The 7 Steps that Stop Us from Keeping Our Weight Off after a Diet

Why do we seem to always return to our previous body weight no matter how many weight loss programs we try?

The hormone called leptin is the key to this dilemma. At the recent world congress on interventional therapies for type 2 diabetes Dr. Leibel from the Columbia University Medical Center explained that our bodies are programmed to protect themselves from starvation not obesity. The challenge humans have faced throughout history is to survive despite times of famine.

Food being too easily available has not been our problem until the last few decades.
The body is tuned to defend our body weight and preserve our stored calories so we do not run out of energy in times of famine.

Here are 7 steps that keep us returning back to our previous weight each time we diet.

1). The more calories we store as fat in our fat cells the larger the fat cells become. As the fat cells become larger they put out more and more of the hormone leptin.

2). Each time we gain weight the leptin level increases and our brains are reset so our weight setting goes up to a new level.

4). This means our weight settings will go up and up each time we gain weight.

5). Unfortunately, weight setting in the brain only resets upward and does not reset downward!

6). Any fall in the level of fat we have decreases the amount of leptin and our brains will trigger mechanisms such as hunger, delay in satiation of food and decreased muscle activity to preserve our stored calories and restore our weight to the previously set level.

7). When we start to lose weight our metabolism slows down and we use 10-15% less energy so we do not use the stored calories any faster than absolutely necessary.

All of these steps serve to maintain our body fat so we have the energy we need to stay alive as long as possible during times of famine.

Unfortunately, when food is too plentiful such as we see in our time these steps work against us as we lose weight and try to keep it off.

If you have struggled to lose weight and keep it off you now understand why it is so difficult to maintain the lower weight. Fortunately, the surgical procedures we use in bariatric surgery counteracts many of these mechanisms and at least 80% of our patients keep their weight off long term.