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After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

nytimes.com

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Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#111

Post by [deleted] »

varelse wrote: post #99
hourislate wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss. Caloric restriction also doesn't work without consuming the correct fats to satiate your appetite. As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's. It will all depend on your diet of the correct foods. I would suggest probably the best book ever written about why people get fat. Why We Get Fat: And What to…

"As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's." This seems overly general and anecdotally total BS. I still eat what I like just like I did in my 20s/30s. It's just that what I like is generally lots of vegetables and sufficient protein, with occasional vices slipped in because YOLO(tm). That said, without the exercise, I gain about a pound per wee…

[deleted]

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#112

Post by kazinator »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #34
varelse wrote: post #15

Extreme diligence seems to be the only way to fight this. If I stop exercising, the pounds pack on within weeks. If I insure I burn at least 3000 calories a day (usually much more), I can maintain my weight indefinitely. But I walk to work and I exercise for 1-2 hours daily. Most people cannot or will not do this. Add in the extreme carbohydrate and fat-laden diets most readily available to America and it's a perfect…

How do you manage the 1 to 2 hours of daily exercise with a programmer lifestyle(assuming you are a programmer)?

I cycle 7 miles to work, and back. That's some 25 minutes both ways. During the day, I go for a 4 or 8 mile run. That's another half an hour or hour.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#113

Post by vinceguidry »

humbleMouse wrote: post #94
vinceguidry wrote: post #69

I managed to lose 40 pounds last year, using intermittent fasting. That impressed people, but what's impressed me is how easy it was to keep it off. I expected to have to do a lot more work than I have, I really seemed to have found a new 'set point', where I can simply let my body self-regulate eating and I won't gain weight. Sometimes it even goes down. I think a person's state of mind plays a huge role. I used IF…

I think the message here is to listen to your body. Too often one finds themselves eating just because they were invited to lunch, or even because they are bored. If you listen to your body and just eat when you are hungry, magical things will happen.

Unfortunately that doesn't really work as a guiding principle. The body is entirely too easy to ignore, and social concerns ultimately are more important and urgent than personal ones. How exactly are you going to handle getting invited out to eat if you're not particularly hungry but could eat anyway? I had to answer this and way more in the year-long or so path to really getting serious about losing it and keeping it off.

And boredom is a real problem.

I liken trying to lose weight to trying to quit smoking. If all you had to fight were the nicotine cravings, nobody would be smoking today. It's the habits you have to fight, those things we build our life out of, and to fight habit you have to fix a lot of other parts of your life. Just finding ways to take five minute breaks that don't involve smoking. We want to treat these things in isolation, but they're not isolated, they all interact with each other. To do something like this forces you to deal with your entire life up to the present and be confronted with your own inadequacies. So there's that too.

Somebody who manages to quit smoking or lose weight and keep it off hasn't just managed to do that one thing, they've also managed to effect a complicated and difficult lifestyle change, and should by all rights be considered a completely different person. I don't feel particularly different from the me that was 210 pounds, but when I look at the big picture, I can understand why women aren't just being shallow when they wouldn't even look at me before, and now all seem to beg for attention.

That's why I focus at the level of lifestyle rather than on more mechanistic concerns like whether the keto diet is better than slow-carb and whatnot.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#114

Post by 49para »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #86
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, survival. Muscle is expensive - your body wants only enough to survive. Fat is life - your body wants all the stores it can afford.

This, our DNA isn't set up to maximise muscle mass. Big cats however are a good example of animals that are designed to keep muscle mass on - damn things can eat once a week, sleep all the time and look like they work out everyday

Right, I understand the idea.

I just haven't seen any studies on the idea that an empty fat cell will never be destroyed.

I have seen quotes like "your whole body is reconstructed over a period of years", i.e. cells have a lifespan, so if your body is reconstructing cells why would it put resources into rebuilding empty fat storage containers. Or, the other option would be fat cells are immortal, which seems to be extreme as well.

Just looking for some actual studies on this ...

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#115

Post by eclipxe »

Hockenbrizzle wrote: post #80

Man this is so frustrating because I have a family member who is like this. I would really like to help them, but they just don't seem to get it. I think the problem is that these people want instant results. That's not how the body works. If you want to become a runner, you start running often and because you love it. You don't force yourself to start doing intense, one-and-done sessions in an attempt to get to your…

Did you even read the article before commenting?

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#116

Post by proglodyte »

It seems like exposing your body to colder temperatures is a sure-fire way to increase your metabolism: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/does-glo...

May be a little uncomfortable, but way better than screwing up your metabolism via extreme dieting. I'm consistently perplexed as to why the ice-vest-under-the-clothes weight loss method hasn't taken off yet.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#117

Post by CuriouslyC »

hourislate wrote: post #70
varelse wrote: post #15

Extreme diligence seems to be the only way to fight this. If I stop exercising, the pounds pack on within weeks. If I insure I burn at least 3000 calories a day (usually much more), I can maintain my weight indefinitely. But I walk to work and I exercise for 1-2 hours daily. Most people cannot or will not do this. Add in the extreme carbohydrate and fat-laden diets most readily available to America and it's a perfect…

Exercise has nothing to do with weight loss. Caloric restriction also doesn't work without consuming the correct fats to satiate your appetite. As you age there is no amount of exercise that will allow you to maintain the amount you weigh in you 20's or 30's. It will all depend on your diet of the correct foods. I would suggest probably the best book ever written about why people get fat. Why We Get Fat: And What to…

This is just wrong. Weight loss on the short scale is literally a function of the difference between calories in vs calories out. You can increase that difference by eating less, or exercising more. You can easily maintain your weight as you age by increasing the amount you exercise, it might involve more exercise than expected, but it is perfectly doable.

Fat is not satiating to everyone. If it works for you, good, but stop making sweeping generalizations.

Eating the correct foods will influence the amount of metabolic slowdown in response to calorie restriction, and also the percentage of weight lost from fat versus lean body mass. What exactly the correct foods are depends on your genetics, your activity level, and your gut microbiota, and are different for everyone. Pretty much the only constant is that a high fiber diet is better than a low fiber diet.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#119

Post by Declanomous »

dempseye wrote: post #93
belltaco wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is still enough to eat well and feel full, in my experience. That's because your hormone levels aren't crazily out of whack like the individual you reference. If your hormone levels were changed to reflect the person that lost weight, I doubt you'd say that.

Perhaps that is true. I have also experienced that if I eat total shit, my hunger is boundless. Whereas if I eat well, my hunger tops out at around where it needs to be to maintain a healthy weight. It is not obvious why this should be the case.

I've had the same experience. My family has a history of heart disease, and for a long while I tried to follow a heart healthy diet. I was always starving, and I had difficulty concentrating. I actually managed to gain weight as well.

A year into this experiment I gave up and started eating foods that I felt help me concentrate the best: red meat, dairy, potatoes, butter, starchy vegetables, deli meats, etc. I suddenly felt much better. I found it much easier to maintain a healthy weight, and I had much more energy throughout the day.

I spoke with my internist and a cardiologist, and they were more than ok with the change. My BMI is exactly where it should be, my cholesterol and blood pressure are incredibly low, and I exercise all the time. I don't want to give the impression that everyone should start eating "unhealthy" foods, but at the very least the foods I'm eating are much healthier than the sugar-laden foods that are prevalent in the average diet.

For what it's worth, my cardiologist, believes "bad" cholesterol is damaging in the absence of "good" cholesterol. His wife, who is a dietitian, disagrees with him entirely.

Re: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

#120

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #109
varelse wrote: post #15

Extreme diligence seems to be the only way to fight this. If I stop exercising, the pounds pack on within weeks. If I insure I burn at least 3000 calories a day (usually much more), I can maintain my weight indefinitely. But I walk to work and I exercise for 1-2 hours daily. Most people cannot or will not do this. Add in the extreme carbohydrate and fat-laden diets most readily available to America and it's a perfect…

Each pound of fat ~= 3,500 calories up front, but also another 3,500 calories every ~4.8 years if you never moved. Keep active and it's significantly higher as your effectively walking around carrying weights 24/7. Thus, you really need to eat far less to maintain a healthy weigh long term, and or become significantly more active.

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