Why is losing weight so hard?
This diet is going to be the one. You can tell. You are feeling really great after the first week, you have drop a couple kilos already and some of your friends have even made some comments about how they can tell already!
The next week, the scales don’t move. What is going on? You weight yourself every day….. nothing.
You cut back even more. You are absolutely starving and just don’t have the energy to go to the gym. But you force yourself. The scales move again another few kilos over the next two weeks. You try even harder, and nothing. In fact the scales don’t go down anymore and you gain a kilo even though you are restricting your diet so much you are starving all the time.
What is going on?! Does this sound familiar?
Allostasis - your body wants to maintain
The human body is designed to try and keep things steady. This is allostasis. There is the theory of the “set-point” and in people who suffer from obesity it is thought that they have a set-point that is higher.
Evolution has made the human body think that during periods of famine, war, recession, when food was scarce - that the body needs to conserve energy, decrease its metabolic rate to prevent weight-loss. So when you go on the “diet”, this is exactly what your body is thinking is going on.
The more weight you lose, the more your body thinks something bad is going on, and it will slow invoke “allostatic mechanisms” in the body to maintain weight. This includes slowing the basal metabolic rate, and increasing hunger hormones and decreasing satiety factors to try to encourage you to eat!
Diet and exercise isn’t very effective
A healthy lifestyle is important for health in general. Eating well and exercise have many benefits to the human body and mental wellbeing.
However, when it comes to effectiveness for losing weight in patients who suffer from obesity, it isn’t actually that effective long-term. Patients who continually try to lose weight through diet and exercise, it gets harder and harder because of the allostatic mechanisms and eventually the allostatic mechanisms sometimes result in patients not losing any weight when they modify their diet and exercise.
Knowing what help is available
Diet and exercise will be effective for some. But when it isn’t, it is important to know when to move onto the next step up and try something that might be more effective. Knowing your options is an important part in getting the right help. Unfortunately, many health professionals also are not well informed about all the treatment options available, and some health professionals have biased and prejudicial views about certain treatments.
Our clinic aims to educate people to know what is available and then support them to make the best decision for themselves. We work with a multidisciplinary team through clinical partnerships to support patients in:
Diet and exercise
Lifestyle management
Medications
Allurion Balloon and Orbera/ BIB Balloon
Bariatric surgery
The team at Brisbane General & Obesity Surgery provide information and consultation in a non-judgemental way, and our aim is to help patients choose what is best suited to them.