I miss food

Cauliflower chips and salsa are negative calorie foods

Make sure what you eat you can work off - Drink lots of water. ..:)

Why can't you eat some of these things but in moderation? I still eat cashews.

Except that MFP does not calculate TDEE. It calculates NEAT. (calories not including exercise). 500 calories can mean the difference of you feeling deprived, and not feeling deprived. So, if you can do it with 500 more calories per day, why wouldn't you want to?

The 500 calories a day is also the difference between 2 pounds a week and 1 pound a week. Since I only hit 1 pound a week anyway, that extra 500 calories would probably just put me into maintenance.

Anyway, it turns out, from the video I posted, it's not the caloric intake that leads to the feeling hungry and cold. It's the loss of leptin caused by the loss of body fat.

So it's the weight loss itself is the problem, not the calorie deficit.

You could try it and see. It could also be cortisol that is causing you to lose 1 pound a week instead of 2. Or inaccurate logging. Or the heavy carb loads/insulin resistance. You might also try to walk 20-30 minutes per day for a little bit of a calorie burn to help.

I'm pretty sure it's inaccurate logging. Often I have to pick substitute items out of the MFP fod database to approximate what I actually ate.

Editing to add: Leptin is not the only hormone in your body that has to do with weight loss. There are other interactions as well.

Yes, of course. If you watch the video, that is discussed. There are many, many genes that are thought to probably play a role that are not yet understood. Even the ones that are someone understood are not completely understood in humans. However, the kingpin appeared to be leptin. Leptin evidently is generated based on the amount of body fat you have. When leptin levels fall it causes a lot of other interactions to come into play. And when leptin levels were artificially raised (presumably by injection?) the symptoms like hunger and hypometabolism went away.

The upshot of this is that it is the fat loss, not the caloric intake, that seems to bring on the problems. To paraphrase the doctor, once you screw with leptin, all hell breaks loose downstream.

Moderation is key!

At what point does it level out, at some point things would have to normalize at a lower body fat % ?

According to the doctor, it may not ever. They saw this effect in people who had kept weight off for 3-4 years. You end up with reduced leptin levels and reduced metabolism.

I highly recommend you watch the entire video if you have an hour. It is very enlightening. It's also very depressing, as it basically says that most people won't have the willpower to fight against the systems your body has to protect body fat.

there sure seem to be a lot of people right here on MFP with a lot of willpower and low body fat %. hormones.....:grumble:

Moderation. Calorie Deficit. Fitness.

yep. That's how my mom does it. If you like eating it. DO NOT EAT IT. My parents simply never buy chips, sweets, cheese, nuts, etc. My dad jokes that they live on baked fish, kale and dust. My mom says you loose the cravings completely after 6-9 months if you never give in.

If that works for you, that's fine.

I don't believe it's true. I don't believe the cravings go away just by not having those foods. If they did, nobody would have started eating those foods in the first place, because they wouldn't have had any particular desire for them.

We eat those foods because they taste good. We crave them because we know they taste good.

I think there is be some biological component that causes us to crave them more than usual if you've been having unhealthy amounts, and that undoubtedly gets better over time. There is also a psychological component to craving, though, and I don't believe for a moment that just magically "goes away" over time. (I would suggest that your dad's comment that they live on, "baked fish, kale, and dust," supports my thesis. His cravings don't seem to have gone away, or he likely wouldn't refer to their diet as "dust.")

So... we have a choice to make - and that choice may be appropriately different for different folks. If the only way you can avoid constantly over-indulging is to go cold turkey and not have those foods ever again, then you may need to do that - but you need to acknowledge that such a decision makes it very difficult to sustain a lifestyle. Alternatively, if you can manage *how much* of those "craved" foods you choose to have in a sensible nutrition lifestyle, then you can enjoy those foods in moderation and still live a healthy (and enjoyable) life.

For me personally, if I simply decide to completely deprive myself of the foods I enjoy semi-permanently, I know that my diet will be unsustainable. (I will decide to remove things from my diet for periods of time to accelerate my progress, however - and I will consciously limit things like sugars long-term.)

Just my $0.02.

there sure seem to be a lot of people right here on MFP with a lot of willpower and low body fat %. hormones.....grumble

It's also that somewhere between 80% and 95% of people who try to lose weight fail. Also there are a lot of people on MFP who have never been obese, which is evidently a big part of the problem. It may well be that becoming obese causes irreversible consequences regarding leptin.

This video gives a great insight as to why that is so. It also shows that the symptoms that I have been experiencing for years are not to be brushed off as, "Oh, you're just eating too few calories!". Loss of body fat triggers loss of leptin which, at least in some people, causes hypometabolism, which can cause cold sensitivity, and increases in hunger. The idea that many people insist here that "you can diet without being hungry or cold" may not, in fact, be true for some people.

there sure seem to be a lot of people right here on MFP with a lot of willpower and low body fat %. hormones.....grumble

It's also that somewhere between 80% and 95% of people who try to lose weight fail. Also there are a lot of people on MFP who have never been obese, which is evidently a big part of the problem. It may well be that becoming obese causes irreversible consequences regarding leptin.

This video gives a great insight as to why that is so. It also shows that the symptoms that I have been experiencing for years are not to be brushed off as, "Oh, you're just eating too few calories!". Loss of body fat triggers loss of leptin which, at least in some people, causes hypometabolism, which can cause cold sensitivity, and increases in hunger. The idea that many people insist here that "you can diet without being hungry or cold" may not, in fact, be true for some people.

What "video" do you keep talking about?

I'm betting money it's some straight-to-youtube "documentary."

there sure seem to be a lot of people right here on MFP with a lot of willpower and low body fat %. hormones.....grumble

It's also that somewhere between 80% and 95% of people who try to lose weight fail. Also there are a lot of people on MFP who have never been obese, which is evidently a big part of the problem. It may well be that becoming obese causes irreversible consequences regarding leptin.

This video gives a great insight as to why that is so. It also shows that the symptoms that I have been experiencing for years are not to be brushed off as, "Oh, you're just eating too few calories!". Loss of body fat triggers loss of leptin which, at least in some people, causes hypometabolism, which can cause cold sensitivity, and increases in hunger. The idea that many people insist here that "you can diet without being hungry or cold" may not, in fact, be true for some people.

What "video" do you keep talking about?

I'm betting money it's some straight-to-youtube "documentary."

Here you go.:flowerforyou: have fun!

For this to stick beyond the dieting faze you must develop a healthy relationship with food or you will gain it back again.

Yes, this has been known for the 30 years I have been trying to lose weight.

Also, very interesting point at the 35 minute mark in this video:
http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=2993&bhcp=1

The symptoms he mentions match mine exactly. It was such a relief to see affirmation after hearing everyone tell me I'm wrong!

Or maybe there are so many obese people because we live in countries where food is abundantly available, and eating has become a hobby along with socializing.

That is a different subject though. You are now talking about all overweight people, when I am talking about people who are overweight who have or are trying to lose weight.

Most people who try to lose weight, between 80% and 95%, depending on study, fail to sustain it long term. This is an entirely different discussion than how many people are actually overweight and/or why.

Hormones cannot be a part of the problem of people gaining or holding onto weight if they stop putting too much food into their mouths. 30 years ago there weren't many fat people around and the same hormones were part of our endocrine systems. It's a copout.

If you watch the video, he goes into the change in genotype and phenotype that relates to the change in food supply. The long and short of it is that it has become increasingly easy to put too much food in your mouth.

The hormone problem is not what causes the weight gain. The leptin mechanism described in the video does not put upper limits on fat storage, but instead lower limits. It basically fights to preserve body fat.

What "video" do you keep talking about?

I'm betting money it's some straight-to-youtube "documentary."

No, this guy is a doctor and professor at Columbia University Medical Center.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Leibel

Here is the video:
http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=2993&bhcp=1

It is part of a lecture.

I don't know about that, I have a number of people on my friends list who have lost upwards of 100 pounds or more, most of them are not eating too few calories. In fact, most of them were successful because they DIDN'T eat too few calories.

This may or may not be true. My point is, it's not relevant to what Dr. Liebel is saying. What he is saying is that fat loss reduces leptin, which in turn triggers many other fat-defense mechanisms in the body. Symptoms of this include cold sensitivity, hypometabolism, and increased hunger.

It's not the caloric intake directly that is causing this, though obviously the caloric intake is what results in the reduced adipose tissue. It is the reduced adipose tissue that results in the reduced leptin that causes these symptoms.

It goes back to what I was saying from a lifetime of experience that I can always tell when I am "on" or "off" my diet without even getting on the scale simply by the way I feel. I can physically feel the physiological changes. It was a relief to see this doctor speak of them after so many people telling me I was simply "dieting wrong".

What I don't know is if this applies to everyone. It does not seem to apply to people who were never obese. It may or may not apply to everyone who is/was obese. I have emailed Dr. Leibel and asked him this and other questions. I do not know if he will respond or not.

Also bear in mind here that I am not trying to be some knowledgeable champion for leptin. I only discovered this a few days ago when googling for the number of people who fail at dieting. It is clear that leptin and the related hormones are not fully understood even by experts in the field.

However, I was heartened to read that reductions in body fat do, in fact, cause feelings of cold and hunger and also reduce metabolism by some 15-20% over the metabolisms of people who have the same body composition but were never obese. I was also heartened to read that in fact abstinence from highly palatable, calorie-dense foods can be a way to lose weight. Though it is disheartening to read that because of the body defense mechanisms to protect body fat most attempts to lose weight through behavioral modification fail. They are simply unsustainable for most people.

Modifying diet is mostly habit and planning.

I think it is mostly discipline, as it takes discipline to do those things.

If I do not have any M&M's but I do have yogurt, I am very unlikely to go find M&M's, I'm going to eat the yogurt.

5 minutes in the car fixes that. I've done it many times. It takes discipline to not do that. Most people can sustain that discipline for a while, but not long-term. But I keep trying.

5 minutes in the car fixes that. I've done it many times. It takes discipline to not do that. Most people can sustain that discipline for a while, but not long-term. But I keep trying.

Personally I think you're selling yourself short. We're talking about sufficient willpower to resist getting in your car, driving to the store, and binging on M&M's - on such a regular basis and in such high quantities that you gain significant weight. You really don't think you as an individual are strong enough to resist that?

Think about the incredible feats of willpower humans have demonstrated throughout our history. Think about the incredibly restrictive diet and training regimen some athletes and body builders go through on a regular basis (and most of these people are not paid well for their efforts, particularly the body builders). Now think about how trivial it really is to resist eating something like M&M's in such huge portions that you gain significant amounts of weight. It doesn't even compare.

Why paint the picture of that being such a daunting task? I'm not saying it's the easiest thing in the world or a trivial thing to accomplish, but you've listed so many reasons/excuses that it comes across as if you're suggesting it's nigh impossible to do, when if you just sit back and look at it, we're talking about a relatively small exercise of willpower. At the end of the day, there's more to life than food and giving up habits like eating M&M's in extremely excessive amounts is hardly the toughest thing you'll have to go through in your life. If you come into it focused on failure and doubtful of long-term success, you're just setting yourself up to be another statistic in the failure column. In my opinion, you're better off asking yourself why so many people fail in long-term weight loss (IMO, the answer is complacency and resting on their laurels) and what you can do to give yourself the best chance for success.

Personally I think you're selling yourself short. We're talking about sufficient willpower to resist getting in your car, driving to the store, and binging on M&M's - on such a regular basis and in such high quantities that you gain significant weight. You really don't think you as an individual are strong enough to resist that?

I know I'm not, from a lifetime of trying many times. For my latest attempt, see:

http://i.imgur.com/ijSkLog.jpg

After 30 weeks of sustained weight loss of 30 pounds I gained back 21 pounds over the course of 3 months.

Why paint the picture of that being such a daunting task?

Because that's what the data shows, my friend. Depending on which study you look at, between 80% and 95% of people who attempt to lose weight fail long term. They simply lack the willpower to sustain the diet necessary to do it.

I'm not saying it's the easiest thing in the world or a trivial thing to accomplish, but you've listed so many reasons/excuses that it comes across as if you're suggesting it's nigh impossible to do, when if you just sit back and look at it, we're talking about a relatively small exercise of willpower. At the end of the day, there's more to life than food and giving up habits like eating M&M's in extremely excessive amounts is hardly the toughest thing you'll have to go through in your life. If you come into it focused on failure and doubtful of long-term success, you're just setting yourself up to be another statistic in the failure column. In my opinion, you're better off asking yourself why so many people fail in long-term weight loss (IMO, the answer is complacency and resting on their laurels) and what you can do to give yourself the best chance for success.

I have been asking (and telling) why people fail long-term. That was is the whole point of the video. The reason why people fail long-term at dieting is because our bodies are programmed to operate in a food-scarce environment and protect body fat stores. In a food-surplus environment it is easy - even with only a 3.6% over-consumption per year, to become obese in a short period of time. And once obese, there are body defense mechanisms that make it very difficult to use willpower to lose weight. Most people don't have the willpower to do it. The doctor in the video says more than once that it is "unsustainable". And the data bears that out.

I'm not trying to be defeatist here, but I'm tired of people suggesting that there are not serious willpower issues here that most people are not able to overcome. I'm also tired of people denying the physiological processes that try and protect fat loss.