A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, entitled Long-Term Persistence of Hormonal Adaptations to Weight Loss, has caused a lot of buzz in the media and among my clients during the past few weeks.

In summary, 50 obese people were put on strict diets of 500 calories per day for 10 weeks.  The primary focus of the study was to track the hormones involved in appetite regulation. By the conclusion of the 70 days, only 34 of the participants remained (I too would drop out if someone only let me eat 500 calories a day!); all of which had lost significant weight.

Then about a year after the study concluded, hormone levels in many of the participants indicated that their bodies were trying to become fat again despite maximal efforts to keep the weight off.  Why?  Think about it this way – If someone has weighed 300 pounds for many years, it is impossible for it (weight) to come off and remain off after only 10 weeks of an extremely low cal, starvation diet! The body wants the weight back as its been operating like that for a long time.

I fear such studies as this one provide our increasingly obese population just another excuse not to change their diet & exercise habits. As many of you probably know, it is really stinking hard to lose weight and it’s even harder to keep it off permanently. That is why the goal with my weight loss clients is manageable weight loss and then work to maintain. Let the body adapt. Let the person’s behavior change.

Tara Parker-Pope, author of the NY Times article highlighting this study, does a great job of looking at obesity from various angles. She suggests we should give overweight people a break, that biological and genetic factors can dictate one’s habits and weight.

While I agree with her arguments to some degree, I currently view the biggest problem as deriving from our societal environment. Some people simply do not want to work very hard to lose weight and keep it off. They have succumbed to the quick-fix mentality of the diet and fitness industry promising overnight results without realizing that hey first need to figure out how and why they got so overweight in the first place.

For example, if you were raised in a household that ate ice cream every night after dinner, is that behavior likely to change by quitting cold turkey?  No!

Many barriers to weight loss exist – work, family, life, injury – I see it every day in my practice. But many or all of these barriers can be overcome if the root of the problem is understood and people are provided with the correct tools to help them succeed.