Why so hard to lose weight, but easy to put on?

roguex_1979 · January 2012

So, had a really bad day yesterday, lots of rubbish and fast food, and when I filled in the diary, I had well over my allowance and it said that 'if everyday were like today' I'd weigh 177 in 5 weeks.

That's 21lbs in 5 weeks! To lose that amount would take 21 weeks or more!!!! Why is that? Why does it take so long to lose weight, but no time to put it on?

chrisdavey · January 2012

Its only maths related that thing & not accurate.

Its actually a lot easier to lose fat than it is to gain muscle.

rochey1098 · January 2012

It's easy to put weight on because food is not supposed to be available 'on tap' for us. We're supposed to hunt and forrage, even then, food would be something that we'd all be very thankful for. Bottom line is fat is your safety net, now that food is on tap you don't need that safety net.

narenn · January 2012

It's the "junk" we're surrounded by. Go back 2,000 years ago, and it would be very difficult to gain that kind of weight. Try eat the equivalent of natural/organic food to a meal at your local fast food joint. Not easy...

myofibril · January 2012

It's the way our bodies have evolved unfortunately. Our bodies still perceive that we live in times of food scarcity and will fight dieting according to preserve body fat, which is our bodies insurance policy against starving. Our bodies want to survive at all costs.

For a more technical explanation:

Now, I want you to think back to the first couple of chapters of this book, where I talked about the evolutionary reasons it’s so hard to lose bodyfat. To your body, becoming too lean is a very real threat to your survival. From a physiological standpoint, that means that your body needs a way to ‘know’ how much energy you have stored.

As you may have guessed (or knew from my last booklet), leptin is one of the primary signals (along with many others including ghrelin, insulin, protein YY and god knows what else will turn up) that signals the brain about how much energy you have stored and how much you’re eating.

All of these hormones send an integrated signal to a part of the brain called the hypothalamus that ‘tell’ it what’s going on elsewhere in your body. This causes changes in various neurochemicals such as NPY, CRH, POMC, alpha-MSH and others, to occur. This has a variety of effects (mostly bad) on metabolic rate, hormone levels and nutrient partitioning.

So metabolic rate goes down, levels of thyroid stimulating hormone, leutinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone (TSH, LH and FSH respectively) go down meaning lowered levels of thyroid and testosterone, levels of growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH) go down meaning GH output can be impaired, sympathetic nervous system activity goes down, cortisol levels go up as does hunger and appetite, etc., etc. What you end up seeing is an all purposes systems crash when you try to take bodyfat below a certain level.

I want to point out that falling leptin has a much larger impact on the body’s metabolism than raising leptin does (unless you’re raising it back to normal). That is, the body fights against dieting to a far greater degree than it does overfeeding. This is why, generally speaking, it’s a lot easier to get fat than it is to get lean. Of course, there are exceptions, folks who seem to resist obesity (or weight gain altogether). Research will probably find that they are extremely sensitive to the effects of leptin, so when calories go up, they simply burn off the excess calories without getting fat.

link:http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/calorie-partitioning-part-1.html

That is why many people advise unless you have a lot of body fat it is better to keep a moderate calorie deficit and have a free /cheat day or meal, refeed, spike your calories, have a diet break on occasion etc. The more severe your deficit the more your body will fight unless you are obese / very overweight.

LaMujerMasBonitaDelMundo · January 2012

Its only maths related that thing & not accurate.

Its actually a lot easier to lose fat than it is to gain muscle.

^^ This! Muscle building is such an uphill battle, losing fat isn't.

Quarrysider · January 2012

Given that you need 3500 cals in or out to gain or lose a pound, it's a lot easier to eat 2000 cals a day more than you need than it is to eat 2000 cals a day less (I guess a 2000 cal deficit would put most of us into a daily allowance of negative calories :frown: - and noone needs me to tell them that aiming for such a deficit is unhealthy, daft etc)

I had a day like that yesterday (1500 over) so i know how you feel

justanotherbrickinthewall · January 2012

It's a lot easier to shove 3500 calories worth of food in your mouth to gain a pound versus cut down your intake and workout. Don't worry, if you eat well today, I'm sure you'll be fine.

NotOnMyOwnagain · January 2012

So, had a really bad day yesterday, lots of rubbish and fast food, and when I filled in the diary, I had well over my allowance and it said that 'if everyday were like today' I'd weigh 177 in 5 weeks.

That's 21lbs in 5 weeks! To lose that amount would take 21 weeks or more!!!! Why is that? Why does it take so long to lose weight, but no time to put it on?

because putting it on is fun and tasty, taking it off is work and discipline. We all like fun, but not so much the work.
So like Marry Poppins says...
"In ev'ry job that must be done,There is an element of fun, you find the fun and snap! The job's a game"
Make the watching of what you eat and the exercise as much fun as the eating

MaximalLife · January 2012

This is the physiological reality having to do with fat storage and human survival.
Accept it.
And set your goals for 1lb per week.

Anything more and you run the risk of losing muscle which lowers metabolism and makes you store more fat, gain more weight and then you look bad, feel horrible and die young.

MaximalLife · January 2012

It's the "junk" we're surrounded by. Go back 2,000 years ago, and it would be very difficult to gain that kind of weight. Try eat the equivalent of natural/organic food to a meal at your local fast food joint. Not easy...

^^^^^^^^^^
THIS
Again, our human survival physiology is in play here.....

MaximalLife · January 2012

It's the way our bodies have evolved unfortunately. Our bodies still perceive that we live in times of food scarcity and will fight dieting according to preserve body fat, which is our bodies insurance policy against starving. Our bodies want to survive at all costs.

For a more technical explanation:

Now, I want you to think back to the first couple of chapters of this book, where I talked about the evolutionary reasons it’s so hard to lose bodyfat. To your body, becoming too lean is a very real threat to your survival. From a physiological standpoint, that means that your body needs a way to ‘know’ how much energy you have stored.

As you may have guessed (or knew from my last booklet), leptin is one of the primary signals (along with many others including ghrelin, insulin, protein YY and god knows what else will turn up) that signals the brain about how much energy you have stored and how much you’re eating.

All of these hormones send an integrated signal to a part of the brain called the hypothalamus that ‘tell’ it what’s going on elsewhere in your body. This causes changes in various neurochemicals such as NPY, CRH, POMC, alpha-MSH and others, to occur. This has a variety of effects (mostly bad) on metabolic rate, hormone levels and nutrient partitioning.

So metabolic rate goes down, levels of thyroid stimulating hormone, leutinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone (TSH, LH and FSH respectively) go down meaning lowered levels of thyroid and testosterone, levels of growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH) go down meaning GH output can be impaired, sympathetic nervous system activity goes down, cortisol levels go up as does hunger and appetite, etc., etc. What you end up seeing is an all purposes systems crash when you try to take bodyfat below a certain level.

I want to point out that falling leptin has a much larger impact on the body’s metabolism than raising leptin does (unless you’re raising it back to normal). That is, the body fights against dieting to a far greater degree than it does overfeeding. This is why, generally speaking, it’s a lot easier to get fat than it is to get lean. Of course, there are exceptions, folks who seem to resist obesity (or weight gain altogether). Research will probably find that they are extremely sensitive to the effects of leptin, so when calories go up, they simply burn off the excess calories without getting fat.

link:http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/calorie-partitioning-part-1.html

That is why many people advise unless you have a lot of body fat it is better to keep a moderate calorie deficit and have a free /cheat day or meal, refeed, spike your calories, have a diet break on occasion etc. The more severe your deficit the more your body will fight unless you are obese / very overweight.

^^^^^^^^
And this - BIG TIME!
Thanks! I am stealing this.

AnarchoGen · January 2012

I was just gonna say... my husband, naturally slender (and a jealous wife for that) has a hell of a time GAINING weight. He works really hard to gain 15lbs of muscle, and if he doesn't keep it up, he loses it in 2 weeks. When he's not working 20+ hours of overtime he starts gaining again.

Also, if you're talking about losing the belly fat you may be insulin resistant. I've always had belly fat, ALWAYS - even when I was a kid. I got labwork done last year and turns out I have a vitamin D deficiency which is one of the signs of being insulin resistant, my thyroid checked out okay though. There are natural supplements out there that can help, but always check with your doctor first.

Nana_Booboo · January 2012

It goes on as slow as it comes off. It's much funner putting it on somethies.

Eat your exercise calories
You should eat back your exercise calories.
Simply stated MFP has already figured out your total calories you need to eat per day to lose 1lb etc. a week.
That's WITHOUT exercise. You'll notice that when you actually add exercise in, the calorie limit goes up.
Why? Because it's telling you to eat your exercise calories.
Large deficits aren't really good to do because while you will lose weight, what kind of weight will it be?
In many cases you'll lose lean muscle tissue which LOWERS your metabolic rate even more.
Then you have to eat even less to compensate for less of a calorie burn to continue to lose the same amount
of weight each week.

Be efficient.
Exercise hard and eat back the calories. The hard exercise will RAISE your metabolic rate and burn more fat at rest.

grinch031 · January 2012

Naturally lean people have just as much difficulty gaining fat as many of us have losing it, despite the availability of junk fast food.

Its not the availability of food itself, its how the body responds to it. Junk food stimulates excessive hunger in some people because it leads to internal starvation within the body because of inhibited fat mobilization from fat stores for energy. Instead the people rely too much on glucose from junk food to fuel their bodies. If they don't continue eating, they become lethargic. The cycle continues.

grinch031 · January 2012

It's the way our bodies have evolved unfortunately. Our bodies still perceive that we live in times of food scarcity and will fight dieting according to preserve body fat, which is our bodies insurance policy against starving.

Within the context of today's obesity epidemic, I think its a load of bull that the body has evolved to preserve body fat when people already have plenty of it. There is no biological reason the body would prefer to become morbidly obese and die prematurely due to a host of medical problems associated with it. Instead a more likely scenario is the modern agricultural advances of man have far outpaced human evolution such that our bodies respond poorly to the types of food we tend to ingest nowadays.

MinimalistShoeAddict · December 2012

I think it really depends on the person. I just completed the first diet of my life (lost about 13 kg) over several months and found it very easy to lose weight by simply watching my caloric intake and adding some cardio. For me I liked the simplicity of knowing that if I burned more calories than I consumed every day I would continue to lose weight until I reached my goal.

On the other hand it takes a lot of effort for me to bulk up and gain a significant amount of muscle. Several years ago when I last tried to gain some weight (muscle) I quit after not seeing the results I wanted. Back then I measured my strength results with the mirror (subjective measurement). This time I have a better plan and will be more disciplined in following it. I am tracking my bodyfat percentage and lifting progress in a number of categories (much more objective). I also have a clear plan set up so that I know which days will be dedicated to each muscle group. For me this is a much more complicated (and difficult) plan than it took to lose weight, and I know their are many others like me.

I think it is important for everyone (whether you are trying to gain, lose or maintain your current weight) to track you body fat percentage. That way when you gain you can ensure you are gaining primarily muscle, and when you lose you can make sure you are burning primarily fat.

I believe we can all be successful in reaching our fitness goals, assuming we are disciplined enough to follow an appropriate plan to get there.

Improvised · December 2012

[/quote] because putting it on is fun and tasty, taking it off is work and discipline. We all like fun, but not so much the work.
So like Marry Poppins says...
"In ev'ry job that must be done,There is an element of fun, you find the fun and snap! The job's a game"
Make the watching of what you eat and the exercise as much fun as the eating
[/quote]

I looooooove Mary Poppins!!!

Improvised · December 2012

OP, could you tell me what site you found your avatar pic on? I've been trying to find that comic for over a year.

JustPeachy044 · December 2012

OP kudos to you for staying accountable and entering all your food intake on your "bad day". we all have 'em but I for one have a tendency to be an ostrich on those days and bury my head in the sand. i don't want to look...

Why so hard to lose weight, but easy to put on?

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