We all know how hard it can be to maintain weight loss in the long-term. Once you’ve struggled through weeks and months of careful eating in order to shed excess pounds, that weight has a sneaky habit of creeping back up again.
And new research may have shed a light on why some people find it so difficult to keep the weight off after dieting.
It looks like losing weight may boost our appetite…
Thirty-four obese participants were monitored during a two-year weight loss programme for the latest study, published in the American Journal of Physiology Endrocrinology and Metabolism. And, while every single person lost weight by the end of the study, only 20% of them managed to keep it off afterwards.
The reason? The participants had higher levels of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, at the end of study than at the start, reports the team from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
They suggest that when we lose weight, our body produces more ghrelin and, unfortunately, it looks like those levels don’t adjust over time, as the participants’ ghrelin levels remained higher, even after two years.
‘Everyone has this hormone, but if you’ve been overweight and then lose weight, the hormone level increases,’ said researcher Catia Martins in a release.
And, rather dramatically, the team claims that anyone who has been overweight and then slimmed down will have to deal with increased hunger for the rest of their lives.
On top of the hormone change, the team identified another factor making participants feel hungrier: the body’s biological ability to conserve energy.
The team believe that formerly obese people also feel hungrier because the body tries to regain the weight it has lost, simply because it is accustomed to requiring more energy.
‘A person who’s been very obese has needed more energy just to breathe, sleep, digest food or walk,’ explained Martins.
The team now believe that obesity should be considered a chronic condition, and handled accordingly by our health services.
‘Obesity is a daily struggle for the rest of one’s life,’ said Martins. ‘We have to stop treating it as a short-term illness by giving patients some support and help, and then just letting them fend for themselves.’
However, before you start feeling too down about the findings, medical expert Dr Sarah Brewer revealed why you shouldn’t ditch the diet just yet.
‘The study may seem depressing, but it’s important to realise that it involved only 36 people, all of whom were classed as morbidly obese, and weight at least 125kg at the start of the study,’ she told Prima.co.uk. ‘This suggests they had an underlying abnormal emotional, hormonal or hunger responses to food that drove their initial over-eating.
‘They lost 5kg over the first three weeks, but over the course of the whole two years, only lost an average of 11kg.
‘This study does not really reflect what happens for those of us who are overweight and aiming to lose a sensible amount of weight slowly and safely.’
