Is It Possible To Lose Weight Long Term

When it comes to weight loss, people want the weight off - and FAST! This is understandable. Extra weight can be uncomfortable, lower confidence, and cause worry over its health implications.

However, I want to emphasize that slow weight loss is not only healthier and more gentle on the body, but more likely to last long-term.

Weight regain is the elephant in the room when it comes to weight loss with the vast majority of those who lose weight regaining it back and often even more (time frames for regain vary but usually occur over one to five years).

Why It's Difficult To Achieve Long Term Weight Loss

One of the problems is dieting. The concept of dieting is reflected in deprivation and restriction - things that are not only disruptive to the body but are unable to be maintained. Although this can help shed pounds relatively quickly, this sets the body up for failure. What has also been found in many studies of restrictive diets that result in significant weight loss, is that metabolism slows down. But the worse part is that the metabolism often does not return to normal even when normal eating patterns return. This not only leads to weight regain but makes it harder to keep weight off since fewer daily calories are consistently needed to counteract the slowed metabolism.

Therefore, the most sensible approach to weight loss is slow, incremental, and sustainable habit changes that don't deviate from a normal amount of daily calories for your height, weight, age, and activity level. You want to take time to experiment with small changes and always be adjusting to find what works for you. Only do things that you could conceivably do as part of the way you eat long-term.

And this brings us to one of the key points: long-term weight loss involves an eating plan that does not focus on food CALORIES but on FOOD quality. I don't think I can emphasize this enough. Cutting calories does not work. Maintaining normal caloric intake with QUALITY food allows the body to adjust in a good way, without slowing metabolism, and without being thrown out of whack. High quality, natural foods without added sugars and processed grains help the body burn fat efficiently - even when caloric intake is normal.

Realistic Ways To Lose Weight Naturally The Weight Loss Guide

Not having to restrict calories to lose weight long-term is great. The caveat is that adopting a diet that is truly high quality and learning how to navigate a food environment that makes it difficult to eat healthy food affordably and conveniently takes time! But with this investment in time and a little bit of patience (ok, A LOT of patience!), you are setting yourself up for success in the weight loss game in the long run.

What also takes time is ensuring that the rest of you daily habits support long-term weight loss. This includes physical activity, solid sleep, and stress management, among other things.There's a disturbing truth that is emerging from the science of obesity, Kelly Crowe reports. After years of study, it's becoming apparent that it's nearly impossible to permanently lose weight.

There's a disturbing truth that is emerging from the science of obesity. After years of study, it's becoming apparent that it's nearly impossible to permanently lose weight.

Understanding Intentional Weight Loss

As incredible as it sounds, that's what the evidence is showing. For psychologist Traci Mann, who has spent 20 years running an eating lab at the University of Minnesota, the evidence is clear. It couldn't be easier to see, she says. Long-term weight loss happens to only the smallest minority of people.

We all think we know someone in that rare group. They become the legends — the friend of a friend, the brother-in-law, the neighbour — the ones who really did it.

But if we check back after five or 10 years, there's a good chance they will have put the weight back on. Only about five per cent of people who try to lose weight ultimately succeed, according to the research. Those people are the outliers, but we cling to their stories as proof that losing weight is possible.

What Is The Secret To Long Term Weight Loss? Study Sheds Light

Those kinds of stories really keep the myth alive, says University of Alberta professor Tim Caulfield, who researches and writes about health misconceptions. You have this confirmation bias going on where people point to these very specific examples as if it's proof. But in fact those are really exceptions.

Our biology taunts us, by making short-term weight loss fairly easy. But the weight creeps back, usually after about a year, and it keeps coming back until the original weight is regained or worse.

This has been tested in randomized controlled trials where people have been separated into groups and given intense exercise and nutrition counselling.

Maintaining Your Weight Loss Long Term, Is It Possible?

When Traci Mann analyzed all of the randomized control trials on long-term weight loss, she discovered that after two years the average amount lost was only one kilogram, or about two pounds, from the original weight.

So if most scientists know that we can't eat ourselves thin, that the lost weight will ultimately bounce back, why don't they say so?

Tim Caulfield says his fellow obesity academics tend to tiptoe around the truth. You go to these meetings and you talk to researchers, you get a sense there is almost a political correctness around it, that we don't want this message to get out there, he said.

Research Confirms Long Term Weight Loss Is Almost Impossible, Please Stop It!

Last fall, the Dubai government launched a 30-day weight loss challenge called Your Weight in Gold to encourage dieters and combat growing obesity in the Gulf Arab emirate. It should probably save its money if the current science is right. (Reuters)

You'll be in a room with very knowledgeable individuals, and everyone in the room will know what the data says and still the message doesn't seem to get out.

In part, that's because it's such a harsh message. You have to be careful about the stigmatizing nature of that kind of image, Caulfield says. That's one of the reasons why this myth of weight loss lives on.

Weight Loss Success

Health experts are also afraid people will abandon all efforts to exercise and eat a nutritious diet — behaviour that is important for health and longevity — even if it doesn't result in much weight loss.

Traci Mann says the emphasis should be on measuring health, not weight. You should still eat right, you should still exercise, doing healthy stuff is still healthy, she said. It just doesn't make you thin.

But eating right to improve health alone isn't a strong motivator. The research shows that most people are willing to exercise and limit caloric intake if it means they will look better. But if they find out their weight probably won't change much, they tend to lose motivation.

How To Lose Weight Quickly And Keep It Off Long Term

That raises another troubling question. If diets don't result in weight loss, what does? At this point the grim answer seems to be that there is no known cure for obesity, except perhaps surgically shrinking the stomach. 

Research suggests bariatric surgery can induce weight loss in the extremely obese, improving health and quality of life at the same time. But most people will still be obese after the surgery. Plus, there are risky side effects, and many will end up gaining some of that weight back.

Michelle Obama has been on an eat better campaign ever since her husband was elected to the White House. An estimated 2.1 billion people on the planet are now considered overweight or obese. (Reuters)

With Weight Loss, Slow And Steady Wins The Race

It's a shift in emphasis that reflects the emerging reality. Just last week the headlines announced the world is fatter than it has ever been, with 2.1 billion people now overweight or obese, based on an analysis published in the online issue of the British medical journal The Lancet.

Researchers are divided about why weight gain seems to be irreversible, probably a combination of biological and social forces. The fundamental reason, Caulfield says, is that we are very efficient biological machines. We evolved not to lose weight. We evolved to keep on as much weight as we possibly can.

Lost in all of the noise about dieting and obesity is the difficult concept of prevention, of not putting weight on in the first place.

Proven Ways To Lose Weight Without Diet Or Exercise

The Lancet study warned that more than one in five kids in developed countries are now overweight or obese. Statistics Canada says close to a third of Canadian kids under 17 are overweight or obese. And in a world flooded with food, with enormous economic interest in keeping people eating that food, what is required to turn this ship around is daunting.

An appropriate rebalancing of the primal needs of humans with food availability is essential, University of Oxford epidemiologist Klim McPherson wrote in a Lancet commentary following last week's study. But to do that, he suggested, would entail curtailing many aspects of production and marketing for food industries.

Perhaps, though, the emerging scientific reality should also be made clear, so we can navigate this obesogenic world armed with the stark truth — that we are held hostage to our biology, which is adapted to gain weight, an old evolutionary advantage that has become a dangerous metabolic liability.

The Truth Revealed: How To Lose Weight Quickly & Naturally

Kelly Crowe is a health and science reporter, who previously spent more than