Your Hormones Are Urging You To Regain Your Lost Weight, Study Says
Have you tried to lose weight and succeeded for a time, then gained the weight back because "something happened" but you weren't quite sure what it was? If you have yo-yo dieted, have you ever imagined that your body was putting up a fight, resisting and making you gain weight, AGAIN? Well, a recent study indicates you shouldn't feel guilty for putting that weight back on. Chances are your body was working against you. Australian scientists have shown that when it comes to keeping weight off for a significant period of time, your biology is not your friend. (Carrie Gann, ABC News)
University of Melbourne researchers discovered that overweight or obese people who lost at least 10 percent of their body weight, and kept the pounds off for one year, generated high levels of hunger-inducing hormones. As a result, biologically, their body registered that they needed to eat and the urge came on them to eat more and more. (Gann, ABC News)
According to the study published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, researchers brought 50 overweight or obese patients into a 10-week diet program to see its effect on people who lost at least 10 percent of their body weight. Thirty-four people were able to lose 10% or more and stay with the study to be analyzed. (USA Today)
The program required participants to eat only 500 to 550 calories a day, use a meal replacement and eat vegetables for 8 weeks. This extreme plan, on average, caused rapid weight loss of up to thirty pounds during the entire 10 week period. (Gann, ABC News)
The good news? Most of the "losers" weighed less than at the outset of the study. The bad news? They gained back about half of their lost weight during the next year. The problem was that researchers found different levels of leptin and ghrelin in their blood then initially tested for. These are hormones that filter one's appetite. Indeed, the way it worked was that the levels of the hormones changed so that the "losers'" appetites were even stronger than they were at the study's beginning. (Gina Kolata, The New York Times)
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati