Why do many people find it so difficult to lose weight and keep it off in the long term?
54 percent of all Germans weigh too many pounds. Losing weight is obviously difficult for most people, but maintaining the new weight is even more difficult. In the long term, only one to three percent of those who want to lose weight actually manage to do this.
The usefulness of common diets and very strict diets must therefore be questioned given the low chances of success. Apparently, the well-known diets completely lack individuality and important factors influencing weight are not taken into account at all.
Losing weight permanently with all of these diets is obviously difficult or impossible. This is also confirmed by a British study. The scientists evaluated data from around 176,000 overweight British women and men and found that the probability of overweight women achieving their normal weight on a standard diet was 1 in 124.
This means that only one in 124 women who wanted to lose weight achieved their goal in the long term. Overweight men have it even harder. Your chances were 1 in 200.
Why do common diets do so little?
Common diets suggest that it would be easy to lose weight and keep it off with this or that concept or diet drink. But in the rarest of cases, weight problems can be solved permanently and this causes frustration and disappointment for those affected. Because many people with weight problems are not undisciplined and actually stick to the guidelines very strictly.
The problem is that traditional diets only look at calorie intake, but ignore other important factors that lead to weight problems. And these problems remain unchanged after the end of the diet phase and cause the weight to increase quickly again after the fasting treatment.
What factors, besides lack of exercise and excessive calorie intake, promote obesity?
In my book “The Weight Loss Compass” I go into great detail about these little-known diet obstacles. These include antibiotics and other medications, plasticizers in plastic bottles, a disorder of the microbiome, vitamin D deficiency, inflammation in the body, an underactive thyroid, even a bedroom that is too bright or sweeteners can hinder weight loss.
If these “obstacles to weight loss” are not removed before or during the diet, subsequent weight gain is inevitable because the “weight drivers” are still there.
Calorie-free sweeteners make you fat? Can you explain this in more detail?
For the most part, sweeteners are not absorbed in the intestine – which is why they initially do not contribute anything to the calorie balance. That sounds good at first and the promises are all too tempting: drink sweet sodas without adding a single calorie to your body, or use a sweet substitute for the sugar pieces in your coffee without feeling guilty.
But sweeteners are definitely not a healthy alternative to sugar. Quite the opposite: Reduced-calorie “diet” foods sweetened with sugar substitutes have been proven to make you fat! Large epidemiological studies suggest that replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners definitely does not help you lose weight.
It may sound paradoxical, but instead of achieving the desired weight loss, the calorie- and sugar-free sweetener actually seems to promote obesity and diabetes. Artificial sweeteners alter the microbiome so that it draws more carbohydrates and calories from food. They reduce the feeling of satiety and make you hungry, which means that in the long term more calories are not consumed, but lead to a slow but continuous weight gain.
In the United States, the increasing number of overweight people coincides with the increasing prevalence of drinks and foods sweetened with sweeteners such as aspartame or sucralose.
These connections have been known since the 1980s. At that time, the San Antonio Heart Study showed that people who drank sweetened diet drinks every day doubled their risk of overweight and obesity compared to people who avoided light drinks.
Sweeteners are now also contained in many foods that are advertised as being particularly rich in protein and therefore apparently healthy, such as yogurt, pudding or protein powder.
What do light and darkness have to do with weight?
Numerous processes in our body take place according to regular rhythms that often repeat every day. Metabolism and digestion, hunger and satiety are also based on rhythms and cycles. These processes are controlled by our “internal clock” and its pacesetters are brightness and darkness.
Studies show that if we want to lose weight and maintain our weight, bright light in the morning and a pitch-dark bedroom at night are important.
Brightness at night is obviously a figure killer, especially for women. Compared to sleeping in a completely darkened room, any type of artificial light increased the risk of obesity by an average of 19 percent.
The effects were stronger when the light source was directly in the bedroom, such as a night light, a clock radio, a running television or a PC screen that was switched on. The risk of being overweight increased by 22 percent and that of obesity by as much as 33 percent.
And regardless of the starting weight, the probability of gaining at least five kilos in the next few years increased by 17 percent. It was particularly risky for the women’s weight if they regularly fell asleep in front of the television.
What is noteworthy is that these results were not obtained from a small mini-study, but rather collected data from more than 43,000 women and then followed them up for almost six years.
Lack of sleep is generally a risk factor for obesity. Among other things, lack of sleep alters the release of appetite-regulating hormones such as leptin and ghrelin. If we don’t sleep, we have more of an appetite the next day. Test subjects consumed up to 500 kcal more the next day if they suffered from sleep deprivation.
And what about light during the day?
During the day we need bright light to lose weight. Losing weight is easier in spring and summer because the high light intensity stimulates the production of appetite-suppressing hormones such as leptin and serotonin. We miss this light stimulus in winter.
If you are currently struggling with cravings, you should get a full-spectrum daylight lamp and place it next to your breakfast plate in the morning or place it next to the screen in the office. This lifts your mood and reduces cravings. It’s also a good idea to go outside for 30 minutes at midday, because even on cloudy days the light outside is many times brighter than in closed rooms.
What else should you pay attention to if you want to lose weight?
There are actually still some measures you can take to support weight loss. Studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency makes it difficult to lose weight while dieting. If study participants with low levels received vitamin D substitution, they lost more weight and more body fat in the same time than the subjects in the placebo group.
It may therefore make sense to have your vitamin D level checked by a doctor. If it is too low, then the value should be raised to the high normal range with appropriate nutritional supplements. Losing weight will then be easier.
Medications such as antibiotics, antidepressants, allergy medications and others can also promote weight gain. Please do not stop taking the medication, but rather discuss with your family doctor whether there are alternatives.
Before starting a weight loss program, as many “obstacles to weight loss” should be removed as possible. Then the chances of maintaining a comfortable figure in the long term are significantly better than with conventional diets.
The original for this article “Diets are useless if you don’t avoid these weight loss traps” comes from BUNTE.de.