I've been thinking a lot lately about weight gain. Probably because I have gained a few pounds myself these past few months! After reading Intuitive Eating, I started paying more attention to my hunger and fullness cues. In my world, the frequency of hunger >>>>> the frequency of fullness. A blog reader asked me recently if I was consistently hungry throughout my weight loss. In general, the answer is no (I have a low tolerance for hunger). But thinking back, there were plenty of times when I could have eaten more and felt more satisfied but chose not to because I made the mental - not physical - decision to lose weight at that point. I wasn't still hungry in the growling-stomach-feed-me sense, but I felt closer to empty than full on a satiety scale and chose not to have that second helping or evening snack.
So I wonder, are humans programmed for weight gain? And is weight loss unfavored by the body?
If you think back to our nearest ancestors - hunter gatherers, cave men, and the like - their bodies probably would not have wanted to lose weight. It would have put them at risk for their life and health because they needed to have fat stores to survive famines and natural disasters. So it makes sense that nature would have selected for metabolisms that stored fat efficiently and had stomachs that got hungry frequently enough to keep some extra pounds on their frames through reminders to snack.
With that in mind, if you let a person just eat whenever they are hungry, will the tendency be for weight gain? Based on experience, my gut ( J ) says yes. Assuming physiological and emotional hunger are acknowledged, I think there is a natural, gradual, tendency toward weight gain. And if this short-term gain isn't countered with activity or lighter days of losses, it will turn into a long-term gain. How many older people do you know who weigh less than they did decades before? It seems to me that unless you choose to make decisions that override your natural cues, the body does prefer to be gaining over maintaining.
When you are losing weight, you are using more fuel than you are eating, so it makes sense that you would feel hungry. If you didn't have a calorie deficit, you wouldn't lose. Maybe you wouldn't feel hungry after each meal or each day but it would eventually catch up. The volumetrics approach to weight loss says to eat lots of water and fiber-filled foods to fool your stomach, but I bet after a few days the stomach would figure it out and demand more calorie dense foods, hence the cravings for desserts and peanut butter so many of us have. So then, is hunger inevitable during weight loss? My gut says yes here too. To me, this is the number one reason why a slow + steady weight loss is much more safe, effective and permanent than a short-term one. The deficit is minimized and so is the hunger, so it is easier to cut back just a little at a time.
I'd love to hear what you guys think!
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Comments: 11
Well after going weeks starving myself without any real weight loss I'd finally go off the diet and would end up weighing several pounds more than when I started. By the time I was 40 I weighed over 380 pounds. I decided I was killing myself and decided to eat healthy rather than worry about weight loss. Ten years later my weight has slowly dropped to just under 300 pounds and I continue to loose about 10 pounds a year.
I agree that our bodies obviously have the ability to gain weight. But I believe it's more of a matter of how often a person is exposed to food shortages. The mind knows your just trying to loose weight. But our bodies only know that food has become scarce. To compensate our bodies adjust our metabolism accordingly. When food becomes plentiful again our body reacts by putting on extra weight in anticipation of the next shortage. Human bodies do not automatically stay in weight gain status. Dieting is dangerous and rarely works. And when it does work, 90% of those who successfully loose weight through diet and exercise, gain it back within 2 years. My comment is; if any other medical treatment had that kind of failure rate, it would have been abandoned long ago.
I think in general eating to satisfy hunger is a wonderful way to "maintain" weight but it is easy for weight to creep on because a 1-2 lb gain isn't *that* noticable (esp if you aren't weighing regulary & just going by the clothes-fitting method) so before you know it, you could experience a 5 lb gain which is noticable & tougher to correct.
In my opinion it would be a tough situation to deal with because I suspect the idea of going back to calorie counting is unappealing BUT how else can you *know* you are reigning in the gain? Life has so many "special occasions" so without a more structured plan, I think it would be difficult to lose. Obviously balance is essential here. But I think its very easy to for people at goal weight to say " just listen to hunger" or "don't count calories - its too restrictive" because they are maintaining & likely used calorie counting to get to goal originally. I find its more difficult to be so "easy-going" about the process when you are dealing with a gain or trying to lose some weight.
In the end for *me*, I have been at goal weight before & gained about 15 lbs back which took me forever to lose (I'm still trying to lose my last 5 lbs). So next time I reach goal, I too want to be mindful of hunger & not a slave to the scale BUT I will want to keep on top of even small gains so I don't have to deal with such a large number again. It was too hard emotionally & physically to tackle such a large number on my small frame.
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/set-points-settling-points-and-bodyweight-regulation-part-1.html
You really ought to read Lyle McDonald. He'll teach you more about nutrition than you'll ever learn in school.