...statistically, it's pretty much impossible to become thin. The key word: statistically.

Fat is Officially Incurable (According to Science).

[The studies] all find the exact same thing: You can lose and keep off some minor amount, 10 or 15 pounds, for the rest of your life -- it's hard, but it can be done. Rarer cases may keep off a little more. But no one goes from actually fat to actually thin and stays thin permanently.

The more serious paper is here: Long-term weight-loss maintenance: a meta-analysis of US studies.

A more accessible NY Times article: The Fat Trap.

For years, the advice to the overweight and obese has been that we simply need to eat less and exercise more. While there is truth to this guidance, it fails to take into account that the human body continues to fight against weight loss long after dieting has stopped. This translates into a sobering reality: once we become fat, most of us, despite our best efforts, will probably stay fat.

There you go.

Lessons from the Amish.

A new study of Old Order Amish living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was reported as showing that physical activity can combat obesity and keep people trim, even among those with a genetic susceptibility to obesity. Today's modern lifestyles and obesogenic environment, with its perceived more fattening, processed foods and lack of exercise, are believed to cause the current obesity epidemic. And people living simpler lives, eschewing the trappings of modern life, eating natural foods and getting lots of exercise, don't have weight problems...or so the myth goes...

...Assuming, for a moment, that the correlation is real, for a man of average Old Order Amish height and BMI, working out 16 hours versus 12 hours a day would equate to about a 15 pounds difference; and for a woman, working out 14 versus 10 hours a day would correlate with a whole 12 pounds difference in body weight. These nominal weight differences would still not transform someone naturally obese into someone thin. Similarly, even these weight changes seen among the least active Amish in this cohort compared with the most active, didn't raise their mean BMIs into the obese category.

Keep in mind: if you were originally thin, you can be again ...at a cost. But the best advice (for thin people) seems to be: don't put the additional weight on in the first place.

For those "always been fat" people though? - No amount of dieting, and no amount of exercise, is going to help. You have no hope.

...well, possibly until there's some kind of medical breakthrough in genetic therapy. Or something.

Posted by: fairwhether at 06:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 437 words, total size 3 kb.