I"ve just read an article in the weekend Australian magazine called Losing Battle, the science of shedding weight and putting it all back on again.
First ii'd say, it doesn't suggest there's simply no point in trying to lose weight if you are normally an overweight person. But it does suggest that keeping the weight off takes a mammoth effort and sets you up in a situation where you are constantly fighting your own body.
In practice this means that you will never be able to let up on focussing on weight control so dont' even think about relaxing your diet when you start to near your goal weight. Doing that is a surefire way to immeidately start piling it back on again. The fact is that if you lose over 10 percent of your body weight and want to keep it off, you will have to remain vigilant forever doing things such as daily weigh ins, daily exercise, and meal control foreover.
The depressing news is that people who lose a lot of weight, actually don't process food as well as others. When you exercise you wo'nt burn as many calories as someone of a stable low weight, you will always need to eat less than the calorie counters say what you have to eat to maintain a low weight as compared to someone who is already a low weight. You will always need to do at least one hour and preferably about 2 hours of exercise a day (that needn't be exercise at the gym either - so find a more productive way to exercise is probably a smart idea eg, strenous house cleaning, gardening or other work should do it.)
I know people would like to read the article. Australians can of course buy the magazine. it was published this weekend, Feb 4-5. Perhaps you could write to the author is you are a foreigner. Her name is Tara Parker-Pope. Or you could email the magazine editors at magazine@theaustralian.com editor is christine Middap.
In the article there are some examples of people who have kept the weight off for a long time and they discuss what they have to do to keep it off.
First ii'd say, it doesn't suggest there's simply no point in trying to lose weight if you are normally an overweight person. But it does suggest that keeping the weight off takes a mammoth effort and sets you up in a situation where you are constantly fighting your own body.
In practice this means that you will never be able to let up on focussing on weight control so dont' even think about relaxing your diet when you start to near your goal weight. Doing that is a surefire way to immeidately start piling it back on again. The fact is that if you lose over 10 percent of your body weight and want to keep it off, you will have to remain vigilant forever doing things such as daily weigh ins, daily exercise, and meal control foreover.
The depressing news is that people who lose a lot of weight, actually don't process food as well as others. When you exercise you wo'nt burn as many calories as someone of a stable low weight, you will always need to eat less than the calorie counters say what you have to eat to maintain a low weight as compared to someone who is already a low weight. You will always need to do at least one hour and preferably about 2 hours of exercise a day (that needn't be exercise at the gym either - so find a more productive way to exercise is probably a smart idea eg, strenous house cleaning, gardening or other work should do it.)
I know people would like to read the article. Australians can of course buy the magazine. it was published this weekend, Feb 4-5. Perhaps you could write to the author is you are a foreigner. Her name is Tara Parker-Pope. Or you could email the magazine editors at magazine@theaustralian.com editor is christine Middap.
In the article there are some examples of people who have kept the weight off for a long time and they discuss what they have to do to keep it off.
.....about 3800-4000 cals a day. And ever since I replaced my old body with this new one, my stomach is like an industrial food processing machine ! And this, coming from a guy who suffered with horrendous, life altering stomach problems / IBS, for 20+ years, up until 29 months ago, when I changed EVERYTHING !