subject: Weight Gain [print this page] Author: michaelrussell Author: michaelrussell
Weight loss is more complicated than a simple equation. That was part of the conclusion drawn from a conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health in the spring of 1992. "Over weight is not a simple disorder of will power, as sometimes implied, but is a complex disorder of energy metabolism," stated the conference report. Many diets just don't work for the long haul. If you really want to keep the weight off for the rest of your life, you have to change your lifestyle. "Some day, I hope we'll look back on semistarvation diets the way we currently view such archaic practices as bleeding and purging," says C. Wayne Callaway, M.D., associate clinical professor of medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.c., and a member of the 1989-1990 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "You have to look at weight loss as a life time management issue," says Callaway. "A weight problem is not like having pneumonia where you can take a course of antibiotics and cure it. You have to keep working on your weight.
Dieting becomes a way of life for some people, particularly women, who lose and gain over and over again in a syndrome of "yo-yo" dieting. A 1991 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine indicates that you may be shortening your life span if you engage in such practices. And most research has shown that such weight cycling probably makes it easier to regain the weight by messing with your metabolism (the rate at which your body burns calories). "You lose eight pounds of fat and two pounds of muscle the first time," explains Gabe Mirkin, M.D., associate professor at Georgetown University Medical School in Washington, D.C., and author of The Mirkin Report, a monthly news letter on health, fitness, and nutrition. "Then you gain back ten pounds all of it fat. So you've increased your amount of fat by two pounds," says Mirkin. Ironically, adds Callaway, you've lost muscle mass, and muscle actually helps burn more calories. How do you lose fat wisely and increase your chances of keeping it off? The experts suggest.
