Why it ’s so hard to lose excess weight and keep it off: The Biggest Losers’ experience

Follow me on Twitter @RobShmerling For most people trying to lose weight, it’s a struggle. It takes more than good intentions and a lot of will power. One reason is that in order to lose weight, we are, in a way, fighting our own biology. As we lose weight, the body adapts to resist it by lowering the resting metabolic rate — that’s the amount of energy spent while at rest, when the “engine” of the body is idling. Lowering the resting metabolic rate is a good thing if food is scarce and weight loss is occurring due to starvation. In that situation, it’s good that the body slows down to conserve energy and limit further weight loss. But this evolutionary adaptation works against you if you are overweight or obese, and excess weight is a bigger threat to your health than starvation. The experience of The Biggest Loser Researchers have studied weight loss for decades to determine how the body responds to it. Among them are studies that enrolled participants in the television series The Biggest Loser. If you aren’t familiar with it, The Biggest Loser is a reality television series in which obese individuals compete to lose the most weight through an intensive program of exercise and dietary changes. A prior study found that after losing lots of weight, participants in The Biggest Loser had markedly reduced metabolic rates. But it was unclear how long those changes would last or whether they predicted regain of weight once the competition ended. A new study of The Bi...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Diet and Weight Loss Health Source Type: blogs