Understanding Why it's So Difficult to Maintain Weight

Very informative.

Coming to the realization that I'd never be "normal", like naturally thinner people, was something I resisted and fought HARD against for a long time. I was a person who became aware of my fatness very early and I never, ever felt comfortable overweight/obese; it always felt "wrong" to me. So it just didn't seem remotely fair that I'd never be like my counterparts, thin and seemingly able to eat however I want. When I regained my weight after the first successful weight loss journey one of the reasons I kept most of it on was a bitter refusal to accept the reality that I'd have to not only lose it again but find a way to maintain.

I finally accepted that I'd need to eat (and not eat) in a way that would strip the weight and help me maintain a lifestyle that is not only sustainable, but enjoyable. Just saying "I will need to watch myself for the rest of my life, and that's just my reality" was hugely freeing, finally. I now have experienced an initial hefty drop in weight, a year and a half of maintenance, and now I'm concluding the final chapters of the rest of the weight loss phase. I've learned that leading a generally lower carb life, coupled with intermittent fasting, and allowing myself a few splurges a month has become the perfect recipe for me. I love the way I'm eating, living, and losing, and the pace at which I'm doing it. I'm not longer terrified of maintaining weight loss.

Bump to watch later. From reading the comments this sounds to be something I need to watch as a while back after losing 25 pounds in 6 months, by just eating a little more and worse foods but still exercising everyday, I gained back all 25 in 2 months. Thanks for posting

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I would like to know whether they also accounted for muscle mass lost because that is quite typical on drastic diets. And that would explain very nicely why two people at the same weight can have a different TDEE- if one has high and the other low muscle mass. And that means that you can increase your TDEE by doing strength training. I think the same is the case for the decrease in metabolism with age: it is muscle mass that is being lost naturally. So then maybe not all is lost. The study paints quite a bleak picture but it's important to remember that a lot of people have managed to maintain by having changed their lifestyle and kept it up.

True.

Let's be honest with ourselves, weight loss is (for most people) 70% about food and 30% about fitness, but maintenance is reversed, fitness can become up to 50% or more and food 50%.

You build muscle mass and do strengths training so your metabolism shoots up and protects you from whatever depleted metabolism issues that might have happened because of the weight loss.

The theory of adaptive thermogenesis neatly explains this, and it tells us that the body becomes more efficient at burning energy. Hence a normal person might burn 100kcals in energy, but a body after months of weight loss will burn the same amount but over a longer period of time, thus it doesn't need the same energy intake to perform the same task.

There are obviously other factors, including age and the fact that your mass has decreased fundamentally. Obviously this doesn't explain why two people with the same TDEE burn calories differently. Essentially though, the only way to fight AT is by continuing to work out and creating a big gap between the effects of AT and what your body actually needs to grow muscles.

If AT tells us the body becomes more efficient at burning energy, then the logical solution is to burn more energy than we used to or more than a person of similar body stats does. You'll then hopefully be able to maintain rather easily.

So pick up your trainers and go do some more jogging?!

EDIT: One extra point to add.

We never quite lose fat cells (ok we do, but once every decade or so, that's a long discussion). And there is a theory of cellular memory, that the cell remembers its previous state, hence the body is likely to constantly to push towards that memory.

The latter is a theory, but the former is true. In any case, one thing is always true, you can never fairly compare one person who lost tons of weight weight with another who never gained much weight and lost it, because obesity does create permanent damage, not least to our blood sugar levels. And the fact that you don't quite lose fat cells means they are there to be refilled again, hence why people gain the weight back very easily, because they don't have to create new cells to store the fat, they just fill the ones that already exist.

Scary I know, but it should just keep us vigilant.

I have to be honest, this thread really freaked me out.

I have been a normal weight my whole life, until i got pregnant with my 3rd child 3 years ago. I have since had another baby, and betweeen the 2 of them, I put on 50 lbs. I was told -by everyone, from my doctor, to my mother, to my husband- to not worry about weight loss or even overly much about weight maintenence while I was pregnant and breastfeeding. i was told that a few years of being fat was worth it for the well being of my children. It is, don't get me wrong, but I was kind of upset to learn that I may have permanently damaged my metabolism by gaining the weight at all. This is exacerbated by the fact that I had it all wrong, maintaining weight should have definitely been a goal!


That being said, I came to a realization yesterday that made me feel better about it.
I'm sick (probably) my metabolism is broken. I cannot trust it to work properly. I will, quite possibly, have to measure
every morsel of food that passes my lips for the rest of my life.

The alternative: give up, get fat, get diabetes and a host of other illnesses and manage those just as meticulously.

Would I rather weigh and measure my food and push myself to the gym on those days I may not want to go? Or would I rather meticulously measure my blood sugar and inject myself with insulin everyday? Would I rather maintain my consition in a body that I love to live in, or would I rather maintain other conditions with a coctail of pharmaceuticals in a body that has trouble walking?

My metabolism may be broken, and that may not be fair, but it isn't fair when a 3 year old child gets type one diabetes either. If they can manage their condition, so can I.

I will do as much as I can to reduce the pain. When I hit a 10% weight reduction (at 180 Lbs) i am going to take a break for a month, eat maintenence calories and lift heavy for a month in an effort to possibly reset my metabolism (this is speculation) and to keep as much LBM as I can.

I also plan to lose a bit more than goal, ultimately, and do a controlled build back up to my goal weight. Any little bit helps