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Home » How to lose weight quickly » Why do I gain so fast and lose so slow – Bangor Daily News

Why do I gain so fast and lose so slow?

I get that question all the time. Frustrated folks looking to lose some weight and hoping to improve their health express their wish that they could lose weight as quickly as they gain it.

Theres a standard reply to that question, but its not really a scientifically sound explanation, nor does it satisfy most people frustrated by their slow weight loss progress. Maybe youve said it yourself, or somebody has said it to you.

You didnt gain it overnight and you cant expect to lose it overnight.

Is that supposed to make you feel better? I dont think its an adequate answer; its a platitude. Its a quick and easy explanation that isnt worth the effort it takes to mutter it. Here is the real reason why weight gain is fast and weight loss is slow.

Your fat cells shrink. You dont actually lose them. In fact, you have on averagebetween 10 to 30 billion fat cells. The amount of fat cells you have wasset during adolescence and levels off into adulthood. If you were very overweight as a child, you will have twice as many fat cells as another adult who wasntan overweight child.

So losing weight isnt losing fat cells. Its shrinking them, but they dont burn up and go away. They stick around looking for their chance to return to their lovely full state or grow even larger. Its theorized that those fat cells think its their duty to plump up again and that the body thinks its necessary for survival.

The body thinks its survival has been threatened by disapearingfood sources. When food once again becomes available (you stop trying to lose weight and go back to former eating and exercising habits) it tries to get back to what it considers its normal state. Its trying totake action to save your (and its) life.

Its more than just a matter of hungry fat cells. Your body adjusted to what it thought was a famine by becoming more efficient with its use of fuel. It is burning fewer calories at rest, so its now become easier to create a calorie excess which goes directly into refilling those fat cells.

Gary Foster, Ph. D., is the Chief Scientific Officer at Weight Watchers International. Years before he joined the Weight Watchers team he was the director of the Center of Obesity Research and Education at Temple University.

Even on a sensible diet, your body sheds pounds reluctantly. One reason its difficult to keep weight off is because there is a metabolic overcompensation for weight loss, says Gary Foster, Ph.D. If you decrease your body mass by 10 percent, you would expect your metabolic rate to decrease by 10 percent, but it actually slows down more than that, by about 11 to 15 percent.

That means, as you probably already know, you have to work hard to lose weight. Its hard work and its not fun. In fact, its the opposite of fun; it feels more like punishment. Gaining weight, however, doesnt take work, especially when wereconditioned to be hypereaters.

The reward circuits in the brains of people who areconditioned hypereaters were excessively activated simply by the smell of food and stayed that way until those people finished eating whatever was on the plate in front of them. The important word isconditioned.

David Kessler, M.D., is the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner. He and his team of researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and Yale University researched weight cycling. Kessler says overeating may not be your fault.

According to Kessler and his research team some people have overactive neural circuitry or a drive to clean the plate and the more palatable the food, the stronger the drive. Its less about willpower and more about the hold conditioning has over an individual.Its biological, not genetic, and difficult to resist. Kessler estimates that 50 percent of obese people and 30 percent of overweight people are conditioned hypereaters.

Your body fights your weight loss efforts and throws its full support into helping you gain weight. That might lead you to ask, why bother to lose weight when my body fights it? The answer is personal. If your weight is getting in the way of doing the things you love or making you sick, its worth it.

If your weight is the result of unhealthy habits, work on making changes to your habits to make them healthier. This will result in weight loss, and more importantly, help you to learn skills that are necessary to maintain your lower and healthier weight.

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Why do I gain so fast and lose so slow - Bangor Daily News

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Home » How to lose weight quickly » Why do I gain so fast and lose so slow – Bangor Daily News