Welcome to week 6 from the Lifestyle Medicine team.
Are you a yo yo dieter? Are you one of the many people who successfully loses weight but once you have reached your goal you quickly regain all the weight you’ve lost? Some research reports that weight regain is common following successful weight loss, with 50% of lost weight being regained within 2 years, and for many, 80% of lost weight being regained within 5 years (1). Willpower, or lack of it, is often blamed for weight regain but new research highlights that it's not simply down to bad habits or a lack of willpower that the pounds go back on. When you lose weight, there are some fundamental shifts in your biological responses including changes to your appetite that can challenge your ability to maintain weight loss.
Increased Appetite
Research shows that the process of losing weight leads to an increase in your appetite - meaning as you lose weight you're likely to find that you feel hungrier than before you tried to lose weight. To offset this biological response it's important for you to understand healthy portion sizes and for you to have an awareness of how much you're eating. These steps can help to prevent you from overeating as a result of the increased hunger you’re experiencing (1).
What Happens When You Reach Your Goal?
The real work begins when you achieve your weight loss goal. Reaching your goal is a fantastic achievement so we want to work with you to help you to maintain your new weight.
Our advice is to keep focusing on your relationship with food. Changing your eating habits and behaviour is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure that you maintain your weight loss. One reason it can be hard to maintain your new weight is thought to be based on the ‘set point theory’. It is thought that your body aims to maintain a stable weight, and this may be a reason why you return to the weight you had been before you lost weight. There is a recognised risk that after following a ‘weight loss diet’ there will be a period of ‘re-feeding’ or ‘over eating’ (2). This tends to be a subconscious behaviour.
It's important to recognise that this is a big risk following successful weight loss so you can stop yourself falling into this pattern. This is one of the reasons we are here to support you to adopt new eating habits for life and to change from the ‘going on a diet’ mindset to eating healthily for life. Belonging to a community of people who are focused on healthy weight maintenance has been shown to be helpful, as is routinely monitoring your weight and food intake. What’s most important is for you to understand that to maintain your new weight you need to continue with your healthy eating habits. You need to maintain your focus and determination. With this attitude and the appropriate action, you can maintain your new weight. The truth is, if you return to your old habits that led you to gain weight in the first place you'll simply regain the weight you have put the effort into losing.
Finding an enjoyable way of eating for the long term will help, not only with your initial weight loss, but with your weight maintenance. Research shows us that there is no perfect long term diet to follow. The key is to reduce your intake of highly processed foods and to follow a low sugar (Low Carbohydrate Diet/ Low Glycemic load) diet, ensuring that you're including some protein with each meal (3). Eating enough protein has been found to help with appetite regulation and feeling full after eating (4).
