is weight loss a losing battle long term?

hollypink

I heard Gary Kirwan on the Ray Darcy show this morning. I felt bad for him as it seems like after such a great start, going from 41 stone to 26, that he has been slipping backwards for the past year. I watched that Sky programme 'a year to save my life' earlier in the week and unlike most weeks, the man was also slipping backwards after a great start. It just seems like it is a Herculean task for some people to control their food consumption, despite having huge reasons, not least the very real threat of an early death, not to give in. I have real difficulty myself in staying in control of my diet so I understand, to an extent, how someone could end up on such a self destructive path

I know there are people on here who have lost weight, in some cases a large amount of weight and have successfully maintained that weight loss, but I feel like I both know and have read of a lot more people who don't maintain and end up as heavy or heavier.

Alf Veedersane

99% of the time it's down to the choices they make. If they've lost weight and then put it back on, it's because they've made the wrong decisions and slipped back into old habits.

Stench Blossoms

I think the main reason why people put the weight back on is because they didn't really ever tackle the reason why they were overeating in the first place.

Another factor is 'diets'. Drastically cutting your calories or cutting out certain food groups isn't really the answer either.

I've found that people who have maintained their weight loss made lifestyle changes.

yellowlabrador

It's all down to portion sizes. Portions are way too large. Some people will sit down to a whole pizza or even half a pizza in one sitting whereas a portion is only a wedge. Calorie counting and being aware of how much you are eating helps. I think that as humans we tend to eat what is in front of us and we lose control. When I was a kid in the 60's a treat was small. Look at the sizes of coca cola or even biscuits. The food industry has upped the sizes to give better 'value' but it's at the cost of our waistlines. Also treat have now become mainstream food.
Mamies that make you eat the whole dinner, because then you're 'good' are no help.

GorillaRising

I lost weight and put it on again for no other reason than laziness and I like my beer and pizza too much and I wanted to just 'enjoy myself' for a while again.

I knew what would happen, but I was content going through the motions if I had to lose weight again.

Now I was by no means huge at all.

So, this time I'm (as Stench Blossoms said) I've made lifestyle changes as I want to keep the weight off and workout for the rest of my life.

Davei141

Never underestimate an exercise routine that you enjoy for giving you that cast iron determination. If you are eating at a calorie deficit each day just for a number on the scales to drop then it will be no surprise that people get bored. Get active and as was said above make a lifestyle change.

If the diet that got you overweight in the first place involved lots of bread, chips or sweets for eg then don't make it part of your diet. If you love bread and your new diet involves a few slices instead of loads a week then get rid of it. If you overeat with chips don't substitute them with oven chips because you are only keeping the fact you want proper chips in your head. Same with sweets, if you have a massive sweet tooth and you "only" have 3 dairy milks a week instead of the usually 7 then get rid.

Some people just can't eat certain foods in moderation, it messes with their mind and keeps them thinking about how hard all this clean eating is. Cut out completely anything that sets you up for a binge.

gizmo23

Stench blossoms really hit the nail
On the head tbh.
It's not all down to just watching what you eat you have to make lifestyle changes. 2 years ago I was 23 stone 4 and I am now 10stone 7 and being honest te reason I lost it was exercise. Of course I ate less but I trained hard and still do to keep the weight off.
The old saying "you can't out exercise your diet" or something along those lines.

April O Neill

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

99% of the time it's down to the choices they make. If they've lost weight and then put it back on, it's because they've made the wrong decisions and slipped back into old habits.

I read somewhere on this forum, I think an el_dangeroso post about how if you're long-term obese, keeping weight off becomes so much harder because of physiological changes in your cells. I think hunger is affected and increased, and other changes. Maybe run a search, I can't remember the full details.

thegreatiam

Not just the psychological effects. but also the lack of education and common understanding make it likely that a large portion of people will regain lost weight.

The lack of knowledge can be seen everywhere and it shows there is no basic awareness.
From kids believing you need to be "on Protein", low fat is healthy and "carbs"=potatoes and pasta

people leave school with the idea that eating healthy means avoiding meat, eating pasta and salad and when they want to lose weight they just stop eating pasta.

protein is spoken of in the same breath as steroids and a multivitamin will fill up the huge gaps in your diet.

Couple this with a psychosocial relationship with food and you have a population that isn't able to make correct choices and hates themselves because of it.

There are also too many groups pushing agenda rather than taking the view that there are many right answers and looking to encourage a balance and varied system.

Add in the snake oil and the whole issue becomes a minefield. It's hard for an overweight person to even know who to ask, let alone how to go about doing it for fear of doing it wrong, where as the reality is that it's actually very simple once you tune out the background noise.

Eat balanced, eat varied and keep moving.

April O Neill

Here is one post I found:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=70298190&postcount=28

April O Neill

Here is another, on why if you were obese as a child, you'll face a losing battle:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=72453729&postcount=30

Interesting stuff.

desertcircus

Lifestyle change is a huge factor in determining whether weight dropped is going to stay dropped. Losing five stone in six months on a restrictive diet is all well and good, but if you don't address the root cause it's only going to be temporary, undone as soon as you come off the diet.

The people I know who've lost weight and kept it off, almost without exception, have been people who took up a sport. Not people who exercised - people who signed up for something properly draining and put the work in to be able to do it. They sometimes eat just as much as they ever did, but they're working off three thousand calories a week trying to whittle their 10k time down or cycle up Howth two minutes faster than they did last week. I'm not sure why this is, but getting leaner seems to be tied far more closely to activity levels than to diet.

April O Neill

thegreatiam wrote: »

and "carbs"=potatoes and pasta

Nothing wrong with potatoes, IMO. My complex carb of choice.

thegreatiam

April O Neill wrote: »

Nothing wrong with potatoes, IMO. My complex carb of choice.

no one said there was, simply that the way people think and are informed about their food is.

People will go low carb by cutting out potatoes/pasta, but not realising that almost everything else they are eating is also carbs.

Alf Veedersane

April O Neill wrote: »

Nothing wrong with potatoes, IMO. My complex carb of choice.

I think thegreatiam was saying that there is a misconceptoin that carbs = pasta and potatoes and that all round lack of knowledge on nutirtion helps no one.

As a general note, it's a disgrace that the 'food pyramid' is still peddled as a guide to healthy eating.

thegreatiam

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

I think thegreatiam was saying that there is a misconceptoin that carbs = pasta and potatoes and that all round lack of knowledge on nutirtion helps no one.

As a general note, it's a disgrace that the 'food pyramid' is still peddled as a guide to healthy eating.

precisely

maguic24

hollypink wrote: »

I heard Gary Kirwan on the Ray Darcy show this morning. I felt bad for him as it seems like after such a great start, going from 41 stone to 26, that he has been slipping backwards for the past year. I watched that Sky programme 'a year to save my life' earlier in the week and unlike most weeks, the man was also slipping backwards after a great start. It just seems like it is a Herculean task for some people to control their food consumption, despite having huge reasons, not least the very real threat of an early death, not to give in. I have real difficulty myself in staying in control of my diet so I understand, to an extent, how someone could end up on such a self destructive path

I know there are people on here who have lost weight, in some cases a large amount of weight and have successfully maintained that weight loss, but I feel like I both know and have read of a lot more people who don't maintain and end up as heavy or heavier.

I think people need to understand that it's a change of lifestyle rather than a temporary thing.

You will never maintain a healthy weight in the long run if your diet is too restrictive. I can understand how people slip back, as I did, myself. The only reason that I maintained my weight the second time I lost a pile of weight is cheat days. Saturday is my cheat day, without it I would go insane!

mitosis

maguic24 wrote: »

I think people need to understand that it's a change of lifestyle rather than a temporary thing.

Absolutely. If you consume no more than what you burn you will not accumulate weight. Take a look at our grandparents, or the hungry folk in Africa etc. They could as easily as us suffer from "big Bones" "water retention" "curvy genes" etc, but they didn't/don't

Alf Veedersane

mitosis wrote: »

Absolutely. If you consume no more than what you burn you will not accumulate weight. Take a look at our grandparents, or the hungry folk in Africa etc. They could as easily as us suffer from "big Bones" "water retention" "curvy genes" etc, but they didn't/don't

Poverty never sounded so quaint.

hollypink

Stench Blossoms wrote: »

I think the main reason why people put the weight back on is because they didn't really ever tackle the reason why they were overeating in the first place.

Another factor is 'diets'. Drastically cutting your calories or cutting out certain food groups isn't really the answer either.

I've found that people who have maintained their weight loss made lifestyle changes.

Yes, I can see that it needs to be a lifestyle change. I suppose I'm wondering why you can make a lifestyle change and yet after a year or two, be seduced back to the bad old ways. But your first point in particular rings true with me. I think I haven't really ever accepted that I can never just eat what I like without gaining weight. And I don't mean never having treats but rather accepting that the food I like and sometimes even crave is bad for me.

April O Neill wrote: »

Here is one post I found:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=70298190&postcount=28

wow that's depressing to read, when you consider the obesity epidemic.

desertcircus wrote: »

The people I know who've lost weight and kept it off, almost without exception, have been people who took up a sport. Not people who exercised - people who signed up for something properly draining and put the work in to be able to do it. They sometimes eat just as much as they ever did, but they're working off three thousand calories a week trying to whittle their 10k time down or cycle up Howth two minutes faster than they did last week. I'm not sure why this is, but getting leaner seems to be tied far more closely to activity levels than to diet.

Now, logically that makes sense to me but if you take Gary Kirwan as an example, he really embraced exercise and does a lot of endurance events, including the DCM and Gaelforce (although he said today he had to drop out of GF midway through). I presume he's training for these events and he mentioned his trainer today.

seamus

There was a US article I read recently about the recent crop of ultra-dieting TV shows like "The Biggest Loser" and the rather depressing fact that none of the winning contestants have ever managed to keep the weight off.

The reason for this is obvious - they spend X no. of weeks isolated at a camp where all they do, all the time, is watch what they eat, and exercise.
When the show finishes, they're sent home and back to their normal life with a job and responsibilities, and no way of integrating any of the new lifestyle into their routine.
Plus, if you've spent the last 12 weeks with some ultra-fit trainer shouting at you for half the day, the first thing you'll say when you get home is, "Ah jaysus, that's nice, peace and quiet. I think I'll take a couple of days off the aul training". Then a few days turns into a week, turns into two weeks and before you know it, the last time you sweated in any significant way was 3 months ago. We've all probably been there at some point.

The same rings true for crash dieting or anything which involves making massive sacrifices or changes and losing lots of weight in a short period of time. Eventually old habits drift back, and the more extreme the changes you made to your lifestyle, the harder it will be to maintain them.

It would be interesting to see the same information for the UK & Ireland version of the show. They went a lot more sensibly about it - the trainers were more about positive encouragement than acting like drill instructors, and the contestants were sent home with a 15-week plan to integrate into their daily lives. Presumably this was done because it's cheaper, but it would also be a better way of getting people to maintain their loss in the long term.

The biggest challenge in terms of weight loss really is not losing the weight, it's getting to grips with the fact that this is something you need to keep up for the rest of your life.
On the plus side, unless you're one of the tiny no. of individuals who never put on weight, learning how to manage your weight for the rest of your life gives you a leg up over your peers when you hit middle-age; those who didn't have to take control over their weight in their younger years will find themselves spreading uncontrollably and not knowing what to do about it.

I'm not sure why this is, but getting leaner seems to be tied far more closely to activity levels than to diet

I'm sure there are multiple reasons for it, not just related to the fact that you're moving more. There's the conscious link - "If I weigh more, then running/cycling/swimming will be more difficult, therefore in order to get better, I need to lose weight, or not gain weight".
But there will also be the unconscious. If someone's job is very manual, then their hands are occupied and food is usually not close to hand. A guy hauling around bricks all day might stop once an hour for a cup of tea or a coke, but he's not going to walk down to the shops because they could be 2km away. But if you're sitting at a desk, you might get up every half an hour for a cuppa, and there's probably a vending machine 30 seconds away that solves your craving for chocolate with your cuppa. And you attend this twice a day.
If you do a lot of driving, you'll pass fifty petrol stations a day, all of which present the opportunity to pop in and get a snack and only costs you 3 minutes.
I would say the latter is probably the main reason why more active people tend to be leaner. Not necessarily because they consciously eat less, but because being active effectively prevents them from eating more.

I read somewhere on this forum, I think an el_dangeroso post about how if you're long-term obese, keeping weight off becomes so much harder because of physiological changes in your cells.

Adipocytes/lipocytes. The main theory at present being that these cells store fat and can only be created in childhood and adolescence and are not destroyed/recycled like normal cells. So if someone is obese in their early years, they will have a lot of these cells as an adult, which makes "draining" them more difficult and "filling" them up again much easier.

As an evolutionary mechanism this probably occurs so that the body is adapted during childhood to make the best use of its environment: where the environment is one that food is frequently available in big quantities, then being able to store it quickly and hold onto it provides a significant advantage.
On the other hand, if you live somewhere that food is permanently or mostly scarce, then it makes no sense to waste energy maintaining a load of fat-storage cells which are never going to be fully utilised.

It's an area of continuing research and there's considerable debate about it. Some sources will tell you that prolonged weight loss and control over your intake will eventually cause lipocytes to die off, other will tell you the number is permanently fixed forever and ever. Some places claim to be able to destroy lipocytes using non-invasive methods, others recommend actual liposuction to do it.

It'll be one of the biggest growth areas in medical science over the next twenty years. It may well be the case that formerly obese people will have to take some form of hormonal suppressant to help regulate their appetite.

desertcircus

hollypink wrote: »

Yes, I can see that it needs to be a lifestyle change. I suppose I'm wondering why you can make a lifestyle change and yet after a year or two, be seduced back to the bad old ways. But your first point in particular rings true with me. I think I haven't really ever accepted that I can never just eat what I like without gaining weight. And I don't mean never having treats but rather accepting that the food I like and sometimes even crave is bad for me.



wow that's depressing to read, when you consider the obesity epidemic.



Now, logically that makes sense to me but if you take Gary Kirwan as an example, he really embraced exercise and does a lot of endurance events, including the DCM and Gaelforce (although he said today he had to drop out of GF midway through). I presume he's training for these events and he mentioned his trainer today.

Did Gaelforce myself, couldn't manage the mountain though! Unfortunately, there's always going to be a couple of outliers whose diet is bad enough to negate all the exercise - if you eat and burn 5,000 calories a day, you're going to stay the same weight. For most people, though, regular hard exercise will be enough to trigger weight loss, even with no change to diet (although a degree of change is almost guaranteed even if not planned).

Alf Veedersane

hollypink wrote: »

Yes, I can see that it needs to be a lifestyle change. I suppose I'm wondering why you can make a lifestyle change and yet after a year or two, be seduced back to the bad old ways. But your first point in particular rings true with me. I think I haven't really ever accepted that I can never just eat what I like without gaining weight. And I don't mean never having treats but rather accepting that the food I like and sometimes even crave is bad for me.



wow that's depressing to read, when you consider the obesity epidemic.



Now, logically that makes sense to me but if you take Gary Kirwan as an example, he really embraced exercise and does a lot of endurance events, including the DCM and Gaelforce (although he said today he had to drop out of GF midway through). I presume he's training for these events and he mentioned his trainer today.

If someone lapses after a year or two, they haven't truly made a lifestylechange. To do that they need to address why they overeat and only then can theymake lifestyle changes that they’re happy with. People can change but they haveto embrace it and, more importantly, be happy with it. Otherwise, it’s unlikelyto be sustainable. Alcoholics can give up drink and some will stay off thedrink because they’ve addressed why they don’t drink and are happier when theydon’t and others won’t drink because they know it’s not a good idea but aren’tcomfortable with the notion that they’re not supposed to drink again.

I don’t know Gary Kirwan or his story but there is a possibility that he’son the straight and narrow when there’s an event to train for but without thatevent as a goal he might be struggling to eat well and exercise as much as hedoes with an event to aim for.

metamorphosis

Some of you guys know that i started a journey to lose weight this time in 2005 ... well iv kept the 6.5 stone off ...

I can say now that my overeating, while obviously tied to food, was not the only reason I was that weight.

Over the years I really had to tackle my cognitive behavior. It took some hard looks into what I don't like about myself and things that I faced in life to see what the problem was. Even after initially losing the weight I had changed my cognitive behaviours from one extreme of 'bad' to another. After time, and perspective and experience, I can look back and see where (and how and why) I have come.

For me, my weight was an extension of other things in my life. Tackle those two (if you have them)

Don't set rules if they are not working (ie only eating paleo, or low fat, or high fat etc) - find something that will nourish your mind and body without demonizing everything else.

doctorwhogirl

I do believe that the research into fat cells is true and as an adolescent that was obese I assume it is applicable to me.

However

I'm 3 years at goal now having lost about 7 stone and my eating habits and exercise have improved over the past few years, rather than me relapsing.

I think the key thing is not to let the idea that "you can weight more easily" or "I'll gain it back eventually" beat you or even enter your head.

I remember a friend asking me was it depressing watching what I eat all the time, do I not get sick of it. My simple answer was not as sick as I was of being fat, no.

As metamorphosis says it's not about setting rules or being on a diet. It's such a cliché but it is the whole lifestyle change thing.
Prime example from my life.

I lost my weight initially with WW and the month after I got to goal 3 years ago I went on a sun holiday with my friend. I took this as an opportunity to relax the diet. I.e. eat EVERYTHING around me- cake for breakfast, chips, chocolate....the whole lot. That was because I was in "diet" mode, I hadn't really made any proper changes to my attitude or understanding of food. Gained about 9 pounds in 7 days. Starved myself for weeks to lose it.

I went away for ten days this year sightseeing. This time I had no major urge whatsoever to binge. I had sweets the odd night or an ice-cream, had my few drinks but ate very well and made good choices when eating out. Didn't feel deprived once. Lost 2 pounds. It was a real realisation that I had really made this a lifestyle change and not just a way to lose weight.

This was on facebook earlier, and I think it's applicable, although you have to adapt the "eating clean" bit to whatever way you have changed your eating for the better.

vitani

I didn't hear the Gary Kirwan interview, but from other things I've heard and read about him, I'm not massively surprised that his weight loss has stalled. I remember reading a couple of years ago that he was on a special ketosis diet that had been designed for him. While it may have helped him drop a large amount of weight relatively quickly, that was never something that he was going to be able to keep up in the long term.

He does a lot of training and endurance events, but I'd wonder how much they actually help him in terms of weight loss. I'm not sure but I'm pretty sure I saw him around the 8 mile marker of the Rock'n'Roll Half Marathon a few weeks ago. This was while I was driving home, so about three hours after it had begun. If the average person burns about 100 calories per mile, he's burned off about 250-300 calories an hour. That's not enough to compensate for a poor diet. (Now, having said that, maybe the calories he burns through exercise are affected by his weight. I'm open to correction on that.)

groovyg

I heard the interview he did with Ray last Thursday and felt depressed for him. One of the reasons he decided to go on a diet and get his s*it together was because he and his partner wanted children. Supposedly it wasn't happening because of his weight so he decided to do something about it and he got in touch with Ray Darcy. I think when he started the plan he signed up with the Motivation Clinic.

So a year after starting on the plan he lost something like 10 stone his partner got pregnant and now he has a young son. The last time he was on the show was in October last year and he had put on a few pounds then.

He is now he is up to 28 stone and reasons for not maintaining the diet seem to be the kid, college and life in general. Lots of listeners were texting in and even Ray said it himself that he if he doesn't continue with the plan he won't be around to see the kid grow up.
Just from listening to him his diet doesn't sound the best, he said the previous Saturday he spent the day living on energy bars and then they had a christening on the Sunday so the diet went out the window. He also wrote a book which was a bit premature as he hadn't even reached his goal weight. Seems too focused on seeing it as a diet and not a lifestyle change.