Modern weight loss - without dieting

Despite the fact that the reduction of body weight usually can be achieved by limiting food intake and/or increasing physical activity, the vast majority of people after some time regain the weight they lost. The results of the meta-analysis shows that after 4.5 years after completing a structured program to reduce weight, including low-calorie diet with the use of exercise or without them, the average loss of body weight, which managed to maintain, was 3.2%-28% reduction of the original weight for the next 4 – 5 years. Why reduced through diet weight so difficult to maintain?





However, if the appetite is controlled solely by homeostatic mechanisms, we would eat only to meet the need for food that is clearly not the case. In addition to homeostatic pathways, the hypothalamus receives input from cortex and regions of the reward system in the limbic (hedonic), associated with vision, odor and taste of the food, along with emotional and social factors that combine to influence the consumption and waste of energy. Hedonic way can reconfigure the homeostatic system, increasing the desire to consume tasty, high-calorie food even when energy stores and providing food in abundance.

It is shown that the weight-loss caused by food restriction leads to compensatory changes in several biological pathways involved in the utilization and storage of energy, regulation of appetite, which together contribute to weight regain. Some of these changes are more pronounced in the weight loss process, than after the stabilisation of reduced body weight. However, recent studies have shown that many of these changes are not only transient phenomena in the dynamics of loss, but also persist for a year or more after weight loss.

Metabolism also changes and shifts towards the use of carbohydrate — utilization allows you to keep dietary fats to Deposit. However, in contrast to the reduced basal fat oxidation, their disposal when performing low-intensity load is higher after weight loss as a result of diet, compared with values before weight loss. This is due to a decrease in the activity of enzymes that oxidize carbohydrates towards oxidising fats.





Other factors affecting metabolism after weight loss include the displacement activity of the autonomic nervous system to the parasympathetic side, which stimulates anabolism. Changes the secretion of hormones in the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid and adrenal glands. Increases the synthesis of cortisol, leading to increase in body weight due to fat deposition. Reduced levels of the hormone leptin, synthesized by fat cells in proportion to the decrease in the number of adipose tissue that acts on the mechanism of negative feedback. High levels of leptin act on the hypothalamus, reducing food intake and increasing energy expenditure.

Their detrimental role in this process plays and a steady increase in subjective appetite. Confirmed not only by the growing appetite of itself (increases the feeling of hunger, desire to eat and estimated food intake) after weight loss through diet, but also the perception of food rewards and preference for high-calorie (fatty and sugary) foods.

The analysis of strategies for the maintenance of body weight after reducing identified several key factors for most participants, which managed to maintain achieved weight loss results:

• stick to food with low fat and low calorie with minimal deviations from the plan;
• daily Breakfast
• frequent self — control 78% of the participants weighed at least once a week, and 50% count calories or fat content of food eaten;
• regular exercise of moderate intensity for about 1 hour a day, without neglecting the high intensity exercise;
• limited time watching TV — 62% reported watching TV less than 10 hours / week, whereas the average data for the USA is 28 hours.

Taking into account that the compensatory adaptation to weight loss leads to a reduction in power consumption and increased risk of fat accumulation, the application of the above strategy seems a perfect way to prevent weight gain after weight loss. However, for any human long-term adherence to the program weight loss is of extraordinary complexity. What can we say about people that reduced weight, increased appetite, in an environment where they are surrounded by food, especially when the environment is not conducive to maintaining physical activity, e.g. office work, the lack of available sports hall and many other familiar problems.

Source: sportmedicine.ru