[JamesBarney]

"Sustainable weight loss is achievable by everyone, whether you're 40 or 50 years or 400 pounds or 600 pounds."

While I applaud those individuals that have kept off weight long term, the science disagrees that is an achievable goal for everyone.(only about 5% of people who successfully lose large amounts of weight will keep it off long term)

For example here is what happened to the contestants on the biggest loser.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weig...

The body will fight very hard to get back up the heavier level. It play nasty tricks such as increasing hunger, decreasing metabolism, and nastiest of all physiologically sabotage the part of the brain that is responsible for conscience regulation of food intake(it turns off willpower specifically for food).

[m00x]

Do you have any sources for the 5%?

More often than not, the cause of the weight gain is because they fall back to bad eating habits. If you can lose it, you can keep it off. Changing to long-term good habits is extremely difficult though.

[JamesBarney]

http://m.ajcn.nutrition.org/content/82/1/222S.full

Here's one that mentions 20%. But that's at a year. The % changes depending on how long you follow up(drops all the way out to 5 years.). This is study uses keeping off 10% of body weight as the definition of success which is far less than the amount that it takes to move an individual from obese into the normal healthy range.

If you can find a study where a majority of the individuals experienced significant and long term(3 yrs+) weight loss I would be happy to see it.

[sidlls]

The "Biggest Loser" contestants undergo an extremely rapid weightloss regimen. It's not clear that similar slowdowns would impact more gradual weight loss regimens, or that it would affect people who start dieting at a lower (but still fat) weight.

[JamesBarney]

Why would you think different rates of weight loss would have different effects? I'm not aware of any studies that say that. Also the hypothesized reason weight loss maintenance is so hard is changes to leptin level which related to absolute level of body fat, not rate of body fat loss.

[fatso83]

This is known for decades. If you drop too fast over too long period of time your metabolism changes base burn rate and you will have a hard time losing fat/staying the same weight once your normalize your diet. There is a reason diets like PSMF at restricted to 1-2 weeks. Not healthy over time.

[JamesBarney]

I've now read several studies about successful long term weight loss maintenance. And none of them mention speed of weight loss as a factor. The Wikipedia article on it doesn't mention it.

Also here's a study that suggests the exact opposite, that rapid weight loss is correlated with long term success.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780395/

[sidlls]

I am not an expert in this area. I speculate the rate is important due to hysteresis in the system.

[JamesBarney]

The system definitely experiences hysteresis.(if you drop and regain weight you're metabolism will be slower) But I haven't seen any evidence that the rate of weight loss has any influence on it. I can see the intuitive appeal, but I haven't seen theoretical, epidemiological, or any other empirical evidence for it.

[KurtMueller]

From my understanding, they dropped body weight very quickly, not allowing their body to adjust to new eating and exercise habits. They (seem) to go to extremes -- either all or nothing.