If you’ve ever lost a lot of weight you may have noticed that some, if not all or more of the weight came back after a short amount of time. This is even more likely if you followed a “fad” diet or had weight loss surgery. It’s important to know why this happens so that we can prevent it.
The body will always choose survival over your aesthetic or performance goals. When we lose weight, our fat stores decrease. Leptin, a hormone made by the fat cells and signals to our brain that we are satiated will likewise decrease, signaling to our brain that we are hungry. To make matters worse, the areas of the brain responsible for the rewarding feeling achieved by eating become more active.
When weight loss is achieved your muscles also become more efficient (for survival) and will begin to burn fewer calories. In other words, when you lose weight you are hungrier, less satisfied with food, and burning fewer calories. Essentially, your body is trying to sabotage your bathroom selfie-sesh.
Fad diets and weight loss surgery are so likely to fail because they allow you to bypass important environmental and behavioral changes you should learn in order to maintain weight loss. To maintain weight loss you should adopt a few key principles.
- Lift weights. You should look to add a solid weight lifting routine in order to build lean muscle mass and increase your metabolism -> daily energy expenditure.
- Learn to eat right. Choose foods that work to maintain proper hunger levels and improve your metabolism.
- Learn self-control and mindful eating. If you want to keep the weight off your going to need self-control. As discussed in Part II certain foods (often the best tasting once) will make it harder to say no. Spend less time focusing on the TV while shoveling food in your mouth. Appreciate your food. Enjoy it.
If you’re serious about losing weight and keeping it off you’re going to need to invest some serious time and effort. After all, you didn’t gain weight overnight and looking back you can probably think of a multitude of factors that led to your weight gain. In other words, you worked really hard and took the time to gain the weight and you’re definitely going to have to work really hard and invest some time to lose it.
