Why People Who Lose Weight Gain It Back?

Why People Who Lose Weight Gain It Back
How Your Appetite Can Sabotage Weight Loss
By Brenda Goodman, MA (Oct. 14, 2016)
New research is shedding light on a question that has long confounded dieters and obesity researchers alike:

Why do so many people regain weight after they’ve worked so hard to lose it?

The answer, according to a new study, is appetite. People who successfully lose weight get really hungry more than anyone had ever expected that they might.The body prompts us to eat about 100 calories more than usual for every 2 pounds or so of weight lost, researchers found.

“It’s this surge in appetite, even more than the drop in metabolism people have after weight loss, that drives weight regain, he says. The effect of appetite is three times stronger than the slowing metabolism . The two together virtually assure that lost pounds will creep back on” Hall says.
 
Metabolism and Food Intake
By some estimates, 80% of people who successfully lose at least 10% of their body weight will gradually regain it to end up as large or even larger than they were before they went on a diet.

The prevailing theory proved dramatically in a study of contestants from “The Biggest Loser” reality TV show that Hall published earlier this year is that the body’s ability to burn calories at rest, or its resting metabolism , slows down, making it easy to regain weight.
When the bodies losing  weight , their bodies were fighting against the weight loss, prompting them to eat more to make up the deficit.

Here’s how that might look in real life. If a person who normally eats about 2,700 calories a day loses about 9 pounds, their body will prompt them to eat about 400 more calories than they were before, a total of 3,100 calories a day.

'This Gives Us Direction'

 Kahan says, “What I see in my patients, they have worked their butt off to lose weight and then keep it off. They can’t understand why they have all this success in other areas of their life, and they have such difficulty in this area of their life”.

“This is one of the pieces of that puzzle. This helps to explain that it’s not all your fault. Your body fights against the long term maintenance of that weight.

Almost all prescription weight loss medications work by turning down a person’s appetite. It may be that people who lose weight can keep it off with the help of one of these drugs.
Fujioka says. “I may also need to give my patients who’ve recently lost weight an appetite suppressant so they’re not so driven to eat.”