Today I’ve been writing in response to a gentleman who weighs 175 lbs and wants to lose 20 lbs. Compared to many folks, he’s quite close to his weight goal, which is great! But it also brings up a note of caution that I’d have for him:
One
thing I need to warn you about, though, is what happens when you get to
your weight goal. If you approach dieting with the idea that as soon as
you hit your desired weight you can go back to eating exactly the way
you used to then your diet will do you no good at all. It may even harm
you.
When you get to your weight goal you can modify your eating habits somewhat so that you stop losing weight, but you can’t just go back to eating the way you are now or all the weight (and likely then some) will come back.
This is important to know when you are as close to your weight goal as
you are. If you had a hundred pounds to lose then the idea of making a
permanent change in your eating habits would set in long before you got
to the target weight. With only twenty pounds, though, (ten of which is
likely water weight that will come off in the first two weeks) you may
get to your weight goal so quickly that you are tempted to think of a
diet as just a temporary change of eating habits.
But the thing is: You body is used to weighting 175 lbs. That is where
you "set point" is right now. You can get away from the set point by
changing your eating habits, but if–as soon as you hit 155 lbs.–you
completely stop dieting then your body will try to trick you into
getting back to 175, because that’s where it’s used to being. It will
treat 175 as your normal weight and 155 as some kind of temporary
famine weight that it wants to get away from as quick as it can. You
have to stay at 155 for long enough for your body to establish a new
set point, for your body to think 155 as the "new" normal, and that
means a longer commitment to new eating habits than just the effort
needed to get down to 155.
Both Atkins and South Beach have modified, longer-term variants
(described in their respective books) to help you keep the weight off,
but you’re so close to your goal that you need to be aware of these up
front or you may think that you don’t need the diet any more and stop
as soon as you hit your weight goal (in which case five to ten pounts
of water weight will come back within a matter of days upon resuming
your previous eating habits, and fat weight will start accumulating
again also).
Hope this helps, and happy dieting!
I guess it’s time I took a look at this Atkin’s book. I just checked and I need to lose 90 lbs and holy cow it’s frightening. Though I’m not sure as an Italian who’s lived off pasta all my life how exactly I’m going to eliminate carbs from my diet.
If only I’d been born Irish or something I’d never have had a problem with overeating!
🙂
I recently had oral surgery and had to modify my eating habits as a result (all soft food). As an unintended result, I’ve lost over 10 lbs. in less than 2 months.
I mentioned the weight loss to the doctor, who said most of his surgery patients lost weight from the change in eating habits. Best part is, I’ve never really been hungry on this diet.
I don’t think the surgery part is required to lose the weight! I’ll post the diet here if this is permissible and anyone is interested. Just a few warnings:
– Exercise is required
– You have to eat oatmeal!!
Peace and God’s blessings to all.
well, if you were Irish you might end up eating potatoes like we did! My mother got a ‘deal’ on from a local farmer once and came home with 800 lbs.
don’t potatoes = sugar?
Technically, potatoes = starch, which is carbs and jumps your blood sugar like crazy.
I’ve lost 35 pounds since January. I didn’t want to do a low-carb plan, because, frankly, I like cereal and it just sounded dull. I lost the first 25 lbs. mostly using ideas written up by Jillian Michaels, trainer on NBC’s the Biggest Loser. Unfortunately, NBC’s taken down her plan, but I’ve still got it as a PDF — anyone who wants it can e-mail me. For the last 10 — after I plateued for a few weeks — I began getting help from ediets.com.
The best thing about ediets has been learning to portion things appropriately. I can still enjoy a steak, but now it’s about the third of the size it once was. I’m learning to eat a lot more fruits and vegetables, too, and I drink water more than anything else, which is a big change.
I’ve still got another 7 pounds to go to reach my goal of 165, but I am fairly confident that I’m building good habits and ‘eating skills,” if you will, that will help me keep the weight off when I get there.
(I’m also weight-training and doing a lot of cardio — on Saturday I ran 10 miles for the first time since at least high-school — took me around 90 minutes.)
How long does it take for your body to accept your new weight as the standard?