kad02002 said:
drizzlybears brother said:
I've lost significant amounts of weight on multiple occasions. One of those dramatic reductions occurred during my off-the-charts highest caloric intake periods of my life.
Anecdotes are particularly unhelpful as what works for one can be the exact wrong approach for another.
Losing weight is hard, for some, immensely hard, but it's nothing compared to the ability to keep it off. The "recidivism" rate for weight gain is unlike any other.
What say the group about the theory that once you gain weight, your body will always try to stay at that weight, thus making long-term weight loss a near miracle? BS or no?
It's a thing with a grain of truth to it that gets blown out of proportion by people who want to believe weight loss is impossible.
The body DOES try to stay at its current weight. I know that when I first started losing weight I was getting ravenously hungry within the first week or so, even though I'd hit my calorie limit for the day. Then my body adjusted to the new normal and got used to the smaller daily calorie amount. Now if I try to eat like I used to when I was almost 270 pounds, I feel like crap. And yes, that's an anecdotal personal example, but I've seen a lot of such stories from other people online (not paid ads, just random people on message boards). That's what happens: it's very hard at first, but it gets easier if you stick with it. There will be plateaus, but over the long run the calorie reduction works.
Psychological factors are another matter. Some people have all kinds of other associations with food that are hard to break. But I'd argue that's the brain more so than the body that's making weight loss hard. I've seen some of the articles where people claim they now eat less than 1000 calories a day and still can't lose weight. I suppose it's possible that such genetic abnormalities exist, but in general when you actually investigate their intake you find they are massively undercounting their calories. The issue is psychological, not physiological.