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I can certainly see that eating a very small amount of food would increase the chance of not getting the necessary vitamins and minerals to be healthy.

However there seems to be a line of thought that if you eat too little your metabolism slows down and you stop loosing weight.

This seems counter intuitive that to lose weight you should eat more calories.

Certainly during famines there doesn’t seem to be many fat people around.

Does anybody know of any academic journal articles that support “the eat more lose more” hypothesis?

i think the issue is more the point "what you lose"

dropping cals should proportionately drop weight, but is that the real aim?

just as an aside Don...

what are your dieticians telling you to do after the op? 

I have had one trip to the dietician and he suggested about 5000Kj per day and about 75 to 100g of protein (meat).

Less if you were a female (short)

hi don, what does your average day consist of food/liquid wise?

just curious

kaz x

I don't have any supporting articles handy but the premise behind it is that like most systems in the body, the body works on a negative feedback loop. A deficiency in one area brings an increase in another area to maintain homeostasis (eg, Oxygen levels, PH, Energy conversion, Temperature, etc). As in all these systems, the body reaches a point where it reacts in a way that will enable itself to survive as long as possible (aka 'survival mode' that you hear Jillian speak of). Just like all these systems, the exact point will be different for everyone. I guess the figures given are based on the majority (or 2Z for those Stats freaks!)

Ray 

m0rgan:

 cals should proportionately drop weight, but is that the real aim?

Certainly as a person who has been over 70 Kg overweight losing weight is what I want to do.

I struggle with the concept that morbidly obese people who are trying to get fitter and healthier would not be better off for losing weight.

I would imagine there would be a lot of people on this forum that if they managed to consistently lose about 2 Kg per month they would be a lot slimmer that what they are now.

Perhaps I am cynical but there seems to be enough misinformation circulating that I wonder if groups with vested interests are making all sorts of unfounded claims that are blindly accepted as fact with no statistically significant scientific studies to confirm their hypothesis.

For instance I heard a rumour that Kellogg’s sponsored the study that suggested that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Would Kellogg’s have a vested interest in encouraging people to eat breakfast?

How scientifically rigorous this study was I have no idea because I can’t find any information.

It dose seem to support very different eating habits than those that would have been common when you had to catch and kill or pick your own.

Kellogs may well have spornsored the research, but it does make sense. We have our last meal of the day between 6pm-9pm, then sleep for 6-10hrs, so most people will go for 11 hours without eating. After eating every 2-4hrs during the day, I'd say the body would be ready for something by then. But maybe I just feel that way because it's part of my ritual to eat in the morning

Ray

what i meant before is that maybe dropping weight isnt the right focus, but dropping fat is

so maybe the strategy to look for is one that does the best job at keeping the muscle you have and dispatching the lard

 Hi Don

I dont know how much this relates but I once read this on the Better Health VIC website

Leptin and Dieting
Various studies have shown that blood leptin levels drop after low kilojoule diets. Reduced leptin levels may increase appetite and slow metabolism. This may help to explain why crash dieters usually regain their lost weight. It is possible that leptin therapy may one day help dieters to maintain their weight loss in the long term, but more research is required before this becomes a reality.

 This led me to search and find this abstract which has some additional links to some interesting looking academic research and journals I thought you might be interested in.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/66/6/1352?ijkey=5e691ad2ce9145e931aca66dd38157dec4af7dd3&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

The language was a bit too medical at times for me but I did find it interesting.  Hope you can continue to narrow down relevant papers.

  (P.S. not me of course... them)

Ray Kelly:

 but it does make sense. We have our last meal of the day between 6pm-9pm, then sleep for 6-10hrs, so most people will go for 11 hours without eating.

What seems sensible may depend on the argument put forward a counter argument could be.

It may be that back say 100 years ago they were a lot less obese people.

In these times people tended to work a lot more physically and so would have burned a lot more calories.

Assuming people should eat to fill there need for calories.

Does 4 hours of vigorous activity use more calories than 8 hours of sleeping?

In most cases I would suggest that it does so the empty tank in the morning theory seems flawed.

Even 4 hour of moderate activity would use more energy than 8 hour sleeping.

For the obese amongst us the fuel tank contains many days (or even months) worth of fuel.

Really the truth can only be found with some sort of reproducible properly run experiment.

Misinformation does little to achieve this.

 the way i see it...

 I think to lose large amounts of fat the quickest then the psmf is the way to go, but thats very extreme, and without monitoring your blood chemistry, quite dangerous.  That said, the thinking behind it might give you the answers you seek.

You may have lots of fat fuel, but our bodies dont just burn fat, they burn a combination of fat/protein/sugar.  The thing we really need to be careful of is you have enough protein for this burn without the body stealing it from your muscles.  Hence the protein target from the dietician (and maybe abit low at that)

Sugars, you can take or leave, depending on how human you want to feel and how crappy you want to feel during exercise

ergh I sound like a low-carber ( LCDave would be pleased)

Equally the dietician may have a lot of experience with obese people and he may think “if I tell then 100g they will actually east more like 200g” certainly the information they provided me with was that the period of weight los is a period do starvation.

I seemed to cope well on a VLCD but I would imagine different people cope differently.

I would imagine that diabetics would need a more conservative approach.

Where did the 4 hours of vigorous activity come from? I don't know many people that do that.

Most people seem to spend their days in a state slightly above sleep so I can't see how you would come to the conclusion that the empty tank theory would be flawed.

Just to give you an idea:

Sleeping = 0.9 Mets

Sitting = 1 Met

Standing = 1.2 Mets

Walking (slow) = 2 Mets

Average Occupation = 3-5 Mets

Vigorous Activity = > 10 Mets

 I really don't understand what you're trying to say with the 4hrs of moderate activity burning more than 8 hrs rest. Of course it does, and you feel hungry afterwards too!

There is no doubt that people with a great deal of body fat have loads of fuel, but do you really believe that the rate it's burned is not affected by factors such as food intake, environment, etc?

My thoughts were 500 years ago that most people worked physically perhaps my definition of vigorous activity is biased by being an office worker.

But really I personally have no idea what is really happening and there seems to be little science that is cutting thought the murky mire of contradicting information.

It does appear that a moderately active person gets a much grater deficit of calories between meals (assuming they don’t graze) than during 8-9 hours sleep.

So if the purpose of food is to fuel the body perhaps breakfast is overrated?

Perhaps it would depend if food is to replace energy used or to support future energy expenditure?

Really without good scientific and statistically significant research it is all just an interesting hypothesis with no basis in fact.

If there has been some good scientific research done it should be published somewhere and I would be interested in reading it.