Just losing weight is fairly easy.
Keeping low body-fat % while maintaining decent amount of muscle is what is really challenging.
Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
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Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#12This is confusing...if you only eat X calories per day and exercise, you will lose weight, and permanently (assuming you don't give up), is this more of a mental thing they're talking about?
It isn't clear. It says :
'Traci Mann says the emphasis should be on measuring health, not weight. "You should still eat right, you should still exercise, doing healthy stuff is still healthy," she said. "It just doesn't make you thin."'
So even if you do eat well and exercise, you still won't lose weight because we have evolved to put weight on, not to lose it.
What I take from this is that there is more of a biological component to this. If you take two people one who used to be obese and one who has never been obese, feed them exactly the same food, put them on exactly the same exercise - the ex-obese person will put more weight on than the always skinny person.
The article gives no indication that there is evidence for this.
Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#13I think I finally get why people actually want to live on Soylent. It's the "abstention" cure for food addiction.
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Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#14I must say that I've been the 5-2 diet (intermittent fasting) for nearly two years and It has worked for me.
Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#15The whole 'weight loss' movement continues to focus on two things: nutrition (either calorie counting, or some permutation of low carb dieting, or some other fad eg. Palio) and exercise.
This over looks some important facts. Basal Metabolic Rate; Thyroid Function; Adrenal Function; Sex hormone balance; Epigenetics; Neurohormonal response[1]. Without addressing the whole person weight loss is likely to be a losing battle.
So long as your diet is predominately: fruit & veg; nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains; fish, eggs, and animal flesh, then you're eating relatively well. Avoid whatever doesn't agree with you, or as your beliefs dictate. Learn to eat intuitively: 'I feel like a carrot' is intuitive eating, 'I feel like a Mars Bar' isn't.
1. The Nurohormonal response or axis is about the understanding of how the mental / emotional sphere of life impacts hormonal / neurotransmitter activity in the body / brain.
Edit: speeling and gramur
Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#16This is confusing...if you only eat X calories per day and exercise, you will lose weight, and permanently (assuming you don't give up), is this more of a mental thing they're talking about?
Not really sure I was expecting something about fat cells never dieing/shrinking half way through it sounded like a metabolism adjusting thing but then it left with no actual conclusion just that "there is these numbers, see, and they're bad"
Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#17This is confusing...if you only eat X calories per day and exercise, you will lose weight, and permanently (assuming you don't give up), is this more of a mental thing they're talking about?
The issue is that humans have extra-ordinary endurance. That just doesn't jibe with modern society. The sub-set of people well-bred to only work out 1-2 hours a day, or to have equilibrium metabolism in a cubicle farms is arbirtary to what would have been bred for genetically. Even the past 10,000 years to about 100 years ago, humans were out and about working physical jobs. And likely going caloric restrictin due to lack of wealth, weather, and other variations of practicality (spoilage, lack of portability, etc). The ability to gorge and store calories is evolutionarily quite useful. But in a sedentary society, lack of balance is not a function of the food, the mined, or even the body. Its rather the lifestyle...cars, cubicles, and costco.
Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#18This article is full of BS.
40 years ago the majority of the population of the US or North Europe was thin. This has been so for the entire evolution of the human species.
People 40 years ago did not starve. They just ate things that refrigerators and mass industrial production do not preserve well, like vitamins, or fiber, or natural fat(like butter).
Now, when most people eat mass-processed foods, odd things happen, and unless people change their food habits, nothing is going to change, but that is not "impossible".
Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
And if you stop smoking crack, you're cured of addiction! It is saying that we don't have any reliable way for an obese individual to restrict their diet to X calories per day other than bariatric surgery.
Okay, so, in the same vein then: "Crack research confirms long-term crack smoking prevention almost impossible". Sounds kinda off, no? It's a mental thing, and by mental, I don't mean "It's all in your head", I mean "It's (literally) all in your head".
Lots of research has demonstrated that most crack addicts (and alcohol addicts, and nicotine addicts) who try to quit relapse. I thought that was an accepted part of science. Why do you think it sounds kinda off?
Re: Obesity research confirms long-term weight loss almost impossible
#20This article is full of BS. 40 years ago the majority of the population of the US or North Europe was thin. This has been so for the entire evolution of the human species. People 40 years ago did not starve. They just ate things that refrigerators and mass industrial production do not preserve well, like vitamins, or fiber, or natural fat(like butter). Now, when most people eat mass-processed foods, odd things happen…
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