Calories, Protein, Fat, Carbs and Weight Loss ... or the Lack of It!

A recent study was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, which apparently ended the argument about the differences in levels of success between popular diet plans. In actual fact this is one of many studies reporting on the limited success of 'dieting for weight loss' plans.

This study followed 811 overweight subjects who were randomly split into four groups assigned to follow a reduced calorie diet. Each of the four diet plans cut around 750 calories from the normal diet. The targeted percentages of energy derived from protein, carbs and fats in the four diets were:

The diets were made up to allow the research team to compare low fat versus high fat and average protein versus high protein and the comparison of highest and lowest carb content. All participants were offered individual and group counselling instructions for the two years of the study.

This is what they found:

· After 6 months, participants assigned to each diet had lost an average of 13 pounds (6 kg), which represented 7% of their initial weight.
· After 12 months, all groups, on average, slowly regained body weight.
· After the two years was complete, each group had lost – and regained – roughly the same amount of weight, regardless of the group.
· 645 participants (80%), completed the two year trial (that is very high), with an average weight loss of 8.8 pounds (4Kg).
· Despite the modest overall losses, 14 to 15% of the participants had a reduction of at least 10% of their initial body weight.
· 31 to 37% of the participants had lost at least 5% of their initial body weight.
· Just 2 to 4% had lost 44 pounds (20Kg) or more.
· Only 185 of the participants (23%) continued to lose weight from 6 months to 2 years.
· By 2 years, in those assigned to a diet with 20% fat and those assigned to a diet with 40% fat the average weight loss was the same (7.3 pounds, 3.3 kg for both groups).
· At the end of the two years, weight loss remained similar in those who were assigned to a low protein diet (15%) vs those assigned to a high protein diet (25%) (6.6 pounds and 8 pounds or 3.0 and 3.6 kg, respectively).
· After two years, those assigned to a diet with 65% carbohydrates and those assigned to a diet with 35% carbohydrates had losses of 6.4 pounds and 7.5 pounds or 2.9 and 3.4 kg, respectively.
· Diminished adherence occurred between 6 months and 2 years in the trial, with some of the participants reverting partly to their old eating habits.
· Satiety, hunger, satisfaction with the diet, and attendance at group sessions were similar for all diets.
· The diets generally improved lipid-related risk factors and fasting insulin levels.

So the worthy points of discussion are:

The diets were much the same in pure weight loss terms. The weight loss profile over time was much the same for each group.

Dr Frank Sacks, lead researcher said:

“The effect of any particular diet group is minuscule, but the effect of individual behavior is humongous. We had some people losing 50 pounds and some people gaining five pounds. That’s what we don’t have a clue about. I think in the future, researchers should focus less on the actual diet but on finding what is really the biggest governor of success in these individuals.”

The key factor in Sacks’ opinion was that researchers need to find what it is that governs success in individual cases. He confessed that as an expert in the field of obesity research he did not 'have a clue’ about the factors governing success.

That is where Slimmer Secrets have an unquestionable edge.

Having studied success strategies in individuals and NOT diets and all the surrounding hullabaloo associated with them, Slimmer Secrets can teach you the principles of success, not how to be really strict with yourself and attempt to stick to a rigid eating plan. Simplicity rules.

Thanks for reading,

Take Care

My successful weight loss and weight maintenance

Thank you for visiting my blog - I do appreciate your time.

I thought I should give you an overview of my situation with regard to my experiences with weight loss and a little background about who I am.

My name is Ian Bracken ridge and I started writing about my experiences back in late 2008 in an effort to help those looking for ways to improve their own weight loss success. In short, I was a failed dieter, but eventually became a successful slimmer and moved on to become a successful maintainer for the last five years.

Having gained weight from around 1999, by living a typical British male life style of too many takeaways and TV dinners, too much boozing with the boys, little activity and a stressful occupation, I decided that it was time to address the increasing weight trouble in 2001.

A pitiful effort at dieting with the low carb diet approach combined with the shopping channel gym equipment (too embarrassed to go to the gym!) and the now apparently compulsory diet pills and left me disillusioned and frustrated at my failings.

I hadn't been accustomed to failure up to this point.

My background as a researcher in academia, followed by a career in the pharma industry had given me the requisite experience in interpreting scientific literature and so I decided to begin exploring for myself how to go about winning in this now problematic game.

I studied the primary literature and followed the ongoing battle of the day between the low carb vs low calorie diets which was raging in the media, although I recognized there was something lacking in all of this debate.

I tried the gym equipment, as I had trained with weights back in my late teens and early twenties, but I just couldn't find the motivation to hang in with this approach.

I finally began to discover successful strategies I could apply around late 2002 and chose to carry on learning while my weight dropped from roughly the 180lb mark down to around the 150lb (~80Kg to 68.5Kg).

I recognized at this time how serious a matter weight maintenance was to those who had slimmed down. I had read about the issue and had witnessed the troubles in other people with my own eyes, but I had never had to face up to this problem before.

Fortunately and I confess rather by chance, I had carried out strategies in a manner that allowed me to beat the yo-yo weight problem that overcomes so many dieters.

At this point, after my success, I stopped reading the primary literature and turned my attention to subjects elsewhere.

After a couple of years of taking on the challenging threat of weight yoyo-ing, I started to realise that the methods that had worked so successfully for me could be useful to other wannabee slimmers, and so I came back to look at the area only to discover the web weight loss arena utterly awash with marketing trash and what I can only describe as a raging community littering the bulletin boards with rather bitter postings!

[If you are trying to slim down nowadays you have my deepest sympathy. Browsing the internet, trying to separate the wheat from the huge amount of chaff, the tripe and the acrimonious ravings from the decent and real help is just about impossible].

I admit freely that at this time I did consider this as an opportunity.

I decided that my accomplishments could serve the community well, so I had to put together a web site to offer my knowledge and more significantly, my experience of weight loss and maintenance.

It's that experience that became the basis for what you are reading today.

I came across some quite amazing facts. The medical community may publically still push slimming down by dieting as a necessary evil if you like, but if you study their ‘trade magazines’, you will discover that there's little belief in weight loss plans (see for example: here ... this is a report penned by medics for medics, not actually for the likes of us, quote: 'When defined as sustained weight loss over a 5-year follow-up period, the success of even the best medical weight-loss programs is next to nil'). Even the medical community have no faith!

Admittedly, I'm a failed dieter too. I agree that dieting does not work typically, but remedying your own diet does work. I can show you how to do this and a lot more too.

The strategies I have developed are all founded on my own success. You'll discover this for yourself as you learn what I have learned. Study what I have studied over the years. Put into practice the techniques I put in place in 2002 and still use now.

The best thing from your position is that you'll be able to short-cut this process, if you choose to learn my techniques.

Nevertheless, that choice is completely your own.

Once more, thank you - for taking the time to read this. Your patience in reading my biog/blog will serve you well in your future success.

I hope you'll stay with me and acquire the strategies of success practised by so many successful slimmers, either following me here or at Slimmer Secrets, although no matter what you do, I wish you Good Luck in your weight loss effort.

I hope this has been of some use to you,

Best Wishes,

Watching Your Weight

For anybody with a weight problem, watching your weight is, I believe, the most critical element to success.

Last weekend I was out on both Friday night and Saturday. Nothing special in that ... no there isn’t ... but what is important to me, is that I know the impact a heavy weekend has on my weight.

How do I know?

Because I monitor my weight in a very regular way. And here is what it looks like for that weekend (wt in Kg's):



The snippet from my weight log tells you what exactly caused the spike. A heavy weekend with the boys. A lot to eat ... in fact ... all we could eat, along with several beers on Friday night, followed by a few more on Saturday night down the local with a couple of mates.

There is absolutely nothing special in this ... people do this every weekend ... but that is exactly my point. You can still get slim and stay slim living in the real world.

The secret is pretty much learning about what you can get away with. Yes I am careful the majority of the time. I take good care of myself.

Could I do better?

Of course I could. I could treat my body like a temple, not assault it with a massive Chinese meal and too much to drink in a weekend, work out at 6 in the morning, before a small bowl of muesli with a drop of skimmed milk, but then I would have little enjoyment with friends (note:- confession, I do actually like muesli, but I think you get the point).

Life is about the balance between what you have to put up with and what you can get away with.

Note what happened to my weight after that heavy weekend. After I put on that 1.5Kg, 3.3lbs in a weekend, it melted away and I ended up back down at my normal weight. I knew it would do this.

How did I know ... I have been watching my weight do this type of thing for years. Around seven years now. I know I can ‘get away with’ enjoying a weekend like this because of the care I take the rest of the time.

I give my body a chance to recover from this sort of weekend. I do this far less than I used to, but I still do enjoy it occasionally.

The critical factor is watching my weight. I learnt what I could do, how I could live and what I needed to do to be able to enjoy weekends like this without guilt and without creating another weight mountain to climb.

Your body gives you the clues ... you just have to look for them and then pay attention to them by reacting accordingly.

I may have lost weight years ago now and maintained for around five years but I still have a weight problem. I have to be prepared to accept that I may have a problem for life. More on that next time.

If you want to know more about how I manage my weight, or watch my weight, just sign up to follow my postings and visit me at http://www.slimmersecrets.com/. I have a lot of experience now about weight loss and maintenance – I may be able to help you too.

Feel free to drop me line anytime. Until next time take care of yourself ... and don’t forget to enjoy yourself too!

Ian

Obesity not individuals’ fault

I was reading an article today on the BBC’s website entitled “Obesity not individuals’ fault”.

It summarised a report stating that individuals can no longer be held responsible for obesity and claimed that government must act to prevent the nation “sleepwalking” into an obesity epidemic.

The authors (a bunch of 250 experts and academics) admitted proof that any anti-obesity policy worked "was scant" (this is true anywhere; I think most medics don’t believe diet and exercise works).

Following on from this they report that obesity was an inevitable consequence of a society in which energy-dense and cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work were rife.

Dr Susan Jebb of the Medical Research Council said that in this environment, it was surprising that anyone was able to remain slim, and so the notion of obesity simply being a product of personal over-indulgence had to be abandoned for good.

"The stress has been on the individual choosing a healthier lifestyle, but that simply isn't enough" she said.

Now in that quote Susan Jebb is absolutely spot on. We all know that the “healthier” approach to diet and exercise is not successful. Adherence to program’s of this type is incredibly low. Modern terms such as the “eat less move more” and the “be more active” as a euphemism for “exercise” are largely just spin.

But Dr Jebb went on to comment that the planning of our towns had to be improved to encourage more physical activity (there’s that word again), mothers should be breastfeeding to slow down infant weight gain, but the report stopped short of actually making ANY recommendations.

So in other words these 250 experts just got together and complained ... it took 250 of them to compile a report that states the bleeding obvious. They are (as far as I am aware) all experts, but could not make one concrete recommendation.

So what are you supposed to do if the experts won’t make any recommendations?

Well, lets go back to that article and the title “Obesity not individuals’ fault”.

The title has two key points. We live in a blame culture. We are looking for someone to blame. Someone or something to point the accusing finger at. The first point I make is “fault” in that title.

Why do we need to look for blame? As a society we live with our heads’ in the past looking for someone to blame. It might make us feel better, but it is not an effective solution is it? It doesn’t solve the problem. The obese are still obese and the overweight are still overweight.

So if it doesn’t solve the problem, what does it do?

Well the obese and the overweight often feel that they must be to blame, end up (wrongly) feeling guilty, consequently eat more to improve their short term morale and ultimately compound their problems.

The second point I want to make in this post is that it may not be individuals’ fault, but what good is that? Again no solutions.

The simple fact of the matter is that it is the individuals responsibility for how they act upon that knowledge. Well we may not be responsible for putting on the weight, but we are responsible for how we react.

We as a society, and this I believe is typical of many cultures around the world, live with our heads in the past and look for who’s to blame. We would be better to get our heads together and look for solutions to solve the problems, not just state the bleeding obvious.

The experts view was that the government needed to act. But if the government tells you what to do ... yet again ... doesn’t it make you feel like “here we go again ... nanny state”? It certainly makes me feel that way.

The better course of action for me was to accept that I had got too big and then start to look at ways in which I could help myself. I did take responsibility for my own actions and as far as I can see, it ultimately is down to us as individuals to act to solve our own issues ... to lose that weight if that is what we want.

If we look back to that article, Dr Susan Jebb commented that in this environment (in our society in which energy-dense and cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work were rife), it was surprising that anyone was able to remain slim.

Well the solutions lie in those factors ... we as individuals have to look at ways in which we can improve our actions within this environment. This is the world we live in. The experts want to change it. It won’t change ... and even if it does, it will take so long that we will all be dead and buried by then anyway. In reality, it will probably only get worse over time rather than better.

We aren’t to blame for this, why should we blame, but we can find better solutions to cope with how we deal with this ... our reactions to modern society. The answers lie within our own lives and our habits and actions within this crazy society we live in.

We can make smarter responses to it. We can challenge ourselves in easier ways than bashing our heads off the old diet and exercise routine.

More on what I did to succeed in losing weight and maintaining my trim self for five years now will follow as I get more of the website up and running.

Take a look if you fancy at:

http://www.slimmersecrets.com

In all honesty, there is not a load there at present, but I promise my aim is to help as much as possible. I may not be one of those experts, but I won’t keep quiet.

‘Til next time, take care,

Ian