Weight Loss Math Uproar: Sorting it out!

An article recently published in the medical journal Lancet,[i] authored by Kevin Hall PhD, a biophysicist at the National Institutes of Health set off some erroneous news coverage on the effect of calorie-restriction on weight loss.

Since there is too much misinformation from the “reporting” on this research paper to try to set straight in a single blog, I’m going to devote my next few blogs to clearing up one piece of confusion at a time.

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Set Point Theory: a few more thoughts

As I talked about in my last post, the set-point, starvation-response, and metabolic-adaptation theories have kept changing over the years as their advocates attempt to maintain a viable theory. The Truth? Are there physiological changes associated with energy restriction? Yes. Do they prevent weight loss, or maintenance of weight loss? No.

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Does Yo-yo Dieting Ruin Your Metabolism?

The majority of clients I’ve worked with over the years had matter-of-factly accepted the notion that they had a “low metabolism,” possibly secondary to yo-yo dieting.

Several comprehensive reviews of the literature (including one by a National Institutes of Health expert panel), however, have concluded that the negative metabolic and body composition side-effects frequently attributed to yo-yo dieting are not supported by careful review of the data. The conclusions: yo-yo dieting does not have a lasting negative effect on resting energy expenditure (REE), or muscle tissue/lean body mass (LBM), and does not make future attempts at weight loss more difficult (at least from a physiological standpoint).

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