Read the Fat Trap

I'm preaching to the choir, since most of us here have had WLS or are wanting it.  But it's important to remember how a calorie isn't quite a calorie (in biochemical terms, not physical) and how obesity changes our bodies.

A year ago, the New York Times ran a fantastic article about this, called The Fat Trap.  It's how once you get morbidly obese, your body helps to "trap" you there.  Here are some highlights of the article:

• With regular diet and exercise, after you lose weight and stay there, your ghrelin levels are actually higher than before, a 20% increase, making them hungrier for having lost weight.  Peptide YY (suppressing hunger) was low, as well as leptin which also suppressed hunger.  So, high ghrelin and low leptin sounds like a recipe for disaster, eh?

“What we see here is a coordinated defense mechanism with multiple components all directed toward making us put on weight,” Proietto says. “This, I think, explains the high failure rate in obesity treatment.”

• In a study with twins, they were overfed such that mathematically, the twin sets should have gained 24 pounds of weight.  In reality, pairs of twins gained as few as 10 pounds, while others at the end of the spectrum gained 29, more than 'should have been' physically possible.  Likewise, the weight came off some pairs quickly, while for others they struggled.
•  
• Several genes like FTO may influence your odds of being obese.  One bad copy of this gene increases your obesity odds by 30%, two bad copies increases it by 60%.  And it's pretty common!  About half of us have one copy of the bad form of the gene.In a study where children where allowed to eat what they want, kids with the FTO variant ate on average 100 extra calories than kids without the variant - they chose foods with higher fat and calorie counts.  (Just 100 extra calories a day is over 10 pounds a year!)
•  
• People who lost weight with diet and exercise have to eat less and exercise more than similar people who weren't overweight, just maintaining their weight.
•  
• Successful people pay attention to their calorie intake and portion sizes.
•  
• Once you've been obese, you need less calories at a reduced weight compared to a person that's at the same weight, but hadn't been obese!

Once she dropped to 190 pounds, losing 17 percent of her body weight, metabolic studies determined that she needed about 2,300 daily calories to maintain the new lower weight. That may sound like plenty, but the typical 30-year-old 190-pound woman can consume about 2,600 calories to maintain her weight — 300 more calories than the woman who dieted to get there.

• When you're obese and lose weight, your muscle fibers change from fast-twitch (inefficient) to slow-twitch (efficient).  That means you burn less calories during exercise, 20-25% less!  That means if a guy at the gym next to me is doing the same exercise as me and he's burning 200 calories, I'm only burning 150 or 160.
•  
• After weight loss, your brain responds more powerfully to food cues in the reward center of the brain, making willpower a much less effective tool for staying on plan.

 

While all this is depressing - it's not so bad, because we have WLS and the sleeve!  The article is great FOOD for thought.

very interesting, thanks for posting

That's exactly how I felt...trapped. Great article.

Without my sleeve it was IMPOSSIBLE to lose the weight. Hunger reduction has been a nice bonus of my sleeve!

Great article.  Thanks for reposting!

I'm still mad at you for telling me about the burning less calories thingy last summer (20-25% less - urgh). 

Hey at least I kept more of my muscle than most. That's got to be some kind of bonus. Doesn't it?

Awww... you're mad about that, huh?

Can't wait to see how mad you are when you find out what Lance and I have done...

 Figures Lance would be gay. All the gorgeous ones are gay. Damnit.

Thanks for posting this, Ruggie. It really just confirms that our bodies are made to deal with feast and famine. Our biology hasn't caught up with the fact that most people nowadays have access to a food supply year-round.

This article reminds me of how Yo-Yo dieting and "Fad Diets" wreck havoc on one's metabolism.  This past year I did 2 medically supervised diets - an Optifast type diet, and then that evil Pregnancy Hormone diet, the HCG diet.  Both have totally destroyed me.  My metabolism is nonexistent. I'm about 30lbs heavier than last January.  And thousands of dollars poorer I hope and pray that when I get Sleeved it will give me a fighting chance to get my body back and have a chance at normalcy.