The Surprising Reason You Can’t Keep the Weight Off

There’s a reason it’s so hard to keep the weight off—and it has nothing to do with your diet or how often you exercise.

That’s because your cells remember you’re obese and actively fight your efforts to keep the weight off, according to a study published in Nature. “The body appears to retain a memory of obesity that defends against weight change,” according to a study that followed the progress of formerly obese mice and found that they gained weight faster than mice with no history of obesity when both were placed on a high-fat diet.

“From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. “Humans and other animals have adapted to defend their body weight rather than lose it, since food scarcity has historically been a common challenge,” said Dr. According to Laura Hinte, first author of the study The Guardian.

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And the tendency to obesity happens at the molecular level, as Professor Ferdinand von Meyenn, senior author of the study at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said: “Our study shows that one of the reasons maintaining body weight after initial weight loss is difficult is that fat cells remember their previous state of obesity and probably want to return to that state. Memory appears to prime cells to respond more quickly, and perhaps in unhealthy ways, to sugars or fatty acids.”

And this, the study says, leads to the “problematic ‘yo-yo’ effect often seen in dieting,” as people have to actively fight against their cellular memory.

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However, researchers say the memory may not be permanent.

“It’s possible that maintaining a reduced or healthy weight long enough is enough to erase the memory,” Hinte said, according to the agency.

As the study says, “targeting these changes in the future could improve long-term weight control and health outcomes” because “obesity and its associated comorbidities pose significant health risks.”

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Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education