Dieting results in long term changes to hormones and muscle fibers.

[noamnety]

134. I didn't take it that way.

I think eridani is echoing the very real experiences of people who have been told all their lives that if you exercise more more more and just restrict your calories eough you will lose weight - only to try it and not get the results they were told to expect, and rebound when they stop restricting calories.

Yes the study is flawed for the reasons mentioned, but on a smaller scale it's also true that people often do slow their metabolism by doing all the things we've been told will increase our metabolism. It's true that much of the common wisdom about weight loss is counterproductive and leaves us feeling like there are no options when it doesn't work for us. It doesn't address that fat is its own organ, just like skin or lungs ... and it has a strong self-preservation mode, to the extent that it will rob other organs of nutrients. So even when we should be full and lord knows we don't need another lecture about portion control, the signal from our body might still be that it's hungry - and that's because our bodies in effect really are being starved even though we're eating a calorie surplus.

If we drop all the sugars and carbs we're told we will lose weight - and initially we do, but then our bodies stop producing leptin which we need to balance out insulin. Body builders know this, that's why they do refeeds. But traditional dieters aren't taught that stuff. If we do too much cardio it becomes less and less effective but gym trainers won't tell us that because it doesn't fit their business model to clue us in. It's an industry and it operates like one.

Programs that don't address all that tend to fail long term at impressive rates. It's not rude to acknowledge that, or to be frustrated about the ineffectiveness of those programs.