The Fat Trap - New Data About Obesity

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  • Akious
    Akious Posts: 71
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    There are so many things wrong with that study, its laughable.
  • sheeler301
    sheeler301 Posts: 16 Member
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    I was thinking the same thing and stopped pretty much reading it not much after seeing that part.
    OK, I am like halfway through the article and had to stop.

    Um, he had them eat 500-550 calories ONLY per day and is SHOCKED why they GAINED weight after they left his program. REALLY???
    ..extreme low-calorie diet, which consisted of special shakes called Optifast and two cups of low-starch vegetables, totaling just 500 to 550 calories a day for eight weeks. Ten weeks in, the dieters lost an average of 30 pounds.

    At that point, the 34 patients who remained stopped dieting and began working to maintain the new lower weight....But despite the effort, they slowly began to put on weight. After a year, the patients already had regained an average of 11 of the pounds they struggled so hard to lose.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    Nothing new here. We've known for decades that extreme cal deficits lead to weight regain. The stats are unequivocal on it - 95% "failure" in the US.
    The 95% failure is general across all diets though, isn't it ? Researchers use high deficits to get measurable and significant changes in a time scale they can afford (and the subjects can adhere to).

    Anyone link me to a study that shows regain as a function of deficit ?
  • PittShkr
    PittShkr Posts: 1,000 Member
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    *kitten* Trap!
  • RockaholicMama
    RockaholicMama Posts: 786 Member
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    I'm not dieting. This isn't some fad. It's an entire life style change or eating the way I should.
  • TexanThom
    TexanThom Posts: 778
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    WOW!! That was one long line of BS.
  • krisiepoo
    krisiepoo Posts: 710 Member
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    Note that this study is far from conclusive. But, the results discussed in the NYT article are consistent with what I have experienced. I lost about 100 pounds, and maintained that weight loss for about 2 years, then regained about 20 pounds. During my maintenance period (and now as well), I found that I was constantly hungry, and somewhat obsessed with food, in a way that I was not when I was fat. I will say that it is comforting to know that what I have experienced may have a biological explanation.

    when I was/am fat prior to my lifestyle change I didn't obsess about food because I at whatever I wanted :)
  • janeite1990
    janeite1990 Posts: 694 Member
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    Yes, all these studies are messed up. BUT, I still enjoyed reading it. I agree about lifestyle change versus diet. I also agree about the quality of the calories people consumed in these studies. Slow and steady wins. Starvation diets will fail. Eat real food that is healthy and exercise as hard as you can. That's about it, right?
  • JoeSzup
    JoeSzup Posts: 51 Member
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    So let me get this straight... if you starve yourself, then start eating a whole bunch of calories... you put on weight?!?! Say it ain't so Batman! Did you notice the trend of the study? Starve the participants, then give them lots of food, but LIMIT their workouts? Hmmm... wonder if that had anything to do with it. I see no data on metabolic rates (something that can easily be measured in a laboratory setting), and I see a lot of generalities.

    Also, the whole "very few success stories" part was a buncha hogwash. Read that section. Notice a pattern? Those who maintained their weight loss, still record calories and still work out. Really? DUH! How are you going to maintain a balance between what you burn, with what you consume, if you don't track? (comment notwithstanding those who have true medical weight problems)

    Remember ladies and gentlemen, don't believe everything you read on the internet. Find what works FOR YOU, and the fark with everyone else.
  • Ticktockman
    Ticktockman Posts: 21
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    That whole article could be summed up in two sentences:

    1. Losing a lot of weight and keeping it off is difficult (though not impossible) for a variety of poorly understood biological reasons.
    2. Keeping weight off for the long term requires constant caution and vigilance.

    My own past experience has shown that it's incredibly easy to gain weight back after losing it. I have to accept that being careful about what I eat, and how much I exercise, will be something I need to do for the rest of my life.
  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
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    Long-term weight-loss maintenance: a meta-analysis of US studies
    James W Anderson, Elizabeth C Konz, Robert C Frederich, and Constance L Wood
    http://www.ajcn.org/content/74/5/579.full

    Concluded that " Successful very-low-energy diets (VLEDs) were associated with significantly greater weight-loss maintenance than were successful hypoenergetic balanced diets (HBDs) at all years of follow-up. "

    "Most investigators used VLEDs of <800 kcal/d (3347 kJ/d) or HBDs during the weight-loss phase." HBD is a moderate calorie deficit, usually through counselling / behaviour therapy.

    http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=623599 concluded that "The overall weight change from pretreatment to the 5-year follow-up was greater in the VLED+BT group than in the BT group (-16.9 kg vs -4.9 kg, respectively; P=.03). Men succeeded better in the VLED+BT group than in BT. Among the dropouts, the mean weight change from baseline was +5.2 kg in the VLED+BT group and +13.0 kg in the BT group." (BT = behavioral therapy).

    So very low calorie interventions do yield a better long term weight loss, not least because they achieve a bigger weight loss to start with.

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