Am not an expert when it comes to weight loss and diet but I read this from a certain website and I basically copy pasted to share with you.....Its quite lengthy but anyway, enjoy.
You're fat.
Again…
How the HECK did this happen???
All that weight you lost on the last diet is back on and then some. Now you just feel powerless, confused, out of control and ashamed. You assume it's because you weren't disciplined enough or you didn't have enough willpower... But still you can't work out how you got back to square one so quickly.
All you want to do is understand WHY now that you're off the diet (BUT eating even less than you did before you started to diet)… you've still gained all of the weight back and more.
WHY?
This is not a mystery.
Once you understand the science behind how diets actually make you fatter, you will have taken the first step to losing weight and keeping it off for good.
A groundbreaking study ("Long Term Persistence of Hormonal Adaptations to Weight Loss") conducted at the University of Melbourne reported that when people diet, the body's hormonal balance changes and it goes into serious weight gain mode.
According to researchers, calorie restriction results in a rapid, significant reduction in levels of leptin - a hormone that speeds up the metabolic rate and curtails appetite. It also causes a reduction in the levels of the appetite suppressing hormone Peptide YY. So when you diet, your metabolism slows down and all the regular hormones that keep your appetite in check just aren't around to protect you... As if that wasn't enough, there is a huge increase in the levels of ghrelin - a hormone which not only makes you hungry as a horse but also stimulates the release of a polypeptide that makes your body store even more fat, especially in the abdominal region!
The lead researcher, Joseph Proietto, said, "Our study has provided clues as to why obese people who have lost weight often relapse. The relapse has a strong physiological basis and is not simply the result of voluntary resumption of old habits."
Dr Rudolph Leibel of Columbia University agrees. He believes obesity is a biological, not a psychological illness. According to Dr Leibel's research, a body that has dieted behaves very differently to a body of the same size that has never dieted. When we lose weight, the body fights fat loss by making our muscle fibers more energy efficient so they burn up to a quarter less calories than the muscles of someone of the same weight who had never dieted. If you lose 10% of your body fat you'll need to eat 20 - 25% fewer calories to maintain your new weight. So if you were eating 2000 calories a day before your diet, now you'll need to eat 400 - 500 calories LESS per day just to keep your weight stable. This 'dieting effect', needing to eat fewer calories, can last years. No wonder we gain the weight back!
Dr Rosenbaum, a researcher at Columbia University scanned the brains of dieters vs non dieters. He found that the body tries to return to the old weight by giving the dieter a much greater emotional response to food combined with real cravings that make the person more excited about food and less able to resist it. Dr Rosenbaum said that this, when combined with the fact that the post diet body needs significantly fewer calories, creates the ideal situation for weight regain... ARGGH!!!
UCLA researchers analyzed 31 long term diet studies and found that the biggest predictor of long term weight gain was if the subject had been on a diet at some point in the past. So basically, if you've ever dieted, you're the one they expect to gain weight long term. One study they analyzed, where dieters were followed for 2 years, showed that 83% of dieters ended up heavier than when they started their diet.
Diets really don't work. They actually make the problem worse. Much worse.
Disclaimer : I haven't tried this so i can't ascertain whether the infor is true or not.
Tweedy.
