Why Weight Loss Can Be Harmful to Your Health

Yes, you can lose weight by reducing calories whether through a calorie-cutting diet, bariatric procedure, or pharmaceutical. But the effect is almost always temporary and followed by a return of weight followed by significant downturn in health. You were also likely not advised that losing weight by cutting calories, we now know through tracking of large numbers of people over many years, likely abbreviates your life by several years. 

In this and future podcasts, I will be introducing concepts that block these effects, concepts that I shall be exploring in even greater depth in my new book, Super Body. 

**Disclaimer:**
The information presented in my books, blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, and other content is for informational and educational purposes only. The content I share should not be interpreted as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with your personal physician or qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your diet, medication, lifestyle, or healthcare regimen. Your individual health needs should be evaluated by a professional who is familiar with your unique medical history. I am also a co-founder and shareholder in Realize Therapeutics Corp.



My new book is Super Body: A 3-Week Program to Harness the New Science of Body Composition and Restore Your Youthful Contours

Available on Amazon and other bookstores, now available for pre-order: 

Hachette (book publisher): https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/william-davis-md/super-body/9780306835995/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0306835991?tag=hacboogrosit-20

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/super-body-william-davis-md/1147241313?ean=9780306835995&st=AFF&2sid=Hachette%20Book%20Group_8040641_NA&sourceId=AFFHachette%20Book%20Group

Books-a-Million: .https://www.booksamillion.com/p/9780306835995?cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww&AID=11552245&PID=8040641&cjevent=dd19ff256e1711f081fe032d0a82b82d

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/super-body-a-3-week-program-to-harness-the-new-science-of-body-composition-and-restore-your-youthful-contours/077984f489f568b2?ean=9780306835995&next=t&affiliate=2344

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Conventional Diets Seem To Work
• 1:05 Subcutaneous Vs Visceral Fat
• 2:44 The Hidden Cost: Losing Muscle
• 4:25 Metabolic Slowdown And Weight Regain
• 5:33 Mortality Risks Of Intentional Weight Loss
• 6:13 A Better Aim: Restore Muscle
• 6:31 Upcoming Strategies And Resources

Transcript

William Davis, MD: 0:00

Now, why would I say that weight loss can be hazardous to your health? Let's not clickbait, that is true, but you often don't hear this side of the story. What you hear is that the varied methods of losing weight, conventional methods of losing weight, that could involve cutting calories and all the variations of that, like programs for meal replacements or calorie counting programs, or it could be a bariatric procedure, like lap band or gastric bypass surgery and other variations. Or it could be a pharmaceutical that slows stomach emptying and reduces appetite. They're all variations on the same theme, which is to reduce your intake of calories. Now we know, we know that these programs, these approaches, work. There's no question about that they work in the near term, in the short run. That is, you will lose weight. Well, what exactly happens when you lose weight? There are upfront benefits, no doubt. You lose, let's say, 40 pounds. There will be improvements in multiple metabolic measures. You'll see a drop in blood glucose, blood insulin, hemoglobin A1C, triglycerides, measures of fatty liver, abdominal fat, waste circumference, blood pressure, and some other measures. So what's the problem? The problem is those benefits are short-lived. And there's a variety of, there's a number of reasons why that is true. One reason is that all those conventional methods of weight loss target subcutaneous fat over visceral fat. Let me tell you what that means. Subcutaneous fat is the fat in your just below the skin, in the abdomen, in the back, in the back side, in your thighs, neck, chest, etc. That's metabolically relatively inactive fat. And then there's abdominal visceral fat. That's fat you can't see on the outside within the abdomen. You can have quite a bit of it even without a big tummy, but if you do have a big tummy, you likely have a lot of abdominal visceral fat encircling the various organs of the abdomen and sometimes even the heart and other organs. So if you have abdominal visceral fat, you have fat in the intestinal tract, what's called the omentum, around the spleen, kidneys, liver, etc. That's much more metabolically active fat. And all those methods of losing weight by reducing calories, regardless of method, are more selective for loss of subcutaneous fat. That's still a good thing, but it means that the benefits are not as great as they could have been. But there's a second problem that's even bigger. And that is when you lose weight, you lose muscle and you lose a lot of muscle. So if you lost 40 pounds, for instance, of the 40 pounds, 30 pounds is fat, largely subcutaneous, and 10 pounds is muscle. Now, 10 pounds of muscle is very significant and long-term cripples your health. Because several things occur when you lose that much muscle. One is your basal metabolic rate drops significantly. Or BMR, we say. Well, when your BMR drops, it means that you require, your body requires fewer calories to conduct the work of living, breathing, digestion, manufacturing body's proteins, and all the other things your body requires to stay alive. Well, your body's requirement drops typically about 25%, because when you cut calories, the signal you give your body is that you're living a lifestyle outdoors, hunting and gathering, and you're starving. You're on the verge of starving or you are starving, your body responds to cause your survival, help your survival by reducing your calorie burn rate, your basal metabolic rate. And that effect is for all practical purposes permanent. It lasts for years and years. What that means is that even if you maintain a vigorous lifestyle, lots of activity, lots of exercise, including resistance exercise, aerobic exercise, even hours a day, and even maintain a low calorie input, like maybe 1200 calories per day, which is really tough, by the way, right? You will regain the weight mostly as abdominal visceral fat, that metabolically destructive form of fat that increases blood glucose, insulin resistance, and raises your risk for all sorts of health conditions long term. And you will not regain the muscle, or the muscle regained is trivial. So you lose 10 pounds of muscle with that 40-pound weight loss. You may regain a couple of pounds of muscle, but you don't regain the full 10 pounds. We know, and this is this surprises many people. We know with very large, very confident evidence that in databases that collect, what happens to people who intentionally lose weight? Not people who unintentionally lose weight, like in cancer, but people who lose weight on purpose, over 90% of those people are through various methods of reducing calories. What happens to those people as tracked in these large databases, like the NIH's NHANES database, or the Western Europe Epic Norfolk database, and other large databases tracking over 50,000 people over many years? Well, people who lose weight intentionally tend to die several years younger than they should have. And the last few years are much more characterized, likely to be characterized because of that loss of muscle by falls, fractures, frailty, loss of independence, and other health conditions. So losing weight by reducing calories, whether it's a diet program, bariatric procedure, pharmaceutical, has all kinds of problems. Now I tell you this, not because it's the end of the world and you're doomed, but because there are better solutions. So I'm trying to get everybody up to speed in preparation for a new book of mine called Superbody. I'm not terribly fond of that title, but it's the idea that you can restore aspects of your shape and body composition that mimics the youthful body composition with more muscle. Not Arnold Schwarzenegger muscle, but the kind of muscle you had before you lost a lot of muscle through aging, worsened by all your weight loss efforts, the muscle you had in your 20s and 30s, because that is metabolically active and provides huge advantages in your control over metabolic rate, weight management, not regaining fat weight, as well as better life long-term free or less likely to have false fractures, frailty, loss of independence, all those kinds of things. So I'm going to introduce a number of strategies to you through my book, Superbody Book, but as well as through this series of conversations here on this YouTube channel, my Define Health podcast, my William DavisMD.com blog with thousands of posts, as well as engaging conversations if you desire guidance on all this in my inner circle.dr Davisinfinite Health.com. Now this starts with basics of management of shape and body composition that could be simple things like your exposure to light, your time spent outdoors managing sleep, but it can also involve the gut brain axis. That's where the real magic occurs. When you start to understand there is a critical role of the gut microbiome and its effects on your body, including the amount of muscle you have, where fat is located. So in coming days and weeks, I'll be discussing these topics bit by bit because there's a lot here to swallow, right? And this will be in preparation for the more advanced concepts I introduced in my superbody book.