9/8/2016: Keeping it off: Why is it so difficult?

Weight:  156.4
Exercise:  Weight lifting later today - I'm not working today

I just googled, "Why is it so difficult to keep weight off" and the below article came up.  The article was written about a study done in Australia in 2011.   Fifty subjects that were healthy but overweight participated in the study.  They were put on severely calorie restrictive diets (500 to 550 calories a day) designed to cause them to lose 10% of their body weight in 10 weeks.  Once the weight was lost, they were put on maintenance diets for a year.  Their hormone levels were measured three times: at the beginning of the study, after the 10 week weight loss period, and after one year on the maintenance diet.

Three hormones were measured, leptin (which tells the body how much fat is present), ghrelin (stimulates hunger), and peptide YY (also stimulates hungers).  After the 10 week diet, leptin decreased by 66% from the pre-diet levels.  One year later, leptin was still 33% lower than normal. Ghrelin and peptide YY were elevated after the 10 week diet and remained elevated a year later. making the subjects' appetites stronger than at the start of the study.

Below is a quote from the article's conclusion:

The results show, once again, Dr. Leibel said, that losing weight "is not a neutral event," and that it is no accident that more than 90 percent of people who lose a lot of weight gain it back.  "You are putting your body into a circumstance it will resist," he said.  "You are, in a sense, more metabolically normal when you are at a higher body weight." 

Link to article:  www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/health/biological-changes-thwart-weight-loss-efforts-study-finds.html?_r=0

I spent the next half hour reading several more articles.  It was interesting how many referred back to the above 2011 study.  Most of the rest of them referred to the study done on several Biggest Loser contestants.  They all say basically the same thing, that the body is metabolically altered after losing a significant amount of weight.  The change in the body after weight loss makes it physically and mentally difficult to stay at a lower weight.  Not impossible, just difficult.

My takeaways are this:

• Avoid long periods of severe calorie restriction.  
• While trying to lose weight, make changes that are sustainable for the rest of your life.  In order to keep weight off, you will have to forever maintain the habits that you incorporated into your life in order to take the weight off.
• Don't be in a hurry.  It's not a race.  This really is a lifestyle change.  This sounds trite, but it's true.
• Don't beat yourself up if you gain back a few pounds, but definitely respond to it quickly. Don't let 5 pounds become 10, and 10 become 20.  
• Never forget why it matters to you to weigh your healthy weight.  In one article I read the participants of a study said that they would rather be blinded or have a leg amputated than be fat again, yet they gained weight back anyway.  Wow.  I get that.  
• Don't suffer through this.  Long term suffering will result in giving up.  A healthy lifestyle that promotes a healthy weight has to be normal and OK (perhaps even enjoyable) with you, or it won't last.
• Develop a food plan for life that is healthy and delicious.  Follow it consistently. 
• Develop an activity plan that you enjoy.  To exercise consistently, you must enjoy it.  For some of us, that is hard to imagine.  Several years ago I often stated, rather emphatically, "I hate exercise!"  Well, guess what?  That doesn't work.  If you hate it, you'll eventually quit doing it. First step, stop saying you hate it.  Second step, keep trying new things until you find something you enjoy.  Third step, find someone to do it with.  Fourth step, play games or participate in activities that are more fun if you're fit.  Somewhere in there, I don't which step it is, make physical activity a priority.

As I think about all of this and as I struggle with finding the right balance of discipline and reward, my thoughts go back to one nagging question, "How can we help other people from ever getting into this predicament in the first place?"

For me and countless other people, the damage is done.  By being 100 pounds overweight earlier in life, I have forever and irreparably damaged my body.  That's a fact.  I have undone a lot of the damage.  I've lost the weight.  I exercise regularly.  I am healthy.  I am strong.  I paid a surgeon to remove a lot of excess skin.  I'm starting to enjoy my exercise routines.  I like to play physical games. I enjoy hiking and other activities in which I must physically push myself.  I have a food program that is healthy and that I enjoy. All of this is great, but it's not the entire story.  The physical evidence of once being overweight is ever present in the form of stretch marks on my thighs, hips, belly and breasts.  My body wants to gain the weight back.  I can't eat much more than 1500 calories a day without gaining weight.  Sometimes, the desire to eat more than 1500 calories a day is overwhelming. Physiologically, I am a different person than I would have been if I was never significantly overweight.

So how do we learn from this? How do we, as a society, take everything we've learned and apply this to real life?  There are millions and millions of us that are overweight and that would be healthier and, I believe, happier if they lost weight.  So part of the question is how do we help them.  But to me, the bigger question is how do we help keep people from getting overweight in the first place.  It seems to me that that needs to be our focus. Wouldn't it make sense to start teaching nutrition in preschool and to continue teaching it every single day until kids graduate from high school? Shouldn't exercise become a part of every child's day, everyday? What is more important, in the long run, than that?  Nutrition, exercise, and the components of a healthy lifestyle can be built into almost any lesson.  Math, science, history, art, music, social studies, political science; you name it, you can incorporate some element of health education into it.  By the time a kid graduates from high school, this should be stuff that they just know.  It should be second nature.  I am astounded by the number of people I talk to that just don't know enough.  The information is out there, if you want to learn, but as an adult it is so much harder.  You have to want the information.  But if we start incorporating this information into the everyday lessons of toddlers, they'll grow up with this knowledge.  I'm not saying that this will solve the problem, but I do believe it would be a huge step in the right direction. From everything I've read and from my own personal experience, it sure seems like one of the most important things we can do for the next generation is to provide them with the tools they need so that they don't become overweight in the first place. I think about this a lot. I worry about it a lot.  I don't know the answers, but I do know that this is not just my struggle. It's our struggle. And, as they say, the struggle is real.

That's all I've got for today.  Have a good one!!