomly assigned to an intensive lifestyle intervention. The average weight loss of these participants was 7 kg (7%) at 6 mo; after 1 y, participants maintained a weight loss of ≈6 kg (6%), and, at 3 y, they maintained a weight loss of ≈4 kg (4%). At the end of the study (follow-up ranging from 1.8 to 4.6 y; mean, 2.8 y), 37% maintained a weight loss of 7% or more. Thus, although the data are limited and the definitions varied across studies, it appears that ≈20% of overweight individuals are successful weight losers.

    ...Again not ten years (only 5), but I wouldn't consider those rates "abysmal".
  • songbyrdsweet
    songbyrdsweet Posts: 5,691 Member
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    Can you link some of those studies?

    I don't believe that every study shows abysmal failure rates, but unless you direct me towards them I won't know for sure. It's also impossible to judge the methodology used in said studies.

    Doing my own search through studies - i haven't found a) the paper mentioned in this news article b) the abysmal failure rates.

    You could save me a lot of time by linking the ones you mention with abysmal failure rates, thanks.

    Here's one stating only 20% can maintain a 10% weight loss for 2 years:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/pubmed/22023231

    Less than 10% can maintain weight loss for 7 years:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/pmc/articles/PMC3139793/

    Another one stating that 20% of individuals can maintain a 10% weight loss for just 1 year, and that on average 30-35% of weight is regained within the first year with an average of 1.8kg gained per year after that:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/pmc/articles/PMC2676575/

    I donno, how many do you want?

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