Editor’s Note: Konstantin will be answering questions in the comments section at the end of this post so feel free to chime in with your thoughts and questions to keep the weight loss discussion going.  Konstantin will be posting a column on The Healthy Home Economist for the next few weeks.  If you haven’t been able to attain your dream weight no matter how hard you’ve tried, these posts will help transform your understanding of how to best attain your optimal weight using Traditional Diet  – without failure and side effects – for life!
Statistically speaking, losing weight and keeping it off permanently is just as challenging as becoming a millionaire, perhaps even more. I discovered the core reason behind this enigma while investigating the weight loss plateau phenomenon of low carbohydrate diets. This finding has helped me to cross the last nine yards toward attaining normal weight, and remaining that way for the past twelve years.
As all serendipitous discoveries go, this one was remarkably simple: weight loss diets fail because doctors, nutritionists, dietitians, and celebrities who promote them (and people who follow their advice) do not make a distinction between the reduction of body weight and the reduction of body fat. In other words, losing weight and losing fat isn’t exactly the same thing!
To understand what the distinction between the body’s fat and weight means in real life, let’s review the most basic physiology of weight loss:
- There are two principal components of body weight — constant weight and variable weight.
- The variable weight is a sum of all the digestive fluids inside your GI tract, the undigested foods already in your stomach and the small intestine, the stools inside your large intestine, and water, which can be safely lost with sweat, urine, and perspiration. These variable components of your body weight represent between 15 and 30 pounds, depending on your original diet, your current weight, and your digestive health.
- The constant weight is everything else – the remaining fluids, such as the blood plasma and lymph, the weight of your skin, bones, internal organs, muscles, and adipose tissue, or body fat – the sole substance you actually want to get rid of.
- Variable weight swings from day to day depending on the amount of foods and fluids you consume and expel, workload, and environment. A day on the beach, an hour in the hot tub, or an intense workout in a sweat suit, for example, can reduce your body weight by several pounds simply from sweating.
- Constant weight remains stable for longer stretches of time because loss of body fat is quite slow on any diet, and requires a considerable time to produce measurable and permanent results.
In practical terms, when you start a weight loss program, the first 10 to 20 pounds of weight reduction are almost exclusively made up from the following components:
(a) A reduction in the total weight of foods that you have consumed over the past few days. It may be considerable, especially if you love to eat.
(b) A reduction in digestive fluids. As soon as you start eating less, your body reduces the amount of saliva, gastric, and pancreatic juices involved in digestion. This amount ranges from 6 to 7 quarts per day, and may be halved by the reduced calorie diet.
(c) A loss of water throughout your body, particularly with urine. This happens because reduced calorie diets have a pronounced diuretic and dehydration effect.
(d) Loss of stools from your bowels. As you reduce food intake, particularly fiber, the total volume of stools inside the large intestine may drop three to five times.
I refer to the total of all of the above as a phantom weight loss. This universally ignored fact of human physiology is behind the ubiquitous promise of the near instant weight loss of 10 to 20 pounds on the covers of diet books, supermarket tabloids, and diet plans.
The precipitous – two weeks or less – loss of phantom weight also explains why so many people yo-yo back to their original weight as soon as they stop dieting – the cumulative weight of foods, digestive juices, water, and stools starts to come back the moment you return to your regular diet.
A quick reduction of the waistline is also a popular diet hoax: as your stomach, intestines, and bowel clear out their respective contents, the waistline around them shrinks down a few sizes, even though practically all the body fat remains exactly where it was before commencing the diet.
The proverbial weight loss plateau is another gimmick intended to absolve weight loss counselors from any responsibility for their advice, and to blame you and your metabolism for an inability to lose weight. The truth is – when you can’t overcome weight loss plateau, it simply means that you have lost only phantom weight, but not an ounce of body fat, and, quite possibly, you have gained even more!
So, let’s summarize what I have just described:
- Anyone commencing a reduced calorie diet will demonstrate an appreciable loss of weight, but this is not a loss of actual body fat, but a loss of phantom weight related to the much smaller intake of foods and fluids.
- Weight loss diets that have a pronounced diuretic and dehydrating effect may demonstrate an even larger phantom weight loss at the expense of body fluids. You can accomplish pretty much the exact same effect by restricting fluid intake or sweating out in a sauna.
- Reaching a weight loss plateau simply means that you have lost only phantom weight, but have not lost and won’t lose any body fat.
- A rapid weight rebound shortly after resuming a regular diet simply means that you’ve simply restored the weight of fluids, undigested foods, and stools in your body back to their original volume.
At this point you may be asking yourself a rightfully indignant question: why have all those diet books I’ve been reading for so long not been telling me about this?
Two reasons, I believe. First, their authors simply may not know or may not want to know about this unsavory phenomenon. Second, telling readers the truth — that it actually takes a LOT of time and a LOT of effort to lose body fat — gets in the way of selling no-sacrifice diet books, cookbooks, classes, tests, and diet-branded foods and snacks.
Since I am not constrained by similar goals, I can tell you the hard truth as it is: If you are contemplating losing weight, it must the fat under your skin, not undigested foods, fluids, and stools inside your gut. Losing actual body fat takes time, because even on a very low calorie diet you can (at best) count on losing just a few ounces (under 60 to 90 grams) daily.
So, the next natural question then is: how long does it take to lose real body fat, and how much effort is involved? Well, that is exactly what I am going to explain in the next post: How Long Will it Take You to Lose the Weight?
Once you realize and appreciate the difference between the loss of fat and the loss of mere phantom weight, you will have a much easier time managing the actual process of weight loss (not the make-believe one), and attaining your desired weight and size.
For your health and safety, please read these important Weight Loss Common Sense Warnings and Disclaimers before commencing a reduced calorie diet.
Can you please post the link to Konstantins post where the answers are — Thanks
Please see https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/the-real-reason-diets-fail-and-what-you-can-do-about-it, at the end of the post.
So far, this all sounds so complicated when it seems so simple to me: if I am in ketotis, I must be burning FAT… Please correct me if I am misunderstanding…
Kat,
You are the lucky one enjoying another stage of weight loss. The article above is addressed to people who are in the first phase of their weight reduction diet, and it explains why it is so easy to lose weight in the first few weeks but often becomes an insurmountable challenge later. You’ll see that this is a serious issue for many people by perusing other comments.
Thank you so much for your quick response; however, it was only two days of my not eating any carbs and testing went from “negative” to “trace” the day after and this morning, to “small,” but my understanding is that one is either in ketosis or not, so I am where I need to be to burn fat. Of course, the process will get even better and the ketones increase. I find it extremely easy to get into ketosis, the challenge is to just stay there and keep on losing weight. But once I indulge in any carbs, I am immediately out of ketosis and can’t resist when carb cravings immediately return with a vengeance. It is far easier for me to resist the temptations without having to regain a state of ketosis over and over. About a decade ago, I lost over 40 pounds without the temptations because I was not hungry and this assisted my determination to stay in ketosis. I only need to lose 20 pounds now so this will happen easier/faster since I have decided to just maintain a ketogenic diet: no carbs except for few low-carb veggies daily and no fruit. I don’t understand why I would be considered lucky and why anyone could not just do the same… It only takes a few days of concentrated effort and the willingness to hang in there while suffering the discomfort experienced during the initial carb withdrawal phase… It will pass soon enough… thankfully!
Kat,
Natural appetite suppression and sustained ketosis are key to successful and permanent weight loss. I’ll address both of these objectives in future posts.
Meanwhile, keep in mind that it takes time to reach and go beyond the “carb withdrawal phase” because your body stores a considerable amount of carbs in the form of glycogen. Until these stores inside the liver and muscle tissues are completely utilized, ketosis (actually, lypolisis is the proper term) does not start.
Thank you Konstantin for sharing your wisdom! People need to get away from diet dogma and try to simply become healthier by eating real food 🙂
Sarah, you are very welcome, and you are absolutely right. I have the dubious benefit of being 58, and when I was growing up in Ukraine in the sixties and seventies (oh dear God), older people around me consumed natural unprocessed foods in prodigious amounts, but the obesity rate was below 5% of the population.
Judging from the historical record, it wasn’t that much different back then in the United States. And take a look at present-day France: despite their gluttonous lifestyle and enormous consumption of alcohol, the obesity rate there is under 12%. So it isn’t only how much we eat, but what we eat.
Thank you for taking the time to write this post!
I am looking forward to reading more of your posts, Konstantin.
@Sarah, thank you too, for all the work you do to help people be informed with the truth. Your site has been a great resource for me.
I’m 53 and just starting menopause and in just the past few months I’ve gained around 15 lbs although I’ve been eating primally for several years now. I tried the Eat Fat, Lose Fat diet without success. Does the fluctuation of hormones during peri- and menopause really prohibit any fat loss? I also do 20 minutes of Kettlebells 3 times a week.
Valerie,
A precipitous decline of estrogen typical indicates an early stage of menopause. This state in a healthy woman’s body is very similar (from the physiological prospective) to being pregnant. Not surprisingly, your body lowers its rate of energy and structural metabolism in order to conserve nutrients (especially fats) for fetus development and lactation.
So what can you do about it? Eat less, eat natural, exercise more.
Thank you so much, Sarah and Konstantinos! I am very eager to read the whole series!
I really enjoyed your post here and look forward to more.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on low body temp, adrenal fatigue, and PCOS. The last two dr.’s told me I probably had PCOS since I wasn’t loosing weight yet have a healthy lifestyle. Do you know if PCOS could be a symptom of hormonal imbalance instead of the cause? I’m getting confused with the different advice on carbs for balancing hormones and raising body temp. I find my carpel tunnel and digestive system acts up when I eat grains/carbs. Thank you for taking the time to answer comments on the blog.
really looking forward to the next post!!!
I read a mention of adrenal fatigue, and have been trying to find more information on how to combat it lately. Unfortunately certain orthorexic (overly restrictive) habits and suppositions from the past few years may have contributed to my (yet-undiagnosed yet very probable) adrenal fatigue and inability to lose the last 20 pounds. There is also a lot mentioned about the link between thyroid insufficiency and adrenal fatigue. How does it all play together? There is also info that thyroid fuction is long term better if certain carbohydrates are maintained in the diet. Personally, I do much better on a diet with certain carbohydrates (properly prepared oats, buckwheat, sourdough bread, rice, lentils & beans) then on a low carb, high protein diet. Im sure this information will be in future posts, but any insight would be appreciated.
I’m another with poor thyroid function and adrenal fatigue. Low carb diets have left me feeling unwell. I do much better (energy-wise and mood-wise) when I include properly prepared grains in moderation. However, neither traditional foods nor low carb has helped me to lose weight.
I have gotten my poor/low temps up and energy is improving slowly. Restricting is the worst thing to do with adrenal fatigue.
I have a short list of real supplements, and an even shorter food restriction list, that is working extremely well for me.
Krystyna, celtymom, Paula,
I will address these conditions in future posts. As strange as it may sound, they are natural reactions to reduced caloric intake and have deep evolutionary roots. Unlike us, our ancestors didn’t have an immediate access to supermarkets, so when foods were in short supply, their bodies dropping their metabolic rate to survive the shortage. In fact, Weston A. Price addresses this very issue in his phenomenal “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.”
I will be a hard sell. I had low body temp all my life, for over 30 years. Even for 3 years after switching to a full traditional diet and discovering I had Celiacs. I had to add even more extra real food carbs in, along with lots of fermented veges, bee pollen, magnesium chloride, FCLO and HVBO before I saw the temps start to slowly climb. It took a long time! I am finally at what is considered normal and healthy, and no way am I going to go low carb again and sabotage all that hard work.
I just read Dr. Price’s book (finally!). Any chance you remember what chapter he addressed this in? I can’t seem to remember reading that or maybe I didn’t catch what he was saying. Thanks!
Konstantin (and Sara) thank you!!! I am so looking forward to this! I lost a lot of weight a few years ago on a low carb/fairly high protein/high fat diet and felt great. I was exercising moderately 3-5 times per week. Then I injured myself and stopped the exercise cold-turkey. I have regained more than half of the weight back and in spite of exercising for the last month, the weight isn’t budging. I am beyond discouraged, and am not sure what to do, so will be very attentive to your posts.
I’ve always referred to your Fiber Menace book and web information btw, after hearing you at the WAPF conference several years back. Great information!
Again, thank you!
Maureen,
Thank you very much for your kind words about our respective work. By the time we are done with this cycle, your weight will definitely budge, and we both — Sarah and I — are looking forward to greeting you in Atlanta for the 14th Annual Wise Traditions Conference: http://conferences.westonaprice.org/main-conference/