I had to share this about a book I just purchased & can't put down. It's called the Obesity Code by Dr Jason Fung. He shows how carbs are our enemy. Very very informative. They way he lays everything out makes so much sense, showing how not all calories are the same. How cutting back on calories in, actually causes reduction in how much calories our bodies use (metabolism). It is so well thought out & explained so that it all makes sense. So....if you can't understand why you are eating very little calories & either not losing or not losing enuff, he explains it in ways that help you understand. He goes on to tell us how we can increase the amount of calories we expend, later on in the book, without having to drastically cut back on the amount we take in. I haven't gotten there yet but so far those lights of understanding have been coming on in my head, like never before. I encourage you all to pick up this book. It actually backs up what our doctors & nutritionists are telling us. This is a very informative read.

Thank you for posting this. I have just bought a copy from Amazon and am reading it on Kindle already. Will post again when I've finished reading it but so far it has got me gripped.

At some level it is still true that (calories in) - (calories out) is proportional to your weight loss. What happens though, is that (calories out) doesn't stay constant. This quantity, or more precisely, resting metabolic rate, tends to go down as your weight goes down. The body has a physiological tendency to try to remain at an equilibrium point, and this includes not only body temperature, but also body weight. The equilibrium weight value is often referred to as the "set point", which comes from engineering - control theory.

I have been reading the scientific literature on this the past couple of weeks, as my metabolism has clearly slowed down. Apparently it was first reported decades ago, but whether this even happened was at first muddled by conflicting studies. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of clarity around what to do about it. A number of studies suggest that slow, steady weight loss is better in this regard than large, rapid weight loss. The other point that I think is pretty well established is that for people who have really lowered their resting metabolic rate, this can persist for a long time - years, and perhaps indefinitely.

Hormone levels associated with hunger are also altered. In particular leptin, which makes you feel satisfied, decreases with weight loss.

A recent well publicized study of the participants on The Biggest Loser, who experience both large and rapid weight loss, found that their resting metabolic rate and their leptin levels were both significantly lower, 6 years later, than would be expected, which explained why nearly all of them had regained their weight. Of course, that is not the same as bariatric surgery, but it's not completely independent either. It's an extreme form of what we can run into.

Learning about these things is why I have decided not to push harder, using ever lower calories or ever higher exercise, to try to maintain my rate of weight loss. I don't want to wreck my metabolism. I am eating roughly 1200 calories a day, and if things stall, then they stall. 1200 calories is already quite low for a 6 foot man. I may even bump it up a bit to 1400, but I won't go down further.

Edited May 15, 201610 yr by Barry W

Here are a few resources I found helpful:

"The Physiology of Body Weight Regulation: Are We Too Efficient for Our Own Good?"

http://spectrum.diabetesjournals.org/content/20/3/166.full

"Long-term persistence of adaptive thermogenesis in subjects who have maintained a reduced body weight"

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/4/906.long

"After 'The Biggest Loser', their bodies fought to regain weight"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html?_r=0

The physiological mechanisms of regulation of body weight - how they work and how they are altered, is still a very active area of research. Sadly most people, even most doctors, aren't well versed on this subject.

Thanks for the info Barry. You forgot to mention insulin & how that works on our metabolism or hunger. As I said, I just wanted to mention this book as it's very interesting & he uses things we can all understand.

Here's some of the info...hopefully I won't get in trouble for posting this....

Calories are needed to heat the body. Fewer calories were available, so body heat was reduced. Result: constant feeling of cold. Calories are needed for the heart to pump blood. Fewer calories were available, so the pump slowed down. Result: heart rate and stroke volume decreases. Calories are needed to maintain blood pressure. Fewer calories were available, so the body turned the pressure down. Result: blood pressure decreased. Calories are needed for brain function, as the brain is very metabolically active. Fewer calories were available, so cognition was reduced. Result: lethargy and inability to concentrate. Calories are needed to move the body. Fewer calories were available, so movement was reduced. Result: weakness during physical activity. Calories are needed to replace hair and nails. Fewer calories were available, so hair and nails were not replaced. Result: brittle nails and hair loss.--there is so much wealth of info in the book. I did read something about fasting intermittently & other things to try in order to increase the efficiency of how or bodies process calories. That is much later in the book. All the above makes sense. I could never figure out why I was cold on a low calorie diet & this makes sense. Again, this book is pretty good. I hope that when I get to the end, there will be information that will help me in regards to metabolism, besides increasing activity, which in of itself has its own repercussions on tiredness & hunger. I get hungry when I exercise, unlike what most people say about decreasing appetite....

Jintycb.....let me know what u think of this book as you keep reading. Thanks so much for posting, both of you? Thanks for the feedback!!

Thanks so much for posting, both of u!! Accidently put in a "?" Instead of "!", In my last post..

I looked at the book on Amazon, and one telling feature (or lack thereof) for this book: I can't find in the table of contents any indicator of footnotes, endnotes, or other citations. Unless a book that purports to be using science contains citations, be wary.

Second - not all who are obese are insulin-resistant, which seems to be key his approach. His findings appear to be based on his work with diabetics who developed some degree if kidney disease. This is not true of the bulk of the obese population.

His approach may work for some, just remember, one size (or approach) does not fit all.

Thanks for the info. I look forward to hearing more when you finish the book.

This lines up with what I have been learning throughout this process.

Calories aren't the enemy. It is the quality/source of the calories that are the most important.

For me, Protein is the most important focus.

Embrace the Stall

http://BariatricPal.com/index.php?/topic/351046-Embrace-the-Stall

I looked at the book on Amazon, and one telling feature (or lack thereof) for this book: I can't find in the table of contents any indicator of footnotes, endnotes, or other citations. Unless a book that purports to be using science contains citations, be wary.

I have not even looked at this book, so I say nothing against it, but I have a similar general instinct about using caution with books on weight loss for the lay public - I think there is a lot of bad information out there. Bad info can actually be worse than no info.

CICO is a gross over simplification. The body can be incredibly resourceful when it think it is starving, and we digesting calories, before we can use them for energy. We are not calorimeters. I think the CICO paradigm works ok for people who need something simple to grasp portion control, but the way people push that "religion" on others is exasperating.

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

At some level it is still true that (calories in) - (calories out) is proportional to your weight loss. What happens though, is that (calories out) doesn't stay constant. This quantity, or more precisely, resting metabolic rate, tends to go down as your weight goes down. The body has a physiological tendency to try to remain at an equilibrium point, and this includes not only body temperature, but also body weight. The equilibrium weight value is often referred to as the "set point", which comes from engineering - control theory.

I have been reading the scientific literature on this the past couple of weeks, as my metabolism has clearly slowed down. Apparently it was first reported decades ago, but whether this even happened was at first muddled by conflicting studies. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of clarity around what to do about it. A number of studies suggest that slow, steady weight loss is better in this regard than large, rapid weight loss. The other point that I think is pretty well established is that for people who have really lowered their resting metabolic rate, this can persist for a long time - years, and perhaps indefinitely.

Hormone levels associated with hunger are also altered. In particular leptin, which makes you feel satisfied, decreases with weight loss.

A recent well publicized study of the participants on The Biggest Loser, who experience both large and rapid weight loss, found that their resting metabolic rate and their leptin levels were both significantly lower, 6 years later, than would be expected, which explained why nearly all of them had regained their weight. Of course, that is not the same as bariatric surgery, but it's not completely independent either. It's an extreme form of what we can run into.

Learning about these things is why I have decided not to push harder, using ever lower calories or ever higher exercise, to try to maintain my rate of weight loss. I don't want to wreck my metabolism. I am eating roughly 1200 calories a day, and if things stall, then they stall. 1200 calories is already quite low for a 6 foot man. I may even bump it up a bit to 1400, but I won't go down further.

What studies did you read that slower rate loss resulted is less BMR reduction. The studies I have been reading showed conversely, faster weight loss is associated with better weight loss maintenance. There are at least 1 study I read that seem to indicate weight loss surgery may be helpful to avoid abnormally low BMR reduction or helping to reduced the "metabolic set point", but that is less clear.

Sent from my iPhone using the BariatricPal App

Thanks for the info Barry. You forgot to mention insulin & how that works on our metabolism or hunger.

You're right, it's not just leptin, insulin plays a role, and so do ghrelin and neuropeptide Y - there are a whole suite of hormones that affect hunger, satiety, metabolism and energy homeostasis. The way that I think about it is that eating and maintaining weight are so important, that you have all kinds of systems that evolved so that you don't have to *think* to eat, you *feel* you must eat and have a powerful drive to do so. Any organism that doesn't have this will go extinct very quickly! The trouble is that these mechanisms that ensure survival in the short term, don't necessarily function ideally in every individual, especially in the long term, and they can work against best health.

A lot is known, but there are still a lot of questions to answer, and the system is complex, depending on genetics, and having crosstalk between different components, and then you have hormonal resistance that can develop (as in insulin and leptin), so unfortunately there is no simple rule like "If you do X, then Y will happen".

The role of leptin in hunger was first discovered in the early 1990s, and a lot of pharma and biotech researchers were very excited, thinking that all they'd need to do is to teach microbes how to make leptin with their newfound bioengineering methods, and they'd all get rich giving fat people leptin injections to make them nice and svelte. Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. They learned that fat people were usually leptin resistiant, and there were other mechanisms at work too.

I am probably causing more confusion than I am clearing up. I did find a nice diagram online from the prestigious journal Nature Endocrinology and Metabolism It shows the relationship between ghrelin, leptin, and neuropeptide Y. You can see that ghrelin is secreted primarily by the stomach and leptin primarily by fat cells. They both act through the hypothalmus to affect neuropeptide Y activity - and ghrelin up-regulates neuropeptide Y while leptin down-regulates it. There is more to the whole story than this picture, but this is a great summary of these players.

http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v2/n2/fig_tab/ncpendmet0080_F3.html

Interesting. All of it., thank you. We are all still trying to find our way. What resonated with me is that I have tried counting calories, as I am sure we all have, & it didn't work. If I ate carbs but still stayed within a certain amount of calories, I found I didn't lose, however using the same number of calories & eating Protein & vegetables, I found I lost. Again no one has found the magic formula yet but this book so far goes with what I have learned thruout my own history of dieting.

By the way, there is a list of chapters in the beginning of the book & he does have an index in the back where he lists his sources as well as indicating this in the reading material. Doesn't make sense that Amazon doesn't show this......

CONTENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION PART 1: The Epidemic CHAPTER 1: How Obesity Became an Epidemic CHAPTER 2: Inheriting Obesity PART 2: The Calorie Deception CHAPTER 3: The Calorie-Reduction Error CHAPTER 4: The Exercise Myth CHAPTER 5: The Overfeeding Paradox PART 3: A New Model of Obesity CHAPTER 6: A New Hope CHAPTER 7: Insulin CHAPTER 8: Cortisol CHAPTER 9: The Atkins Onslaught CHAPTER 10: Insulin Resistance: The Major Player PART 4: The Social Phenomenon of Obesity CHAPTER 11: Big Food, More Food and the New Science of Diabesity CHAPTER 12: Poverty and Obesity CHAPTER 13: Childhood Obesity PART 5: What’s Wrong with Our Diet? CHAPTER 14: The Deadly Effects of Fructose CHAPTER 15: The Diet Soda Delusion CHAPTER 16: Carbohydrates and Protective Fiber CHAPTER 17: Protein CHAPTER 18: Fat Phobia PART 6: The Solution CHAPTER 19: What to Eat CHAPTER 20: When to Eat APPENDIX A: Sample Meal Plans (with Fasting Protocols) APPENDIX B: Fasting: A Practical Guide APPENDIX C: Meditation and Sleep Hygiene to Reduce Cortisol ENDNOTES INDEX

Amazon does have the table of contents, but nothing in the TOC indicates scientific citations. Those are what I was looking for.