If you’ve ever tried to lose weight but the pounds come back almost as quickly as they went away, you’re not alone.
In fact, the challenge of maintaining weight loss is backed up by research, including an analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies which revealed that more than half of the weight lost by the participants was recovered within two years, and more than 80% of the weight lost was recovered within five years.
When we gain weight, we tend to attribute it to a lack of willpower.
But there is a scientific reason why many people return to their previous weight after dieting, and the understanding of science – known as weight set point theory – is the key to achieving long-term weight loss.
What is the weight instruction?
We each have a predetermined weight – a set point – that our body protects. It’s the weight you’ll remember being for a long period of time as an adult (over 20 years) and it’s the weight you’ll remember bouncing back to after any diet.
It is programmed in the first years of life – specifically during the first 2,000 days of life – from conception to age five. OUR Genoa play a role in the programming of our weight instruction. Just as DNA prescribes whether we are shorter or taller than others, we are born tending to be thin or overweight. But our genetic make-up is only a predisposition, not an inevitable fate.
Weight set point is also influenced by environmental factors that genes may be exposed to during pregnancy and the first years of life. This explains why some children who have poor diets are more likely to gain unhealthy weight (due to their genetic makeup) while others are not. Research shows that unhealthy weight gain in the first years of life is likely to persist throughout life. adolescence and adulthood.
Finally, our body weight is influenced by the environment itself. For example, an unhealthy diet, sedentary lifestyle, and poor sleep will cause your weight set point to increase over time and at a rate of 0.5 kg per year.
Our body works hard to keep our weight around our set point by adjusting our biological systems, regulating how much food we eat, how we store fat and expend energy. It comes from our hunter-gatherer ancestors, whose bodies evolved this survival response to adapt to times of deprivation when food was scarce to protect against starvation. Unfortunately, this means that our bodies are very good at protecting against weight loss, but not against weight gain.
How our body works to protect our set point when we diet
When we change our diet to lose weight, we take our body out of its comfort zone and trigger its survival response. It then counteracts weight loss, triggering multiple physiological responses to defend our body weight and “survive” starvation.
Our body’s survival mechanisms want us to regain lost weight to ensure we survive the next starvation (dieting) period, which is why many people who regain weight after dieting end up weighing more than they did when beginning.
Our body achieves this result in several ways.
The take home message
We are biologically wired to protect our weight set point. Conventional diets, including the latest hype around “intermittent fasting” and “keto,” fail to promote healthy eating and fail to regulate weight. You will eventually regain the weight you lost.
Just as the problem is scalable, the solution is scalable too.
Successfully losing weight over the long term comes down to:
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from evidence-based care delivered by healthcare professionals who have studied the science of obesity, not celebrities
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lose weight in small, manageable chunks that you can handle, specifically periods of weight loss, followed by periods of weight maintenance, and so on, until your goal weight is reached
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make gradual changes to your lifestyle to ensure you form habits that last a lifetime.
