Refuse To Regain

The Calm Before the Serious Holiday Storm

by Barbara Berkeley, MD We are in the lull between Thanksgiving and the start of serious holiday partying. Use this interval to get your weight back down below Scream. Time, too, to make your plans for December. Are you serious about wanting to avoid regain during this period? Is your goal a stable weight on January 2nd? If so, you had better start designing some behavioral rules and absolute cut-offs for the coming campaign. Things to notice this week: Holiday... Read more →

Our Seasonal Mantra: No Holiday Weight Gain. Stick With Me!

by Barbara Berkeley, MD With Thanksgiving receding in the rear view mirror we now enter the most challenging time of the weight loss year: December. The obstacles for maintainers are obvious: temptation, memory, comfort, emotion, celebration and anxiety. Put them all together and you have the perfect recipe for 5 to 20 pounds. While no one knows exactly how much Americans gain over the holidays, I do subscribe to the belief that whatever is put on is rarely lost. This... Read more →

Meatless Fruitless Mondays

by Barbara Berkeley, MD Cue the gorilla in the room. Can you please start roaring and waving your arms? What's that you say? Despite a killing rampage, still no one notices you? Attention America. You are dying of diabesity. You are living in a country where 46% of the adult population has some form of impaired sugar metabolism--either pre-diabetes or diabetes itself. Let me shout this. FORTY SIX PERCENT!!!! Adult diabetes is a disease that develops most commonly when people... Read more →

Board Review Factoid: Dieting to achieve weight loss is achievable for many. What defeats maintainers is the "energy gap". This is the increase in hunger and decrease in energy burn that happens after weight loss. Both factors are partially attributable to changes in hormones that cause ramped up appetite and less calorie burn. Closing this gap is the challenge of maintenance, both for scientists and for maintainers. Long term treatment to buffer these responses may be necessary. I like this... Read more →

Another interesting factoid. There are such a raft of hormones and chemicals in the brain and gut that tell us to STOP eating. There are so few that encourage eating by contrast. It makes one wonder about the degree of dysfunction that all of these pathways to decreased appetite are disabled in obesity syndromes. Read more →

As I prep for the ABOM (American Board of Obesity Medicine) board exams, I am coming across some nuggets that I find fascinating. I'd like to share them in these quick posts. At the recent ASBP conference I attended, nutrition professor Chris Melby spoke about the differences in calorie "harvesting" that occur between one person and another. For example, your gut flora may determine whether you extract more calories from food than someone else does...or whether more of these calories... Read more →

Planning for Maintenance: What To Do While You're Losing Weight

by Barbara Berkeley, MD I hope the message of Refuse to Regain (both book an blog) continues to be a clear one. Weight maintenance is tough and isn't accomplished without planning, strategies, and a healthy respect for its difficulties. This week a study from Stanford University showed that women who studied the skills of weight maintenance before they ever started dieting were better able to avoid weight regain after one year. The American dieting process is deeply flawed because it... Read more →