Ten things about weight loss: Part 3

Here's the next installment in the ten things you never knew about weight loss.....

4. Don't blame your metabolism

This part of the programme focussed on a lady who is overweight, but who seemed unable to lose weight. She explained that she ate a very healthy diet and has an active lifestyle. Despite watching what she eats and claiming not to eat very much, the lady remains overweight and never loses anything. Her explanation for this is that she has a slow metabolism.

I have discussed metabolism on earlier posts following a presentation that I sat through at the Healthier Weight support group. Basal metabolism is basically the number of calories a person needs to maintain their current weight - assuming a completely sedentary lifestyle. In other words, the number of calories (energy) needed to support the body's vital functions (e.g. breathing, heart-beating, digestion etc). The reality is, that heavier people need more energy to maintain their bodily functions, and therefore, obese people are likely to have a higher metabolic rate than thin people - completely contrary to the oft-claimed myth.

So, back to the lady in the programme. She had her metabolic rate accurately measured in the laboratory and it was found to be absolutely normal for a lady of her age and height! I think she was a little embarrassed and perhaps realised that her long believed claim was actually an excuse for not dealing with her weight probem more seriously. However, knowing that her metabolic rate was normal did not solve the problem - she still had to get to the bottom of why she was not losing weight. Michael asked her to keep a detailed food diary over a nine-day period. In the first four days she had to make a video diary at the end of the day. For the last five days she had to keep a written diary - and write things down at the time that she ate them. She was also asked to drink an isotonic drink each day and provide a urine sample. What she wasn't told was that the medical team were testing her urine on a daily basis and were able to tell exactly how many calories she had consumed!!! Talk about Big Brother! For the record, she should have been consuming about 2000 calories a day to maintain her current weight.

At the end of nine days all of this information was assessed. According to her video diary she was consuming about 1100 calories a day. According to her written diary she was consuming about 1400 calories a day. However, what was rather shocking is that the urine analyses demonstrated that she was actually consuming about 3000 calories a day!!!!

The experiment showed that when she recorded her food intake at the end of the day on the video diary, she 'forgot' 60% of her intake. This reduces to 45% when she writes it down as she eats it. This is good evidence that all of us are likely to genuinely forget things that we have eaten if we leave it until the end of the day to record it. How can we forget so much stuff? Well, Michael suggested that a big part of it is forgetting about sauces, dressings and snacks. It may also be that we delude ourselves that we are eating smaller portions than we actually are. I know I am guilty of this unless I religiously weigh everything. Breakfast cereal in particular, is so easy to under-estimate. I also know that my eyes are bigger than my stomach a lot of the time. For example, if I don't weigh my breakfast cereal I am much more inclined to put a huge portion in my bowl - and eat it. Whereas if I weigh it, I have a much smaller portion and yet still feel full when I have eaten it!!

So, the lesson here, is that if I am going through a period when I am not losing weight, rather than blaming it on spurious arguments about metabolism, get serious about accurately assessing what my intake is and deal with it. There is also a lesson to record intake as I eat - not leave it till the end of the day when I will be relying on my memory. And then the lesson that we probably all know already - unless we accurately count calories, we will almost certainly under-estimate intake.