95% of people who lose weight put it back on. Why?

geekyjock76

For me, it got too hard. I was eating very little and exercising pretty much everyday, and I wasn't educated enough when it came to weight loss and nutrition to make it happen. I was around 18 when I lost the weight, I didn't have help or a lot of support, and I was in college in a town where I didn't have any friends, and I was desperate to fit in any way I could. I didn't really know the right way to do it, and my emotions were all over the place. I had a lot going on in my life at the time and the way I was doing it just simply wasn't sustainable to begin with, and well, when things got hard or friends rejected me, food was there. Food was the one constant I had and I knew that it wouldn't ever leave me or reject me like so many people had; I personally used it as a crutch and I kept using it as comfort through tough times. I think that's one of the big factors into my own weight issues along with the lack of nutritional education and desperation.

However, I think that's what happens to a lot of dieters; they're so desperate to get the weight off and they're not educated enough to do it in a healthy way, or they know and they want to lose weight so badly that they're willing to do anything for the fast fix. People just want it over with because they think that weight loss will solve all their problems- I know definitely did, because I thought that losing weight would make people like me more and my parents love me more, and it didn't. It didn't help me make more friends or make my life easier at all, really. And honestly, I got tired of putting all the work in, and I got tired of barely eating, and I bailed. I was stupid about it and I gave up; I felt like I was getting nowhere when I had gotten pretty far, actually. It was just that I was limiting myself so much and I wasn't doing it in a way that could last a life time.

This is it, here.

People do not learn what changes need to be made to maintain weight after they lose it or understand fundamental concepts that connect proper dietary intake and exercise with fat loss. If one does not advance their understanding, they're going to fall back to their old habits. Lastly, although exercise is not essential for fat loss, it is one of the major determinants that aid one to maintain their body weight. When dieters do not add regular activity in their intervention either during calorie restriction or while in maintenance, they are very likely to regain their fat mass. Combine a lack of education and physical activity and that equals failure.

BigGuy47

People handle life in different ways. To just write off everyone who fails at something as being lazy is just wrong, IMO.

You're right, it's unfair to categorize everyone that fails as lazy (I didn't say that). For the record, I didn't say lazy you did.

Yes, a certain percentage of the population deals with heavy emotional problems that get in the way of self improvement. I'm well familiar with the emotional impact of losing a loved one. Severe depression aside, I still think it's accurate to say that a large percentage of people are unwilling to put in the effort. As a society we've become comfortable with being comfortable. Most people are too complacent for real change.

We're talking about weight loss and fitness here, but you can substitute education or business and see the dividends of hard work.

"She's the valedictorian of her class because she put in the extra hours on her study time."
"He is a successful business man because he's never satisfied, always striving to do better".

These people are successful because they are willing to put forth the effort.

warmheart050

zaph0d...well said

Espressocycle

I prefer a simpler answer: food is f-ing delicious.

WendyTerry420

So is the OP suggesting that people who are *NOT* emotional eaters will certainly enjoy long-term success? I hope that's the case! It bodes well for those of us who are not emotional eaters.

dreilingda

For me the difference was knowledge. I have only ever been 30 lbs overweight and am not an emotional eater. Once I educated myself on how simple (and yet difficult) this really was, I lost the 30 lbs and have had an easy time keeping it off for 2 years. We tend to get so bogged down in different diet fads and the minutia of which exercise is best that we fail to see the stark truth. Just move more and eat less and you'll see results. That knowledge made it impossible for me to continue to make excuses.

lyttlewon

I just watched Hirsch's documentary last night on HBO. It was a tad depressing and kind of a slap in the face. WAKE UP! Basically they were saying the body will strive to get itself back to the overweight state it was in and we will have to spend the rest of our lives fighting that urge. I was talking to my sister about it afterwards, who is a nurse, and she pointed out that it is like disease management. If you are living with a chronically diseased state you have to work, for the rest of your life, at maintaining your health. Just like a diabetic will have to take medication forever, I will have to focus on my food and exercise forever.

just copying an old post.

While I'm not keen on the entire set - point theory, I do think genetic inheritance plays a very important part in the body returning to a "comfortable" weight. I really think weight is due to a combination of both genes and environment. After reading articles like the following I can't help but wonder if dieting is just too hard for some. My thinking (at the moment ) leans towards the possibility that people who relapse are just tired of the struggle to maintain the constant vigilance. Maybe it's due to a shifting of values where remaining thin is no longer a top priority in life, or counting calories and thinking about food becomes too time consuming and starts taking away from someone's life instead of adding to it. It's nice to be free from analyzing your options every time you eat something, to be able to eat something because that's what you "want", and not what you "should" have.


I'm sure there are many reasons, just throwing some possibilities out there.

class="quote_top">QUOTE:
class="quote">
May 8, 2007
Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside

By GINA KOLATA
Correction Appended

It was 1959. Jules Hirsch, a research physician at Rockefeller University, had gotten curious about weight loss in the obese. He was about to start a simple experiment that would change forever the way scientists think about fat.

Obese people, he knew, had huge fat cells, stuffed with glistening yellow fat. What happened to those cells when people lost weight, he wondered. Did they shrink or did they go away? He decided to find out.

It seemed straightforward. Dr. Hirsch found eight people who had been fat since childhood or adolescence and who agreed to live at the Rockefeller University Hospital for eight months while scientists would control their diets, make them lose weight and then examine their fat cells.

The study was rigorous and demanding. It began with an agonizing four weeks of a maintenance diet that assessed the subjects’ metabolism and caloric needs. Then the diet began. The only food permitted was a liquid formula providing 600 calories a day, a regimen that guaranteed they would lose weight. Finally, the subjects spent another four weeks on a diet that maintained them at their new weights, 100 pounds lower than their initial weights, on average.

Dr. Hirsch answered his original question — the subjects’ fat cells had shrunk and were now normal in size. And everyone, including Dr. Hirsch, assumed that the subjects would leave the hospital permanently thinner.

That did not happen. Instead, Dr. Hirsch says, “they all regained.” He was horrified. The study subjects certainly wanted to be thin, so what went wrong? Maybe, he thought, they had some deep-seated psychological need to be fat.

So Dr. Hirsch and his colleagues, including Dr. Rudolph L. Leibel, who is now at Columbia University, repeated the experiment and repeated it again. Every time the result was the same. The weight, so painstakingly lost, came right back. But since this was a research study, the investigators were also measuring metabolic changes, psychiatric conditions, body temperature and pulse. And that led them to a surprising conclusion: fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.

Before the diet began, the fat subjects’ metabolism was normal — the number of calories burned per square meter of body surface was no different from that of people who had never been fat. But when they lost weight, they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories consumed by those who were naturally thin.

The Rockefeller subjects also had a psychiatric syndrome, called semi-starvation neurosis, which had been noticed before in people of normal weight who had been starved. They dreamed of food, they fantasized about food or about breaking their diet. They were anxious and depressed; some had thoughts of suicide. They secreted food in their rooms. And they binged.

The Rockefeller researchers explained their observations in one of their papers: “It is entirely possible that weight reduction, instead of resulting in a normal state for obese patients, results in an abnormal state resembling that of starved nonobese individuals.”

Eventually, more than 50 people lived at the hospital and lost weight, and every one had physical and psychological signs of starvation. There were a very few who did not get fat again, but they made staying thin their life’s work, becoming Weight Watchers lecturers, for example, and, always, counting calories and maintaining themselves in a permanent state of starvation.

“Did those who stayed thin simply have more willpower?” Dr. Hirsch asked. “In a funny way, they did.”

One way to interpret Dr. Hirsch and Dr. Leibel’s studies would be to propose that once a person got fat, the body would adjust, making it hopeless to lose weight and keep it off. The issue was important, because if getting fat was the problem, there might be a solution to the obesity epidemic: convince people that any weight gain was a step toward an irreversible condition that they most definitely did not want to have.

But another group of studies showed that that hypothesis, too, was wrong.

It began with studies that were the inspiration of Dr. Ethan Sims at the University of Vermont, who asked what would happen if thin people who had never had a weight problem deliberately got fat.

His subjects were prisoners at a nearby state prison who volunteered to gain weight. With great difficulty, they succeeded, increasing their weight by 20 percent to 25 percent. But it took them four to six months, eating as much as they could every day. Some consumed 10,000 calories a day, an amount so incredible that it would be hard to believe, were it not for the fact that there were attendants present at each meal who dutifully recorded everything the men ate.

Once the men were fat, their metabolisms increased by 50 percent. They needed more than 2,700 calories per square meter of their body surface to stay fat but needed just 1,800 calories per square meter to maintain their normal weight.

When the study ended, the prisoners had no trouble losing weight. Within months, they were back to normal and effortlessly stayed there.

The implications were clear. There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed.

That, of course, was contrary to what every scientist had thought, and Dr. Sims knew it, as did Dr. Hirsch.

The message never really got out to the nation’s dieters, but a few research scientists were intrigued and asked the next question about body weight: Is body weight inherited, or is obesity more of an inadvertent, almost unconscious response to a society where food is cheap, abundant and tempting? An extra 100 calories a day will pile on 10 pounds in a year, public health messages often say. In five years, that is 50 pounds.

The assumption was that environment determined weight, but Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania wondered if that was true and, if so, to what extent. It was the early 1980s, long before obesity became what one social scientist called a moral panic, but a time when those questions of nature versus nurture were very much on Dr. Stunkard’s mind.

He found the perfect tool for investigating the nature-nurture question — a Danish registry of adoptees developed to understand whether schizophrenia was inherited. It included meticulous medical records of every Danish adoption between 1927 and 1947, including the names of the adoptees’ biological parents, and the heights and weights of the adoptees, their biological parents and their adoptive parents.

Dr. Stunkard ended up with 540 adults whose average age was 40. They had been adopted when they were very young — 55 percent had been adopted in the first month of life and 90 percent were adopted in the first year of life. His conclusions, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1986, were unequivocal. The adoptees were as fat as their biological parents, and how fat they were had no relation to how fat their adoptive parents were.

The scientists summarized it in their paper: “The two major findings of this study were that there was a clear relation between the body-mass index of biologic parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that genetic influences are important determinants of body fatness; and that there was no relation between the body-mass index of adoptive parents and the weight class of adoptees, suggesting that childhood family environment alone has little or no effect.”

In other words, being fat was an inherited condition.

Dr. Stunkard also pointed out the implications: “Current efforts to prevent obesity are directed toward all children (and their parents) almost indiscriminately. Yet if family environment alone has no role in obesity, efforts now directed toward persons with little genetic risk of the disorder could be refocused on the smaller number who are more vulnerable. Such persons can already be identified with some assurance: 80 percent of the offspring of two obese parents become obese, as compared with no more than 14 percent of the offspring of two parents of normal weight.”

A few years later, in 1990, Dr. Stunkard published another study in The New England Journal of Medicine, using another classic method of geneticists: investigating twins. This time, he used the Swedish Twin Registry, studying its 93 pairs of identical twins who were reared apart, 154 pairs of identical twins who were reared together, 218 pairs of fraternal twins who were reared apart, and 208 pairs of fraternal twins who were reared together.

The identical twins had nearly identical body mass indexes, whether they had been reared apart or together. There was more variation in the body mass indexes of the fraternal twins, who, like any siblings, share some, but not all, genes.

The researchers concluded that 70 percent of the variation in peoples’ weights may be accounted for by inheritance, a figure that means that weight is more strongly inherited than nearly any other condition, including mental illness, breast cancer or heart disease.

The results did not mean that people are completely helpless to control their weight, Dr. Stunkard said. But, he said, it did mean that those who tend to be fat will have to constantly battle their genetic inheritance if they want to reach and maintain a significantly lower weight.

The findings also provided evidence for a phenomenon that scientists like Dr. Hirsch and Dr. Leibel were certain was true — each person has a comfortable weight range to which the body gravitates. The range might span 10 or 20 pounds: someone might be able to weigh 120 to 140 pounds without too much effort. Going much above or much below the natural weight range is difficult, however; the body resists by increasing or decreasing the appetite and changing the metabolism to push the weight back to the range it seeks.

The message is so at odds with the popular conception of weight loss — the mantra that all a person has to do is eat less and exercise more — that Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at the Rockefeller University, tried to come up with an analogy that would convey what science has found about the powerful biological controls over body weight.

He published it in the journal Science in 2003 and still cites it:

“Those who doubt the power of basic drives, however, might note that although one can hold one’s breath, this conscious act is soon overcome by the compulsion to breathe,” Dr. Friedman wrote. “The feeling of hunger is intense and, if not as potent as the drive to breathe, is probably no less powerful than the drive to drink when one is thirsty. This is the feeling the obese must resist after they have lost a significant amount of weight.”

This is an excerpt from Gina Kolata’s new book, “Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss — and the Myths and Realities of Dieting” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

Correction: May 12, 2007


An article in Science Times on Tuesday about the role of genes in weight gain misstated the publication date for an article in the journal Science describing the biological controls over body weight. The article was published in 2003, not 2000.


Lots of comments after this article at the New York Times if you're interested - most not as depressing as this article and a few by readers that are maintaining a large loss of weight.

SvenMagnusson

The reason for weight regain is BIOLOGY.

Obesity is an extremely complex chronic disease state for which there is no current cure. "Eat less and move more " is a silly nostrum which has no basis in science. It's an extrapolation. It is NOT a solution to obesity. The body responds to everything we do and has tricks we do not even understand yet designed to keep us at a certain weight. You will regain over the long term and not even "hear its voice." Dr. Liebel has discoevred this. Body weight is involuntarily regulated by neural circuitry. But , we all can be about 8 pounds less.


This extremely small group of people who maintain most likely have a different neural circuitry wiring than most of the population.


Obesity is as heritable as height. Obesity is more heritable than ANY other condition studied by science. I am in contact with the top obesity researchers in the world such as Dr. Douglas Coleman and Dr. Rudolph Liebel. Most people on here are laughably misinformed.

Our ability to affect our body weight is very limited , especially over the long term. "The Biggest Loser" is not based on any kind of science. It's fraud.

etoiles_argentees

Ohhhhhhh.....missed Hirsch's documentary, no HBO. Will look for it now. Thanks!

neverstray

I think it's a total crock to blame it on something outside your own control. Despite what he research says, it's wrong. Yes, some might have a predisposition. But, this makes it too easy to just give up. Screw that. We really don't know much about how all this works, and just giving in to "genetics" is just lame. The human mind is more powerful than that. I don't buy the research.

weird_me2

People handle life in different ways. To just write off everyone who fails at something as being lazy is just wrong, IMO.

You're right, it's unfair to categorize everyone that fails as lazy (I didn't say that). For the record, I didn't say lazy you did.

Yes, a certain percentage of the population deals with heavy emotional problems that get in the way of self improvement. I'm well familiar with the emotional impact of losing a loved one. Severe depression aside, I still think it's accurate to say that a large percentage of people are unwilling to put in the effort. As a society we've become comfortable with being comfortable. Most people are too complacent for real change.

We're talking about weight loss and fitness here, but you can substitute education or business and see the dividends of hard work.

"She's the valedictorian of her class because she put in the extra hours on her study time."
"He is a successful business man because he's never satisfied, always striving to do better".

These people are successful because they are willing to put forth the effort.

I think there are probably two main reasons why 95% of dieters fail:

1) They went for a quick fix and were unaware of what was required for maintenance (I feel this is probably true for most with small amounts to lose). In this case, yes, it probably does come down to being willing to put in the effort, whether it means continued logging or maintaining good eating and exercise habits.

2) Some aspect of emotional eating (I feel this is probably true for most people who are obese and have been that way for a while). Emotional eating can cover any range of emotions and often is done to avoid feelings. People can eat to "cure" sadness, anxiety, depression, boredom, happiness, excitement, etc...If you can feel it, there is probably someone out there who eats for that emotion. Overcoming a long term habit of eating for emotional reasons, especially the negative ones, takes a heck of a lot of work. Even those who are willing to put forth the efffort have a tough road ahead of them and it's hard to find what tools will work for each individual person.

I think many seriously overweight/obese people don't realize that motivation and will power will only take you so far and that if you haven't worked on the underlying reasons for why you eat, then you will probably fail in your attempts to lose weight, no matter how much physical effort you are willing to put forth. Yeah, some people get to be obese simply by making poor food choices, but I think that they probably in the minority.

For my personal history, I graduated Saludatorian (2nd) of a large class, I am successful and determined in everything I do, I have always been the top of my classes and have won many awards at work for my performance. I have always put forth my best effort in everything I do, including weight loss. I've probably lost about 500 lbs over the last 10 years, but I've always gained it back because I didn't realize how truly important it was to deal with my underlying reasons for being overweight. I know about proper nutrition and I was committed to maintaining my habits for life, but in the end, it doesn't matter. Not many diet or "lifestyle change" books or plans help you figure out the emotional aspect, either. Just 6 years ago I lost 89 lbs over the course of about 14 months and then gained it all back plus some when I hit a difficult emotional time and didn't have the tools I needed to deal with it. I wasn't super strict with my eating, I ate what I wanted in moderation, I exercised in moderation and enjoyed my fitness, but I still failed because I didn't have the tools to help me succeed when willpower wasn't enough. I've finally found tools that are helping me to find other ways to cope with my emotions, but it's been a long, hard road filled with many failures before I finally found this success.