Is it true that some people just CANNOT lose weight?

[Great_Antibob]

@Zep_Tepi

The medical profession have a scale called the Body Mass Index. If you are outside these norms your health is being compromised by your body fat.

I think that certain people protest to much. I wonder if they are healthy eating challenged.

“too” much.

Also, read the rest of the thread.

The question is how best to “healthfully” lose weight and whether it is harder for some people than others?

The answer to the second part is that, yes, it’s harder for some people. But why? There does seem to be evidence that the bodies of formerly obese people behave differently than people who weren’t obese to start with.

Why is this important? If the goal is figuring out how best to get people to lose weight - AND KEEP IT OFF - simplistic, trite answers don’t help.

[Garfield226]

@Great_Antibob

The question is how best to “healthfully” lose weight and whether it is harder for some people than others?

The question, if you’ll read the OP, was whether it is impossible for some people to lose weight while remaining healthy. Not “harder”.

It is impossible for a few. It’s harder for the rest of us.

[Great_Antibob]

@Garfield226

The question, if you’ll read the OP, was whether it is impossible for some people to lose weight while remaining healthy. Not “harder”.

It is impossible for a few. It’s harder for the rest of us.

Sure, that’s the original question.

It doesn’t seem like it’s impossible (except for those with actual glandular issues). So, it really does make more sense for the discussion to move onto whether or not it is ‘harder’. All evidence points to ‘yes’.

Now, ‘why’? There’s been some discussion in this thread about it, and it’s been quite interesting.

Zep, on the other hand, has ignored both the original question as literally stated and anything brought up in the rest of the thread, including ‘how’ or ‘why’ it is harder.

[Omar_Little]

Losing weight can be done very easily if the individual is up to the challenge. One of the reasons that it can be considered easy, is that you know it’s for a limited time.

It’s the maintaining your goal weight that’s the hard part. This requires a permanent change to your eating and exercise habits. Most people don’t like to make permanent changes.

[kimera]

Hormones definitely play an important factor. I used to be one of those people who could eat anything and I wouldn’t gain weight. Despite eating crap, my BMI was usually around 17.9 (underweight). Then, I used birth control. My BMI shot up to 20 (normal weight yay!) even though I was eating healthier and exercising more. Last year, I got sick and lost a lot of weight. I don’t know exactly how much because I don’t have a scale, but I’d guess I had a BMI of about 19.

Last May, I started on a new form of birth control. Between May and now, I gained about 20 pounds and went from a 32A to a 32DD, most of that weight gain occurring in a period of four months. My BMI is now 22 (still normal weight). While I probably rebuilt some of the weight I had lost due to being sick, I’m heavier than I’ve ever been my entire life. I don’t keep careful track of my meals, but I eat very healthy (mostly veggies, no high glycemic carbs except for occasional fruit, etc) and get lots of regular exercise. My body is ‘holding on’ to food more than it did before. The only thing that I did differently during those four months was use a new birth control. If some women naturally have a higher level of those hormones than I do, I do not doubt that they gain weight quicker than me and have a harder time losing it even on the exact same diet.

[Jake]

@iiandyiiii

I think that’s probably true. But losing weight is harder for some than for others, and for some it’s just so hard that they can’t do it, or can’t keep the weight off. Especially for low income people who work long hours- unhealthy food is cheaper and easier to prepare, and when you have very little extra money or time, eating tasty food might be about the one nice thing during the day that you look forward too.

It’s awfully hard to expect someone to cut out the fried chicken and ice cream when that’s literally the only nice part about their day.

How true. Sometimes food is the only thing some people have for comfort in their lives.
(for me it’s beer!)

[voltaire]

@kimera

Last May, I started on a new form of birth control. Between May and now, I gained about 20 pounds and went from a 32A to a 32DD, most of that weight gain occurring in a period of four months.

:eek: Before and after pics, or it didn’t happen! Are you sure those weren’t fertility pills instead of BC pills, and now you’re pregnant?

But seriously, what kind of BC pills are those and what company makes them? I might have to make an investment!

[Chickenwrangler]

The best weight loss program is not to get fat in the first place.

[Yllaria]

@Dewey_Finn

This is a lengthy article from earlier this month about why it’s difficult for people to lose weight and to keep off weight, that once a person loses weight, the body fights to regain it.

Thanks for the link. I’d heard about this article and you saved me the search.

@Omar_Little

Losing weight can be done very easily if the individual is up to the challenge. One of the reasons that it can be considered easy, is that you know it’s for a limited time.

It’s the maintaining your goal weight that’s the hard part. This requires a permanent change to your eating and exercise habits. Most people don’t like to make permanent changes.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a limited time; it’s still hard. It’s easy if your body does not work against you, not if you’re up to the challenge. It’s never very easy, unless you’re talking about losing ten pounds or less.

The only time weight ever came off steadily for me was when I was enrolled in both a weight training class (going for strenght increase, not endurance) and raquetball. That was six hours of strenuous activity a week.

From the article:

Registry* members exercise about an hour or more each day – the average weight-loser puts in the equivalent of a four-mile daily walk, seven days a week. They get on a scale every day in order to keep their wieght within a narrow range. They eat breakfast regularly. Most watch less than half as much television as the overall population.** They eat the same foods and in the same patterns consistently each day and don’t “cheat” on weekends or holidays. . . .

. . . “You find these people are incredibly vigilant about maintaining their weight. Years later they are paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise. They never don’t think about their weight.”

• The National Weight Control Registry - it tracks people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off or at least a year. ** There was no comment about internet time.

And:

Just talking to Bridge about the effort required to maintain her weight is exhausting. . . Bridge concedes that having grown children and being retired make it easier to focus on her weight. "I don’t know if I could have done this when I had three kids living at home. . . "

The description of how she lost the weight implies that losing it was harder than maintaining it. She did it together with her husband and it included therapy and a lot of bike riding and gym time. At this stage of my life, I am not retired and I have arthritis in my knees. I’m on a weight downswing mostly because there are things I can do at the gym and I’ve been spending the time to do them. When something interrupts, the swing goes the other way.

[Waenara]

@Omar Little

It’s the maintaining your goal weight that’s the hard part. This requires a permanent change to your eating and exercise habits. Most people don’t like to make permanent changes.

Saying that it “requires a permanent change to your eating and exercise habits” is absolutely true, but it’s also an understatement. Most people would interpret a “lifestyle change” to mean that sure, maybe you have to follow a strict diet and/or calorie counting and/or exercise, but then once you reach your goal weight everyone envisions a “lifestyle change” as continuing to eat healthy foods and exercise a little, like other healthy people who have always been a healthy weight. In reality, the weight loss registry shows that people who successfully lose large amounts of weight and maintain it don’t just have a healthy “lifestyle change” - they have to perpetually live a *stricter *lifestyle than people who have always been thin. How many people who ridicule “fatties” for regaining weight and say they “just need a lifestyle change” understand that said lifestyle change would likely necessitate obsessive calorie counting for many years, a permanently slowed metabolism (not just for a little while until your body adjusts - but at least five years and likely longer), etc…?

Reading the NYT article, it struck me that the “successful maintainers” on the weight loss registry all obsess about food, exercise and weight so much that is almost seems like they could almost meet the criteria for an eating disorder. Seriously, if someone who had always been normal weight or underweight acted the same way, it could be seen as a form of bulimia!

Snips from the article:

“You find these people are incredibly vigilant about maintaining their weight. Years later they are paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise. They never don’t think about their weight.”

Quote from a member of the registry:

“It’s one of the hardest things there is,” she says. “It’s something that has to be focused on every minute. I’m not always thinking about food, but I am always aware of food.”

“It’s been a real struggle to stay at this weight, but it’s worth it, it’s good for me, it makes me feel better. But my body would put on weight almost instantaneously if I ever let up.”

So she never lets up. Since October 2006 she has weighed herself every morning and recorded the result in a weight diary. She even carries a scale with her when she travels. In the past six years, she made only one exception to this routine: a two-week, no-weigh vacation in Hawaii.

<snip>

“That transfer process is really important; it’s my accountability,” she says. “It comes up with the total number of calories I’ve eaten today and the amount of protein. I do a little bit of self-analysis every night.”

<snip>

Janice Bridge has used years of her exercise and diet data to calculate her own personal fuel efficiency. She knows that her body burns about three calories a minute during gardening, about four calories a minute on the recumbent bike and during water aerobics and about five a minute when she zips around town on her regular bike.

“Practically anyone will tell you someone biking is going to burn 11 calories a minute,” she says. “That’s not my body. I know it because of the statistics I’ve kept.”

“I think many people who are anxious to lose weight don’t fully understand what the consequences are going to be, nor does the medical community fully explain this to people,” Rudolph Leibel, an obesity researcher at Columbia University in New York, says. “We don’t want to make them feel hopeless, but we do want to make them understand that they are trying to buck a biological system that is going to try to make it hard for them.”

[Polycarp]

With all due respect (in some cases not much):

1. A number of the respondents to this thread seem to have mistaken the forum for IMHO – that’s down the hall to the right, just past the Game Room. A good substantive answer in GQ (as opposed to a witticism, permitted after a substantive answer has been arrived at) is founded on fact (or expert opinion) rather than personal opinions amounting to not much more than rehearsing one’s own prejudgments.

2. Personal disclaimer: I spent most of my adolescent and adult life slightly underweight. I have no personal dog in this fight.

3. There are a relatively small number of people who do sufferb from conditions, largely glandular, which make losing significant weight very difficult. That is, they can take off 10-20 pounds almost as easily as anyone else, but owing to their fucked-up physiology this is only a tiny portion of their overall weight. A large proportion of these poor sufferers are morbidly obese in the literal medical meaning of the term.

4. The majority of overweight people suffer from a relatively low basal metabolism (actually metabolic rate, but the term has taken on the same meaning). While one’s basal metabolism can be reset, generally by diet and exercise, it takes serious ongoing effort to do it. Rapid weight loss is not in the cards for them.

5. A fair proportion of those with low basal metabolism find the regimen of diet an exercise too difficult and hence give up and live wi5th their overweight condition.

6. Only a small proportion of truly overweight people can correct their weight relatively rapidly by diet and/or exercise. However, they too fall back on the it’s too hard rationalization.

7. Overweight seems to be one of the areas in which people feel justified in minding the business of others. It seems for a lot of people a good excuse for rudeness.

[Zep_Tepi]

OK. The answer to the first question “Is it harder for some people to lose weight” I say that the problem is not Physiological but Psychological.

Growing up in post war London, one never saw an obese person. There was just not enough food available for people to “pig out”.

[Tristan]

@Zep_Tepi

OK. The answer to the first question “Is it harder for some people to lose weight” I say that the problem is not Physiological but Psychological.

Growing up in post war London, one never saw an obese person. There was just not enough food available for people to “pig out”.

Are you even reading anything anyone else posts? There have been folks here citing studies, published in respected medical journals, that state that there is a physiological aspect to losing weight, and more, keeping weight off if one is successful in doing so.

Your anecdotal “post war London” bit is a tired rehash of the same things others have been saying. Also, I would bet you are most likely wrong.

That being said, yes, there is a psychological factor. Nobody here is saying there isn’t. Many here have cited it as part (of varying degree) of the problem of weight loss in the first place.

Read what others have posted, learn the culture of the board. Someone citing the New England Journal of medicine trumps any anecdotal evidence. Always.

[quietob]

@a35362

This is kind of what I’m talking about, I think.

And I think this is the answer you’re waiting for someone to post.

I am morbidly obese. I have a disease called POLYCYSTIC OVARIAN SYNDROME (PCOS).

Here are some of the foods I eat every day (I don’t eat all of them every day!):

broccoli, swiss chard, sweet potatoes, green beans, spinach, butternut squash, blueberries, strawberries, apples, canteloupe, chick peas, rolled oats, flax seeds, almonds, whole grains, brown rice, olive oil, unsweetened soy beverage, scallops, rainbow trout, chicken breasts, and so on…

Here is a list of foods I haven’t eaten in 22 years:

bacon, sausage, pizza, hot dogs, salad dressing, white flour, white rice, white potatoes, canned soups, deli meats, potato chips, soda pop, donuts, and so on.

I was also one of these freaks who actually liked to exercise, up to three hours a day.

I used to weigh 104 pounds and was healthy except for (warning to the men: I’m about to talk about icky female stuff) my periods which were heavy, painful and irregular.

When I was 24, I stopped menstruating altogether and started gaining weight at lightening speed. The first 50 pounds went on in just six weeks.

I had other symptoms pop up, such as male pattern baldness, acne, excess body and facial hair, swollen ankles and a dramatically increased libido.

I went to one doctor after another trying to find answers and they just told me to go on a diet and start exercising. They obviously didn’t believe me when I told them what I ate and how active I was.

2 1/2 years and 183 pounds later, I finally found a doctor who agreed that it had to be something hormonal. She referred me to an ENDOCRINOLOGIST. Within five minutes of my examination, she pointed to the cluster of grapes on the monitor and said, “See those black circles? Those are cysts on your ovaries. That’s why you are morbidly obese. You have polycystic ovarian syndrome.”

I insisted on seeing four more endocrinologists who all said the same thing. My androgen levels were so high, it was interfering with the production of estrogen and progesterone. Testosterone, which is an androgen hormone, was causing the spiked libido, hair loss, acne and the moustache I was now sporting!

I was told by all five doctors that women with PCOS rarely lose but a few pounds no matter how strict their diet is. The only way I would lose any significant weight was if I started menstruating again and since androgen was preventing me from having periods…

I didn’t menstruate for 10 years and then something bizarre happened. I broke out in these burning welts that lasted for several weeks. When the hives went away, I started menstruating again. And not like in my teens. Every 28 days for three days with no cramps.

Then I started losing weight. Over a 3 year period, I lost 113 pounds. Even though the weight loss eventually slowed down and stopped, which is why I’m still obese, it was nothing short of miraculous. One doctor said I was her first PCOS patient to lose more than 30 pounds.

When people find out I have lost 113 pounds, they always say something like, that’s amazing, how did you do it? I tell them I just started menstruating again and they get this funny look on their faces. So I just tell them what you’ve just read.

And most important to note-- I lost that 113 pounds without doing any exercise at all. That’s because it wasn’t lack of exercise that made me fat in the first place-- it was a metabolic/endocrine disorder.

And not only was I not exercising while I was losing all this weight, I was virtually completely sedentary. In the midst of all this, at the age of 30, I had a completely unrelated health crisis that landed me in a wheelchair.

And I still lost 113 pounds.

So how many unkind, biased myths (otherwise known as complete bullshit) about obesity did I just topple?

We’re not all out-of-control food junkies sitting on our asses 24 hours a day. (Except those of us in wheelchairs, of course.)

[astro]

@quietob

And not only was I not exercising while I was losing all this weight, I was virtually completely sedentary. In the midst of all this, at the age of 30, I had a completely unrelated health crisis that landed me in a wheelchair.

And I still lost 113 pounds.

So how many unkind, biased myths (otherwise known as complete bullshit) about obesity did I just topple?

We’re not all out-of-control food junkies sitting on our asses 24 hours a day. (Except those of us in wheelchairs, of course.)

None of this is unbelievable. We’ve has many weight loss threads over the years, and several have had people with PCOS and other glandular issues chime in about the bizarre way their body behaves. One women stayed about 120 lbs eating around 800 calories per day. It seems thermodynamically impossible (and I struggled to believe her), but she swore it was true, and she was a respected long time SDMB member not given to fabulizing.

Having said this people with real glandular disorders are a very minor part of the overall population of the obese. The vast majority simply intake too much food for the rate at which they burn it. The interesting thing is that it only needs to be a *little *too much.

It’s odd how amazingly sophisticated modern medicine is in some many areas, but how relatively ignorant many medical folks are of the physiological realities of what is going on with people who are obese. I have struggled with gaining and losing all my life. I am an obsessive (and accurate) calorie counter when dieting, and I can tell you as a fact that the amount of food (at this point) that I require to get by is very low vs “normal” people. I can have an active lifestyle intaking 9-10 calories per lb of body weight, not the 12 to 15 usually deemed necessary for an active lifestyle.

These conclusions which I came to through my own record keeping are being borne out in various studies like the one linked earlier in the thread. People who have yo-yo dieted have VERY different metabolic profiles vs people who have never lost weight.

In other words I can maintain an *active *weight of 225 lbs eating 2,000- 2,250 calories per day. Until recently most substantially overweight people were suspected of massive secret eating. The truth is just a little extra every day will rapidly get you into morbid obesity territory. It doesn’t have to secret or massive.

[Mijin]

It’s a lot harder than many assume. Prevention is easier than cure when it comes to obesity.
And it does vary in difficulty a lot between individuals.

I was reading in New Scientist a review of several studies which suggest that even exercise may not be hugely beneficial for those overweight. Reason being, the body compensates through both increased appetite and lethargy for a period afterwards.

This is on top of the normal hunger and metabolism drop one gets from restricting calorie intake. So it’s no cakewalk. So to speak.

[UltraVires]

@astro

I can have an active lifestyle intaking 9-10 calories per lb of body weight, not the 12 to 15 usually deemed necessary for an active lifestyle.

I think that this is the answer. Most people eat that 12 to 15 per lb of body weight and are just fine. Someone else comes along and only needs your 9 to 10 but eats 12-15 just like everyone else. That 300 extra calories per day amounts to a pound every 12 days. Close to 20 pounds per year. In a couple of years, this person is 40 pounds overweight and can’t understand because he/she eats no more than “normal”.

Plus, simple calorie counting is overrated. Yes, it is a mathematical formula, but some calories are rich in vitamins which can increase metabolism and burn calories faster. A friend who is dieting told me about the weight loss app he has on his phone and how it “even scans the bar code on the food” he eats to help him count the calories.

I told him that if he is eating food that has a bar code on it, he’s got the first step wrong. Fresh fish, fruits, and veg don’t have bar codes.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

@quietob

When I was 24, I stopped menstruating altogether and started gaining weight at lightening speed. The first 50 pounds went on in just six weeks.

<snip>

We’re not all out-of-control food junkies sitting on our asses 24 hours a day. (Except those of us in wheelchairs, of course.)

You’ve contradicted yourself. It’s impossible to gain 50 pounds in six weeks without over eating 50 pounds worth of energy.

One of Newton’s Laws of Physics states that energy CANNOT be created. It is always transferred from one medium to another. Body fat is nothing more than an energy storage mechanism to cope with times of famine - nothing more, nothing less. It is impossible, by the laws of physics, to create 50 pounds of body fat in 6 weeks without ingesting 50 pounds of extra energy during that 6 weeks - which by any yardstick, is a veritible shitload of over eating for a 24 year old woman who was hitherto 104 pounds.

The sooner folks start thinking of body fat as a reserve fuel tank and stop projecting the myth that energy storage can be created out pure THIN AIR, the better off those folks will be.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

@astro

None of this is unbelievable. We’ve has many weight loss threads over the years, and several have had people with PCOS and other glandular issues chime in about the bizarre way their body behaves. One women stayed about 120 lbs eating around 800 calories per day. It seems thermodynamically impossible (and I struggled to believe her), but she swore it was true, and she was a respected long time SDMB member not given to fabulizing.

It IS thermodynamically impossible. Body fat, like fossil fuel, is a form of energy storage in the form of highly complex hydrocarbons. Millions of them in every fat cell. They get built, they store energy. They break down, they release energy. It’s impossible to create them without eating the excess energy in the first place, because energy CANNOT be created.

It’s an insult to any intelligent sane person to suggest otherwise.

As for the OP, yes, inarguably some people struggle more than others to maintain weight loss - and the evidence does indeed indicate that our genetic body fat minimum slides upward with age. And also, the body fat minimum, once set at a high level through years of being overweight, is exceedingly hard to bring back down.

[UltraVires]

@Boo_Boo_Foo

You’ve contradicted yourself. It’s impossible to gain 50 pounds in six weeks without over eating 50 pounds worth of energy.

Agreed. Assuming 42 days (6 weeks) and each pound of fat requiring 3,500 calories, my ciphering shows a DAILY calorie surplus of 4166.67 calories. Assuming your metabolism slowed your bodily functions, including heartbeat and breathing, to zero, that is still an ingestion of 4,100 calories per day, an enormous amount.