Update on my weight regain

Ignoramus11139 wrote:
After becoming certain of that, last week I decided to try "eating
less". I skipped breakfast and lunch and ate a good sized meal in the
evening.

Skipping meals(in effect not eating all day)and then having one big
meal is going to mess with your metabolism. You will find it harder and
harder to lose any stored bodyfat and your body will probably store as
much as possible from that one big meal. Starving makes you fatter not
leaner. The scale lies. http://skwigg.tripod.com/id12.html
This also reminded me of an article I read about Olympic athletes and
food timing - you would think they would all know better, but the ones
who skipped meals were the fattest of the lot. Those who ate smaller
portioned meals 5-6 times a day were the leanest. So you could be
'eating less' but portioned out thruout the day for best results.


joni

I could do what you suggested, also (eating less but in several
meals). I figure, a week of eating once a day should not do any damage
and it was relatively easy to do for a week. After all, all I had to
lose was 2-3 lbs.

Yes, anything will do for losing a few pounds, that's what crash diets were
created for: people who need to shake off a few pounds quickly. The problem
starts when obese people want to drop 50 or 100lbs on one of these plans,
you can live on cabbage soup for a week but not for 6 months.

I have become relatively skeptical about all these claims about
metabolism, lately.

True. After all, it's a question of physics: if it takes a certain amount of
energy for something (chemical reaction, motion, temperature change, etc.)
to happen, how can it happen on a lot less energy? I've seen claims that
your metabolism 'will drop down to 50%', this doesn't make any sense, after
all if your body could be run on half the energy, why not do it all the
time? If you could tweak your car to run on 50% of the fuel, would you tweak
it back to use the full amount? There are energy-saving tips'n'tricks for
drivers that will reduce fuel consumption by modest amounts, this must be
the kind of thing that your body does when it goes into 'starvation' mode,
i.e. trying to save bits of energy here & there, which is why people feel
cold & tired when they don't eat.

Our bodies must have been designed for irregular eating, otherwise why the
limitless ability to store fat? If we were designed to eat 3 or 4 regular
meals day in day out, we'd only be able to store a few pounds of fat for,
say, a period of sickness during which we couldn't eat. If there's any BMR
change, it's likely to be +/- 10% or thereabouts and only temporarily, it's
not like if you starve yourself for a week you'll have a lower BMR forever.

Polar Light wrote:
I have become relatively skeptical about all these claims about
metabolism, lately.

True. After all, it's a question of physics:

But it's not. I find it hard to believe people don't think the body can
adapt to survival by making choices of where to spend resources. Plus it
has been shown to happen, so there's not much to argue about.

if it takes a certain amount of
energy for something (chemical reaction, motion, temperature change, etc.)
to happen, how can it happen on a lot less energy? I've seen claims that
your metabolism 'will drop down to 50%', this doesn't make any sense, after
all if your body could be run on half the energy, why not do it all the
time?

When my car is low on gass i drive slower. Why don't i drive slower all
the time?


Our bodies must have been designed for irregular eating, otherwise why the
limitless ability to store fat? If we were designed to eat 3 or 4 regular
meals day in day out, we'd only be able to store a few pounds of fat for,
say, a period of sickness during which we couldn't eat.

But interestingly we don't store other things like essential fatty acids
and proteins. But we store fat.

"Ignoramus11139" wrote in message
...
On 7 May 2005 21:40:09 -0700, joni wrote:

Ignoramus11139 wrote:
After becoming certain of that, last week I decided to try "eating
less". I skipped breakfast and lunch and ate a good sized meal in the
evening.


How do you know the weight you gained was fat you needed to lose and not
muscle you want to keep?

--
No Husband Has Ever Been Shot While Doing The Dishes

"Ignoramus8220" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 8 May 2005 14:02:20 -0500, None Given
wrote:
"Ignoramus11139" wrote in message
...
On 7 May 2005 21:40:09 -0700, joni wrote:

Ignoramus11139 wrote:
After becoming certain of that, last week I decided to try "eating
less". I skipped breakfast and lunch and ate a good sized meal in the
evening.


How do you know the weight you gained was fat you needed to lose and
not muscle you want to keep?


Well, I did not change my exercise routine in any way...

And I guess you didn't start taking steroids either... it's not possible to
gain several pounds of muscle in a week or two, I think the average gain is
more like10lbs/yr or thereabouts.

Yes, anything will do for losing a few pounds, that's what crash
diets were created for: people who need to shake off a few pounds
quickly. The problem starts when obese people want to drop 50 or
100lbs on one of these plans, you can live on cabbage soup for a
week but not for 6 months.

Although I agree with you, what I did last week (and plan on repeating
this week) was not a crash diet. I ate, probably, around 1,500 cals
per day.

I just mentioned it 'coz people say it would 'screw your metabolism'. Any
diet or meal plan followed for only a short time is not likely to have
long-term ill effects unless you have a medical condition.

I've seen claims that your metabolism 'will drop down to 50%', this
doesn't make any sense, after all if your body could be run on half
the energy, why not do it all the time? If you could tweak your car
to run on 50% of the fuel, would you tweak it back to use the full
amount?

Not so sure about cars. Um, compare two cars, a Toyota Corolla with a
small engine, and a Corvette with a big V8. Both, really, do the same
thing, which getting the driver from point A to point B. But the
Corvette will burn a lot more fuel. Why do people choose Corvettes? I
would not choose one, but they have their reasons.

You're comparing two different cars, which is like two different bodies. I
wouldn't have lost 3lbs in a week eating 1,500 cals/day 'coz I have a
smaller body. But I was referring to the car you already have and being able
to run it on a lot less fuel whilst getting the same performance from it, as
it's supposed to happen with your body when your metabolism gets 'screwed up
by dieting'.

Our bodies must have been designed for irregular eating, otherwise
why the limitless ability to store fat? If we were designed to eat 3
or 4 regular meals day in day out, we'd only be able to store a few
pounds of fat for, say, a period of sickness during which we
couldn't eat. If there's any BMR change, it's likely to be +/- 10%
or thereabouts and only temporarily, it's not like if you starve
yourself for a week you'll have a lower BMR forever.

All true. I am not in the least concerned that one or two weeks of
eating once a day (with regular eating on weekend) are going to ruin
my metabolism.

I don't think you can really 'ruin your metabolism' as such. It does slow
down a little on low cal intake but you still lose weight, and so do
anorexics who eat almost nothing. And it picks up as soon as you eat more
cals, it doesn't stay 'lowered' forever. There are some people with
metabolic issues but they quite rare and have other causes.

In article ,
Ignoramus8220 wrote:

Not so sure about cars. Um, compare two cars, a Toyota Corolla with a
small engine, and a Corvette with a big V8. Both, really, do the same
thing, which getting the driver from point A to point B. But the
Corvette will burn a lot more fuel. Why do people choose Corvettes? I
would not choose one, but they have their reasons.

Stick to discussing LC, you don't know much about cars. A Corolla and a
Corvette "do the same thing" only for a very broad definition of "the
same thing", and the reason one burns more fuel than another under
different conditions has little to do with metabolism.

KeS

There was a thing in the paper this week about how most people
seriously underestimate how many calories they are taking in daily - so
given that, its not surprising that many people THINK they are not
eating too much when they actually are taking in more than they need to
stay stable or lose. You see it in this forum all the time - especially
from newbies who complain that they aren't eating much but are gaining
or at least, not losing - essentially wanting someone to tell them some
magic secret OTHER than...uh, eat less than you are and see what
happens.

I'm mom of three, and wow, the amount I can nibble during food prep, or
post meal clean up is really amazing and I'm not really aware of what
I'm doing (like, there are only a few spoons of mashed potatoes left in
the pot, not enough for left overs....instead of letting them go to
waste...I'll just eat them! ARGH!). Keeping a strict food diary does
help, as does relentlessly weighing/measuring portions.

I really don't think its metabolism in terms of some kind of post diet
slow down , I think its just that our body wants to regain, makes us
hungry, and we are kinda oblivious sometimes to just how much we are
actually taking in. Oh, I dream of my younger days when my weight
stayed stable for years without me paying ANY attention to it. Those
days are gone, gone, gone.

Mary G.
5' 6" tall, started at 195 last Sept, goal was 135 reached in Feb, now
just south of 130.

Ignoramus18353 wrote:
Mary, I agree with you. There is no doubt that I gained weight due to
eating too much. What concerns me is why did I start eating too much,
whereas for 8 months before, I did not eat too much without trying
to limit eating.

It occured to me there's an aging aspect as well. We are said to gain a
pound at year after 40 because our BMR slows down.

JC Der Koenig schreef:
"Ignoramus18353" wrote in message
...

On Thu, 12 May 2005 16:48:14 GMT, JC Der Koenig
wrote:

You haven't aligned your setpoint properly yet.


And what are the implications of this statement?



You have a bodyweight setpoint and a bodyfat setpoint. Dieting down to 175,
and then trying to stay at 175, means that you're trying to constantly fight
against your setpoints which will be somewhat higher than where you are at.
For me, my bodyweight setpoint is between 10 and 15 pounds above where I
dieted down to. The bodyfat setpoint is the difference of a few percent.

How does that affect you? I believe that if you dieted down to about 160,
and then let yourself creep up to the weight you are at now, you would be
able to maintain that weight much more easily. It depends on where your
individual setpoint is though. It might take a few cycles to get the
adjustment right.

Hmm, maybe that would work, if you lift weights so the weight you gain
back is mostly muscle and not just fat. Of 2 people who weigh the same,
the one with the most lean body mass can eat more without gaining weight.

Berna (101.5/69.3/~68)

--
( )_( ) Berna M. Bleeker-Slikker
/ . . \
\ \@/ / http://www.volksliedjes.nl