Important weight loss news a key to fat loss....

Today's Post: Thursday, 2-23-2012

Last week there was a story about managing fat loss that was very important for causing permanent fat loss and for keeping it off.

Since it usually is needed to produce a net calorie decrease to lose fat, the commonly used guide is to predict how much you will lose for each 100 calories you achieve removing from your net calories per day.

The common way to do this is to note that a pound of fat contains 3500 calories. So, subtracting that net drop would predict that for each 100 calorie net drop each day you will lose a pound in about 35 days. So, in 6 months, you would lose about 5 pounds.

The news report said that obesity expert and analyst, Dr Kevin Hall says the data he has seen show that this model does work for about the first 6 months to a year in real life.

But at that point the model begins to stop working in real life. If people maintain the 100 calorie daily net drop, they do keep losing fat. But his data suggest that instead of losing the second 5 pounds in a second 6 months, it takes about another two and a half years for most people. The weight loss does continue but it takes five times longer.

He says the reason for this five to one slow down at this point is due to slowing or decreasing metabolism in people who have lost weight for 6 months or more.

Dr Hall works in the Laboratory of Biological Modeling in Maryland.

(Laboratory of Biological Modeling in Maryland http://mrb.niddk.nih.gov/

It's part of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

To see the news story, look up, the “Laboratory of Biological Modelling” because the name of the group had that double L typo in the story.)

Here’s why the story is so important.

1. Reading it, it’s clear that two things are likely the case. First, to keep the fat off, the 100 calorie daily net decrease must stay in place. And, it’s important to think in terms of at least a 3 year plan to remove the fat initially.

There are people who do better than that. And, we’ll next describe how they manage it.

But the two general statements ARE accurate and important.

The term “diet” and what most people mean by it is treacherous and tends to lead to fat loss failure.

a) One key reason is that most people define it as temporarily not eating as many calories after which they assume the fat loss will stay off once the temporary period ends.

b) The other is that most people presume that “going on a diet” for 6 months will remove all their excess fat and to plan on a 6 month effort.

Dr Hall is saying in very fact based way that the data show that both these beliefs are both proven to be false.

That’s why most people who write about permanent weight loss or permanent fat loss, talk about permanent lifestyle upgrades and do NOT talk much about diets! They don’t always use the term, “permanent lifestyle upgrades,” but what they recommend is always just that.

2. To do well with fat loss, his data show that having your body slow your metabolism less than the rate his data show can be a huge help in losing all your fat and in keeping it off.

3. To do well with fat loss his data show that doing things that tend to increase your metabolism can be a huge help in losing all your fat and in keeping it off.

These last two points are exactly what you need after you understand the first one to do well.

The people who do better than his model and those who succeed in losing all their excess fat and in keeping it off do those last two things.

2. How do you have your body slow your metabolism less than the rate his data show?

If you cut back your calories eaten too much and with no breaks and for too long at that level, your body’s failsafe famine response kicks in. You feel you have less energy because your body cuts back on what you feel like using and your metabolism drops so you burn fewer calories even at rest!

If you cut back on protein or fiber, this happens sooner and more severely.

He doesn’t talk about the fact that your famine response also makes you so much hungrier that you no longer eat that many fewer calories if you have access to food.

Cutting back that way causes failure. Most of us are the descendants of people who were the survivors during famines many times over.

So, you cut back less initially and plan to take longer. His data suggest planning a multi-year plan already. But cutting back to moderate intake instead of tiny intake helps you prevent triggering this famine response.

And, that’s true even though you cut back more on some days. The first time I lost weight cutting back less overall was one of the reasons I succeeded.

Second, the people we are descended from for hundreds of thousands of years – even when there was no famine – varied from day to day in how much they got to eat. So if your protein supply is excellent and you get enough fiber and then eat a bit low on the moderate side some days and moderate some days, your body may slow your metabolism a bit, but the massive slowdown doesn’t happen nor does the extreme hunger that you can’t resist.

I learned this idea initially from author Jon Benson. His version he calls the, “Every Other Day Diet.”

There are other effective ways; but his method works and I used it myself for the fat and weight I lost recently. The fact that I still have kept most of it off is due in part to my continuing to follow my version of his plan.

And just within the last few months there was a news story that cutting back to low moderate calorie intake and a bit higher in protein for just TWO nonconsecutive days a week, people in that group lost something like two or three times as much weight as people who cut back all 7 days.

Third, getting enough health OK protein foods and fiber mostly from nonstarchy vegetables and beans and lentils helps keep you from getting too hungry. Since being too hungry is hard on you and ALSO helps trigger your famine response, that too is extremely useful.

So what to cut back on instead? To some extent, everything else.

But for sure, every single thing you can stop eating or drinking that cuts your hunger very little when you have it or actually makes you hungrier, stop entirely or as close to it as you can manage – as in 95 % of the time or more!

Regular and diet soft drinks are exactly that. Regular adds calories without lowering your hunger and they both tend to make you hungrier later!

And, since one goal of weight loss and fat loss is good health and feeling better, anything that tends to cause disease or makes you feel bad, stop entirely or as close to it as you can manage – as in 95 % of the time or more! High fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and refined grains and the foods made from them are good examples of this one.

3. How can you actually work to avoid the other cause of the metabolism slowdown or even speed yours up?

There are several ways to do that too.

Have you heard that exercise doesn’t help with fat loss? That’s false!

Other than the fact that you will also need to eat a bit less and a lot better to lose weight and lose fat at all, to lose ONLY fat and to keep it off, exercise is essential.

It’s also essential to have your life work well and to stay healthy.

Walking is something your body is set up to do from hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. It’s a mild enough exercise that you can do a lot of it and not have your body trigger your famine response.

And if you can walk an hour a day or burn 300 calories a day by walking, you can cut back on food by 200 or 300 calories less and still lose fat which enables you to eat more and be less hungry while still losing fat.

But after doing all the walking you have time for, you may not be able to do that much of it.

The better news is that strength training and interval cardio can be done in less time than walking. And, they both add muscle and prevent you from losing it if you eat enough protein.

Muscle gained and/or none lost help prevent your metabolism from slowing!

But it gets better! If you do some of your strength training and interval cardio at a moderately intense or vigorous level, you burn more calories for up to several hours after you stop.

You might burn 100 calories by doing 15 minutes of interval cardio and then burn 50 extra calories an hour for another five hours.

In short, exercise, and particularly vigorous interval cardio and strength training both prevent metabolism drop off from losing muscle instead of fat, AND they also boost your metabolism by a good bit they day you do them!

Plus, when you succeed in adding muscle, your metabolism is higher even when you are resting and on your days off because that muscle burns more calories than fat does!

The research backs this up too. In one study I read of recently, the group that only ate less lost a bit; but the matched group that ate a bit less AND did strength training too, lost 9 more pounds on the average in the same time period and they lost a lot more inches.

So, they not only lost more, the extra they lost was fat!

Conclusion, eating a bit less by eating better for you food plus just a bit more cut backs on some days plus getting strength training and interval cardio; having a long term approach; and making each part a permanent lifestyle upgrade, DOES work.

Permanent fat loss and losing most or all of your fat IS possible.

So, Dr Hall’s data can be good news if you know what to do about it!