Diet Expectations

One of the problems with weight loss seems to be that everyone wants a quick fix. Yeah, I'd love to be able to do a month long program, lose the excess, and return to what I was doing before. We all would.

But life isn't like that, and a couple of articles over at the excellent Diet Blog are worth a look.

First of all, a sobering review of various trials says that the average weight loss after 12 months was just 6% of start weight. Even if you take my start weight of 273lbs, that's still only about 15lbs or so. Not much.

They also have a "ask the readers" for Weight Maintenance tips. Definitely worth a look. My own process here is slow and steady does it. I'm really trying to make sure I lose weight slowly: the last thing I want to do is to slow down my higher-than-average metabolic rate. If I can burn 300 calories a day more, that means I can eat 300 calories a day more and still lose weight. If I try to lose faster, I'm likely to bring the base rate down, and that will make maintenance harder.