The "slow and steady wins the race" myth...
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However the main issue is sustainability.
anyone with the "diet is a temporary thing to get the weight down before going back to eating the same way you got fat in the first place" mentality will gain it back no matter how quickly or slowly they lost the weight.
If you have the "this is a lifestyle change, I'm going to eat and exercise like this for the rest of my life" mentality and stick to it, then you will maintain your new weight for life.
These are NOT the only two options, though. There seems to be a consensus that anyone who loses weight loss quickly, doesn't have the intelligence to understand that they need to adapt to maintain. Many people are reporting that they have lost weight quickly, and adapted their lifestyle, at some point during the process to maintain the lower weight.
Fast weight loss does not necessarily = stupid.0 -
The idea is twofold. 1. Slower weight loss means less loss of lean body mass, which keeps your metabolism from lowering as much when your weight drops. 2. A smaller deficit makes it easier to maintain your healthy eating habits when you switch to maintenance and decreases initial gains from upping your calories to maintenance level. It's part physiological and part psychological. But the bottom line is that looking at weight loss as a "diet" as opposed to a lifestyle change is a big culprit of regains regardless of deficit size.
I wonder how many of the study subjects continued to tack calorie intake after losing the weight?
QFT - I've been maintaining for years...
Point 1 is not true.
You only lose lots of LBM if you quit doing weights. If you do strength training, you can retain your LBM even in moderate to high deficits.
Big deficits plus lots of cardio destroys LBM, but big deficits and lots of strength training retains LBM.
Big deficit with lots of strength training still means slower weight loss than big deficits with lots of cardio because cardio burns more calories per minute, increasing weight loss within a given time. Slow is a relative term. And a bigger deficit with strength training means LESS LBM loss than with cardio, but someone at a bigger deficit doing strength training will still lose more LBM than someone doing the same strength routine at a smaller deficit. There isn't a large amount of difference, but it is there.
I think slow and steady is kind of like recommending WW. More people who try it seem to have success with it than they do without it, but it doesn't mean it's for everyone or that the other method is wrong. You have to find what works best for you and do it.0 -
However the main issue is sustainability.
anyone with the "diet is a temporary thing to get the weight down before going back to eating the same way you got fat in the first place" mentality will gain it back no matter how quickly or slowly they lost the weight.
If you have the "this is a lifestyle change, I'm going to eat and exercise like this for the rest of my life" mentality and stick to it, then you will maintain your new weight for life.
These are NOT the only two options, though. There seems to be a consensus that anyone who loses weight loss quickly, doesn't have the intelligence to understand that they need to adapt to maintain. Many people are reporting that they have lost weight quickly, and adapted their lifestyle, at some point during the process to maintain the lower weight.
Fast weight loss does not necessarily = stupid.
Nowhere in those sentences did I mention anything about whether the person loses weight quickly or slowly. I deliberately phrased those options so as NOT to specify in either case whether the weight was lost quickly or slowly, if you read my words again more carefully, you'll see that I don't specify either fast or slow weight loss in either sentence.
Also, it's not about fast weight loss = people are too stupid to maintain it.... it's about the fact that fast weight loss requires more sacrifice and more giving up of favourite foods, which most people *don't want to* do. Why take a more difficult path when there's an easier path that's still going to work? If you (as in you, personally) can maintain your weight after losing weight quickly, good for you. Go ahead and do that. However there are huge numbers of people who are yo-yo dieters and have been for years, losing weight with overly restrictive diets, then gaining it back again, who have in the end learned to get to and actually maintain a healthy weight, by not being so extreme. Also, (as I tried to explain in my last post) it's much less about how fast you lose the weight, and much more about how sustainable the changes you make are. If you're happy with the lifestyle that leads to fast weight losses, and you're not suffering from lean body mass loss (especially loss of bone density), then absolutely no-one is stopping you from doing that or saying that you won't be able to maintain it..... but this advice, i.e. take it slowly and do it via lifestyle changes that you will be able to maintain, is something that a lot of people need to hear, and that a lot of people have finally succeeded with after years of yo-yo dieting.0 -
I also don't think it's a myth. I think it's not so much "the slower you lose weight, the more it will stay off..." as "the less radical change to your current diet will be easier to endure."
This is a marathon, not a sprint. Moderation is the key. If you sprint flat out right from the start, you probably will peter out before you get anywhere near the finish line. If you walk, it will take you a good while longer but you will finish eventually. Stop and smell the roses once in a while. Enjoy life.0 -
What are these races that slow and steady wins? Didn't work for me in my half marathon...
It's in comparison to the other extreme.
Have you done a half where a group went out really fast and you thought wow, they don't look like they can run that fast, but good for them.
And then at mile 8 you catch up with them because they are walking, complaining of stomach and leg cramps, ect.
Compared to them, you were slow and steady.
You didn't cause yourself problems that interfered with reaching your goal at a reasonable pace.
This assumes that there is no "fast and steady" category. I agree this analogy breaks down pretty quickly though.
I think your analogy was good actually, and applies well to diet.
Marathon might apply better, where doing it wrong at the beginning of race can have really bad effects near the end.
Marathon and a diet.
You can start out fast, with lack of knowledge you think it's a good pace for running or loss amount.
At some point down the road, the too fast pace (as indicated by what eventually happens) forces you to slow down greatly in comparison to prior pace. Weight loss slows down greatly.
You try to keep running at now a decent pace, might say you increase exercise and lower eating level more to get weight loss rate back up.
But there at mile 18-20, you hit the wall of glucose stores are gone, nothing to burn along with the fat except converted protein, you slow to a crawl. In diet you lowered your metabolism so bad, that slows to a crawl for weight loss.
You finally come in to your goal at finish walking, or perhaps last burst of jog for the picture.
You come in to your weight goal with barely in loss at the end.
The week or so after the marathon you have no motivation for much of anything, should take exercise break of course, but you can't seem to get going again after the week.
After the goal weight is reached so slowly and with so much difficulty, so have a hard time sticking to routine you used.
Compare that to doing the race and diet with knowledge and wisdom.
Reasonable pace for you at the outset, based on your specifics, deficit amount and running pace. From experience and training and not getting over hyped about what you think you can accomplish that isn't realistic.
You maintain a steady pace and reasonable loss amount, you have some hills to slow down on, but no need to walk, no wall hit, you hit goal as expected.
You can walk normal the next day, and later that week you can do some light exercise, because it didn't burn you out. For the diet you enjoyed your eating levels there at the end because of being reasonable, and getting to eat some extra food now is just icing on the cake, if you have the calories for it of course.
I think analogy works great.0 -
Think of it like saving money. If you work hard and bank every penny; you only buy food/essentials, you don't have cable, cell phone, you don't go out for dinner, movies, you don't entertain guests, all you do is work and sleep. Yes, you will have an impressive bank account but are you really enjoying your life? Now, not saying go out and blow it all and borrow more and blow that all too. Find some place in the middle ground that you can live with.0
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I also don't think it's a myth. I think it's not so much "the slower you lose weight, the more it will stay off..." as "the less radical change to your current diet will be easier to endure."
This is a marathon, not a sprint. Moderation is the key. If you sprint flat out right from the start, you probably will peter out before you get anywhere near the finish line. If you walk, it will take you a good while longer but you will finish eventually. Stop and smell the roses once in a while. Enjoy life.
^^^ this is pretty much what I was trying to say. It isn't so much about how fast or slow (up to a point, because water weight losses will come back and lean body mass losses are bad for health) but about whether you can stick to it for life. Most people have more success sticking to less extreme programmes, and less extreme programmes generally mean slower fat loss. But it's not a competition as to who can lose weight the fastest... the prize is being healthy for life.0 -
Where does this notion that "slow and steady" weight loss leads to a greater chance of maintaining weight loss in the long run originate from?
This study, and others like it, suggest otherwise:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780395/
The regain rates for weight loss are unfortunately abysmal across the board, regardless of the rate of loss.
Yet it's so common in dieting circles to here, ad nauseum, that the slower you loses it, the higher the chances of long term maintenance. Except all real signs just point to slow loss simply lengthening the weight loss-weight regain journey for an unfortunately high amount of dieters. Lose it slow, and you can still regain it fast.
So where did this myth originate and why is it continually propagated?
Just as there is a stigma associated with being overweight, there is inherent pride in losing said weight, and achieving a "normal" size (just look at how many display their tickers here).
Although most don't want to admit it, many (outside of MFP, at least) view those who lose weight more quickly as more successful (the "winners" in the race, if you will).
When it's not immediately evident that the individual that lost weight more rapidly did so in an unhealthy fashion (e.g. complications resulting from lack of nutrition), the only recourse the "losers" have is to comfort themselves in the fact that the "winners" won't maintain their success.
"Sour grapes," if you will.
the problem with this line of thinking is that the vast majority of people I've come across who are putting out the "slow steady and sustainable" advice out there are people who've already succeeded and are maintaining without difficulty. They're passing on the advice that worked for them (for quite a few of them, it's a case of what finally worked after many years of yo-yo dieting so they have a lot of experience of what doesn't work too). So I really don't think they have sour grapes at all....0 -
i always wondered why this was a common mantra on here. I assumed it had to with developing habits.0
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I lost pretty quickly even though I did nothing unusual. *shrug*
Just regular exercise and portion control. When on weight loss mode, I eat 1600-2000 calories a day. Nothing extreme, results in weight loss every time for me. (I'm 5'6" and medium build)
Assumptions... there are many.0 -
The saying 'slow and steady wins the race' is based on the morale of the story for Aesop's Fable the Tortoise and the Hare, which is the idea that the people who try to rush things screw up.
Now, you're talking about how it's a myth for weight loss because people who lose weight often re-gain weight. But, I do not think it's a myth when you look at weight loss, maintenance, or weight gain as a process and not a one time thing.
People who try to rush a process that takes time, screw up. And I'm not talking just about re-gaining weight, I mean that forcing yourself to lose weight too fast by VLCD, weight loss surgery (which I am NOT against for people with health issues, do what you gotta do!), or over training/under eating are more likely to screw up and suffer physically & mentally for the rush job on a steady process.
I watch people here, big people, like me, who are really cutting calories AND exercising through the week. Now, they're used to a watching 2+ or 3+ lbs come off every week. If they have a bad week, they beat themselves up over it. They call themselves horrible names. They call themselves failures. They're calling food names. They're hating the way their body betrays them because they're angry about making big sacrifices and not seeing results. They're angry about any time they fail with a restaurant meal and ate their TDEE (or a little over that). They're screwing their own heads because they're pushing themselves too hard to lose lose lose! And any delay means they're failing.
You don't see a problem with that kind of self-inflicted pressure? I do.
I might seem like a failure next to a someone who is melting off pounds like an ice sculpture in the sun, but I'm not calling myself names and I'm not angry at food (except for sodium -- my nemesis!) or my body. I'm frustrated sometimes! But I do not self-loathe when it takes 10 days instead of 7 days to show a loss.
Healthy weight loss has to be healthy mentally as well as physically, and weight loss for people who have always been big is a lot to cope with.0 -
Unlike what most people are saying, losing weight fast does not inherently mean that you're not eating enough and losing muscle mass. I've found that I lose weight (not just weight- FAT) REALLY fast with exercise and cleaning up my diet. You can lose weight fast healthily.
I think the saying is kind of misleading. By slow weight loss, I think they mean making lifestyle changes rather than crash dieting. People who make lifestyle changes are more likely to maintain a healthy figure than those who do not. But it is possible to make such changes in a short period of time- it's just that most people find it easier to go slow.
Weight gain is simply due to eating an excess of calories. Anyone can eat too many calories. How fast you lost the weight in the first place has NO effect on whether you eat too much and gain weight afterwards- it's just your level of discipline and commitment
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I'm no expert but imo its bs.
I have lost 4 stone in 2 months before and i never gained it back.
My sisters lost 6 stones slowly over 2 years and gain half a stone to a stone within a weekend if they go out for the night.0 -
I am a product of slow weight loss. Over the last two and half years, I have lost 27 lbs. I feel great and I will continue to lose weight until I get to my goal. For me, I make small changes, which results in weight loss!0
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Nowhere in those sentences did I mention anything about whether the person loses weight quickly or slowly. I deliberately phrased those options so as NOT to specify in either case whether the weight was lost quickly or slowly, if you read my words again more carefully, you'll see that I don't specify either fast or slow weight loss in either sentence.
Also, it's not about fast weight loss = people are too stupid to maintain it.... it's about the fact that fast weight loss requires more sacrifice and more giving up of favourite foods, which most people *don't want to* do. Why take a more difficult path when there's an easier path that's still going to work? If you (as in you, personally) can maintain your weight after losing weight quickly, good for you. Go ahead and do that. However there are huge numbers of people who are yo-yo dieters and have been for years, losing weight with overly restrictive diets, then gaining it back again, who have in the end learned to get to and actually maintain a healthy weight, by not being so extreme. Also, (as I tried to explain in my last post) it's much less about how fast you lose the weight, and much more about how sustainable the changes you make are. If you're happy with the lifestyle that leads to fast weight losses, and you're not suffering from lean body mass loss (especially loss of bone density), then absolutely no-one is stopping you from doing that or saying that you won't be able to maintain it..... but this advice, i.e. take it slowly and do it via lifestyle changes that you will be able to maintain, is something that a lot of people need to hear, and that a lot of people have finally succeeded with after years of yo-yo dieting.
I do see that you avoided the 'fast vs slow' argument in your post. I should read more carefully before quoting and replying.
Without trying to offend any yo-yo dieters here... I think the saying...
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
comes to mind here.
And that's why the slow and steady approach gets the MFP seal of approval. However.... as I keep trying to point out, some people may have the common sense, to understand that losing X amount of lbs in Y amount of time, ISN'T the prize here... being healthy and at a healthy weight is. So, if someone is yo-yo'ing up and down, up and down... and up... regardless of whether or not they are doing it fast or slow, they are not getting the full picture, correct? The definition of insanity.
What I think I have learned in my short time at MFP is.... it's not so much how you get there, it's how you STAY there. The common consensus at MFP seems to be, that how you get there, will dictate whether or not you can stay there. For some, perhaps many, that's almost surely true. But, not for all.
I think if you go off half-cocked, jump on some diet bandwagon, without any concrete plan, you're probably doomed to fail. Fast or slow... you're still doomed. I fully agree with the MFP mantra, "it's a lifestyle change....' but, that doesn't mean, you have to settle into your permanent lifestyle on day 1. Everyone is going to progress somehow, from the day they start, until at least the time they reach maintenance, and probably long after that.... so, in summation... as some people like to say around here, everybody is different.0 -
The participants in the study were divided into fast, moderate and slow losers after just one month. The follow-up was in a year. Most people can lose quite quickly in the beginning, especially if they are, as these participants were, in the obese category, put on 1200 calories and encouraged to take 10 000 steps a day. Losing quickly in the beginning can be very encouraging, and this group was the one with the best one year results. I didn't read the whole paper, but I didn't notice any mention of what kind of program they were on after the one month, and if there were further losses.
I don't think this study does much to dispel the notion that 'slow and steady' is for most of us, the way to better health, weight loss and the ability to do so while having a life! If it works for you, fine.0 -
overall, this is the winning phrase (from stage14, p1) "2. A smaller deficit makes it easier to maintain your healthy eating habits when you switch to maintenance and decreases initial gains from upping your calories to maintenance level."
if you move from "dieting" to "maintenance" in a responsible manner, (not just following the diet and having your extra calories as cake, f'rinstance) then the transition is less of a shock to your body, which is used to a lower overall calorie intake. dieting responsibly (slow and steady) also gets your body used to the much lower calorie intake you end up with towards your target weight without it panicking and stashing fats and sugars.
eg. initially, my "lose 0.75kg/week" cal goal was 1680 and i struggled to keep within that. now, my goal intake is 1280. had you told me at the start of my journey in january that i would be living on 1280 cals and not complaining about it, i would have laughed in your face. i might have stuck with it for a month (and lost a nice lump of weight), but then i would have rolled off the wagon and into the food trough.
i've now lost a lot of weight over a decent length of time, and i know i'll lose it again - i'm CONFIDENT that i can do it, and do it responsibly - after the baby is born, and it'll be the slow and steady principle because fast and loose is at best unreliable and at worst dangerous imho/from experience.0 -
Nowhere in those sentences did I mention anything about whether the person loses weight quickly or slowly. I deliberately phrased those options so as NOT to specify in either case whether the weight was lost quickly or slowly, if you read my words again more carefully, you'll see that I don't specify either fast or slow weight loss in either sentence.
Also, it's not about fast weight loss = people are too stupid to maintain it.... it's about the fact that fast weight loss requires more sacrifice and more giving up of favourite foods, which most people *don't want to* do. Why take a more difficult path when there's an easier path that's still going to work? If you (as in you, personally) can maintain your weight after losing weight quickly, good for you. Go ahead and do that. However there are huge numbers of people who are yo-yo dieters and have been for years, losing weight with overly restrictive diets, then gaining it back again, who have in the end learned to get to and actually maintain a healthy weight, by not being so extreme. Also, (as I tried to explain in my last post) it's much less about how fast you lose the weight, and much more about how sustainable the changes you make are. If you're happy with the lifestyle that leads to fast weight losses, and you're not suffering from lean body mass loss (especially loss of bone density), then absolutely no-one is stopping you from doing that or saying that you won't be able to maintain it..... but this advice, i.e. take it slowly and do it via lifestyle changes that you will be able to maintain, is something that a lot of people need to hear, and that a lot of people have finally succeeded with after years of yo-yo dieting.
I do see that you avoided the 'fast vs slow' argument in your post. I should read more carefully before quoting and replying.
Without trying to offend any yo-yo dieters here... I think the saying...
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
comes to mind here.
And that's why the slow and steady approach gets the MFP seal of approval. However.... as I keep trying to point out, some people may have the common sense, to understand that losing X amount of lbs in Y amount of time, ISN'T the prize here... being healthy and at a healthy weight is. So, if someone is yo-yo'ing up and down, up and down... and up... regardless of whether or not they are doing it fast or slow, they are not getting the full picture, correct? The definition of insanity.
What I think I have learned in my short time at MFP is.... it's not so much how you get there, it's how you STAY there. The common consensus at MFP seems to be, that how you get there, will dictate whether or not you can stay there. For some, perhaps many, that's almost surely true. But, not for all.
I think if you go off half-cocked, jump on some diet bandwagon, without any concrete plan, you're probably doomed to fail. Fast or slow... you're still doomed. I fully agree with the MFP mantra, "it's a lifestyle change....' but, that doesn't mean, you have to settle into your permanent lifestyle on day 1. Everyone is going to progress somehow, from the day they start, until at least the time they reach maintenance, and probably long after that.... so, in summation... as some people like to say around here, everybody is different.
I pretty much agree with what you're saying, especially the bit in bold. And I think it's what most people mean when they say about taking it slow and steady, because they see people going on crash diets, losing 15lb of water weight then gaining it back again quickly.... or being stuck in a cycle of excessive restriction and binge eating.... those people need to hear "slow and steady".... but I always add in the word sustainable. There are plenty of people who have succeeded with a more radical approach than the one I took, both in terms of the end point (visible muscle definition and 6 pack abs) and how they got there (more strict diet, more time in the gym, actually doing cardio on a regular basis) but I still succeeded and couldn't give a rat's hairy behind that it took me longer, because I didn't feel deprived or tortured in the process. I only ate food that I liked, I didn't give up any foods (yep, portion sizes got more sensible but you can counteract the psychological effect of that by eating more slowly) and I only did exercise that I liked (I happen to like lifting heavy weights which helps a lot with maintaining lean mass), and I like best how my body is between 22-25% body fat, and that's where I'm staying. I did, quite a few years back, get to a similar weight to where I am now through weightwatchers, losing 3lb a week (3x faster than this time around) and did gain all that back, and did feel deprived, and did lose lean body mass (which I'm sure I've gained back again from weight training, including deliberately bulking to add 10lb).
So that's where I'm coming from really.... I think what's going to succeed long term for most people is the easiest route that's actually going to work and give them the long term results that they really want, i.e. somewhere in the middle between wishful thinking that the weight's going to magically melt away while making no changes at all and torturing yourself into eventual submission and binge eating. With the emphasis on sustainable. Some people will be able to sustain faster weight losses than others, some people will care more for getting results within a time frame, but on the other hand if it's that much of a torture that you want to lose weight as quickly as possible, then IMO the mindset is in the wrong place, i.e. focusing on a short term (and torturous) fix followed by returning to the old lifestyle, rather than focusing on long term sustainable changes.
I agree that this is a process and pretty much no-one settles into the eventual maintenance lifestyle right away, but IMO long term maintenance, health and fitness should always be the ultimate goal, and there are no prizes for losing weight more quickly than anyone else. The prize is long term health and fitness.0 -
if you move from "dieting" to "maintenance" in a responsible manner...
That's the key phrase. The question comes down to...is there any tangible evidence that slow-and-steady results in increased "responsible" behaviour post-diet. I don't know of any.
And curiously, the fittest humans alive (our professional athletes) are notorious for dropping and adding weight quickly.0 -
In my opinion, I think its an excuse for people that dont want to put the extra effort into serious exercise routine. I have a few friends that are somewhat lazy where they only want to put 30 min a few days a week of exercise, they "could" make time for an hour, or mabe even 5 days a week, but they are happy taking the "slow and steady" approach. So lets justify it by adding that its easier to keep the weight off if you take it "easy" Is complete garbage.
You don't need to workout for hours to lose weight!!!!!! :grumble:
Oh and to add I did weight loss at a fast pace before and gained it all back!!!!
Now I am doing the right way, slow and steady, see ticker below!!!!! :bigsmile:
Guess who will keep the weight off!!!
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