Diata Health, Medical Weight Loss

WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

It should be simple, right, just eat less calories than you burn; eat healthy food, exercise, and you will lose the pounds. It sounds straightforward, very clean, very easy. Your doctor has told you a dozen times, just eat a little less, exercise a little more, and your going to lose weight. So you try to follow these instructions, you cut back, take the stairs more often, go to the gymn, and then you get on the scale; nothing is happening, body weight is not budging; it does not work.

Look around America, something like 95% of all adults are overweight, over 40% are obese, depending on which statistics you read. It adds up to a lot of people struggling. Weight loss is not easy.

So really, why is this so hard? As a physician that specializes in weight loss, and has treated hundreds of patients, I will tell you that the answer is because weight loss is not simple. It is actually really hard and really complicated. And the reason is, that your body has many many mechanisms to prevent you from losing weight, and many mechanisms to make you gain weight. Your body does not know that your obesity is unhealthy, it has no emotional IQ to understand that you are unhappy, that overweight or obesity is affecting your life, your job, your energy. What your body does have is a set point, an internal thermostat of what it “thinks” your normal weight is, which is a two to three pound range, and it wants you to stay exactly at this point.

How does your body manipulate you to prevent weight loss? The answer is that there are many mechanisms; one example is that there are cells in your body which secrete a nasty hormone called a Ghrelin, which travels to the brain, and tells you that you are hungry, or have cravings, or have the munchies. There is a different hormone which slows down your metabolism, so if you eat less, you burn less calories. Yet another hormone makes your cells insulin resistant, so carbs you eat go straight into fat and do not get used by, for example, by muscle cells; and then it turns out that there are many different types of fat cells, that gobble up calories, so you gain weight really easily. To make matters worse, researchers are constantly discovering new chemicals and hormones in your body, that prevent you from losing weight.

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