The authors of a research study about OBESITY MYTHS recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said the following statement has proven NOT to be True:

 “Large, rapid weight loss is associated with poorer long-term weight outcomes than is slow, gradual weight loss.”

This “MYTH” came from:

“…a reaction to the adverse effects of nutritionally insufficient very-low-calorie diets (less than 800 calories per day) in the 1960s; the belief has persisted, has been repeated in textbooks and recommendations from health authorities, and has been offered as a rule by dietitians.”

In the 1960’s, very-low-calorie diets had inadequate protein content and a few other nutritional deficiencies, which resulted in rapid loss of lean tissue, thereby reducing metabolic rates beyond what may have been expected with a more gradual nutritionally balance weight loss.

However, here in 2010’s, low-calorie formula diets are generally high in protein and nutritionally balanced (except perhaps for fibre) and have in fact been shown in some cases to preserve lean body mass compared to simply eating less. Today, there are many documented situations where rapid weight loss by the use of Dr.-Supervised-low-calorie-diets are both indicated and  beneficial.

The study points out, that when comparing longer-term outcome data … more than a couple of years ….,  people who lose large amounts of weight rapidly, have no worse chance of keeping weight off, than those who lose weight slowly. The ultimate question with any diet is whether or not patients can live on a restrictive caloric intake, and possibly a rather high amount of physical activity, in the long-term.

Maintaining a significant amount of weight loss, is ongoing hard work.

Although we might assume that the radical changes which are needed for fast weight loss are less likely to be sustainable than more moderate and gradual changes, we must recognise that the effort to keep a given amount of weight off is the same irrespective of whether that weight loss was fast or slow.

Effort Shock is discovering that what you want
costs a whole lot more effort than you thought it would.

 Weight-Loss and Weight-Loss Maintenance is a good example of this.
See more about Effort Shock in the excellent article below - written by David Wong of Cracked.

“I think The Karate Kid ruined the modern world.

Not just that movie, but all of the movies like it (you certainly can't let the Rocky sequels escape blame). Basically any movie with a training montage.

You know what I'm talking about; the main character is very bad at something, then there is a sequence in the middle of the film set to upbeat music that shows him practicing. When it's done, he's an expert.

It seems so obvious that it actually feels insulting to point it out. But it's not obvious. Every adult I know--or at least the ones who are depressed--continually suffers from something like sticker shock (that is, when you go shopping for something for the first time and are shocked to find it costs way, way more than you thought). Only it costs effort. It's Effort Shock.

We have a vague idea in our head of the "price" of certain accomplishments, how difficult it should be to get a degree, or succeed at a job, or stay in shape, or raise a kid, or build a house. And that vague idea is almost always catastrophically wrong.

Accomplishing worthwhile things isn't just a little harder than people think; it's 10 or 20 times harder. Like losing weight. You make yourself miserable for six months and find yourself down a whopping four pounds. Let yourself go at a single all-you-can-eat buffet and you've gained it all back.

So, people bail on diets. Not just because they're harder than they expected, but because they're so much harder it seems unfair, almost criminally unjust. You can't shake the bitter thought that, "This amount of effort should result in me looking like a panty model."

It applies to everything. America is full of frustrated, broken, baffled people because so many of us think, "If I work this hard, this many hours a week, I should have (a great job, a nice house, a nice car, etc). I don't have that thing, therefore something has corrupted the system and kept me from getting what I deserve, and that something must be (the government, illegal immigrants, my wife, my boss, my bad luck, etc)."

I really think Effort Shock has been one of the major drivers of world events. Think about the whole economic collapse and the bad credit bubble. You can imagine millions of working types saying, "All right, I have NO free time. I work every day, all day. I come home and take care of the kids. We live in a tiny house, with two shitty cars. And we are still deeper in debt every single month." So they borrow and buy on credit because they have this unspoken assumption that, dammit, the universe will surely right itself at some point and the amount of money we should have been making all along (according to our level of effort) will come raining down.

All of it comes back to having those massively skewed expectations of the world. Even the people you think of as pessimists, they got their pessimism by continually seeing the world fail to live up to their expectations, which only happened because their expectations were grossly inaccurate in the first place.

You know that TV show where Gordon Ramsay tours various failing restaurants and swears at the owners until everything is fine again? Every episode is a great example. They all involve some haggard restaurant owner, a half a million dollars in debt, looking exhausted into the camera and saying, "How can we be losing money? I work 90 hours a week!"

The world demands more. So, so much more. How have we gotten to adulthood and failed to realize this? Why would our expectations of the world be so off? I blame the montages. Five breezy minutes, from sucking at karate to being great at karate, from morbid obesity to trim, from geeky girl to prom queen, from terrible garage band to awesome rock band.

In the real world, the winners of the All Valley Karate Championship in The Karate Kid would be the kids who had been at it since they were in elementary school. The kids who act like douchebags because their parents made them skip video games and days out with their friends and birthday parties so they could practice, practice, practice. And that's just what it takes to get "pretty good" at it. Want to know how long it takes to become an expert at something? About 10,000 hours, according to research.

That's practicing two hours a day, every day, for almost 14 years.

Nobody told me how hard this was going to be.

See "Rocky" Training Montage below:

Changing is hard.

 When we’ve done something the same way for all our lives, it’s not easy to do it differently. Getting used to changes takes a long time. But if we want a different result in life we have to change what has been – up to now - our normal. When we try to exchange new habits for old habits, we can feel anger and sadness, even when those habits are no longer useful.
We need to take a realistic look at our past and present mistakes,  and come up with some compassionate solutions that will make a difference. Having an open mind means embracing the constantly changing nature of everything. What was good for us yesterday may not be right today. What is right today, may be wrong tomorrow. Change never stops. Many people fall into the trap of thinking they must find A WAY and stick to it forever. But the reality is that everything in life is constantly in a state of flux.

 We need to always be willing to learn something new and adjust our actions accordingly. This is a basic secret to success in anything. It is also one of the most difficult because being open-minded means admitting to the possibility of being wrong, and we prefer being right. Learning involves making mistakes, but mistakes can teach us things.