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8 weight-loss myths
By: agate Date: May 18, 2015, 12:30 am
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From Nutrition Action, May 17, 2015:
[quote]8 Big, Fat, Weight Loss Myths
Posted By Bonnie Liebman
It’s no secret that losing weight—and keeping it off—is tough.
That’s all the more reason to avoid moving up a pant size in the
first place. Here we correct 8 common weight loss myths to help
you play defense in the battle of the bulge.
MYTH #1: “I can lose weight later.”
Let’s say you’ve been on vacation. Or it’s the holidays. You
know you’ve put on a few pounds, but so what? You’ll just cut
back when things get back to normal, and your waist will shrink
back to its pre-vacation or pre-holiday size in a few weeks,
right?
Not so fast.
“A student of mine was interested in how long it would take for
somebody to lose the weight they had gained from holiday
overeating if all they did was go back to their regular
pre-Thanksgiving diet,” says Kevin Hall, senior investigator in
the Laboratory of Biological Modeling at the National Institute
of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
“The funny thing was that they wouldn’t have lost all the new
weight by the time the next holiday period came around.”
So just several weeks’ worth of indulgence can have lasting
consequences.
“If you never quite lose the weight that you gained the previous
year, you’re just ratcheting your weight up year after year
after year,” explains Hall.
Why does it take so long to lose those extra pounds that you put
on so quickly? The old rule of thumb—that you can expect to lose
a pound for every 3,500 calories you cut—is wrong for several
reasons.
For example:
You’ve lost muscle.
The 3,500- calorie rule assumes that you’ve lost only fat. In
fact, about 25 percent of the weight that dieters lose is lean
tissue.
“Most of the lean body mass is skeletal muscle,” says Hall. “And
even at rest, it burns more calories than fat tissue.”
Your organs are smaller.
“As you lose weight, your liver, kidneys, and other organs
shrink,” says Hall. “So the number of calories that are required
to keep those organs operating goes down.”
Roughly 60 to 70 percent of your calories are used just to keep
your heart beating, your kidneys filtering blood, etc., 24 hours
a day.
“The liver and kidneys are much smaller than the sum total of
your skeletal muscles,” explains Hall. “But per unit weight,
they are 10 to 20 times more active than skeletal muscle at
rest. So even small changes in these organs can make relatively
substantial changes in metabolic rate.”
Metabolic slowdown.
Lost at least 10 percent of your weight? To keep it off, you may
have to eat 10 to 15 percent fewer calories than you did before
you gained it.
Exercise burns fewer calories.
As your body becomes smaller, moving it around becomes easier.
Going for a walk or climbing the stairs burns fewer calories
than it used to.
Your metabolism is slower.
“Your metabolism slows down when you cut calories,” says Hall.
It’s as though your body is hunkering down to face scarcity, so
it burns fewer calories per minute.
...
Bottom line: A slower metabolism and less lean mass make it hard
to lose all the extra pounds you gain.
MYTH #2: Once I lose weight, it’ll stay off.
You go on a diet for six months. Gone are those extra 10 or 20
pounds. But slowly, they start to reappear. That’s what happens
in most large studies. What’s up?
“We’ve looked at body weight changes to figure out what people
have done to their food intake, and what we found was pretty
surprising,” says Hall.
“Initially, most people go like gangbusters. They’re pretty good
about sticking to their weight-loss program for a while.”
But they gradually start to eat more, and they don’t notice
because they keep losing weight. That’s because they’re still
eating less than when they started dieting.
...
“By the time they reach their maximum success, after six to
eight months, they’re about 80 percent of the way back to what
they were eating at the beginning of the weight-loss program,”
says Hall.
“They’re eating, say, 100 calories less per day, whereas they
started out probably cutting about 700 calories out of their
diet. So 80 percent of that initial diet has been lost.”
And their weight creeps back up.
...
Bottom line: Many dieters regain lost weight because they
gradually start eating more.
MYTH #3: Fat is fat, no matter where it is.
When you overeat, your body needs to stash the excess calories
somewhere. But your odds of losing those extra pounds—and their
impact on your health—depend on where the fat ends up. And much
of that is beyond your control (see No. 5).
“We know that if people gain leg fat, they actually gain new fat
cells, so they’re sort of stuck with new fat cells,” says
Michael Jensen, director of the Obesity Treatment Research
Program at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
That’s not true for belly fat.
“At least with modest weight gain, almost all the weight gain in
upper body fat is an increase in fat cell size,” says Jensen.
“Each fat cell just agrees to store a little bit more. That
makes upper body fat easier to lose.”
...
“Your fat cells can only get so big,” explains Jensen. “From the
smallest fat cell to the biggest fat cell is only about a
four-fold increase. And we all know people who have gained more
than four times as much fat as they had when they were skinny.
So eventually, you have to start recruiting new fat cells.”
Apparently, we all have pre-adipocytes (pre-fat cells) that are
just waiting to be pressed into service whenever we need them.
The irony: storing more fat in your legs is actually healthier.
“People who gain predominantly leg fat tend to have a much
better metabolic profile than people who put on a lot of
abdominal fat,” notes Jensen. “They’re less likely to get
diabetes, less likely to get high cholesterol and high
triglycerides, and less likely to get hypertension and sleep
apnea.
“My biggest worry is when a patient comes in with a big gut and
skinny legs,” he adds. “I know they’re probably in trouble.”
It’s not clear why upper body fat—especially the deep-belly
visceral fat—is worse. One possibility: visceral fat cells may
send more fat to the liver. Or a generous layer of visceral fat
may be a sign that your subcutaneous fat is faulty.
“One speculation is that people gain visceral fat because the
subcutaneous fat in their abdomen and thighs is not doing its
job,” says Jensen. “Its job is to sequester fat from the excess
calories you ate so that it can’t harm your lean tissue.
“And if the subcutaneous fat can’t do its job, the fallback job
goes to the visceral fat. And if the visceral fat can’t do its
job, the fat starts building up in your liver and muscles and
other places where you really, really don’t want it.”
Why?
“Those organs can’t package fat in the safe triglyceride form
very well,” explains Jensen. “So the fatty acids—the individual
components of triglycerides—can interfere with cell function.”
You might end up with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, for
example.
“It’s as though you kept putting gas in the gas tank when it’s
full and now it’s running all over the side of your car,” says
Jensen. “It’s a bad situation.”
Bottom line: Extra calories can lead to leg fat that’s tough to
lose or deep-belly fat that’s a risk to your health.
MYTH #4: You have to go out of your way to overeat.
You needn’t sit at home all day and stuff your mouth with potato
chips, candy bars, and ice cream to end up with a spare tire.
You just have to eat—like most of us do— in restaurants,
shopping malls, movie theaters, ballparks, airports, drug
stores, gas stations, and at virtually every other public place.
“Food is now available everywhere,” says Kevin Hall, of the
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases. “It’s even socially acceptable to eat during meetings.
In fact, food is now provided at meetings.”
Where isn’t food available? And the size of meals has grown.
“The restaurant is a toxic environment,” says Susan Roberts,
director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer
USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts
University. “The portion sizes are enormous, and the calories
are excessive.”
In a 2013 study, she and colleagues analyzed the calories in the
42 most frequently eaten meals from independent and small chain
sit-down restaurants in the Boston area. They included popular
cuisines like Mexican, American, Chinese, Italian, Japanese,
Thai, Indian, Greek, and Vietnamese.
“These establishments make up half of all restaurants but offer
no calories or other Nutrition Facts on their menus,” notes
Roberts.
The average meal had roughly 1,300 calories—about two-thirds of
the calories an average person needs in a day.
“And people have no idea how many calories they’re eating,” adds
Roberts.
Bottom line: What’s typically served in restaurants can make you
gain weight.
MYTH #5: All extra calories are equal.
Can you change where your extra calories end up?
“There’s certainly some genetic component to it,” says Mayo’s
Michael Jensen.
“Women, because of female hormones, are going to be more able to
store leg fat than men.” (That is, until menopause, when they
may wonder where that waist went.)
“It turns out that smokers are probably not as good at making
new leg fat cells,” he adds. “And people who drink a lot of
alcohol tend to store more fat in the abdominal area.”
Saturated fat may also make a beeline to your belly. Swedish
scientists added enough 250-calorie muffins—typically three a
day—to the diets of 39 young lean adults to make them gain about
3½ pounds over seven weeks. But those who got muffins made with
saturated fat (palm oil) gained more visceral and liver fat than
those who got muffins made with a polyunsaturated fat (sunflower
oil).
And it’s not just palm oil. The same researchers found more
liver fat when they fed obese people butter instead of sunflower
oil. (That study didn’t measure visceral fat.)
The extra calories from added sugars like sucrose and
high-fructose corn syrup may also prefer to settle in deep-belly
fat.
When researchers gave 32 overweight or obese middle-aged men and
women a high dose of fructose or glucose for 10 weeks, both
groups gained about three pounds.
“But fructose significantly increased visceral fat, while
glucose did not,” explains Kimber Stanhope, associate researcher
at the University of California, Davis.
(Since we get glucose from nearly all carbs but fructose only
from sugars, the only way to limit fructose is to limit added
sugars—from soft drinks, frappuccinos, cookies, cakes, ice
cream, muffins, doughnuts, scones, candy, and other sweets.)
“A Danish study that gave overweight people a much smaller dose
of fructose—a liter of sucrose-sweetened cola per day for six
months— also found an increase in visceral fat,” notes Stanhope.
“More studies are needed, but this direct experimental evidence
suggests that sugars may increase visceral fat.”
Bottom line: Excess calories from foods high in sugars or
saturated fats may be more likely to settle in deep-belly fat.
MYTH #6: You can boost your metabolism.
“Metabolism boost,” boasts the label of Organic Matcha green tea
powder, which also claims to be a “calorie burner.” “Supports
energy and metabolism,” claims Herbalife Herbal Tea Concentrate.
CALORIES IN RESTAURANT DISHES
Most typical restaurant dishes have at least 1,000 calories.
It’s easy to gain weight if you eat what restaurants serve.
Food and Calories:
Uno Chicago Classic Deep Dish Pizza 2,300
Famous Dave’s Baby Back Ribs (full rack) w/baked beans, fries,
corn bread 2,110
Outback Steakhouse 16 oz. Herb Prime Rib w/Caesar salad, garlic
mashed potatoes 2,000
Buffalo Wild Wings Traditional Wings w/blue cheese (small order,
around 10 wings) 1,940
Five Guys Bacon Cheeseburger w/regular fries 1,870
IHOP Hearty Ham & Cheese Omelette w/3 buttermilk pancakes
w/syrup 1,730
Chili’s Smoked Chicken Quesadillas 1,720
Joe’s Crab Shack Seaside Platter (fish, chips, jumbo shrimp,
breaded scallops, coleslaw) 1,650
Olive Garden Chicken Alfredo 1,540
On The Border Mesquite-Grilled Steak Fajita w/3 flour tortillas,
sour cream, guacamole, cheese, pico de gallo, rice, black beans
1,460
Outback Steakhouse 14 oz. New York Strip Steak w/Caesar salad,
dressed baked potato 1,410
P.F. Chang’s Kung Pao Chicken w/rice 1,370
Chili’s Cajun Pasta with Grilled Chicken 1,270
Denny’s All-American Slam (3 eggs, cheese, 2 bacon strips, 2
sausage links, hash browns, 2 slices toast) 1,220
P.F. Chang’s Combo Fried Rice 1,210
Chili’s Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie 1,200
Chili’s Molten Chocolate Cake 1,160
Maggiano’s Shrimp Scampi 1,130
Olive Garden Spaghetti with Meatballs 1,120
Romano’s Macaroni Grill Lasagna Bolognese 1,110
Olive Garden Fettuccine Alfredo 1,090
Häagen-Dazs Banana Split Dazzler Sundae 1,080
California Pizza Kitchen Original BBQ Chicken or California
Veggie Pizza 1,070
P.F. Chang’s Shrimp Pad Thai 1,070
Olive Garden Eggplant Parmigiana w/spaghetti 1,050
California Pizza Kitchen California Cobb Salad w/bleu cheese
dressing 1,030
Pei Wei Chicken Lo Mein (Original size) 1,030
Chipotle Chicken Burrito (rice, black beans, salsa, sour cream,
cheese) 1,020
Uno Pepperoni Flatbread Pizza 990
Häagen-Dazs Classic Hot Fudge Sundae (reg. size) 980
Panera Mac & Cheese (full size) 980
IHOP Original Buttermilk Pancakes (5) w/syrup 970
IHOP Original French Toast w/syrup 940
Romano’s Macaroni Grill Mushroom Ravioli 930
Cinnabon Classic Roll 880
Panera Fontina Grilled Cheese Sandwich 850
The Cheesecake Factory Original Cheesecake 820
Starbucks Java Chip Frappuccino (venti, 24 fl. oz.) 600
Source: restaurant chains. Chart compiled by Paige Einstein.
The catch: companies need virtually no evidence to make those
claims. “This boosting of metabolism is pretty overblown,” says
Tufts’ Susan Roberts.
“Magazines and supplements love to talk about ways to boost your
metabolism. But you can eat a brownie with 700 calories in about
10 seconds, and there is nothing that you can remotely do to
change your metabolism by anywhere near that much, except to
give up your job and spend all your day in the gym.”
Take green tea. Some small studies report that it leads to a
bump in metabolic rate, but long-term studies find that it makes
little or no difference in weight.
The largest study: With funding from Coca-Cola, researchers
randomly assigned 572 people to a weight-loss program with or
without three daily cans of diet cola, each fortified with green
tea extract (83 mg of EGCG) and caffeine (100 mg). After three
months, the diet-cola drinkers had lost no more weight than the
others.
Does anything help you burn more calories per minute?
“Exercise is going to help a bit because muscle is more
metabolically active than fat,” says Roberts. “So if you have
five more pounds of muscle and five pounds less fat, it will
make a bit of difference, but not a huge difference.
“Weight control is dominated by how many calories you eat.
That’s the honest truth.”
Bottom line: Don’t expect to lose much weight from “metabolism
boosters.”
MYTH #7: There’s a magic bullet diet.
The Paleo Diet. The Sugar Impact Diet. The New Atkins Diet. All
promise to make the pounds peel away fast.
Most experts wouldn’t agree. In 2013, the Obesity Society,
American Heart Association, and American College of Cardiology
issued a report on overweight and obesity. Its advice: cut
calories or try a diet that’s low in fat or carbs or whatever.
“We started off with different, almost religious, beliefs as to
what diet would be better,” says the Mayo Clinic’s Michael
Jensen. “And we wound up being agnostic.
“We looked for studies that had results for at least a year, and
preferably two years, because for most of us who treat patients
with obesity, it’s not what they did in six months that matters,
it’s what they did in two years that really drives our decision
making.”
And those longer trials didn’t reveal any magic bullets. “We
found that in the end, on average, the diets produced about the
same amount of weight loss,” says Jensen.
The key for weight loss is the long game.
“For any given person, it’s really more a matter of what can
they stick with,” notes Jensen, “rather than whether there’s a
specific diet that we know is best for them ”.
Bottom line: Don’t pin your hopes on the latest “miracle” diet.
MYTH #8: I can work off the extra calories.
So what if you had General Tso’s chicken or steak fajitas for
dinner? So what if you shared a large bucket of popcorn at the
movies? You can always work it off, right?
“People totally overestimate how many calories they’ll burn when
they exercise,” says Roberts.
“We recently asked people, ‘What do you need to do to lose
weight?’ About three-quarters of them said, ‘My trouble is that
I stopped going to the gym’ or ‘I’ve been lazy. I need to go to
the gym.’ They were beating themselves up because they weren’t
doing enough exercise.”
In fact, most studies find that people who are told to cut
calories lose more weight than those who are told to exercise
more, though a mix of diet plus exercise is best in many
studies.
“Exercise for weight loss is often unhelpful,” says Roberts.
“Several years ago, a study looked at the individual response to
an exercise program. It was terrifying because they found a huge
variability.”
UK researchers had 35 overweight or obese men and women exercise
(on a stationary bike, treadmill, or stepping or rowing machine)
long and hard enough to burn 500 calories per session, five
times a week.
After 12 weeks, the average weight loss was 8 pounds, but some
people lost 32 pounds, while others gained 4 pounds. Those who
lost the least weight also reported more hunger and ate more on
a given day near the end of the study than did those who lost
the most weight.
“For some people it was clearly working, but for others it was
counterproductive,” says Roberts.
It’s not just individual differences. Other factors, like
temperature, might also matter. In a recent study, researchers
assigned 16 overweight people to walk for 45 minutes on a
treadmill when the room temperature was either 46º or 68º
Fahrenheit. They ate more calories (1,300) at an all-you-can-eat
buffet after walking in the cold temperature than after walking
in the typical indoor temperature (1,170 calories).
“You need to keep doing exercise for your health, for preventing
disabilities and problems in old age,” says Roberts. “But for
most people, exercise is not the solution for losing weight.”
Bottom line: Exercise when you can, but don’t count on it alone
to lose—or keep off—extra pounds.
[/quote]
[References and some charts omitted.]
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