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What is the Solution to Weight Loss Confusion

By Gregory Ellis

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Published: 09Aug2009
Word count: 720
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Many overweight people say they don't eat much and consequently can't believe that they aren't losing weight. In reality, of course, they're eating much more than they admit.

In a study, Dr. Paul Moe tested this contention in an overweight man. When he fed the man the amount of food he claimed to eat each day, the man lost weight.

In a New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article, researchers tested the claim that there are large differences in metabolism among overweight people, and as a result many fail to lose weight despite calorie-restricted diets.

Many Overweight People Who Fail to Lose Weight Seek Help from Many Sources, Including Physicians

Because of the widely-held belief that overweight people have a slow metabolism, physicians frequently treat them with thyroid or other hormonal therapies, but their weight remains the same.

Both the physician and patient can't understand why they don't lose weight even on a diet of 1,200 or fewer calories a day.

Two possible explanations are: 1) low resting energy expenditure (low metabolic rate) and 2) the consumption of more food than reported.

Resting metabolic rate is largely dependent upon the body's muscle and organ tissues, and of the two, the organs exert the greater impact because resting muscle doesn't burn many calories.

Usually, muscle tissue and organs (the lean components of bodyweight) vary with bodyweight. Heavier people have more lean (and fat, too) than those with lower bodyweight.

This relationship changes in athletes who have more muscle per unit height. Even with athletes though, metabolic rates vary about the same as in normal people.

In heavily muscled males, the difference in daily metabolic rate (predicted by two different formulas) comes to approximately 50 extra calories per day. This could make a slight difference in weight control for inactive people, but not for active athletes because of the high number of calories they burn in exercise.

In the NEJM study, resting metabolic rate related as expected to lean mass: metabolic rate increased as lean tissue increased. The subjects who claimed they had a faulty metabolism did not. It was neither faulty nor abnormally low.

In fact, the overweight people who claimed to have a low metabolic rate had a rate only 10 calories per day different from normal people, adjusted for the differences in bodyweight (overweight people always have a higher metabolic rate than those weighing in the normal ranges). This is less than 1% different and confirms the studies made by Dr. Moe.

Further, every other measure of metabolism showed that the people failing to lose weight were normal in every way.

This was true except in two critical areas:

* first, these people said they ate about 1,000 calories each day when they really ate 2,100

* thus, they ate 1,100 more calories each day than they thought, under-reporting their calorie intake by more than 50%!

* in addition, the real number was actually closer to 1,500 calories

* the measurements made by the researchers showed that they needed almost 2,500 calories each day simply to maintain their weight

* they over-reported their activity calorie burn by 250 calories a day

The main finding of this study was that "failure to lose weight despite a self-reported low calorie intake can be explained by substantial mis-reporting of food intake and physical activity."

There you have it: no difference in metabolic rate, no failure of the glands, just eating more than we think we eat and not moving around enough.

Do We Now Know the Secret to Weight Control?

We sure do.

We have all been subjected to a plethora of misinformation regarding the best methods of weight control.

Yet, science knows that bodyweight maintenance is contingent upon the mechanisms we've discussed in the preceding paragraphs. We must match the amount of food we consume with the amount of food we burn each day.

Nobody, anywhere, is spared from this dietary "cliché." I often sit with people to discuss a weight control program and ask them whether they know the answer to controlling their weight. Invariably, they look at me with a befuddled expression on their faces.

They are so overwhelmed with the competing weight loss choices in the marketplace that they have absolutely no idea that bodyweight is a very precisely controlled function and acts by One Law that's operative in Every Person.

They have no idea that they have absolute power and complete control over their bodyweight.

Dr. Gregory Ellis is a professional weight loss expert who's specialty is to uncover the hype and misinformation on this very important topic. Dr. Ellis's regular blog is a great place to keep your head on straight about weight loss and control.

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