Hellobee Boards

@Mrs. Lion: well the researcher may no disagree with you actually....she did lose ten pounds after she started the mindful eating. But there is compelling evidence that people who lose a significant amount of weight have to eat far fewer calories to maintain the weight loss than people who are just naturally the same size. Which means that if you are in maintenance mode you are likely feeling hungry all the time, which of course leads to binges. In the video she said that even after ten years of maintenance, the set point has not moved...

@catlady: I also lost a ton of weight in my mid 20s (about 40 lbs). And then I've had two pregnancies and have lost the baby weight thus putting me back at about ten pounds above weight I was in high school, about ten below my highest non pregnancy weight, and over twenty above my thinnest weight. In light of that, I'm sort of leaning towards the idea of a set point! Because truth be told i have not consciously dieted or been consistent with exercise since my kids were born and still I am where I mostly have always been. My diet is probably better now because i want to be a good role model for my kids but I don't calorie count the way I did between the ages of 24 and 28.

@Mrs. Lion: Sure, but even if you are eating baby carrots around the clock to feel full, your body is also on a subconscious level trying to get you back to the set point by modifying metabolism, energy expended, etc. It isn't all about specific foods but the brain processes that recalibrate hunger, metabolism, etc., literally work against dieter's attempts to maintain. In terms of the obesity crisis, is it helpful to frame weight loss as a willpower issue when so much of it is subconscious? Especially in light of the graph she showed that if a person becomes active, eats well, drinks moderately, they can get all of the health benefits in spite of no losing weight? Seems like a lot of unnecessary shaming to engage in. I will honestly say I am becoming increasingly more skeptical of anyone who is financially invested in the "weight loss" culture. Seems like people trying to cash in on denial about the benefits of dieting and the insecurities of the public....

@Mrs. Lion: The TED writer also endorses the same lifestyle changes as the ones your blogger endorses, but with the overall goal of healthfulness, instead of weight loss. If you watch the TED talk, you'll see that incorporating those changes will improve a person's life even if the scale does not budge. And yet we still use weight lost as a metric for health, even as we are beginning to know that long term weight loss is not likely for most people. If we focused on health and stopped focusing on the number, people would be more likely to engage the health behaviors in the blog post because they wouldn't be tempted to fall into health negative/pro weight loss behaviors like drinking fake sugar, cutting calories to the point of starvation, eating rice cakes instead of real meals, etc. Plus the shame that is involved with weight loss triggers binging, purging, anorexia, and keeps people from seeking out help and exercising because of shame.

I have to ask....why are we so invested in the weight loss narrative? It it important culturally for us to believe that we can "do anything we put our mind to"? Is it important for us to believe that we are all self-improvement projects in the making? Is this part of our overall belief in self-determination? If set-point is determined by early adulthood this means that most obese people had a set point before they had control over their diet (childhood). And yet we blame obese people for being obese, set up weight loss as a willpower issue, and create a cycle of failure and shame.

I believe that anyone who did everything in the article you cited would indeed lose weight and keep it off. But they may have to put weight loss at the exclusion of most other life goals (if you're working on a big work project and you run out to get Chinese and it has sugar in it....now you're a failure! If you love to decorate cake but you can't resist eating a slice, you have no willpower! If you buy cookies from the Girl Scouts, you're ruining your life! If someone brings you a casserole after you have a baby and it has pasta in it....well they are the devil). Why is it that weight loss is assumed to be a goal you MUST pursue, instead of just one of many a person might choose to pursue, just as they might choose to write a novel or hike the AT? Especially if we knew that permanent, ideal weight loss was not necessarily possible for every person? Essentially, if we know that weight loss requires extreme life changes and basically running against your own metabolism/hunger cues/biopsychology AND that it really didn't improve health outcomes, then why do we encourage people to do it? I feel like there's more afoot here than just willpower/health.

@newlypregnantlady: I think the basic science behind the article is that our bodies are not designed to lose weight, even if we are obese. This is not because we are "supposed" to be obese, but because we've evolved to hang onto weight, and for the vast majority of human existence, obesity was out of the question because food was scarce. But we haven't evolved to be able to bring our set point down, even if in terms of health it would be awfully great if we could. Certainly portion size is an issue culturally, but that isn't really what she's saying. She's saying that regardless of whether your weight is healthy or visually ideal, your body acclimates to it and will do whatever is necessary to keep you from changing it.

I will admit I'm getting a little frustrated with some of the responses because there's a lot of hard science behind how damaging it is to diet (by that I mean counting calories, cutting out food groups), and how in the long run you are more likely to gain weight through dieting than to lose it! Which makes me wonder if the "fat people are lazy, eat too much, have no willpower, are their own worst enemy, etc." narrative is so strong that even hard science cannot alter it. I hope that's not too aggressive but...I dunno. It is worth asking.

Here's another look at the same material, from the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?_r=0

@Mrs. Lion: to put it another way, if this were another health issue, would we tell people to "change yourself!", or would we help them to manage the problem? My son has low muscle tone (not sure why). His therapists never make reference to "fixing" his low muscle tone because it isn't fixable. It is a part of him that he can learn to counterbalance, but never will he grow out of it. Same way with ADHD, etc. We feel comfortable identifying ADHD behaviors as being a "part" of a person fundamentally, and we develop workarounds. But obesity is still seen as, frankly, a character flaw that you should fix instead of work around.

@Mrs. Lion: I think I'm having difficulty in explaining myself, but the basic premise of the TED Talk can be summed up better than I can do it in this little snippet from that NYT article I posted:

"What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover. They became even slower, and the pounds kept piling on. It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.

Mr. Cahill was one of the worst off. As he regained more than 100 pounds, his metabolism slowed so much that, just to maintain his current weight of 295 pounds, he now has to eat 800 calories a day less than a typical man his size. Anything more turns to fat."

So basically, the evidence shows that calories in/calories out is a myth, because the body will re-calibrate (regardless of how big or small it is) to hang onto the weight. Can you imagine having to eat 800 calories less than someone the same weight as you during the maintenance portion of a diet for the rest of your life? It would make your life an absolute misery! And is really only an option for people who have support beyond what the working class get (the only person in the study who had maintained the weight loss works out for an hour a day and does not work). The only reason anyone would do it is because of the stigma that we associate with people who "choose" to be overweight. Because if someone else had that level of obsessive fixation on any other portion of their life, we would call it unhealthy, an OCD, etc. But when it happens to people in the realm of weight, we call it a failure of willpower...

Not trying to say that this is what you believe, but the blog you posted had some extreme food rules (no junk food in environment, no sugar ever) that, again, if we applied it to any other behavior, we would call it unhealthy.

@mrbee: Ok, I feel like I'm not taking crazy pills now that we have established that yes, actively attempting to control weight (since the word "diet" seems to imply "fad diet" when in reality I only mean intentional food restriction) can have nasty metabolic side effects....so my next question is, how much are we "obligated" to lose weight even if we are obese? Especially if the effort required to lose weight is extreme, and possibly sisyphean? I really like this Slate article because it gets into how difficult it would be, psychologically and culturally, to make some of the lifestyle changes that are suggested for long-term large scale weight loss:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/03/diets_do_not_work_the_thin_evidence_that_losing_weight_makes_you_healthier.html

It sounds to me like people who lose a lot of weight and keep it off have to make extreme changes, some of which may not be realistic for all people. For example I think one of the BL people profiled worked night shift, which has got to mess with your appetite, and limit your ability to work out/cook, but what is the solution for him? To go back to college to get a new career in order to have a better schedule that allows him to lose weight? Surely we can see that is totally lopsided and completely unrealistic. At some point, people are so altered due to culture, genetics, and history that asking them to make "lifestyle changes" feels cruel.

I often feel as though it is assumed that being thinner is a valuable goal that is worth any level of "lifestyle modification." People typically say this is due to the health benefits, but a) we know that making healthier choices, regardless of weight loss, is beneficial for health and b) some people would choose other things over health. If you were working on some massive personal project that was extremely important to you, and gained weight while doing so because your attention was on something other than your weight, would you still feel guilty about weight gain? We wouldn't make someone feel guilty for not hiking the AT because they were too busy writing a novel, but we will make an obese person feel guilty for not making herculean lifestyle changes because that's not where his or her priorities lie, or because they don't have access to the tools necessary to make lifestyle changes. I lost about 40 lbs in my mid 20s (I'm 32 now) but at the time my work schedule was very flexible and I had no kids, nor was I married. I also was completely fixated on my weight and would have meltdowns if I gained a pound or was in a social situation that required me to eat non-approved foods. I haven't had much success keeping to that weight while TTC and now, just weaning my second. I will admit the people I know who have kept the weight off are people who are childfree and male. Not saying that mothers can't keep the weight off, but the hormonal and weight fluctuations, plus the daily demands of motherhood, make it harder to pull off without making life decisions that feel equally gutting (for example someone who is committed to extended breastfeeding will likely hold on to a little weight...) And if you compound that with the fact that your body is actively re-organizing its metabolism against your best intentions...

This is on Everyday Feminism, but the idea is obviously not limited to a particular gender....

http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/01/concern-trolling-is-bullshit/

@looch: I certainly agree with the idea that modern portion sizes are enormous. And none of the research I cited is denying that the food culture we are in does contribute to obesity. And certainly, none of the research I cited is saying that obesity is a good thing. What the research I cited is saying is that once you are obese, your body's processes adapt to that size. And it isn't necessarily possible to undo the damage. If you look at the NYTimes article it shows the metabolic rate of the weight losers slowed to the point that they have to eat as if they are on a diet even when in maintenance. So if someone goes from 175 to 125, they can't in maintenance eat as much as someone who is naturally 125. They may have to eat as much as a whole meal less than someone who is naturally 125, and even after as many as seven years, continue to maintain a calorie deficit relative to their actual weight. Basically they have to eat like a 110 pound person indefinitely to maintain 125. TDEE doesn't work for someone with a damaged metabolism.

What this article is basically saying is that obesity is not reversible. It is definitely not ideal, or unavoidable, but once it happens it is not totally reversible. That's why I made the comparison between addiction and obesity because we now know that our brains change permanently when we become addicted. It would appear that it is the same with obesity. Literally people who have lost a ton of weight have 20% more of the hormone that causes hunger than someone who has not recently lost weight. Which means we are asking people to deal with an unnatural level of physical hunger all the time so that they can maintain their weight. I am just wondering if that is really a lifestyle change or if that is more like a socially sanctioned eating disorder, with its attendant mental health risks.

The TED talk I posted does talk about making healthy changes but is pretty clear that people can see positive outcomes from healthy changes even if the scale doesn't budge. And she also advocates for a healthy, non-shame approach to food. Meaning no negative self talk when you succumb to the temptation of a carb. I have lost about 35 lbs in the past year hrough calorie tracking and I sometimes feel that the anxiety and stress brought on by that process outweighs the benefits of being at a lower weight. If it is the case that my set point is a little higher than what my ideal weight is, then I am engaging a lot of terrible self talk in order to reach a goal that I may never reach, and i don't know personally if the gamble is worth it.