You’ve lost weight, but beware of regaining it

IF YOU’VE just shed a lot of weight, you might want to hold off on buying a new wardrobe full of “thin” clothes.

That’s because new research finds that lost weight starts creeping back almost immediately after a diet stops.

“We noticed individuals transitioned from a weightloss intervention immediately to gain weight,” said Kathryn Ross, of the University of Florida, Gainesville.

As to why weight started to come back so quickly, Ross said: “There are a lot of different reasons. There’s not an easy answer.”

It may be that people need a specific maintenance intervention where the focus shifts from how to lose weight to how to maintain that loss.

Ross said people also needed to understand how challenging the environment was, and how it was geared to weight gain because of the easy and seemingly endless access to high-calorie foods.

People also got a lot of positive reinforcement when they were losing weight. Family and friends probably commented on what a great job the dieter was doing. Once weight loss was done, however, no one patted you on the back and said: “Hey, great job maintaining your weight!” said Ross, an assistant professor in the clinical and health psychology department.

There were also physiologic and metabolic changes that made it easier to regain weight if you were not following a dietary plan, said dietitian Samantha Heller of NYU Langone Health in New York City.

“Weight loss and maintenance are tough,” Heller said. “Bodies like hanging on to weight. And when dieting, if you’re too hungry, our bodies think no food is available. So the body encourages you to eat more.”

Heller said one way to counteract this was to lose weight slowly, by making healthy changes.

“Your weight loss and maintenance need to be sustainable forever. When you are very focused on creating healthy eating habits, you can maintain those habits even on holiday,” she explained. “It doesn’t mean you can’t try new foods, but you have to watch your portions.”

The new study included information from 70 overweight or obese adults who completed a 12-week weight management programme.

The participants lost an average of about 0.5kg a week. But once the weight intervention ended, weight regain started almost immediately, the findings showed.

Participants gained back about 0.06kg a week the first 11 weeks. At about 32 weeks from the start of the study, the rate of weight regain slowed slightly.

Ross said the researchers had expected there would be a longer period of weight maintenance before a regain started.

But she added, these findings didn’t mean it was impossible to lose weight and keep it off.

The US government has sponsored a large study of “losers” who have maintained their weight loss. One reason for their success was that they maintained the behaviour changes they made when losing weight, Ross said. Many weighed themselves daily, which helped to catch a weight regain early.

Ross said physical activity was an important component in weight maintenance, but people probably needed to exercise more than current US guidelines recommended.

She said it probably took about 200 to 300 minutes of activity a week – up to five hours – to help with weight management.

And, it’s important to realise that when it comes to the environment Americans live in, “we’re really working upstream. It’s easy to spend very little money to get lots of calories”, Ross added.

“As much as you can, modify your environment to work for you.”

For example, Ross bought a house that allows her to bike to work daily, which means she doesn’t even have to think about how she’ll get her daily exercise. As a bonus, she said, her commute on the bike even saved her time compared with driving.

Ross said she had a client who had a lot of trouble driving past a certain doughnut shop.

Ross suggested that the client take a different route home so she wasn’t presented with that challenge every day.

The study was published online recently in the journal Obesity. – New York Times