Hello,
I have two questions. I see these posted ad infinitum.

Lose Weight slowly
Eat 1200 calories...

Why? I see lots of people who just say the answer, but I was wondering where is the studies to back this up.

I have heard the crash your metabolism story, but the science doesn't seem to back this up. You metabolism is around 10 times your weight plus how much you wiggle. Most of us do not wiggle that much when dieting, fast or slow. Sorry if this is a heretical question, I was just wondering if there have been any actual studies on this.

I can understand that you should lose weight slowly because most of us do not have the willpower to crash diet, and then we fail miserably, but most people fail miserably on slow diets as well, i think around 90% after 5 years are even heavier than before.

Anyways thank you for your help.

Sorry a few more questions, I am pretty new to this. I see, your calories are too low, so you are not losing weight. This makes no sense at all. Ethiopians are plenty skinny. Yes, I understand that having too low a calories makes it really difficult to exercise and all that and makes you sluggish, but If I go below my BMR then I will either lose weight or start to cheat a lot. There does not seem to be much sense to this weight loss stuff.

The other thing that does not make sense is that people keep saying that they are gaining muscle while in a calorie deficit. Where are the nutrients coming from to build new muscle, if you are in a calorie deficit.

Confusion reigns in my head.

Talk to Steve... he is the master of reasons to avoid the 1,200 calorie diet. He has some good tips and information.

On think that I do know is that if you loose weight quickly your body does not have time to adjust to each size. For larger people, if they loose weight too quickly their spines are often severely affected and they end up living at the chiropractor. You gained the weight slowly and your body slowly adjusted to more weight, the same has to happen when you loose.

There have been a few studies on how fast and heavy your BMR has slowed. The highest that has been tracked is a lowering by 40%. However there is more to it to this. The metabolism isn't an organ that just is in the body. Your metabolism is a process if you will. Its the combination of a lot of working systems that need all function properly. There is a lot your can do from your hormones to gland function to slow your metabolisms. However, problems can occur that are not related to metabolic function.

I do not believe that is a correct number, but I get your point. Dieting in general never gets anyone anywhere. Good exercise programs and nutrition habits are the key to life long change.
You stated very clearly why lowering your calories will lower you energy output "Yes, I understand that having too low a calories makes it really difficult to exercise and all that and makes you sluggish" See the lower you take your calories, the lower output of energy your body gives. Your body will force you to remain as still as possible. You will sit more still, you will train with less aggression. Then you will likely binge and feed over what used to be your maintenance metabolic burn rate. This is how people can be over weight and undernourished and with massively lowered metabolisms in correlation to their size. Now if you can stick to the malnutrition and no calories then yes you will sport a nice Ethiopian look. However it will take you a while to get there, and understand they have from birth and the genetic genes to get that way themselves.

A person who is new to exercise can gain a very small amount of excess muscle or newbie muscle gains. This is very small for men and even smaller for women. After initial weight training break ins if you time your nutrition the best you can and have a really solid diet with the right program you can achieve again a SMALL amount of muscle, we are talking .25-.5 pounds a week IF that on a hypocaloric diet and that for men, women even less. So while technically you can gain muscle in a caloric deficit, it isn't much and isn't easy to do once past the point of complete beginner.

I hope this helps answer some questions.

Thank you for your very good reply. That is a lot more information than I expected
Ok, So I have been searching what journals I can access from home while I waited and see that BMR rates fall during weight loss, because you tend to lose muscle mass. The total amount of muscle lost is proportional to the calorie deficit. However, it seems a good workout plan can mitigate this somewhat. But nothing seems to say that the BMR is based on anything but your weight(fat + otherstuff). I can see how the total metabolism is effected by calorie reduction as you wiggle less, but I know I operate pretty close to my BMR already. That may be why I am in this forum
However, this being said, I still do not see the starvation mode that is commonly quoted. All that seems to happen is that you lose a little less than expected. Am I getting this right?
It seems that the main problem with major calorie reduction is that only people with massive willpower can stay on these diets. But I have the same problem with being irritatingly hungry for the next 20 weeks at 2 pounds per week. I tend to make it 2-3 weeks, enjoy a holiday and start over, or more often quit.

So, I looked up the number of people who do not maintain their weightloss after 5 years and it is 94.9% on commercial diets, but I disagree about the exercise. It seems much easier to cut back 500 calories than to ramp up 500 calories. I would like to get in shape, but I am already hurting from the weight loss and exercising that hard just adds to my misery. The studies I have seen say that a calorie is a calorie, but I may be getting this confused. Just tired of dieting wrong

Muscle reduction has little to do with BMR rates. Gaining muscle for a "faster burning metabolism" is a bit well hyped. Though it does increase metabolic rate it is only a very small degree and has still to yet be measured within a close range in actual numbers. From the studies I have read it seems to be 3-5 more calories difference from fat. As for loss of body fat enough will decrease your metabolic rate. Size matters, think of it along the lines of a Hummers need for gasoline over a civic. So losing body fat AND losing muscle mass will decrease in over all energy needs for your body. The differences can add up over time.

The other point that needs to be made is a BMR is based on one very important things or statment if you will. The Basel Metabolic Rate for a Average Healthy Person.

Staying in a constant dieted down state, yo-yo effect, losing muscle mass, losing fat, gaining fat but never regaining muscle mass, etc. maintains a vicious cycle that does a number on your hormones levels, peptides, insulin, protein synthesis, etc. Again like I said more comes into play than just "slow metabolism".


This is why extreme caloric reductions don't work. The end result is again all those things I listed above. Extremist attitudes in diet always lead to a crash and reversion.

Well the key there is COMMERCIAL diets, diets that are set up for repeat business. How many times do you hear "I loved weight watchers the first time I did it." Now I am not saying there isn't some good aspects to some of these programs, but they all lack the high important aspect of fat loss...education.

First I would like you to look at my 3 part series on calculating fat loss.
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/news-...art-1-3-a.html

Your calories should be defendant upon your activity level. If you need 2000 calories a day to maintain your weight with general daily activity then you can exercise 250 calories off and diet 250 off. That is the smart approach.

While a calories is a calories, nutrients are not nutrients. Getting balanced nutrients leads to a healthier body function, better body function means better fat loss. The two go hand in hand.

This is the point though isn't it. We all want to crash our metabolism by losing weight, which reduces the number of calories we need to survive.

I am not arguing with you, just trying to get all the information straight. I understand what your article says. Calorie needs = BMR + activity, so

metabolism = BMR + activity calories
weight loss = (Calories eaten - metabolism)/3500.

So BMR is only slightly effected by the rate you lose weight(loss of muscle and hopefully fat), but it is mostly dependant on how much you weight. This is the energy threshold to keep you alive.

Metabolism is what most people mean when they talk about crashing, and it just means that you do not move as much.

Exercise is good for you, but as long as you play this at the fullly measured level (measure both calories in and calories out) all that matters is calories eaten versus calories out.

Everything kosher?

Leigh has given you some good input.

I think you are searching for a simple answer to a very complex problem.

The 'starvation mode' is very over-hyped IMO.

Concurrently, it's a very real phenomenon.

However, it's not an event that occurs due to dieting. It's a process. A very complex process that Leigh touched on above. We aren't even aware of all the mechanisms at play yet. Heck, Leptin, the primary driver of the physiological adaptations due to dieting, is a very new discovery relatively speaking.

A study is not going to capture all of this in a snapshot. It can't.

Leigh, weren't you doing some research on this topic?

So you are suggesting the goal is to create a very 'inefficient' metabolism so we don't need to eat a lot?

Ya, that's not going to work.

The theory you are running through your mind right now is the exact cause for your typical yo-yo dieter.

Starve yourself.

Metabolic slowdown is a certainty.

However, so is increased hunger, decreased sympathetic nervous system activity, increased parasympathetic NS activity, possible loss of muscle, fatigue, and the list goes on and on.

Eventually you'll get to the point where your body will literally MAKE YOU EAT. There's a fine line due to the various mechanisms at play here that mesh physiology and psychology together. During starvation, there's a lot of signaling being sent to the brain through various pathways that will make you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. Like binge uncontrollably.

So you'll have to eat.

But your metabolic output is low.

You gain a bunch of fat back.

And let that yo-yo fly!

Again, you are thinking too simplistically.

Believe me I am ok with complexity. I have a phD in biophysics. The answers that I am getting do not seem to be lining up in any way.
Let me go into my own history. I was always thin (my parents were sure I was going to die because my ribs stuck out) When I got married I gorged a little on the honeymoon and gained 15 pounds. Then about 15 pounds with the birth and chaos of each child. Other than life changing events, my metabolism is very stable. I eat too much, I just am hot and wiggly the next day. I can go years without my weight changing by more than 5 pounds.
I have done the exercise hard thing. My last job was in phoenix. I did a 3 hour grueling bike ride everyday to and from work. I averaged between 18-22 mph for the whole ride and if fat could melt off, it would have in that heat. Didn't lose a pound. I had too much going on to deal with the hunger and stress of cutting calories. I mostly rode because it took the same amount of time to drive and I wanted to be healthy.
I am now in job in Holland. Now I ride my bike for 15 minutes to work and back, the weather is nice, and as I am now working on setting up a new job and teaching my children dutch, as well as just getting adjusted to a new life. I know that I am operating pretty close to my BMR.
I am just looking at the most efficent way to lose weight. A little bit of study shows that most of studies should have been thrown out. Seriously, the science here is seriously lacking. So I was checking before I just dove in with the old eat less move more idiom.

So here is the information that I have gathered, I may be wrong, as it seems there is very little consensus.

1. Exercising more is just the same as eating less. I found more than a few studies that support this. Most were well done. Most have found that it is more important to cut calories just because it is much easier to cut 500 calories than it is to burn 500 calories. All the bad effects of dieting seem to be related to the size of the calorie deficit, not the manner it is created. I am probably wrong about this and would be glad to get more information.

2. Losing weight is bad for your health, being fat is even worse. Studies have shown that it does not matter if you lose weight fast or slow, it is the same. Now I understand that losing fast is extremely hard mentally, but to be honest, so is dieting for the rest of existence. I also realize that it is only possible to lose about 3 pounds per week without some kind of superhuman abilities.

3. I am still curious about how BMR is effected by eating less. Not metabolism. Right now, I and most of America are operating pretty close to their resting metabolism. I would like to know if BMR, not metabolism is effected by how much you eat. Everything seems to indicate that BMR is a function only of weight, but I am probably wrong here too.

Sorry for the long message. I mostly constantly see articles that do not make an ounce of sense, that contradict themselves, or contradict each other. New studies come out that seem to be contradicting everything is claimed to be true by current generation of pundits.
By the way, I got the earlier message wrong. 94.9% of people who diet alone lose nothing after 5 years. 70% lose nothing on a commercial program, but this was just a single study.

I a little more of a reply.

These are all symptomes of any type of dieting. Isn't all dieting starving yourself? Yes, the degree matters, but I have experienced these on both minor and major diets. I have enough willpower to endure for 2 weeks of major problems as opposed to 4 weeks of minor symptomes.

When I binge, I eat back to exactly were I was before, plus an extra 2 pounds in good will. It doesn't matter whether I do it slow or quick. It is like my body has a setpoint. But I also have more energy, so my muscle mass tends to return as well, as long as I do not completely give up.

I looked around at studies that test the effectiveness of different diets and all the counting calorie diets perform the best. These are all mild starvation diets... Maybe I am just defining things wrong because I am late to this weight loss stuff.

Yes Steve I completed my first study and am releasing the report to the public in October. The better thing is I am hounding a local university enough to get on the ball with me to get a actual peer study done to release in a journal.

Wow man, you are thinking way too deep.

At least too deep for me on the weekend....

I'll answer you when I have some time.

Yes, you do have a setpoint weight.

Even with your questions, I don't get where you are going with this. Do you really think that starving the weight off is the answer? What do you suppose you'll do once you starve yourself to the point you want to be at? Where do you go from there?

There is a lot here to me that suggests a problem with your actual metabolic behvaour as well as your accounting of what you are taking in. How often/long have you been charting your actual food intake?

To me it seems like you have a long history of undereating for you activity needs. When this is the case you are going to have changes in your metabolic functions (hormones, adrenal function, glands, CNS, peptides,etc.) If you operate under the process of undereating for years and years and years it is no longer undereating, it just is your metabolic behavior. I would be very interested to not hear an accounting for daily activity and lifestyle but an exact counting and food journal of your eating habits during these different times in your life.

Regardless of that your biggest problem is living in the past, body comp and dietary speaking. Here is the absolute. The absolute is what's done is done and you either
A-are not accounting properly for you intake or
B-are accounting properly for your intake and its either
1) wrong for you or
2) low and you need to focus on increasing your metabolic function.

Instead of figuring out the best way for you to lose weight you first need to figure out what it is you are dealing with as far as your body composition goes.

That being said as to the other...
First studies are for the most part crap. They are performed poorly, and rarely determine anything other than the fact that years were wasted on methods of studies that prove nothing. Still there are good one and it seems like you are just getting hold of a bunch of bad ones.

This statement is almost 100% right. "All the bad effects of dieting seem to be related to the size of the calorie deficit, not the manner it is created."

How is it wrong, it isn't so much the size of the caloric deficit, it is the relation of the caloric deficit to the need of natural body process. Allow me to explain.

Female Athlete A-Needs 1500 calories a day for basic body function to process correctly. They train at a high intensity level. That level of activity demands that they need roughly 2000 extra calories a day for activity. This mean to maintain all their needed energy they would have to consume 3500 calories. Since they are trying to cut weight their coach puts them on a 1400 caloric diet (very common for female athletes). This gives them a daily negative of 2100 calories. What is the end result?
The end result is a lowered metabolic function, lower energy expenditure (meaning body forced lower caloric output), electrolyte dysfunction, water/glycogen transfer, high rise in chance of injury, etc. In short she is either going to force re-feed (on a now lower metabolic pattern) or she will meet with injury and be out of it all together. Usually the binging/re-feeds occur, diet pattern and behavior is continued and thus is the reason you see so many chubby female athletes who look "bulky". The big problem was there at no time where enough nutrients to the body to provide general repair and function. There wasn't enough in to support the out of nutrients. I will explain this further in the next bit though.

NOW

Take same athlete and instead of a 2100 negative deficit, give her a 1000 deficit leave her with 2400 calories a day she takes in for fat loss. Now there still will be loss of metabolic functioning at its peak level, but its less, in fact there is still a chance for a lot of the problems above but on a much lower level. The big importance is that there are more nutrients coming in a out. So while fuel may be running low and in the negative still, there was still a nice level of comfort to the body of nutrients coming in to not "freak out" the system. Let me describe it another way.

Take a automoblie vehicle.

Lets say you drive your car all day long and you fill up the car with gas and don't refill it up again until its bone dry and stops on the side of the road. What are going to overtime happen to the mechanics of that vehicle? That extra strain on the parts of the car overtime are going to wear and tear till one day something gives and then something else and you have a new lawn decoration.

Now take the same vehicle and instead of stopping when its bone dry you have a fuel truck riding along side you pumping gas into it right before it gets to that point. Because the rest of the vehicle parts never have to compensate for the lack of fuel, then the wear and tear of those parts is minimal to none at all.

This is why eating more AND moving more is the ultimate combination for fat loss.

You are right the body does not ever want to be in a deficit. It is against nature. No matter how you do it there are problems, but you can LESSEN those problems as much as possible and get in and out. That is exactly what I do with my clients. We get it off as fast and as safe as possible and get back to supercharging their daily metabolic patterns.

You seem to miss how everything goes hand in end, the butterfly effect of things. Your BMR is not just related by weight, its related to how your body functions (from heart rate, kidneys, lungs, liver, bowels, etc.) The heavier you are the more these things need to function. Go back to the car example. IF you are not feeding your body properly this is going to put strain on your organs. Your heart rate is going to drop but cortisol is going to rise meaning more adrenal signals, this is going to overload organ secretions. Your liver is going to start to get strained and usually digestion problems start to occur and enzyme production slows. All of this leads to what? The engine slowing down and chugging, performance of your body being less and less. This means less energy expenditure at rest (BMR) brought on by lack of fuel.

I don't see how they aren't. Sorry.

Me too if I didn't manipulate my energy balances.

Right, but that's b/c however you were eating balanced out your energy output. You're a science guy...

Energy deficit = weight loss.

Your weight was constant.

You were not in an energy deficit regardless of how much you were expending.

What do you mean by 'operating pretty close to my BRR'?

And how do you know this?

Yup, the science in this field sucks.

Better to base off of experience and apply what little science we have where it fits.

Pretty much correct. A deficit is a deficit.

However, outcomes aren't always the same.

Take someone close to their setpoint weight for instance. Their bodies don't 'want' to drop below that body weight. By creating an energy deficit, you can still go below this point... it's just your body doesn't want to.

Because of this, you'll most likely breakdown muscle while dieting from setpoint.

Chances of losing muscle though are minimized more if you create that deficit through the 'right' kinds of exercise than had you simply created the deficit through food manipulation.

You could run a million different scenarios.

At the end of the day, your best outcome is probably going to come from a combination of dietary manipulation/control and exercise... assuming the outcome you are interested isn't only the number on the scale but also the image in the mirror, how you feel, and what you can do.

Push to hard and you'll lose weight... not fat, assuming you aren't obese now.

It sounds like you have a real hang up on weight vs. fat loss.

Big difference.

Haha, BMR is part of your total metabolism.

If you are so interested in this science... you should have majored in the appropriate field.

You say you are ok with complexity... go by a text.

Explain?

Yes, you are.

Yea, most literature sucks wrt to fitness/nutrition.

a) many of the science sucks

b) some of the science is new and therefore change is almost inevitable as we learn more... thankfully.

Ya, that doesn't match reality.

When science doesn't match reality, you don't dismiss reality and hold on to the science.

You go back to the drawing board.

You really love science, don't ya.

I can tell you this, looking at a few studies is not going to give you the answers you are looking for. Hell, I can't even tell exactly what you are looking for.

But it seems like reading some high level texts would fill your need for understanding these complexities.

Physiology, human biology, etc.