Cannot even fathom maintaining…or even attempting…this aggressive an energy deficit.
Years ago…like around 2012 or so, I tried a diet. For no other reason than to see what it felt like. The idea was first thunk up on one of my fitness instructor forums and started around the early Fall (of, say, 2011) when a thread discussion started about strategies to help clients and class members stay “on the wagon” WRT weight loss/management over the upcoming holiday season. The usual back and forth with worthwhile tips and redundant anecdotes in equal measures. Among the group were 2 or 3 registered dieticians who chimed in on opinions expressed about diets and dieting…from those who had never been fat/dieted/needed to diet, to folk who were struggling, as well as those in between.
So, it transpired that when these women had been in school (all different places) it was a requirement for pretty much every semester, they all follow a diet for a month…whether needed or not. The rationale being to give them an appreciation of what it was like trying to hack whatever they were advising their patients/clients to follow. They issued a challenge to those of us who’d never (consciously) dieted and didn’t need to that we try doing the same…so, along with a few others, I did. I actually found a 2 week meal plan for a “cutting” diet designed to preserve muscle…came in at around 1600-1700Cals, 120gms protein and the remainder low glycemic carbs (plenty of veggies etc) and “healthy” fats. Just right for me and, absent fancy sauces and whatnot, very similar to my regular, fashionably healthy eating habits.
Started just after Christmas. In the run up, I purchased a pedometer (no wearable back then…heart rate monitors were called exactly that because they only monitored heart rate) Was surprised at my daily step count as I was only wearing it from about 11 am onwards…after my class schedule and own training…until bedtime. Routinely around 1400 or so a day. Started the diet just after New Years and, oh boy, what an eye opener.
Although it wasn’t a tremendously aggressive deficit for me and although hunger wasn’t an issue because of the relatively high protein level, it messed with my head by about day 3 onwards…I found myself thinking about food or trying not to think about food pretty consistently. Just because it was o-FISH-awly a diet. Additionally, and although this is something I wasn’t aware of consciously, my step count dropped to around 7-8000 or so. Not exactly a true Sedentarian but enough of a drop in energy expenditure to account for a stall if I’d been unaware. I gave it up after about 10 days with barely any weight change for all the misery and brush with dysfunctional eating habits. Gave me an appreciation for why some folk probably need a bit more help than the usual cant of Eat Real Food or Eat Less, Exercise More
It’s interesting because there are so many ways to do it and not everyone is the same, I think that is why it’s so hard for some people because they are told calories in and calories out, while that is true it isn’t very helpful when most people don’t understand what a calorie is and how many calories are in food. But I do not have a hard time with 1000 calories a day, although it does take a lot of thought. But I am not hungry which is a good thing. I add that with walking a little over 6 miles 3 days a week which burns around 550 calories at about 15:40 minute miles and then work with weights 3 days a week for about 450 calories a day. While, when I was younger, working in the woods I couldn’t keep the weight on, that was working from sun up to sundown, these days I wouldn’t want to keep up that pace. So exercising is helpful and beneficial it isn’t anything I take off my calorie count. Once I get to 170 pounds I should be able to up my calorie count to 2000 to 2500 calories and then just go onto weighing myself every week to maintain like the Captain suggests. But like I said everyone has a different way of doing it but counting calories is so easy to do now and it’s been eye opening. Never really realized how many calories I was eating.
The program can set you up with someone medical who will prescribe the common weight loss drugs. I do not follow the nonsense commercial names for the drugs.
The introduction to the app askes people if they want to be set up with the drug or if they just want the program without the drugs.
Andy, I was raised by a doctor who thought in terms of paring down ideas etc…I pare things down. People going on at length here about nothing much are terrible writers.
I think people find what works for them and if they can’t find what they need they just give up. To many different view points out there with to many companies providing bad information in order to sell their products. So I agree with some that a lot of people will take the easiest way in the form of a pill but I don’t pretend to be an expert about anything to do with the Medical field so I am happy to listen to everyone’s viewpoint.
@Leap1 …yes, from your brief endorsements whenever you mention the scheme, Noom seems to work well for you. You successfully lose the weight you’ve regained after the last session with it. I think what most folk look for in a diet, though, is something that not only helps them lose weight…but maintain that weight loss over the long haul (with maybe a few minor tweaks)
Of course, I would say that, I guess, seeing as I’ve maintained a lean bodyweight over “the long haul”…as in never allowed myself to get fat in the first place.
@buynholdisdead … there’s a fair bit of evidence to show that successful “dieters” (folk who’ve lost largish amounts of weight and kept it off) don’t frequently achieve this success first time. Oftentimes trying and failing and trying again.
The National Weight Control Registry was established years ago to study this very phenomenon…of what makes a successful dieter and diet successful. The answer is…there is no one answer.
That is what I was thinking Vee, it seems it’s different for everyone. I am going to try a soft landing, where I go in hard at first and dial it back later until I find the amount of calories that will allow me to maintain a proper weight. We will see how it goes. I am down 14 pounds in a month and hoping to go down 10 this month.
Well, I went to a really interesting day long workshop on this topic a few years ago. Lecturer had been involved with the registry in her years in academia but, on her move to a private practice, focused on folk who imagined they were resistant to weight loss somehow as theyd tried and failed so many times.
She worked on the principle that the first 10% of bodyweight is easiest to lose. With her patients/clients, she first did a RMR measurement and prescribed an eating plan (to suit individual dietary preferences) and exercise regimen to create a meaningful and reasonably accurate energy deficit designed to drop roughly that 10% of bodyweight over a 3 month period. Then the next 3 months focused on maintaining this weight loss…so a bit of a diet break and opportunity to learn maintenence. Next 3 months a repeat…measure RMR and use this newer figure to create deficit to drop 10% of this new lower weight over 3 months and so on.
She claimed success…well, she would, wouldn’t she…but it struck me as a way to harness physiology (any metabolic slowdown associated with the diet) and psychology (a planned break and new routine) in a useful way.
I have been watching Naked and Afraid but that seems rather extreme and it is more like a forced diet. But having an audience watch you would probably be conducive to staying the course.
That’s not as flippant as a remark as you might think, Andy. There’s such a thing as the Hawthorne Effect …whereby study subjects alter their behaviour (consciously or otherwise) just for being part of the study. It’s probably the reason why any diet that is designed to reduce energy intake can be demonstrated to work when it’s part of a study … but can fail miserably in “free living” individuals. Or, depending upon the individual, being on a diet introduces a level of accountability…and this novelty is what’s responsible for weight loss rather than the selling points of the diet programs
Out of 50 pounds I kept 33 off for 3 years. That sort of success is rare. Does not matter what people would like to find as a solution to keep the weight off. No other diet has been that successful. The failure rate used to be closer to 100% multiplied by the failed attempts.
Out of the 50 pounds the gain back is now only 5 pounds. I have lost 12 pounds. It has been up and down a bit but I am on track.
So, after a diet that has helped you lose 50lbs in weight, you gained 17 back when you stopped dieting? That’s way better than the original 50 but how come you gained that much? Didn’t you notice an energy imbalance at the 5lb gain, say (assuming a slow and steady weight gain over an extended period)…or was it a rapid gain that’s not uncommon with the rebound overeating that follows a long period with an aggressive deficit. This post starvation hyperphagia has been pretty well studied. Best known example being Ancel Keys’s Minnesota Starvation Studies through victims of famine to bodybuilders after their aggressive “cutting” diet.
Doing what without the meds? Losing weight…you’ve done that before, right? Maintaining that weight loss…from your own account in this very thread and in others on the topic, you haven’t achieved that quite yet, have you? The correct statement should be “I intend to do that without the meds”.
Don’t get me wrong, I think its GRRRREAT! that you can keep coming back to something that facilitates the reversal on persistent weight regain…as you point out that’s better than a good many achieve…but the problem is with the snappy one liners that denotes “good writing” in your book, you miss out on the nuances and complexity of weight management. The psychology is easily as important as the physiology.
According to this lecturer I mentioned upstream, the most successful in the weight management stakes on that registry I mentioned rarely did it as first time dieters. They failed, tried again and oftentimes failed again, each time trying something different …retaining what had worked on previous occasions and dropping what did not
I suspect that ignoring the early regains…that first 5 lb…and waiting until a double digit regain has occured might be one of those strategies that don’t work in the long run.
You can make your proses as complicated as you like. It makes you a poor writer. You missed my points through your own nonsense.
That is not communicating properly.
The other diets have far less success.
Noom is written by psychologists. The program gets into not gaining the weight back. That does not mean it works for most people.
You believe if you state with authority some sort of ideal it matters. It does not matter to worldly topics at all. People are all fallible. In your pursuit you are not comprehending what is said point blank to you.
If the question is how to permanently reduce one’s BMI, I think there are three “answers”.
I am a believer in the Set Point Theory that, simply put, is that the body after a lifetime of experiences becomes programmed to maintain a certain BMI. This is why if one loses weight through dieting or a bout with stomach flu, the body will try to regain that weight. Does your body have a set point weight and can you change it? | MD Anderson Cancer Center
There are I believe two ways to change your body’s set point. One is to change one’s life style. An extreme example would be a guy who loves steaks becoming a strict vegetarian. The set point will change, but it will take awhile. Unfortunately, this only works if the lifestyle changes are permanent.
The second is to change one’s body type/physiology. A natural way to accomplish this would be doing strength training to significantly increase muscle mass, which in turn increases one’s basal metabolic rate. More calories are burned at rest. The artificial way is to use one or more drugs that suppress appetite.
The third way is the most difficult as it doesn’t change the set point. This means being at constant war with one’s body. The third way is to count calories.
In my experience the most effective way for me to lose weight is intermittent fasting with significant exercise during the fasting period. The problems with fasting by itself is that the body responds to low calorie intake by slowing metabolism. Exercise during the fast compensates for that.
