Maintaining......

teetime 1400 calories is quite generous if you want to lose weight slowly and maintain it. In my humble opinion, anyway.

I've just caught up. It was interesting that the guy who'd kept the weight off said that "diets work", whilst the general consensus of the programme was that "diets don't work".

It seemed to me that the dieters who'd lost weight and put it back on had gone back to their old eating habits. So it's hardly surprising that the weight went back on, really....

One thing that wasn't clear to me: do people who have lost lots of weight, and quickly, have an increased propensity to put the weight back on? Are people who have always been slim less likely to pile weight on? not sure I'm making sense.

The facile conclusion that it's all down to will-power - or lack of it.

I saw last nights programme about slimmers who lost a great deal and put most or all of it back and I did feel quite disheartened afterwards. I have lost and gained all my life not HUGE amounts but a stone or two but I know it was because I slipped back not to eating fast food which I have never liked but really good food, restaurant meals, lovely chocolate, cheese too much wine that kind of thing. At the moment I am on the NHS Choices 14 week 1400 calorie diet and its working but it looks like I'll be on it forever if I don't want to regain the weight. I agree with a previous poster that the doctor featured seemed to be saying in her view that dieting confuses the metabolism but she didn't offer a solution.

What facile conclusions?

I don't think you can look at the this as just 'why do people eat too much and get fat?'. There is a much wider question here: what is different now to X years ago (put in whatever number you like for X)?
Immediately, you think of: less physical requirements at work or home; wider variety of food; more money to spend on food; advertising; more leisure time; easy access to fast food; busy lives needing quick meals....
Particularly, the fast food that is available is designed to appeal to our inbuilt need to store against hunger - however unreasonable that seems to our conscious mind. We and the US are the most obvious 'victims' of this assault, but other countries are catching us up. When we moved to Switzerland in 1990, it was unusual to see overweight children and adults: when we left in 2005, it was becoming quite common. Holidaying in Sicily last year and going to a restaurant full of local people, we ordered the pasta - and were about the only table that did. Everyone else was eating pizza.
I'm not offering any solutions - I'm sure others will do that. But you have to study a problem in its entirety, and not offer facile conclusions which ignore many other variables.

Well 30% is much better then 95%

From what I have heard people with all kinds of bariatric processes, risk their health by finding ways round the limited eating the system is meant to place on them.

A quick google suggests that a third or more of patients put weight back on after the initial loss and some even return to their original weight.

A friend of a friend had a gastric band a year or two ago and from what I can see doesn't look much different. I've seen stories of people eating the same calories overall after surgery, as they just have smaller but more frequent meals, but I don't have personal knowledge of this.

With the more radical gastric sleeve, absorption is affected so maybe that's more effective.

But Gill it does seem to contradict the experience of those who undergo bariatric surgery

It was an interesting programme, and the message seemed to be that extreme dieting messes up a person's metabolism. As far as I could see, none of the people who had regained the weight were eating a bad diet, none of them had slipped back into bad habits, they had just started eating normally. I would have liked a more in depth programme explaining it better perhaps as this is such an important subject.

PS I always feel sorry for those who end up with the baggy skin problem after weight loss.

But .....what about those who have lost weight through bariatric surgery? Most of those do keep the weight off, simply because their stomach capacity is drasticallly reduced?

No solutions offered, except just possibly a punishing exercise regime

Yes Anya that was quite a telling moment, in relation to keeping the weight off, particularly as it was said by a doctor.

An interesting programme. Those super-slimmers who appear on TV have huge weight losses in such a short time, seemingly as a result of total removal from everyday life e.g. extreme diet, full-time fitness trainer, medical monitoring, etc., so it's no surprise that the weight piles back on once they get back to a normal homelife.

Regarding the two British women (one young and out buying flowers, the other with Rosemary Conley) who have since regained a lot of weight. Does anyone remember, did they follow an extreme diet/exercise regime for their original weight loss?

I saw last nights's programme. It only enhanced my belief that weight loss is far more complicated than stopping eating.

I was shocked by the the American man who lost 20 stone and ended up with a metabolism that has slowed down so much that he put on weight if he consumed more than 1600 calories a day. He was a big man, I do not mean overweight, but he must have been around 6 foot tall with broad shoulders.

The concentration of attention and publicity should be on not putting the weight on first place, where possible, because once on it gets more and more difficult to lose the more you try.

You are of course suggesting I have a black and white attitude - rubbish, but as I can't seem to get you to enter into a dialogue and you persist in thinking as you do, I think I'd better ignore your posts on this subject.

Saw that programme Badenkate - rather deoressing for those poor souls who lost such a lot of weight to be told it was inevitable that 90-95% would regain it. No solutions offered, except just possibly a punishing exercise regime. But I did find certain comments from those who had regained all their weight quite revealing.

Generally it was saying that if you'd been obese, there was little point in trying to diet and lose weight because you would probably regain it after a couple of years, and some!

At 8 tonight there is what should be an interesting proramme on Channel 4 on super slimmers and whether they managed to keep the weight off.

I meant that until I was 50 I had a black and white attitude to losing weight. 'Eat less, simples' Once I hit 50 I began to realise that it wasn't that simple.

Nor do I think that my eventual weight loss was due to eating less on the 5:2 diet. In the interim (and the interim lasted nearly 15 years), I tried a lot of diets, including several where I ate less overall than on the 5:2 regime but my weight lost would be limited to about 5lb, which would be frequently return while I was still on the diet. I have no idea why the 5:2 worked when others didn't, but I do think the pattern of 'feast and famine', which is the essential basis of the 5:2 affects the way you metabilise your food.

The problem is people do make sweeping statements and then insult or are dismissive of anyone overweight. I am merely saying that I deplore the way overweight people, as a group, are demonised and accused of stuffing their faces, never taking exercise etc etc, without anyone bothering to look at them as individuals, whose story and life may actually be very different.

I think the first step is to stop making excuses for why you are putting on weight and realise that it is so easy to do it when you eat chips,fatty food, too many carbs, chocolate, deserts, biscuits, and drink sugary drinks.

Not singling anyone out here by the way I mean generally.

In WWI and WWII people were rationed (enforced diet) and almost nobody was fat. They also had a lot of worry I know, but they couldn't over eat because there was not enough food in the first place.

But your weight gain was due to altered metabolism because of the menopause Monica and now you've succeeded in losing that weight (well done incidentally) it's because you have cut out a substantial amount of calories in two days of the week by adopting the 5:2 diet.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say 'I thought like you when I was 50' though, because I'm 70 so have also been through the roller coaster that the menopause brings weight-wise. Perhaps because I realised I needed to eat far less due to my science background I was prepared for possible weight gain and able to preempt it.

My daughter suffers from an underactive thyroid so I'm well aware of the practicalities. And I do agree that some people are 'good-doers' ....this is a phrase used usually regarding horses. Some horses need plenty of feed just to keep the weight on and others need their feed severely restricting or they'd eat themselves into conditions like laminitis.

But there's a difference between making sweeping statements and stating a general rule. Generally people with a weight issue are eating more than their body needs.

I quite agree that most obesity is caused by over eating. In the past people could not afford to overeat and led more active lives so stayed slim.

I thought like you Anya when I was under 50. Lose weight? what was the problem? Stop eating and the weight would come off.I could really enjoy Christmas or a holiday without worry, if I came home 5lbs heavier, a couple of weeks cutback and I was back to normal.

My weight gain after the menopause and the difficulty losing it was a humbling experience.

I think what I dislike about much of the fat hating is the way everybody who is overweight is tarred with the same brush. If you ate less you wouldn't be fat. As a number of people, including me, have pointed out it is not that simple, there are those, and they could account for 10 - 20% of overweight people for who whom weight gain and loss are much more complicated and difficult and we should bear that in mind before making sweeping statements - as I learnt.

My doctor told me it is not exercise but what you put in your mouth that counts. He said you would have to run a few miles to lose a few calories. So remember 'A moment on the lips, forever on the hips'.

Oops! And there was me thinking this obesity epidemic was due to overeating, possibly overeating the wrong kind of food Moanica!! Whereas it's all to do with something else entirely

Of course there are other factors such as age, menopause, metabolic rate, brown fat cells, gut bacteria, thyroid issues, etc. everyone knows about these. But to suggest that eating too much isn't the main cause of obesity is just burying your head in the sand, or being in denial.

Gettingonabit I'm particularly interested in the part played by gut bacteria and how it affects metabolic syndrome. While there's obviously many reasons behind poor quality bacteria, including vaginal v C-section, breastfed v bottle fed, etc there is strong evidence that poor quality diet, especially one high in 'sugars' adversely affects gut flora.

Having access to information is not the same as knowing it is there or knowing how to access it and assess it.

There are times when we have threads on Gransnet posted by people looking for information which is readily available on line with the simplest of google searches. Being adept on a smart phone or tablet and being able to whizz your way round social media and shopping online can give a superficial impression of being new technology savvy but knowing how to find the information you want correctly presented is something very different.

DS is a university lecturer and his department run training sessions for new students to teach them how to search and find information and assess its reliability and relevance. The new students are meant to be our brightest and best with umpteen A levels and high grades.