In an article posted Monday on Yahoo Health, Joy Bauer, M.S., R.D., C.D.N. says, “Switch from 2% reduced-fat milk to skim milk - and assuming you have one serving each day - at the end of the year, you’ll save more than 14,000 calories and drop 4 pounds!” Is this accurate? Assuming all things are the same and I drank skim milk instead of 2% for the next 10 years, would I be 40lbs lighter?
Here’s the article: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos
No.
You’re net gain/losses will be affected by 4lbs/year.
Example: If you are gaining 10/year like so many people, dropping those calories will, for the first year, result in you only gaining 6 lbs.
If you are eating the perfect am’t of cals to maintain your weight, one could say that cutting those calories would mean you actually lose 4lbs.
You would lose the weight the first year and once gone, you would not lose 4 every year, but you’d keep them off with the lowfat-milk plan You would need to reduce calories even farther to reduce your weight each subsequent year.
Whew…let me clean my post up:
No.
You’re net gain/losses will be affected by 4lbs for the first year.
Examples:
If you are gaining 10/year like so many people, dropping those calories will, for the first year, result in you only gaining 6 lbs.
If you are eating the perfect am’t of cals to maintain your weight, then one could say that cutting those calories would mean you actually lose 4lbs.
Losing every year from lowfat milk? No. Reaping the benefits every year: Yes. See, you would lose the weight the first year and once gone, you would not lose 4 every year, but you’d keep them off with the lowfat-milk plan. You would then need to reduce calories even farther to reduce your weight each subsequent year.
I’d lose a lot more than 40lbs if I drank that much milk every day. I figure that all of my friends would weigh over a thousand pounds, easily, if you add them all together.
I’d lose every one of them, considering I’m lactose intolerant.
Ok - but how do you determine how much you actually lose before you are maintaining? Is it really cumulative for a whole year? If I have been drinking 2% for the last ten years, am I up 140,000 calories or is it just that at a certain point I have gained the weight I’m going to gain, and now I’m maintaining that weight gain? If so, won’t that effect happen pretty quickly and be done (and the same be true for the reverse?) It seems misleading to say switching to skim will create a larger effect over that period of time…
First, assume a spherical cow…
The catch is assuming that everything else is constant. It isn’t that simple, unless all your meals are being prepared for you in a laboratory.
The problem is that non-fat milk does not contain fat, which is a long term energy source, compaired to carbs. The carbs get burned quickly and leave you feeling hungry faster and tired faster then if it has fat in it, so you eat sooner.
If you eat the same am’t of cals every year, and maintain exactly the same activity level, and it is excess calories causing you to gain weight, then you will gain um let’s say five pounds this year.
Okay…so next year, you do exactly the same thing calorie-wise and you once again gain weight, but actually you won’t quite gain the same am’t, it will be less.
Why? Because you are heavier than you were the previous year, and it takes about 12 cals per day per pound of body weight too maintain your weight. So, as you get fatter, if you maintain the caloric intake that made you fatter, you will actually burn more calories and you will gain less every year.
It works in reverse the same way. Eat less, lose weight and you then need fewer cals to maintain body weight. If you eat 1200 cals/day and watch your weight plummet to down 100 lbs, then it will probably bottom out there (all things being equal). 100 lbs requires only about 1200 cals per day.
(side note: food is so plentiful, that it is now inconceivable that a small-statured women could live on a paltry 1200 cal/day diet, yet that is exactly the am’t an inactive, small 100 lb women would need. If she desired to eat more and not gain weight, she would need to kick in some exercise). Of course, as BMI changes, some of the number change (such as calculating caloric intake).
Thank you!!