Posted on 09/24/2011 8:57:53 AM PDT by Kaslin
Are you dieting and/or exercising to lose weight right now? And how much weight do you expect to be able to lose and keep off by following your weight loss plan?
You've probably heard that rule of thumb that says you can lose one pound by either eating 3,500 fewer Calories over time or by burning 3,500 more Calories through exercise. And you might very well have heard it from some seemingly reputable sources, like NBC's Today show or from the winning contestants on that network's show The Biggest Loser.
The only problem with that kind of math is that it doesn't work in real life. Here's what we learned on that topic last year, when we looked at what might happen to our weight if we started eating one extra chocolate chip cookie (or 210 extra Calories) every day:
What happens in real life is that your body's metabolism will adjust over time to compensate for the additional calories you're consuming, in such a way that the amount of weight you might gain will be much smaller than what that 3,500 calories = 1 pound relationship would predict.
One way to look at that situation is that the weight you would gain would also cause you to burn more calories, which limits how much additional weight you would actually gain in that situation.
The body's process of metabolic compensation then works in reverse if you're trying to lose weight. Here, many people will recognize that force at work if they ever had the experience of succeeding in losing some weight, but reaching that certain point where it became really tough to lose any more.
Kevin Hall is a biologist at the U.S. National Institute of Health whose research into the body's metabolism has led him and his colleagues to publish a new paper in the Lancet medical journal, which quantifies how a person's metabolism adjusts when they change their calorie intake or physical output.
Better still, they developed a web-based application where you can apply the mathematical model they've built based upon their research for yourself!
We took their tool for a test drive and were pretty impressed. In our first screen shot of what the Human Body Weight Simulator can do, we entered the data for a 35 year old woman who is 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighs 170 pounds, whose daily physical activity is very light.
We then had the tool calculate what it would take, just in reduced food intake, for our heroine to lose 10 pounds in 30 days.
Here, we find that our heroine can lose the 10 pounds in 30 days by cutting her typical daily intake of 2,123 Calories down to 1,205 Calories.
After that, assuming she ups her food intake up to 2,057 Calories per day, her weight will rise back up to 162.8 pounds, where it will then hold steady at that level indefinitely (provided her Calorie intake and physical activity levels also remain steady!)
For our next screen shot, we specified a lifestyle change for our hypothetical woman, where we started her making just one change on the first day of her new diet plan: we put her on a 2,000 Calorie per day diet, just 123 Calories per day less than her estimated baseline diet value. 
Here, after one year, her weight had dropped to 162.1 pounds. Adjusting the number of days to span two years (730 days), her weight had dropped to 158.4 pounds.
Three years later, her weight had dropped to 156.7 pounds. After four years, she hit 155.9 pounds, as her weight loss flattened out and her weight began holding steady. Ten years later, our simuluated heroine was maintaining a steady 155.1 pounds, about 15 pounds below her starting weight of 170.
By contrast, if every 3,500 Calories not consumed really leads to one pound of weight loss, after reducing her diet by 123 Calories per day over 10 years, our hypothetical woman would have lost 128 pounds, putting her weight at 42 pounds.
Overall, we found the NIH's Human Body Weight Simulator provides highly informative results, which are based on solid science.
On the user interface side of things however, we have some issues, as we found it to be somewhat of a mixed bag. Although the tool provides slider controls for the graphed portion of its output, it would be really nice to have a similar control for the time period displayed.
Likewise, we'd love to be able to have a control that would allow us to read the data points at various points along the graph, rather than directly entering the number of days.
All in all, the NIH's Human Body Weight Simulator meets our Silver Standard for online applications. Based on its strong information quality, we highly recommend it.
chocolate chip cookie
Ymmmmmmmmmmmm
Very interesting - thanks Kaslin.
If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk.
Then you have more milk than cookie, so you have to eat a few more cookies to even things out. Of course, you’re lounging on the couch while doing this. Then the carbs hit and it’s nap time. Now you have an open bag of cookies that’s just begging to be finished off.
Something that the weight-loss models don’t take into account is the body mass to surface area ratio. People who are already fat need fewer calories (proportionately) to maintain their core body temperature, because heat dissipates at the surface, and the percentage of their body mass that is surface is proportionately lower than that of an angular person of the same weight. That’s why fat people can starve themselves and not lose weight, while tall skinny people can eat anything they like, and not put on a pound.
To break the cycle, I would recommend a cold environment with the air constantly circulating and wearing as few clothes as possible ... along with a sensible diet and a modicum of exercise.
IOW, skip the morning donut.
This is useless. There’s a lot more to weight loss than just counting calories. What kind of calories you eat matter. It’s not just thermodynamics.
I don’t count calories...at all. I eat a Paleo diet which consists of mostly vegetables and meat. I gave up sugar and grains and finally lost the last 10 lbs I had been trying to lose foever! Gave up low fat too! I eat butter, olive oil and coconut oil. I actually eat more now than I did before but I don’t eat any junk! Sure, it’s not easy but my stomach feels a lot better without grains and all that sugar that is put in everything. They took out the fat and added sugar to make things taste better! It’s the sugar and carbs that are making everyone FAT!
My husband and I re-dedicated ourselves to an Atkins-style diet starting in April. I have lost around 32 pounds. I got my blood drawn and tested and compared it to the last time I had it done, about 9 months ago, and my numbers have all improved, some of them dramatically.
Different people metabolize food differently. I had read Gary Taubes' book Why We Get Fat and it really helped me understand how my body metabolizes food. He also is a believer in individuality. I mean, that he believes that different people may be able to eat the way the govt. wants us to and still maintain a "lean" body type. Other people (me, for instance), look at food and gain weight. (As an example, I had peas as a vegetable a month or so ago, and the next day had put on 2 pounds. Now, you probably don't believe that, but it is the truth. My body is that sensitive to carbs, even starchy veggie carbs. Peas are off the menu as a regular veggie and can only be consumed as a treat.)
I was eating my "grains" and rye bread instead of white, etc, and I was huge. Also, I was constantly hungry. Now, I eat bacon and eggs and meat and cheese and green leafy vegetables and I feel full faster. I feel full longer. And, I am losing weight effortlessly. I miss ice cream, and that is my treat now; but, other than that, I'm doing fine. The holidays will be a test.
So, I could do this stupid thing for months, and I wouldn't lose a pound, and probably would gain weight. Different strokes, for different folks.
“If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk.
Then you have more milk than cookie, so you have to eat a few more cookies to even things out. Of course, you’re lounging on the couch while doing this. Then the carbs hit and it’s nap time. Now you have an open bag of cookies that’s just begging to be finished off.”
Have you been to my house?
I have re-dedicated myself to an Atkins-style diet (with my hubby) and we have lost tons of weight and, MY stomach also feels so much better.
I started using Prilosec in my early 40's. When I got close to 50, I added digestive enzymes because the Prilosec was not enough, and still I would need some Tums. Take out flour, grain, etc., and my stomach feels fine, I am weaning myself off the Prilosec and I am not using the digestive enzymes any more. I used to think it was the bacon on the bacon and eggs plate that was making my stomach upset. Nope. It was the toast. My body loves bacon, and I am glad.
Operator error.
If they held the hypothetical woman's calorie intake at 123 calories under her baseline value, she would in fact eventually have starved to death.
But if they had held her intake at 2000 calories per day, as they originally stated, she would have lost weight until her size was consistent with 2000 calories per day, and she would then have leveled-off at that weight.
I’ve always not liked diets. Why eat a certain way that you can’t keep up? The key is moderation and not being lazy. That is it. Is a roll bad for you? No, but having 30 of them in one sitting is. Is a cookie bad for you? No, but having 10 in one sitting is.
So yeah, moderation and exercise. That is it.
tag for later research
I have dropped from 252 pounds last November to 196 almost entirely due to dieting (I’m male). IMO the key was dropping desserts. The calories from refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup really add up. My desserts consist of about ten graham crackers per week.
A renowned cardiologist explains how eliminating wheat from our diets can prevent fat storage, shrink unsightly bulges, and reverse myriad health problems. Every day, over 200 million Americans consume food products made of wheat. As a result, over 100 million of them experience some form of adverse health effect, ranging from minor rashes and high blood sugar to the unattractive stomach bulges that preventive cardiologist William Davis calls “wheat bellies.”
According to Davis, that excess fat has nothing to do with gluttony, sloth, or too much butter: It’s due to the whole grain wraps we eat for lunch.
After witnessing over 2,000 patients regain their health after giving up wheat, Davis reached the disturbing conclusion that wheat is the single largest contributor to the nationwide obesity epidemic—and its elimination is key to dramatic weight loss and optimal health.
In Wheat Belly, Davis exposes the harmful effects of what is actually a product of genetic tinkering and agribusiness being sold to the American public as “wheat”—and provides readers with a user-friendly, step-by-step plan to navigate a new, wheat-free lifestyle.
Informed by cutting-edge science and nutrition, along with case studies from men and women who have experienced life-changing transformations in their health after waving goodbye to wheat, Wheat Belly is an illuminating look at what is truly making Americans sick and an action plan to clear our plates of this seemingly benign ingredient.
About the Author William Davis, MD, is a preventive cardiologist whose unique approach to diet allows him to advocate reversal, not just prevention, of heart disease. He blames Low HDL cholesterol, high triglycerides and small LDL particles for the rise in heart disease.He is the founder of the TrackYourPlaque.com program. He lives in Wisconsin.
This whole article misses the fact that you shouldn’t be worried about weight, you should be going for muscular/aerobic performance improvements as well as other intangibles such as how much better you feel and how much better you look.
Case in point, my body weight is almost always around 225, no matter how good or bad shape I’m in. It may waiver here or there by five pounds, but that’s it. If I went solely by body weight, I’d always be frustrated with the lack of results.
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