There has been a long standing belief that rapid weight loss was harmful and that dieters should aim for no more then 1 to 2 pounds per week. For someone that may have more then 20 pounds to lose, that can look pretty bleak. If you have 100 or 200 or more, you're looking at a year or two of constant adherence to a restricted eating plan. Since most diets are not made for enjoyment, this is unrealistic. The typical dieter can stay focused on a restricted eating plan for a month or two, but certainly not years! Along with that is the belief that rapid weight loss leads to rapid regain. An example of unproven theory accepted as fact.
15 years ago when weight loss surgery started to become more common, the expected rate of weight loss kind of flew in the face of the previous recommended loss of 1 or 2 pounds per week. Patients were expected to lose 5 or 10 times that much. Why was it suddenly ok for a body to drop weight quickly? What was different?
Fast forward to the ever popular reality (?) TV shows that feature obese cast members and their trainers who miraculously transform them in to weight loss machines, sometimes losing well in to the double digits in their weekly weigh ins.
So in spite of these contradictions, we were still being advised the same old tired thing...aim for 1 to 2 pounds per week. Anything beyond that was deemed "unsafe". Like most theories that are never proven, but repeated enough over the years for people to assume they are fact, this directive never had any foundation to stand on. It's true that for most people to lose weight rapidly, it requires extreme caloric restriction and that usually means nutritional deficiencies. THAT can be potentially harmful. The body needs nutrients to thrive and survive. Going several months on say, 500 calories of conventional food would be unwise since it would be nearly impossible to consume what your body needs. The typical dieter would soon grow weary of so little food and feeling so weak and would have a good possibility of rebounding right back to the old eating habits that originally made them obese. So in reality, it is not the rate of fat being burned for energy that is the problem, it is depriving your body of nutritional building blocks to maintain good health. Now that makes sense.
Unfortunately, in the case of weight loss patients who rapidly lose large amounts of weight quickly through not only caloric deprivation, but also nutritional deprivation, it can leave them vulnerable to long term consequences related to nutritional deficiencies. They are burning not just fat for energy, but muscle and other lean tissues. The fact that a good majority of them end up gaining the weight back suggest that the body is hard wired to survive and will demand nutrition. Old eating habits creep back in along with the drive to compensate for what's lacking in the diet. Patients learn to override the surgery by stretching out the stomach again. They may have lost weight rapidly, but gaining the weight back has nothing to do with how fast they lost the weight.
There is a light shining on this subject now. Recently there has been research that has proven the rate of loss has no bearing on any fat regained after the dieter goes off their plan. In other words, slow loss does not mean long term maintenance. Finally! You can read the actual results here:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(14)70200-1/abstract
The research that was done during the development of Cambridge all those years ago by a team of scientists and doctors in the UK, proved that when fed complete balanced nutrition, the body was able to lose the excess fat rapidly with no damage done to lean tissues. This is key to the safety of rapid weight loss and long term maintenance. In spite of these findings, Cambridge was still looked at with suspicion in it's early years because it went against that old 1 to 2 pounds per week idea. People were losing an average of 4 to 7 + pounds per week on less then 400 calories a day while remaining perfectly healthy. We were still subjected to all sorts of doom and gloom predictions by people who knew nothing about the diet, including media doctors who never even read the label.
The new research that has been done studied controlled groups of dieters. One group was put on a very low calorie diet that resulted in rapid weight loss, while the other was given one to follow that gave 1 to 2 pounds per week. The goal was to determine if rapid weight loss resulted in more regaining of weight post diet, along with any other health consequences. What was found was that while the 2 groups both lost weight in the allotted time, the rapid group had lost much more. Both groups some time later were then evaluated for regain. Both in fact, did regain approximately the same percentage of the weight back, but the rapid group, because they had experienced far more weight loss initially, were still way ahead of the other group. In other words, if rapid group A lost 30 pounds, while slow group B only lost 5, and both gained back 4, it is easy to see that a rapid weight loss is desirable when done safely. On top of that the rapid group was far more motivated to remain healthy and in control of their diet due to a significant life style change.
Cambridge has been proven over time to be the best option for safe rapid weight loss. Given the choice to lose 1 pound per week on a conventional diet, or possibly 7 on Cambridge... the choice is obvious. All those old theories of the body going in to "starvation mode" or the metabolism slowing down or the nay-sayers predicting you will gain it all back because you lost if fast have been proven false. It's time to embrace the idea that the most beneficial way to lose the weight is as quickly as possible as long as your body is being fed completely as it is on Cambridge. Obesity is a killer and the sooner you leave it behind, the better for your long term health.
