Set Point
- POSTED ON: Sep 30, 2017

We do not understand how the body resists weight change and why, after weight loss, so many people regain it. The concept of a set point for weight is widely accepted.

The set point is like the thermostat in our central heating system. It is switched on when the temperature falls below a critical (set point) temperature and is switched off when that is exceeded.

Using the word “rachet” might help one conceptualize the set point concept.

To rachet is to cause to increase or decrease by increments. A rachet is a mechanical device consisting of a toothed wheel or rack engaged with a pawl that permits it to move in only one direction.

A person has an existing set point. That person gains weight, and then gains and sustains even more weight gain. This causes the set point to be racheted up, and once it passes each rachet, there is no going back. The rachet is the biological set point and it can be easily driven upwards, but is very difficult to drive back down.

Using the fat cell theory is helpful to further explain how this works.

For an example, let’s assume an average fat cell contains 0.4 micrograms of fat each. A person gaining weight might see that fat cell load expand to 0.6 micrograms. This is an acceptable load increase, and when the person loses weight, the fat cell level drops back to 0.4 micrograms.

 This seesaw can go on forever, but when the weight gain loads the fat cell up to 0.8 micrograms, a tipping point is reached, and the fat cell divides. Now we have two fat cells, each containing 0.4 micrograms. Click! That was the ratchet turning irreversibly.

When we want to return to the previous weight, we must lose half the fat we gained. The problem with this is that each fat cell now has the standard fat load of 0.4 micrograms each, and to halve this to just 0.2 micrograms per cell requires us to get the cells to live a life they do not like. If we let our mind tell us what to eat, we can overcome the disgruntled fat cells which are below their fat quota. But all the time the basic animal biology of our body will be waiting to return to 0.4 micrograms per cell.

Then, along comes an event like a vacation, a holiday, or other eating occasion, and we take our eye off the ball .. lose our mental concentration, but the fat cells in our body didn’t rest, and we’ve regained our w...


Running DOWN the UP Escalator - Weight Loss & Maintenance
- POSTED ON: Sep 30, 2017

 
                
This article "hits the nail on the head" in the way it accurately describes my own personal experience, as well as what I’ve witnessed for years while watching the experiences of others.

It contains one of most accurate analogies for Weight-loss and Maintenance that I’ve ever heard.

Some might find it depressing, but here in my 8th year (now starting my 12th year) of maintaining a very large weight-loss, I find it encouraging and positive to hear a medical professional, who is an expert in obesity, speak the unvarnished Truth.

Despite the fact that this Truth is rather unpleasant, and isn’t something we’re ever going to hear from Marketing Interests… (which includes most doctors and nutritionists) …. Facing it, Understanding it, and Accepting it, can be very helpful.


Running Down the Up Escalator 
                 By Dr. Ayra Sharma, M.D. (a Canadian Obesity Specialist)

One of the games I used to play as a kid was to run Down the UP escalator.

To get to the bottom, I had to run faster than the escalator was moving up. If I ran any slower, the escalator would gradually but steadily take me back to the top.

In fact, even to just stay half-way down, I’d have to keep running at about the speed the escalator was moving up. If I stopped running even for a second, I’d be moving up again.

As you may guess, I am using this analogy, to illustrate the challenge of losing weight and keeping it off.

The escalator represents all the complex neuroendocrine responses to weight loss that will always want to take you back to the top – the only way to reach the bottom or to even maintain your place half-way down is to keep running.

Alas, in real life, the weight-loss escalator is even trickier. For one, there is no real bottom – i.e. no matter how fast you run, you will never reach the bottom and be able to simply get off. No matter how far down the escalator you manage to get, you are still running on the escalator and it will keep moving you back up to the top the minute you stop running.

But things get even more depressing, because, the further down the escalator you get, the faster it runs. This means that the further down the escalator you manage to get – the harder you have to keep running to just stay where you are.

Or, in other words, when you start from the top, the escalator is running relatively slowly and you may easily manage to get down the first 5 steps. But as you go down, the escalator picks up speed and so, if you just keep up running with the speed you started at, you may not even manage to hold your place 5 steps down.

And, to get to 10 steps down, you’ll definitely have to speed up – unfortunately, with every additional step you manage to make your way down, the escalator moves up even faster.


Why Diets Fail - The Salt/Water/Waste Issue
- POSTED ON: Jul 27, 2017


Whatever method one chooses
as a “Diet”…

including Diets that are called:

  • “Way-of-Eating”,
  • “Lifestyle-change”, or 
  • “Non-Diet”

this Truth always remains.



 When a body with excess fat consistently takes in LESS food
(meaning: calories within one or more of the three macronutrients)
THAN IT USES as energy, that body will access stored fat for energy.


The process of losing excess fat takes a long time.


Weight-loss diets ultimately fail approximately 95% of the time.  This means that most people fail to lose very much weight on any type of diet, and very few manage to maintain any long-term weight loss.

Losing weight and losing fat isn’t exactly the same thing. However most doctors, nutritionists, dietitians ... and the people who follow their advice ... don’t clearly distinguish the process of reducing body fat from the process of reducing body weight.

Most people sort of KNOW that body weight and body fat are different, and vaguely understand that the scale can register body weight higher due to “water gain”.

 To understand the difference between these two things, it is important to understand that there are two principal components of body weight. We can label these two: constant weight and variable weight.

  • The variable weight is a sum of all the digestive fluids inside the GI tract, the undigested foods already in the stomach and the small intestine, the stools inside the large intestine, and water, which can be safely lost with sweat, urine, and perspiration. These variable components of body weight normally represent between 7 and 30 pounds, depending on one’s original diet, one’s current weight, and one’s digestive health.

  • The constant weight is everything else — the remaining fluids, such as the blood plasma and lymph, the weight of one’s skin, bones, internal organs, muscles, and adipose tissue, or body fat. Of course, body fat is actually the only substance in the body one actually wants to get rid of.

  • Variable


Body Weight Calculator - Timeline Projections
- POSTED ON: Jul 09, 2017




The Best Online
Calorie Calculator,
According to Science.
But it might not work for you.


Another free online calorie calculator, the Body Weight Planner, is now available to the public after several years of being used as a research tool for scientists at the National Institutes of Health. This one is noteworthy because its algorithms were validated in several controlled weight loss studies in human beings, and because it takes into account a person's slowing metabolism.
 
Kevin Hall, a scientist at the NIH's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, created the tool.

Dr. Hall says the 3,500-calorie rule is accurate only if a pound of human fat is burned in a lab.  However, unlike a lab, the body is not a static environment, and instead adapts when a person changes their diet and exercise.

As a person diets and loses weight, the body slows the metabolism in an effort to conserve energy. As a result, eating 500 fewer calories a day leads to slightly less weight loss as time goes on.

Instead of 3,500 fewer calories, over 12 months, a person will need to eat 7,000 fewer calories to burn a pound of fat.

Dr. Hall said that the biggest flaw with the 3,500-calorie-rule is that it assumes weight loss will continue in a linear fashion over time. "That's not the way the body responds. The body is a very dynamic system, and a change in one part of the system always produces changes in other parts.”


He admits that dieters may be “bummed out” by news that they must double their efforts at reducing calories. “But we believe it's better to have an accurate assessment of what you might lose, that way you don't feel like a failure if you don't reach your goal.”

Dr. Hall added that very few people seem to be able to keep losing weight after 12 months.

The BWP calculates how many calories a day a person should eat to achieve their weight loss goals in a certain time (for example, to lose 10 lbs within a year).  The link can always be found here in DietHobby, under RESOURCES, Links, Body weight Calculator - NIH (Timeline Projections).

The NIH bills the planner as a cutting-edge tool that will empower people to take their health into their own hands, but research on the success of such calculators and trackers is mixed.  Although the federal government is to be praised for its official nod toward the utility of trackers and calculators,  human beings themselves are not “simple machines” who operate on a calories in, calories out basis.
 


Projections about the Rate of Weight-Loss
- POSTED ON: Jul 09, 2017

 

                 

The issue of Projections about the Rate of Weight-Loss has been on my mind for a very long time, and so this article is going to be quite long and detailed.  Those who bear with me and press on through, might learn some helpful information, or at least be exposed to something other than empty promises.

The Diet Industry knows that people want to lose their excess fat ASAP, and that people also want to spend as little time possible on a weight-loss Diet.  It takes advantage of that fact by using the diet-of-the-moment’s maximum 1st week weight-loss number as a marketing tool. 

Typical is: “Lose 15 pounds in 7 days”; or 10 pounds or 7 pounds, etc.  We see that ploy used continually in the media.  It is almost impossible to look at any magazine display rack in a supermarket checkout line without seeing a similar Headline.

What is implied by this claim is that the number of the first week’s weight loss is a prediction of weight-loss for the subsequent weeks. Marketing claims: “10 pounds in 1 week”.  People think, “Wow, If I stick to this Diet for just 5 weeks, I can lose 50 pounds.” 

Then, when they don’t experience that rate of weight-loss, they feel disappointed. Upon expressing their disappointment to the medical doctor, the nutritionist, the diet guru, the group leader, the program counselor, or whoever, the most common response is: “YOU didn’t follow the diet correctly.”  People are blamed for their weight-loss failure; while the Diet Industry gets the credit for their weight-loss success.

This is universal. I’ve never seen or participated in ANY diet program that didn’t follow that line of thinking, and during the past 60 years …from adolescence on… I’ve been involved with a great many of them.  I have personal experience with a great many diets and diet programs, and I’ve closely watched the experiences of many hundreds of other people as they dieted.

People WANT TO BELIEVE the claims of rapid weight-loss that they hear, and they desperately hope that they will personally experience rapid weight-loss by following their latest Diet-of-choice.   Some of these rapid weight-loss claims are based on lies; some are based on ignorance; some are based on personal experience together with poor memory; and a few are based on the real results of very unusual people. There are those who make these incorrect rapid weight-loss projections in good faith; who stubbornly hold onto an unreasonable Belief by stubbornly ignoring the overwhelmingly-vast-weight-of-the-evidence stacked up against it. However, the fact is that almost all of those claims are false, and the rest of them are based on factors that...


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