When I read about morbidly obese people who are unable to lose weight, I always wonder if the following would work.
Let’s say you agree to be locked in a cell, be placed on an island or otherwise be isolated. Then the first day you get what your previously ate, and then for each day you get just slightly less food until you reach your desired weight.
Besides the practical (and maybe ethical) matters, are there really any downsides to this. I assume you would just feel a slight hunger all the time and the eventually get used to it?
As long as all the nutritional requirements were met (i.e., no lack of vitamins or minerals,) and there is full consent, I don’t see why it couldn’t work.
However, exercise would still have to be strongly recommended as well. Honestly, instead of forced-dieting, a regimen of forced-exercise would probably be more useful and effective.
More calories out than calories in = lost weight. That’s a universal truth, if we found someone who violated it we could crack the laws of thermodynamics and create free energy.
Whether this particular method you described is the best way to accomplish this goal, and how much psychological trauma would it cause along the way? These are the questions you should worry about.
Unless the obese person was locked up permanently, that form of “dieting” is not a long-term solution.
Lawrence Block wrote a short story about a man envying a friend who succeeded in quitting smoking and was in great shape, and asked him for his secret. It involved a form of coercion, though not quite akin to what’s described in the OP.
An organized crime figure has cooked up a sideline in which his thugs enforce a ban on smoking and make sure the “client” eats a proper, limited diet.
I’d be worried about sending the body into “starvation mode.” As I understand it, in nature if an organism gets less and less food over time, this is a sign to the body that food supplies are becoming scarce, and its response is to hoard fat/calories rather than burn them off. But I don’t know enough about the science to know if and when this would happen.
There is a reality competition show called The Biggest Loser in which a group of overweight people are given access to nutritionists, personal trainers and so forth and compete for who can lose the most weight. I’ve never watched it, but I believe people do lose weight while on the program. The Wikipedia article on the show has this to say about long-term results.
In 2016, the results of a long-term study by the US National Institute of Health (NIH) were released that documented the weight gain and loss of contestants in Season 8, which aired in 2009. The study found that most of the 16 contestants regained their weight, and in some case gained more than before they entered the contest. Their metabolisms had slowed to the point where they were burning hundreds of calories a day less than other people of their new, reduced size. The New York Times reported: “What shocked the researchers was what happened next: As the years went by and the numbers on the scale climbed, the contestants’ metabolisms did not recover… It was as if their bodies were intensifying their effort to pull the contestants back to their original weight.” The article quoted Dr. Michael Rosenbaum who said, “The difficulty in keeping weight off reflects biology, not a pathological lack of willpower.”
If your body starts using less calories, there is pretty much nothing you can do, right? It won’t matter in what way you are dieting. You would need to keep eating much less (than others your weight) for the rest of your life. Or does it stabilisere at some point?
The point of my thought experiment is to take willpower out of the equation, at least for a period of time, as it seems like that is the greatest hurdle to losing weight.
EDIT: I’m imagining this being voluntary at the start, but then you give up your rights for a set period of time.
Also, The Biggest Loser won’t be quite the same, as they actually compete with eachother and have to lose weight really fast. I’m thinking more gradually, over a longer period of time, as you continue working etc.
Then maybe a gradual transition to following your own meal plans at home.
I’m sure there are “wellness retreats” for overweight people of means that essentially do this, but caloric intake should be carefully measured for anybody. Rather than “get a little bit less food each day,” their caloric intake should be based on their level of activity and their current weight.
A lot depends on how many fewer calories you’re giving the person every day. Too fast and you’ll be starving them pretty quickly.
The right way to do this would be starting them at what they need for their body weight (almost certainly less than what they consume each day). Forcing them to stick to that will result in quite a bit of weight loss with no further intervention required. Adjust downwards as weight begins to plummet.
Velocity is correct that incorporating exercise would be much more healthy and effective, even under the basic “calories out > calories in” formula of weight loss.
This kind of simplistic “pure physics” interpretation of nutritional biochemistry is neither accurate nor useful. Food is not “calories”, which is a measure of the net energy from combustion in a bomb calorimeter, not physical utilization in a human body. As others have noted, caloric restriction results in the metabolism switching to ‘starvation mode’ which reduces energy consumption. When morbidly obese people are placed on a reducing diet it is done with regular monitoring of kidney and metabolic function to ensure that there are not adverse effects from caloric restriction.
This is incorrect. ‘Willpower’ is a losing strategy because it relies upon sustaining some mental resistance to temptation which has been definitely shown by neuroscience as ineffective. The “greatest hurdle to losing weight” and maintaining a healthy body weight is developing good dietary habits and patterns, and to a lesser (but still important) extent, regular exercise. For the most part, just cutting out processed foods and sugars will result in substantial reduction of excess body weight and the ‘sugar cravings’ that tend to drive overconsumption.
You’re telling me it is not entirely true that fewer calories in than out = lost weight; you then give the example of eating less, but consuming more calories in alcohol, for a net result of consuming more calories than you burn.
