Once you're fat, it's impossible to get permanently thin again.

[Mouthwash]

my thinking is that if you change your life style you can keep weight from coming back, that dose not mean 'one day at a time', like AA or NA it means that you change your behaviour from what caused someone to become fat in the first place.

my dietician showed me what I was consuming and how to read labels (something I knew but did not follow much ) and demonstrate how much sugar I consumed a day from drinks and foods with sugar cubes in a bowl .

I got down to my desired weight over the next year and it has stayed there without any effort since for about 3 years.
it would come back if I changed my life style again.

people put on weight because they eat the wrong foods, you don't need science studies to know this

The studies take this into account. Do you really think nobody's heard that you need to make permanent eating changes? The point is that it's almost impossible to actually stick to the change.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's true it's annoying. I got screwed badly by a thyroid issue. Tsh was 256. I lost weight again years ago, recovered some athletic ability, but need to eat hundreds fewer calories to maintain a still higher weight.

It sucks and it isn't fair, but such is life. At least I can still look decent and work out pretty well. That's a better lot than many.

 

[Zkribbler]

Well, that just puts a damper for me losing weight.

No, you just have to be motivated to eat less and/or better...and/or to exercise more. Motivation and discipline are the key.

I am bored to death by exercising and cannot or will not do it. While I was still working, I knew I had no discipline to exercise but I did have the discipline to come to work. So I gave up my parking permit, which forced me to walk a mile down to the train station. It was a dangerous neighborhood. Once I was attacked by a puppy and once I was attacked by a chicken.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Exercise plays a rather small role in losing weight. It really is all about caloric intake.

This video is simplifying the issue, but at least has proper research at its basis:


Link to video.

Now what I want from you Mouthwash (and anyone else mentioning it) is proper research on how fat cells do not die off. Not because I don't trust you, because I instinctively do, but because this topic is highly interesting to me.

I won't bother anyone with my own successfully weight loss story and be accused of anecdotal evidence, but I must say I am not surprised to hear about fat cells in the slightest. Really explains a lot to me!

 

[W|M]

They do not go away without surgical removal, this much is a known fact. Everything else here on my part is speculation (vis a vis hormones) but the fat cells do not go away. They shrink considerably when you lose weight but they don't die and get reabsorbed by your body.

Literally cancer

 

[Kyriakos]

One thing which i surely know is based on studies, is that your body will react with hostility to any sudden or anxious attempt of yours to just not eat, or not eat as much as you used to, cause it will be picked up as an attempt to starve it. So the body will start turning anything you eat into long-term sustainable (fat? some type of fat?), so as to keep reserves in case you keep refusing to eat as much. Obviously this will make it nearly impossible for you to lose weight, as long as your metabolism has stopped in this way.
Which is why starvation diets don't work. People can almost not eat at all and still not lose weight, or even gain some, cause literally Anything they eat will remain in their body instead of being properly metabolised.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

I know enough people who dealt with their overweight and kept that this way for years, completely changing their body. The problem is not in the body, but in the mind.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

One thing which i surely know is based on studies, is that your body will react with hostility to any sudden or anxious attempt of yours to just not eat, or not eat as much as you used to, cause it will be picked up as an attempt to starve it. So the body will start turning anything you eat into long-term sustainable (fat? some type of fat?), so as to keep reserves in case you keep refusing to eat as much. Obviously this will make it nearly impossible for you to lose weight, as long as your metabolism has stopped in this way.
Which is why starvation diets don't work. People can almost not eat at all and still not lose weight, or even gain some, cause literally Anything they eat will remain in their body instead of being properly metabolised.

I think what you are referring to only really sets in if you have an insane caloric deficit, probably a thousand or more. It only happens if you are literally sending off signal that you are starving. Also, the human body will, after some time, adapt even to the most severe of caloric deficits. I myself had some good fun starving myself and (from anecdotal evidence) it worked.

Still I would love to see some studies on this since all my post is based on speculation and experiments on my own body.

I still think that a 500 to 300 caloric deficit every day will have you losing weight heavily without triggering a state of starvation and panic in your body. After all one's feeling of hunger depends on many factors, no? It is proven that eating at a slower pace will keep one full with less food. It is also proven that a smaller plate with less food on it will result in less immediate appetite than a big plate filled with food, even if you, say, eat two small plates that are the exact same amount as the big one.

I am certain there are far more "tricks", for example eating a diet that is incredibly high in fiber, which fills you up to a degree, but does not contain any calories in and of itself.

 

[uppi]

I would like to point out that despite the claims, there is no study or anything scientific cited in the OP that actually supports the claim that "once you're fat, it's impossible to get permanently thin again".

Please let's not confuse science with opinion.

 

[Leifmk]

Exercise plays a rather small role in losing weight. It really is all about caloric intake.

Calorie balance controls weight; exercise controls body composition. For overall health and function, one should have a handle on both.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Apart from the whole fat cells don't die thing, there's also that for overweight people, weight loss is often a pretty extraordinary diet, and so when they've reached target weight, they have a harder time having a healthy balanced diet (and exercise), and it's really easy to fall back to old habits.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

My method to deal with this - besides a considered diet - is muscle growth. That way you have an alleviated energy consumption every minute of the day and that helps to balance those dame hungry fat cells. But yeah, that consumes some time.
I did some googeling on the fat-cells-don't-die-thing (never heard of it before) and it seems true. However. they seem to also not increase in numbers in aduldhood. Rather, when the development of your body finishes up, the body just settles with the number you got at that point. And that is actually also how it goes with muscle strings. You can increase or decrease the size of those strings - but the number is determined by what you got when growing up.
However, every cell dies and deeds to be recreated, as do fat and muscle cells. And I remember reading that it is not entirely conclusive weather muscle strings really never increase. I am hopeful the same is true for fat cells and that in the end you can loose fat cells, but only extremely slowly and over extremely long time periods (many years).

 

[Vectors]

People when they diet also tend to do far too extreme diets, yes, cutting your intake by 1000 calories a day will yield dramatic results when sustained, but it also makes your body think you are starving because in a way, you are. People need to get used to much slower weight loss.

 

[EgonSpengler]

An article in the The Washington Post this morning cited proper sleep and reducing stress as a key in cutting belly fat, specifically. Something to do with cortisol. One person thought sleep & stress were bigger factors than diet or exercise.

 

[timtofly]

In other words do not stay up late at night worrying about eating too much?

 

[EgonSpengler]

In other words do not stay up late at night worrying about eating too much?

Right.

Actually, the article said that, for some people, sleeping the extra hour may be more beneficial than getting up early and exercising before starting your day.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Interesting...definitely supports the idea that the best way to combat obesity is to prevent people from getting fat in the first place. I think the human body was designed to be perfectly healthy when doing most everything in moderation...we don't do well in the extremes (at either end). Reminds me of that study a few years back which showed that slightly overweight people (on the BMI scale) actually tend to live longer than any other category. It's not bad to have a little padding, but too much or too little and you may all sorts of health problems.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Reducing sugar intake may be as good for your health as any single thing you can do. The sugar industry may be guilty of the same fraud that the tobacco industry was. And I think corn syrup, which gets added to all kinds of things you wouldn't expect, may be one of the worst things you can eat (iirc, it does something really screwy to your pancreas and/or insulin levels, I don't remember the details).

NY Times, 12 Sept 16 - How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat
CNN, 12 Sept 16 - How the sugar industry sweetened research in its favor
NPR, 13 Sept 16 - 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat
Science News, 25 Sept 16 - Sugar industry sought to sugarcoat causes of heart disease

 

[thecrazyscot]

I was shopping for some Greek yogurt since my wife and I went back on South Beach (we restart it every now and then simply to reset our diet...weight loss is pretty minor) and checked some Vanilla flavored that I'd bought the week before...39g of sugar per serving. I was speechless.

 

[timtofly]

Reducing sugar intake may be as good for your health as any single thing you can do. The sugar industry may be guilty of the same fraud that the tobacco industry was. And I think corn syrup, which gets added to all kinds of things you wouldn't expect, may be one of the worst things you can eat (iirc, it does something really screwy to your pancreas and/or insulin levels, I don't remember the details).

NY Times, 12 Sept 16 - How the Sugar Industry Shifted Blame to Fat
CNN, 12 Sept 16 - How the sugar industry sweetened research in its favor
NPR, 13 Sept 16 - 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat
Science News, 25 Sept 16 - Sugar industry sought to sugarcoat causes of heart disease

I would place sugar intake as being an addiction. But as stated you still need to eat moderately. Artificial sweeteners mess with your brain, causing the body to produce too much insulin, to combat the sugar that is not there, and the insulin stays in the body longer, or so they say.

Some artificial sweeteners may also change the gut bacteria. Sweeteners as a whole though, if overused leads to all sort of issues.