The Fat Trap - NYTimes

[sontaikle]

New York Times recently posted this article about weight maintenance and how many people usually regain weight after weight loss:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/ma...e-fat-trap.htm

The article was interesting and didn't mention too much new info, but I do have issue with the fact that they really only mentioned people losing weight on very low-calorie diets (500 cal and 800cal) which I wonder if that has something to do with people regaining weight.

We all know maintenance is more difficult than weight loss, but overall I found the article a bit troubling in that it seems to discourage weight loss by making both weight loss and maintenance seem even more difficult than they are.

I have to give the article props for mentioning that maintainers have to likely eat less and watch their food intake over people who haven't been overweight/obese.

[xardins]

A good diet is important.
Low-calorie diet is not enough. Our body finds that a future bad times and will try to survive, but when we return to a normal diet your body starts to accumulate stocks in case of re diet. This is a yo-yo effect. In addition, the body will accumulate more reserves in case of long diet. Everywhere in nature we find the law of contradiction
We need to remember about a balanced diet and not just about calories.

[lin43]

Sontaikle, I haven't read the full article, but I did hear an interview with the author of that article on NPR: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/03/144627...ork-against-us . I found that she, subtly, seems to have a bit of a defeatist attitude about the whole thing.

I, too, found it discouraging. But one thing she mentions is that maintainers have to exercise a lot more than those who are the same "natural" weight. She mentions something about walking 4 miles a day as the least and makes doing that seem unrealistic. However, long ago, I remember reading Thin for Life and making note of the fact that most successful maintainers seemed to exercise an hour or more a day. Now that I'm maintaining what I hope will be my last big weight loss, I do at least an hour a day of exercise (6 days a week), and I'm just taking it in stride. It's almost as if I've accepted that I will need to do this, and because of that acceptance, I haven't really minded doing it.

[baker23]

The study is complete bull....When your eating only 500-800 your body adjust. When they stopped trying to lose weight, and upped their calories, what is average for a normal person was far to much for them. So the weight piled back on. Besides nutrition factors, this is why no one should eat so few calories -.-.....

Its funny because instead of interfering and trying to create a controlled setting which did taint the results, they should have just studied people who have lost weight, and studied them over the course of a few years to find how many actually did gain....I couldn't really take this article seriously and it frustrated me *breathes*...I only read part of the first page as i'm in a hurry and have to get to work but i'll be coming back to it later.

[ValRock]

UGH. Bull!

You know what the problem with this study is? The dieters learned NOTHING. They learned that they had to starve on shakes and veggies to lose weight. Then they were left to their own devices to maintain that weight loss. People who were previously obese were that way for a reason. You can make all the excuses in the world but it all comes down to habits and nutrition.

I was an obese child. I was a obese teenager. I had NO grasp of the fundamentals of nutrition until I took it on myself to learn them during this weight loss journey. I wasn't successful until I learned the importance of not only how much I put in my body but WHAT.

Maintenance is easy. You just can't slip back into those familiar habits that put the weight on in the first place!!!