How to get my weight down after Lupron treatment stops

Redwing57:

Your article is 45 years old. Since it was published there have been other studies that were less sanguine about the health effects of long-term fasting. Their subject did unusually well on his fast.

But in those 45 years people have grown fatter and fatter. So, yes, with enough motivation it is possible to overcome your weight homeostasis and lose weight. But not many people are willing to stick to the Buchenwald diet plan and other, less-rigorous, calorie-counting diets have lousy success rates when attempted by free-range homo sapiens.

My point in talking about the feedback mechanisms your body uses to try to maintain body mass with fluctuating energy inputs isn't to say that if you eat only a hundred calories a day you won't lose weight. I'm saying that if you eat 100 calories less a day you won't necessarily lose any weight since that falls within the range your body's feedback mechanisms can deal with by reducing your metabolism, tinkering with thermogenesis, and making you less energetic.

Interestingly, Cheetahs, like all cats, spend a lot of their time sleeping. During a high-speed run, pursuing prey, they expend energy at a furious rate but they can't maintain it for more than a few minutes. They are ambush predators who rely on speed and stealth in hunting. They have to get close before they start their attack run. Give an impala a hundred yard lead and it will outrun a Cheetah 100% of the time.

Cheetah's energy expenditures are actually quite close to that of humans. (See this from National Geographic.)

Interestingly, they eat 6 1/2 pounds of impala meat (or similar) a day which represents a whopping 5000 calories. Why don't they get fat?

The answer is obvious.

Low-carb diets.

Redwing57 said...

PeterDisAbelard. said...

...
Interestingly, they eat 6 1/2 pounds of impala meat (or similar) a day which represents a whopping 5000 calories. Why don't they get fat?

The answer is obvious.

Low-carb diets.

Or, maybe it's a diet of impala meat? Fairly equivalent conclusion. Maybe our problem is we just don't eat enough impala! Wonder if it makes good burgers?

Nah, just kidding. There was a TV show many years ago, maybe National Geographic, that went through the energy budget of many different animals. I hadn't thought of it that way before, but it was pretty interesting. It went into some depth on the cheetah because of its unusually precarious situation. As you point out they only work by ambush. It appears they have to be very careful about doing so, because the show contended that they only have a very few, like perhaps 3-5, full-on sprints in them. If they aren't successful landing prey with one of them they won't survive, they'll be out of fuel. I don't know if that's true, but it is an interesting way to look at how nature fits organisms into various niches.

So why do you suppose people keep getting fatter? Is food just that much more available today? This article is a little alarming. Not a very good trend. It suggests "...three factors: we're eating less healthy food, we're eating more of it, and we're not moving around as much."
The average American woman now weighs as much as the average 1960s man

50 years ago, maybe more, our medical and governmental authorities decided that fat was bad, saturated fat is really bad, and started strongly advising the population to eat more carbs and less fat. Because fat makes you fat and gives you heart disease as well(they said). And since saturated fat was the worst of it, they asked us to switch to PU vegetable oil, some of it hardened via hydrogenation(tranfats). And they asked us to cook with PU oils which when heated do bad things. In order to replace that saturated fat at all costs.

It seems they started America on this huge diet experiment with little to no evidence(good clinical trials) that their ideas were true. The clinical trials were either lacking or did not prove the theory. They also asked us to move more. Hence gyms and joggers are everywhere, many multiples more than in the past, though apparently we have not moved enough to make up for more carbs and less fat. So what has the result been for obesity? Diabetes? This answer also seems obvious. I would also ask about heart disease which goes hand in hand with diabetes and pre-diabetes? I think there might be just as much heart disease as there ever was, maybe more, though their ability to rescue us via surgery and stents is vastly higher.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 6/8/2018 2:00:42 PM (GMT-6)

InTheShop said...
The answer is: low carb high fat diets.

This meta study found no link between heart disease and saturated fats:

Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648

Somebody said...
The pooled relative risk estimates that compared extreme quantiles of saturated fat intake were 1.07 (95% CI: 0.96, 1.19; P = 0.22) for CHD, 0.81 (95% CI: 0.62, 1.05; P = 0.11) for stroke, and 1.00 (95% CI: 0.89, 1.11; P = 0.95) for CVD. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not change the results.

Those figures, showing not even a smidgen of harm, and closer to an actual benefit, are based on "extreme quantiles of saturated fat". I am afraid we have been sold a bill of goods by the medical and governmental authorities. And I'm afraid it has done much harm.

Bob656.

You said it has been 1 year since your last Lupron shot and that you were to be on Lupron for 24 months starting 3/16. Can you clarify that? Was the last Lupron shot supposed to last 1 year?

In any case, have you had a blood testosterone test?

Reading this forum, many people say that it takes your body about as long to recover to a normal testosterone level as the time you were on Lupron.

In your case, if that time estimate is true, you may not see your testosterone level return to normal for another year.

If your testosterone is still very low, and the low testosterone resulted in the big weight gain, then there is probably nothing you can do to lose the extra weight except to wait another year for your body to recover from the Lupron.

Your best plan may be to get that testosterone blood test and then wait patiently for your body to return to normal.

My philosophy has always been high protein, low carb. By "carb" I mean starches like snacks, chips and most fried foods. I do not restrict sugar but am not a big fan of sweets. A little ice cream or a donut now and then keeps us happy and satiated and less likely to binge. As I tell those opposed to eating meat, meat is what keeps you from getting hungry.

I've been on Lupron for 18 months and haven't gained any weight to speak of. I did add ten pounds while on a high dose of gabapentin last year following radiation but have since taken that back off. High protein, reasonable consumption of fats, dairy and sugar, but limited starches. Not saying that it would work for everyone, but it has worked for me.

Regarding the "butter book", my dad passed away thirty years ago but at the age of 79, which is not bad for his generation. He always cooked with real butter, used cream in his coffee and ate steaks. He was opposed to such things as margarine and shortening, which he called "ersatz". I suspect he had esophageal cancer, but he wouldn't confide in any of us. Again, that was the way of his generation.

And about the cholesterol hoax... I suspect that upon autopsies, researchers found an accumulation of fats in the corpses' arteries and concluded that the body had consumed too much fat... not unlike how long ago many noticed that people died when they bled a lot, so concluded that they must have had too much blood... hence bloodletting and leaches.