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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

#231

Post by dennisgorelik »

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've never been overweight, but eating ~once per day works for me too.

Good point that laziness helps. Being busy helps. Eating only after exercising (I run ~3 miles daily) also helps.

Eating only once per day also helps to learn what food is good and bad for me. If hours after the meal I feel bad taste in my mouth - the food probably had a component that I should eat less. Sugar in big quantities is definitely once such bad component.

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

#233

Post by ThrustVectoring »

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)?

The right hobbies help out a ton. Like, I've been doing social dancing twice a week, and that usually takes up 3-4 hours. Plus, there's fun movements to do while bored waiting for transit to show up.

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

#234

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Kenji wrote: post #40
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…

I'm not sure if it's that simple. My body maintains a low but healthy weight no matter what I do. I can avoid sports for years and eat as much as I want, to the point of feeling uncomfortably full, without increasing weight. It seems likely that in some or even most obese people, a regulation system has been broken.

Have you tried deliberate weight-gaining diets? GOMAD (take your normal diet, and throw in a gallon of whole milk a day on top of it) apparently works particularly well.

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

#235

Post by HardDaysKnight »

Very little was said about the type of exercise they were doing. I'd guess that most of it was "cardio." Would they have different results if they were involved in more specifically muscle building exercises, i.e, weight lifting (and with adequate rest)?

I've been following McGuff's Body By Science protocol for the past 6 months and I believe that with increased muscle my overall health is improving much more than would have resulted from typical long and slow cardio.

Has anybody else tried this?

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

#236

Post by ThrustVectoring »

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…

Yeah, the actual mechanics of losing weight is pretty basic calories-in calories-out. The difficult part is engaging in behavior that consistently gives a caloric deficit without making unsustainable trade-offs against willpower or other things. Intermittent fasting is a very good way to remove "how much willpower do I spend while holding a fork and looking at food" out of the weight-loss equation. I lost about 60 pounds using keto, which basically moves all decision making over what to eat (and gives compelling reasons to stay on the wagon - restarting the ketogenic biochemistry is not a particularly fun process).

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

#237

Post by smelterdemon »

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)?

"Programmer lifestyle?" I'm at the gym 6:30-7:30. At work by 9 and home by 6:30. I have enough time to cook my own meals too, which I find to be as important as the exercise. Granted I don't have kids.

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

#238

Post by ajosh »

cableshaft wrote: post #126

I really need to lose weight, my heaviness has started to lead to other health problems, but I find that whenever I try to eat significantly less, I have difficulty concentrating on heavy mental tasks (i.e. programming, my job). The constant feeling of hunger distracts me, or my mind just drifts, until I get some food in me again. I never see any of these articles even acknowledge this as an issue, either as if no on…

I've definitely seen this. The trick for me was keeping my calorie restrictions reasonable.

At first, I was able to compute what my body needed to live in a day and then would cut from there. A lot of the time, I was hungry, distracted, etc. When I got a fitbit, I connected it to MyFitnessPal. I used the same baseline and used my exercise (walking) to add calories. This would give me a daily goal which is basically base_calories - weight_loss_calories + walking_calories.

I found that by targeting the computed goal, I didn't suffer the same problems. Sometimes that meant that I had to eat a bit more to get up to the target. It also made me think about how to spend the calories that I had.

Part of what made it work for me is that I didn't go crazy trying to lose weight. I targeted one pound per week which is a significant amount of weight over the course of a few months. I didn't always go down by exactly one pound but I was happy with the results.

Of course, that was my experience and yours may be different. One thing that I think is key for anyone is to find foods that you like which are high in nutrition and low in calories. Get some set meals that you know you can order and stay on track. That could be some fruit and a sandwich, a particular bowl at chipotle or whatever. Use memoization - compute the amount of calories in something you're going to eat and keep using that information. It lowers the cognitive load a lot and you know you'll be getting something you like.

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

#239

Post by ThrustVectoring »

richmt wrote: post #158
rickdale wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll concur with this. I have been practicing one meal/day for almost 3 years now. I think it took my body over a year to really adjust to all the benefits. Now I realize I have some big eating days, some small eating days, I mostly crave healthy stuff and I let the rest take care of itself.

What about feeling tired/lethargic during the time in which you fast? Also, can your body really efficiently utilize all of the micro/macro nutrients it needs in a day when it's handed them all at once? I agree that IF can be a good little mental trick for a quick cut, but I'm skeptical on one meal a day for a life time and if there's any negative effects that could come up.

You've got the energy levels and eating relationship reversed. Over the short run, digestion uses a lot of energy and generally does not give super quick results. Especially if you're eating cleaner food (vs giant piles of sugar etc).

The more involved answer involves talking about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems (SNS vs PSNS). The SNS is activated when doing things like going for a run, focusing on a specific problem, fight-or-flight, and other generally short-term "do things or have issues" situations. It does large systematic things that make your body better at overcoming the short-term obstacles in your life.

The PSNS, on the other hand, is responsible for more long-term survival goals. Sleep, digestion, relaxing, general awareness, etc.

Another important fact is that activating one of the circuits tends to deactivate the other. Eating activates the PSNS. Having "high energy" and not feeling tired/lethargic is basically a high SNS activation state.

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

#240

Post by [deleted] »

pc86 wrote: post #157
alva wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the first time I have heard glucose meters being used specifically for weight loss, very interesting. If this is a safe and effective way to encourage weight loss, this could be a huge business opportunity.

> If this is a safe and effective way to encourage weight loss It is, presuming that your macros and micros are still in line. It's easy to eat the same meal for lunch and dinner every day and lose weight but be very unhealthy while doing so.

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