Study Shows Why It’s Hard to Keep Weight Off
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It is true that you will loose weight if you restrict calories, but if you don't fix the root problem you are fighting a very old (leptin resistant) part of the brain that wants its fat back.
We evolved an extremely complex and precise energy regulation mechanism over millions of years (just like all other organisms on earth). So the big question is, what is breaking this system?
The answer (I believe) is rooted in high-calorie low nutrient junk-foods that are now ubiquitous (mainly sugar and grain based foods). The emphasis here is low nutrient by the way, not high calorie.
I dare anyone to gain weight on meat and vegetables alone. If it's even possible, it's not easy to do.
Over a year I lost 60 lbs (27kg) eating fatty meats and butter drenched vegetables and outside of the first two weeks or so, I NEVER starved myself and always ate till I was full.
I feel truly sorry for those that struggle with obesity and try starving themselves and exercising as I did for the first 25 years of my life.
Exercise - 3x/week 2 hours minimum cardio+weights and pilates, dance. I lost a lot of body fat and I'm in normal ranges for my age, but I'm just gaining a disturbing amount of weight via muscle mass to the point that simple BMI calculations think I'm obese.
Food - My new doctor and personal trainer were both confused at my heaviness after finding out what I normally ate in a two-week timespan. Whole grains across the board (brown rice, beans, my favorite quinoa), half my meals were salads with little to no dressing/sauce (and that was usually just sriracha or a little vinaigrette), almost always water or green tea for drinking, small portions spread out with a little fruit across the day. My only guilty pleasures were the occasional piece of dark chocolate and a glass or two of wine/beer in a week. All the meat and seafood I ate were cooked pretty healthily, and things like butter are only touched when we have guests over. The only time I deviated from any of this was for rare situations, like my birthday lunch at The French Laundry :)
Nobody could come up with a great diet solution for me that wasn't "eat less" or "exercise more", given that "eat less" would be sub-2000 calories for a moderately active person and "exercise more" would be quite painful and make me less likely to work out. I tried eating less for a short while anyway, and nearly passed out in the middle of a street. I can't possibly find a healthier way of eating than what I do now, and the people I talk to only wish their clients/patients would eat like I did. And yet here I am, looking fat, am still fat in some areas, weighing enough to be obese, running <10 minute miles, and still struggling with my weight despite being in pretty good shape. :(
1.) Low fat salad dressing is generally a bad thing. You should add olive oil, butter, or some natural fat source any time you eat vegetables because you can't absorb many of the vitamins in greens without some type of fat in the meal.
2.) Regardless of what many people believe, "Whole grains" are really not that great. The bran of many grains adds nutrients, but when you look at the actual bioavailability of those nutrients it's very low due to things like phytic acid. It adds fiber, but it's mostly insoluble fiber which doesn't have all of the benefits of soluble fiber.
This effectively makes whole grains "empty calories". They aren't completely empty, but there is a low nutrient to calorie ratio, and that's what you need to improve. Meat and vegetables have much higher nutrients compared to calories.
Eliminate grains and sugary items (especially fructose) and eat 'real' foods (veggies, meats, and natural coconut, olive, or animal fats), and you will lose weight without starving yourself or counting calories.
1. Every week, calculate your bodyfat% with a bodyfat scale or via the Navy method (http://www.scientificpsychic.com/fitness/diet.html). It doesn't have to be perfect, just roughly accurate, say, within +/- 5%. Let f[d] be your bodyfat ratio on day d, so if you calculate 30% bodyfat, then f[d] = 0.3. For the rest of the week, assume f[d] remains the same as it did when you measured it at the beginning of the week.
2. Weigh yourself every day. Let w[d] your measured weight on day d, and let w'[d] be the 5-day moving median (that is, w'[d] is the median of w[d-4],w[d-3],w[d-2],w[d-1], and w[d]).
3. Calculate t'[d], your target weight for each day, as t'[d] = w'[d-14] ∙ (1 - 0.08 ∙ f[d-14]). The 0.08 is related to the maximum rate at which fat can be lost without losing lean body mass ([2]). In short, each pound of fat can supply 20 kcal per day, and a pound of fat can hold roughly 3500 kcal. so (1-3480/3500)^14 is about 0.92, which means you can safely lose at most 8% of your body fat in two weeks.
4. Every day, for the first three weeks of your diet (basically, until you become low-carb adapted), eat 90-110 g of carbohydrate. After that, eat 45-55 g of carbohydrate per day.
5. Every day, eat (h-100)-(h-90) g of protein, where h is your height in cm. (This is Kwasniewski's recommended protein requirement based on "due body weight").
6. Every day, get the rest of your calories from high-quality fats. (See [1] below). Start out so that you are eating enough total calories to maintain your weight. You can find this amount by measuring the number of calories you currently eat. Then adjust the number of grams of fat you eat each day so that w'[d] is as low as possible while still keeping w'[d] ≥ t'[d]. Remember to eat 5-6 more g of fat per day starting on week 4 to compensate for the 50 g drop in carbohydrate intake.
7. Track what you eat with a free site like http://cronometer.com (MUCH better than fitday).
8. Do some strength training to maintain your lean body mass. You won't gain lean body mass on this plan, but you should be able to avoid losing too much of it.
[1] http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2009/8/27/how-to-lose-w...
If, after losing weight, these people are driven to consume more calories than their bodies are expending, they need to do something to compensate for that, plain and simple. It could be exercise or it could be gaining muscle mass (and maintaining muscle mass requires more caloric intake than maintaining fat).
It's an absurdity to believe that these people should be able to lose weight, then simply go back to being sedentary and eating what they want to eat and expect to keep it off.
I believe a more exact wording would be: "the subjects were asked to keep a maintenance diet, and they reported doing so". Without reading the article (which is not freely available), it's hard to see how they verified the subjects actually kept the diet for 1 year.
We already know this is the case. The article addresses why this is difficult.