[ad_1]
Research shows at least 30% of our tendency toward obesity can be attributed to lifestyle, which leaves plenty of wiggle room to modify daily routines that could significantly boost your health and quality of life, as well as increase your ability to establish a body weight that works for you.
Below are six common reasons why weight loss can be difficult, along with a few key ways to make weight reduction and maintenance more accessible.
Medical Conditions
Underlying medical conditions, such as hypothyroidism, Cushing’s disease, diabetes and other metabolic diseases, can cause weight gain or make weight loss difficult, as can taking medications like steroids and some antidepressants, according to Ashwini Nadkarni, M.D., a psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Chronic pain, chronic fatigue, rheumatoid arthritis and injuries can also reduce people’s ability to engage in physical activity, which can help with weight loss.
Easy Access to Tasty, High-Calorie Foods
Today, it’s difficult to avoid highly-processed, calorically dense foods that are manufactured to be immensely appealing to our palates. As a review in Medical Clinics of North America puts it, these foods are engineered to contain “supernormal appetitive properties.” What’s more, these highly-processed, highly-addictive foods can be delivered to our front doors in minutes, which makes them both accessible and exceedingly tempting.
Lower Body Weight Requires Fewer Calories
Smaller bodies burn fewer calories, so when you lose weight (especially if you’re losing muscle mass), your metabolism drops. Research shows that for each pound of body weight lost, most people need to consume approximately 44 to 66 fewer calories per day. Therefore, if you lost 10 pounds, you would need to consume 440 to 660 fewer calories per day to continue losing weight at the same rate you lost those 10 pounds.
Weight Loss Increases Appetite
To make matters even more challenging, research shows weight loss can cause a proportional increase in people’s appetites, resulting in the potential consumption of an extra 220 calories per pound lost per day compared to consumption prior to weight loss. For 10 pounds of weight loss, a person may feel compelled to consume an additional 2,200 calories per day to satiate their appetite despite actually having reduced metabolic needs.
Specific numbers vary among individuals, but the message here is that after losing weight, you’re likely to feel hungrier than before while your body requires fewer calories.
Stress, Depression and Emotional Eating
Dr. Nadkarni reports that depression and other deep, emotional connections or conditioned responses to stress, fear, comfort or control can also make weight loss difficult. Depression is associated with changes in appetite, reduced motivation and lethargy, making the behavioral changes needed to lose weight even more challenging, she says.
Additionally, depression and stress can increase systemic inflammation and imbalances in the gut microbiome, both of which are associated with obesity.
Inadequate Sleep
Lack of sleep can undermine efforts to lose weight in a variety of ways, according to Houston-based psychiatrist and sleep specialist Chester Wu, M.D. Physically, sleeplessness can disrupt the balance of hunger-regulating hormones like ghrelin and leptin and cause changes in glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Lack of sleep also increases fatigue, resulting in lower levels of physical activity and increased cravings for high-calorie, carbohydrate-rich foods, he explains.
Psychologically, inadequate sleep can impair decision making and emotional regulation. Not getting enough sleep can also reduce motivation, increase susceptibility to depression and anxiety, and decrease focus and concentration, making the consistency required for a successful weight loss regime—including diet plans and consistent exercise—considerably harder, adds Dr. Wu.
[ad_2]
