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  #1   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 11:15
carbcoma carbcoma is offline
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Posts: 14
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 260/260/180 Female 5'9"
BF:
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Default Study: Hormones May Make It Hard for Dieters to Keep the Weight Off

Quote:
Why Dieters Can't Keep the Weight Off
By Sora Song
Thursday, October 27, 2011

As any dieter knows, losing weight is hard. Keeping it off can be even harder, and a small, new study by Australian researchers helps explain why: a symphony of hormonal changes sends the body relentless signals to slow metabolism and increase the urge to eat, for at least a year after weight loss.

The findings support obesity researchers' long-held belief that dieters who regain weight aren't just reverting back to old habits. Instead, they may be fighting their own biology.

Many previous studies have shown that when overweight people slim down, their bodies respond vigorously, by undergoing changes in hormones that affect hunger and satiety — "multiple compensatory mechanisms encouraging weight gain," as the authors put it. For instance, when obese people lose body fat, levels of the hormone leptin, which is produced by fat cells, drop. That signals to the brain that the body's energy stores are low, slowing metabolism and triggering hunger.

It's an evolutionary survival tactic. "These mechanisms would be advantageous for a lean person in an environment where food was scarce," write the authors, from the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, in Australia, "but in an environment in which energy-dense food is abundant and physical activity is largely unnecessary, the high rate of relapse after weight loss is not surprising."

What the new study adds to the picture is a longer view. By tracking participants for 16 months, the researchers found that these hormonal changes are persistent, possibly even permanent. The study involved 50 overweight or obese adults enrolled in an intense 10-week diet program. For the first eight weeks, the volunteers consumed just 500 to 550 calories a day. As a testament to how hard weight loss is, 11 participants dropped out during this early phase — they either quit or failed to lose the required 10% of body weight to continue.

Over the following two weeks, the 39 remaining participants, who had lost an average of 30 lbs. (14% of their initial body weight), were reintroduced to a normal diet and counseled on how to maintain their new weight. Over the next year, they were brought in every two months for follow-ups, contacted by phone between visits for dietary counseling and encouraged to exercise regularly. The researchers checked the participants' hormone levels at baseline, at the end of the diet phase, and then again one year later; they also asked about the dieters' subjective feelings of hunger. Before the year was up, five more participants had dropped out.

Despite the counseling, people gained back about 12 lbs. — nearly half of what they had lost — during the maintenance phase. And they reported feeling even hungrier at the end of the study than at the start. Their hormone profiles may help explain why.

Over the 10-week weight-loss phase, participants' levels of leptin plummeted by 65%. A year later they were still a third lower than before weight loss, having climbed as people regained fat. Levels of several other appetite-regulating hormones, including ghrelin and peptide YY, which are produced in the pancreas and gut, also remained significantly changed a year later, in ways that would increase hunger and spur the urge to eat.

To many experts, the findings were not surprising. Weight loss is difficult — the study confirms it. But while compelling, the findings are limited by the study's small size and the lack of a control group; more rigorous research that compares hormone levels in dieters to those in overweight people who maintain their body size would be helpful. Also, the current study doesn't show whether hormonal changes caused the weight gain or coincided with it.

What is clear, however, is that obesity is not merely a problem of failed willpower or an unhealthy food environment. Solving it will require far better treatments than we've got now, perhaps including drugs that can balance dieters' hormones and restore normal appetite. "A combination of medications will probably be required," the authors write, although no such drug has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Of course, this is not to suggest that long-term weight loss is impossible. Many people have done it. But dieters "who have lost weight need to remain vigilant and understand that once they have lost weight the battle is not over," study author Joseph Proietto of the University of Melbourne told Bloomberg. "Indeed, the most difficult part of the weight loss program is the maintenance phase, which may be indefinite."

The study's essential finding is simple: prevention is key. "It's better not to gain weight than to try to lose it," Dr. George Bray of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, in Baton Rouge, La., told the AP.

The new study was published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/...the-weight-off/

Last edited by carbcoma : Thu, Oct-27-11 at 12:07.
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  #2   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 11:40
Failed. Failed. is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 399
 
Plan: Ketogenic
Stats: 232/202/120 Female 5'3
BF:Insane
Progress: 27%
Location: NewEngland
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Quote:
were reintroduced to a normal diet and counseled on how to maintain their new weight.


/End of thread.
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  #3   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 13:04
rozi's Avatar
rozi rozi is offline
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Posts: 7
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 225/128/122 Female 5'3"
BF:
Progress: 94%
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Wow what a shame it is too late for most of us to have not gained weight! Our mistake!
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  #4   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 13:24
CherryCola
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Wow! I could've saved them millions of dollars and told them that!
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  #5   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 15:19
Judynyc's Avatar
Judynyc Judynyc is offline
Attitude is a Choice
Posts: 30,111
 
Plan: No sugar, flour, wheat
Stats: 228.4/209.0/170 Female 5'6"
BF:stl/too/mch
Progress: 33%
Location: NYC
Default

500 cals a day for 2 weeks? Then what?

If people don't change they way they eat permanently, they will regain lost weight when doing any 'diet'.
If people don't learn how to control their carb intake(even the good carbs) and keep eating all the processed crap carb food out there, they can lose weight but will surely regain it.

If I lost my weight eating 500 cals a day and lost it fast, I wouldn't have been able to keep it off for 6 years now.
In my experience, slow weight loss enables the body to adjust its hormones to its new weight.
And, when you keep eating the way you ate to lose it, you are in an even better place to keep it off.

This is a stupid study and the results don't hold much for me.
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  #6   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 17:10
melibsmile's Avatar
melibsmile melibsmile is offline
Absurdtive
Posts: 11,313
 
Plan: Atkins
Stats: 272.5/174.4/165 Female 5'4
BF:44?/32.6/20
Progress: 91%
Location: SF Bay Area
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I agree, this is an insanely stupid study. No wonder their bodies were trying to make them regain weight--they had been forced into starvation! 500 calories is not a diet, it's a famine. How about tracking people on a reasonable WOE and see how their hormones respond? Oh right, because that wouldn't provide evidence that we need drugs from big pharma to fix the problem

--Melissa
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  #7   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 17:27
Jay1988 Jay1988 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 200
 
Plan: WAPF
Stats: 000/000/000 Male 0'0"
BF:0%/0%/0%
Progress: 163%
Location: Olathe, Kansas
Default

500 calories a day is insane. Of course you'll lose weight eating that little, but very low calorie diets are notorious for rebounding. I ate almost 5x that and lost weight, with that "evil saturated fat" making up over half my fats and no grains- my diet consisted of meat, butter, small amounts of veggies and even smaller amounts of fruit, that's what worked for me, and apparently plenty of others.
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  #8   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 18:48
mike_d's Avatar
mike_d mike_d is offline
Grease is the word!
Posts: 8,475
 
Plan: PSMF/IF
Stats: 236/181/180 Male 72 inches
BF:disappearing!
Progress: 98%
Location: Alamo city, Texas
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No sit Sherlock!
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  #9   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 19:55
M Levac M Levac is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 6,498
 
Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Quote:
The findings support obesity researchers' long-held belief that dieters who regain weight aren't just reverting back to old habits.

Old habits, of course, refers to overeating. And how much did these dieters overeat exactly, 20 kcals per day for 20 years? (that's 41 lbs of calories) And they call that gluttony? 20 kcals is literally 2g of fat. Who the heck can be so accurate in their habits? Maybe it's not the uber accurate gluttony, but the sloth instead. Yeah, 1 kcals per hour of sloth every hour of every day for 20 years. That's beyond uber accurate sloth. Or maybe it's a combination of the two. Uber gluttony of 10 kcals per day + uber sloth of 10 kcals per day. And I didn't need a study to figure that one out.

Quote:
Many previous studies have shown that when overweight people slim down, their bodies respond vigorously, by undergoing changes in hormones that affect hunger and satiety — "multiple compensatory mechanisms encouraging weight gain," as the authors put it.

Like the Minnesota Semi-Starvation study for example. But in this case, it wasn't overweight people, it was healthy young men of normal weight who became emaciated. The same mechanisms that make a previously overweight person regain weight also make a previously normal weight person regain weight. We call this mechanism homeostasis.

Quote:
It's an evolutionary survival tactic. "These mechanisms would be advantageous for a lean person in an environment where food was scarce," write the authors, from the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, in Australia, "but in an environment in which energy-dense food is abundant and physical activity is largely unnecessary, the high rate of relapse after weight loss is not surprising."

Homeostasis is indeed an evolutionary tactic. However, it does not solely apply to weight regain, it also applies to weight re-loss. It is equally difficult to gain weight as it is to lose weight. The same hormones that keep us at a heavier weight, also keep us at a lighter weight, as the case may be.

Quote:
As a testament to how hard weight loss is, 11 participants dropped out during this early phase — they either quit or failed to lose the required 10% of body weight to continue.

Correction, as a testament to how hard it is to eat a semi-starvation diet. Losing weight is easy. In fact, losing weight requires no conscious effort on our part, it's all done by hormones you see. Incidentally, gaining weight requires no conscious effort on our part either, it's all done by hormones as well. To illustrate, a growing child does not will himself to grow taller. He grows taller in spite of all his efforts to remain small.

Quote:
What is clear, however, is that obesity is not merely a problem of failed willpower or an unhealthy food environment.

Not merely?!? Obesity is not a problem of failed willpower at all.

Quote:
"Indeed, the most difficult part of the weight loss program is the maintenance phase, which may be indefinite."

It is indefinite. Whatever we had to do to reach this new lower weight, we must continue to do to maintain it. If we had to eat 500 kcals per day for 6 months, then that's what we gotta keep doing for the rest of our lives. The very idea of eating this way for the rest of one's life is absurd. Anybody would immediately see a problem with the whole thing. There are more effective alternatives and ironically those better alternatives are also easier to stick to.
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  #10   ^
Old Thu, Oct-27-11, 23:02
GlendaRC's Avatar
GlendaRC GlendaRC is offline
Posts: 8,787
 
Plan: Atkins maintenance
Stats: 170/120/130 Female 65 inches & shrinking
BF:
Progress: 125%
Location: Victoria, BC Canada
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How does it go? If you resume doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten! Duhhhhh!!!!
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  #11   ^
Old Fri, Oct-28-11, 00:00
Pilili Pilili is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 327
 
Plan: Avoid PUFA, sugar & bread
Stats: 240/210/150 Female 156cm
BF:
Progress: 33%
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Default

If you have 500 kcal a day, you may just as well have none at all and do an actual fast. I do better on an empty stomach than on one that's only somewhat filled.
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  #12   ^
Old Fri, Oct-28-11, 05:04
LAwoman75's Avatar
LAwoman75 LAwoman75 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,741
 
Plan: Whole food, semi low carb
Stats: 165/165/140 Female 5'6"
BF:
Progress: 0%
Location: Ozark Mt's
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I have a friend who has yo-yo'd all her life and is totally resistant to ever try the way I eat. She has lowered her calories down to staggering low levels before to lose and I ever remember her complaining to me "I lose the weight and as I soon I start eating normally again, I gain it all back." ............ Go figure!
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  #13   ^
Old Fri, Oct-28-11, 07:18
Zei Zei is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,596
 
Plan: Carb reduction in general
Stats: 230/185/180 Female 5 ft 9 in
BF:
Progress: 90%
Location: Texas
Default

Return to normal eating habits and the weight comes back? Forget that, after a very low calorie starvation diet, you'd probably only have to go back to eating far less than you did before the diet and you'll still gain weight, at least that was my experience. Started gaining back on way less than I'd eaten before. Because after starving the body is desperate to restore its missing fat stores with any calories it can get after this artificially induced apparent famine. Body wants to survive and will do what it can to meet that goal, and it doesn't care about thin looks. Fortunately what I learned from that experience plus some good low-carb education and now I'm losing without the hunger.
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  #14   ^
Old Fri, Oct-28-11, 09:22
heirloom10 heirloom10 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 177
 
Plan: Kwasniewski
Stats: 120/132/115 Female 5'5"
BF:
Progress: -240%
Location: canada
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yes, namely the hormone insulin!! dun dun dun
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  #15   ^
Old Fri, Oct-28-11, 10:08
beernutz's Avatar
beernutz beernutz is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 284
 
Plan: low carb
Stats: 195/174/170 Male 72 inches
BF:22%/15.2%/6 pack!
Progress: 84%
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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. --Albert Einstein
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