Weight loss is almost impossible for most people, and weight retention is even more difficult.
Medical professionals no longer consider this a personal failing. Scientific evidence has led medical professionals to stop blaming patients for not losing excess weight in recent years.
Nevertheless, there is a lot at stake.
Obesity: A Rethinking
American obesity has only gotten worse after decades of fighting. The risk of death from obesity in the U.S. was nearly 12%. The health risks associated with obesity include heart disease, diabetes, asthma, hypertension, arthritis, sleep apnea, and many types of cancer.
Experts pointed to a variety of compounding factors. Social stigma. Economics. Stress. Ultra-processed food. Losing weight is biologically challenging.
Quickly Gained, Hard To Lose
It’s easy to lose weight by eating more calories than you burn, but it’s harder to lose. Excess calories are stored in fat in the body over tens of thousands of years.
Tamas Horvath, a neuroscientist, “The default is to promote eating. It’s straightforward and very logical. If it were not this way, you would die after you’re born.”
With colleague Joseph Schlessinger, Horvath has studied how the brain drives hunger.
People Considered Obesity To Be A Failure
Weight gain causes shame and guilt for many people. Losing weight on your own is extremely difficult because human biology evolved to hold onto extra calories. Despite the difficulty of finding help, there are resources available.
Is Obesity Going To End
Children must be at the center of any solution. Kids learn patterns almost from birth, so eating healthily, exercising regularly, and sleeping is important ways to teach them.
Earlier this year, a study encouraged people who were overweight but not obese to sleep 1.2 hours more a night. They consumed 270 fewer calories than volunteers who slept their usual 612-hour nights.