http://www.medicaldaily.com/biggest-loser-weight-loss-slow-metabolism-384465?platform=hootsuite

Yes, I saw it this past weekend and it's really been on my mind since.
Something here is just not right.
I have lost 75 pounds. My metabolism is still the same. My caloric intake is still around 2100. Hunger levels still the same. Everything is still the same. I've been at goal for almost a year. Am I just lucky or am I missing something?

Well that's quite disheartening, isn't it?

Just recently I had gone through some of old threads on this forum and wondered how many of people who contributed, who felt encouraged to lose weight, who were really trying back then - how many of them actually LOST the extra weight. And judging by their current tickers, not many. And of those who actually lost, many have regained. (Me being one of them. I lost lot of weight twice before, regianed everything back. And I gave up numerous other attempts after ten pounds or so).

I'm going to try anyhow, but reading the article today makes me wonder even more!

Not at all! I imagine you did it safely and weren't at a 4,000-5,000 calorie deficit per day. If you starve yourself and over exercise for too long, you would likely be in the same predicament. Metabolic adaptation is real, especially seen in anorexia - which is why people go through "refeeding" to get it back to normal.

Congratulations on your loss and maintenance!

From what I understand if you lose that weight very slowly your body has time to adjust. I have a friend who lost 150lbs through a juice fast and his metabolism is completely messed up. If he eats more than 1100 calories per day he gains weight. The scary part is how quickly weight comes on, it feels impossible to gain 20lbs in a month but he can do it just by looking at a French fry.

I thought I read a story on this a year ago or so, that said they were forcing the contestants to drink only things like Red Bull and stuff provided by sponsors - no healthy foods like fruits and stuff. I can't post the article link, but it said:

Meanwhile, their calories were severely restricted. The contestants were ingesting far less than 1,000 (calories) per day. Hibbard says the bulk of food on her season was provided by sponsors and had little to no nutritional value. “Your grocery list is approved by your trainer,” she says. “My season had a lot of Franken-foods: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray, Kraft fat-free cheese, Rockstar Energy Drinks, Jell-O.”

dmnoland: That is very encouraging to me. I really really don't want it to be true that some people are fat and some people aren't, but everyone thinks that fatness is a moral failing. That mix of circumstance is upsetting to me. I am glad things are working out for you, and I'm hoping things will work out ok for me since I've never been able to tell when I'm hungry anyway.

The story said that their metabolisms were burning about 300 to 500 fewer calories than would be expected for someone their size. That is a real adaptation, but not impossible to live with.
Probably the more important issue is that they lost the weight in a very hyped up TV atmosphere- not in real every day life.

Interesting discussion!
My reaction to the article was 'Is any information gleaned from a reality TV show worthy of our attention?' It's basically entertainment created by sponsors for the purpose of selling products. They can manipulate variables willy nilly without reporting those tweaks. This is not scientific method, far from it, so not at all generalizable to other people. Just because it was reported in the NY Times doesn't mean it is any more credible, especially given the decline in quality of Times reporting in recent years.

That said, I would be curious to see reproducible studies. Especially ones that also measured the changes in the body with major weight GAIN. Does that have any effect on subsequent major weight loss? No one studies those who are in the process of adding pounds, so a whole piece of the puzzle is missing, imho.

Re leptin levels, I may be out of date but I don't think leptin levels tell the whole story. In my animal phys class a few yrs ago, we read that leptin receptors vary among individuals--this had been studied in mammals but not humans, not sure about now. They found that if you have few receptors to transport the leptin into the cell where it does its work, then giving extra leptin won't help. I wonder if a scarcity of leptin receptors contributed to weight gain in the first place.

If their leptin was normal pre-diet, what made them hungry for massive amounts of food that led to the gain in the first place? (I include myself in this question--almost my entire family tree as seen in photos reveals a lot of morbid obesity). Then their leptin levels dropped after the loss. But maybe post-diet drop leptin is not the culprit. Just my 2 cents.

I think it's hugely beneficial to learn this information because these weightloss reality shows lead a dangerous trend and give hope to morbidly obese people without giving them the real truth. We are fed a lie that losing weight will restore your health but then it is absolutely not true and even if it is, it lasts for only a little while because in reality who can bare the hardship of a severaly damaged metabolism? We are taught (falsely) that fat people have a slow metabolism and it's not true, DIETING causes a slow metabolism. This information is now being processed and chewed by all kinds of publications. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/05/08...158993&referer

Only 5% of dieters have long lasting success, this statistic is not a secret, it's been out for a while. It's safe to assume that 95% of humans could not all be at fault for this, so it must be dieting that doesn't work, not us. Yet the diet industry keeps challenging this notion so that they can make MONEY. Meanwhile these people's lives are ruined, their metabolisms are ruined, they put their health in jeopardy and now they're worse off. I think there is a real problem here, we're blaming weight for all our health problems and yet I see skinny men having heart attacks, I see thin women getting cancer just the same. We're told that being fat is the worst thing we can be and it's just not true! The physical damage done by yo-yo dieting is irrepairable! And yet I hear so many women say "I'd rather lose 20 gain 20 continuously than stay at my heavy weight all the time" and when that is seen as a healthy attitude then we've got problems. I don't know the exact statistics but there are more women than not who would trade 5yrs of their life to be thin. And then they say they want to lose weight for their health. It's nuts.

One of the most important studies done on the effects of starvation (which is what dieting simulates) was done by Ancel Keys in the 1940s. Read about this important experiment, it's a lot like the Biggest Loser in some ways and the results are fascinating. http://www.madsciencemuseum.com/msm/...ion_experiment

There is a lot of push-back and efforts to invalidate the information in the article, but this is less relevant than other broader studies conducted on people who weren't losing weight on TV that showed similar issues. The primary problem is leptin levels and leptin resistance (leptin resistance is a key point here - you may have plenty of leptin, but your brain doesn't recognize it and says, "I'm super hungry" anyway).

Long before this study, there was more than enough scientific evidence that people who are quite overweight and lose weight can only maintain it in a state of constant hunger (which is likely why they regain in many cases). It's not that everyone experiences this, but a majority do, and it's not "in their heads" or a lack of will. Anyone who has to constantly resist a basic biological urge as strong as hunger is going to become emotionally exhausted over time and start to give in more and more. Hunger is an extremely potent behavioral motivator. It is supposed to be in order to ensure survival. Whether or not one needs to eat to survive or the brain is falsely signaling is irrelevant. If I put a probe in a point in your brain to initiate pain receptors such that your leg feels like it's been smashed with a sledgehammer, the fact that your leg is still fine isn't going to mean you are going to tolerate that pain any better. You're still going to want it to stop.

The whole point of this is not to say everyone has these issues, but rather to point out how complex the battle is. By minimizing or attempting to invalidate the evidence, one is attempting to simplify the complexity for personal worldview validation rather than to help consider how the problem can actually be solved.