Why Is It Easy To Lose Weight But Incredibly Difficult To Maintain Weight Loss?
This is a different sort of of blog, but I question I became intrigued in from this podcast from Dr. Peter Attia. M.D. with Dr. David Allison, Ph.D. , an award-winning scientific writer in obesity research for the last 20 years. The podcast between Attia and Allison is fascinating, yet the question goes unanswered. Or, to be frank, I don’t feel like Allison really answers it other than to hypothesize why we can’t answer it. To use terminology I learned in my doctoral program, he posits the answer may be “ill-structured” — it is so multivariate we don’t yet know why. Which is a fair answer from someone that knows this field better than I do at an order of magnitude that is laughable.
So while it would be the height of arrogance to claim I know the “why” in the first word in the title of this blog, I do know what has worked for me when I get “high school level (for me) fit” and when I stay there. And it’s pretty simple. So while I am a data point of 1, I still think it might worthwhile to share.
Losing weight for most off us in the short term is indeed easy. Why? Because, especially in today’s society and as we age, most of us are a bit above where our resting body weight would like for us to be. Society has made food/energy incredibly easy to acquire, incredible potent in the caloric density, while also making exercise and physical activity easy to avoid. The average American takes about 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day, per the Mayo Clinic, where the ideal and historic levels for homo-sapiens would seem to be between 12,000 - 15,000/day.
It’s that extra weight that makes thing at the start relatively simple. Just change a habit. Society has driven us to habits that encourage weight gain, and you simply need to change a habit to lose that extra weight. Just in the caloric intake realm alone, removing exercise/energy expenditure entirely, there are 3 levers you can pull. Per Attia: “what you eat or don’t eat (i.e., dietary restriction or DR), how much you eat (i.e., caloric restriction or CR), or when you eat and don’t eat (i.e., time restriction or TR), virtually all of the dietary schemes you can think of can be distilled into these three elements in some combination.” So if you pull on one lever relatively hard, or just two gently, and you are going to lose weight. Add in the third lever, or exercise, and you are going to melt off weight.
And therein rests the problem. Your body, for evolutionary reason we may (or may not quite know see Allisoon’s take) know, does not like the melting off of weight. So relatively soon it is going to push back. Hard. Hence the answer to the question, “why is it easy to lose weight but really difficult to keep it off.” As you lose weight your body does two nefarious things: (1) it slows down the metabolism and (2) it makes you more hungry. As I spoke about with Dr. Judson Brewer, M.D., Ph.D. the idea that willpower is the solution has zero supporting data. You can’t just will yourself to perpetually pull on levers in a society that is conspiring against you to pull, or that you haven’t turned to in years.
What is the solution? Well, please don’t take this as me saying I have the solution for everyone, or for that matter that people should even lose weight. Subcutaneous fat, just under the skin, isn’t really unhealthy. Society has, for whatever reason, just dictated to us that we are better off without it. And that has become pervasive, likely psychologically damaging for many, and generally adapted at an early age now. But the unhealthy weight is the smaller amount that surrounds our organs, visceral fat. This is what causes all kinds of metabolic disease and, if your goal is to live healthier, longer, you do want to shed.
Back to the solution. Let’s say you just lost 20 pounds, through whatever behavioral change you employed. An arbitrary number, so we’ll say more generally let’s say your body has started pushing back hard. EXERCISE EVERY DAY. yep, it’s that simple, at least for me, and the science backs it up. Exercise, a combination of both weight training and cardio, will accomplish two counterbalances. (1) it will reduce food cravings (especially of done at lower intensities) and (2), it will prevent your metabolism from the slowdown. The exact two counterbalances you need. If you make exercise a daily part of your life, and the key here would be to find something or a combination of things that you enjoy — where you get a reward — you will prevent the “yo-yo” weight gain. Or at least, both my experience and the science would seem to support that.
As an anecdotal note, I remember being a senior in college and talking to someone who was by all measures incredibly fit. :ike most of us in college, he didn’t eat a very clean diet and he didn’t abainstain from beer. But writing this article made me remember asking him how he stayed so fit and his answer “I do something physically active every single day, 7 days a week.”
Let me disclaim I’m not a doctor. I have never been obese, nor do I have genetics that would tilt me toward obesity. This is not medical advice. But, to the extent it may help someone answer a question that, to me at least has had a simple answer, I hope it is helpful. And like you, I hope I embrace the mantra of physical activity every single day for as long as I can.
- Mike Spivey
We are our own griefs. We are our own happinesses. We are our own remedies.