Why dieting won’t help you lose weight, explained by evolution

When it comes to keeping weight off, a combination of circumstances conspires against you. Each one on its own makes it difficult, but put them together and you are no longer in a fair fight. One circumstance that makes things hard is our environment of near-constant temptation. Two others are biology and psychology. I realize it may seem odd to you that I am calling these things “circumstances,” but we need to acknowledge the context in which you regain weight.

To an important extent, weight regain after a diet is your body’s evolved response to starvation. When you are dieting, it may feel as though you are about to starve to death, but you know that you can open the fridge at any time and find more to eat, if you really wanted to. Your body doesn’t know this, however, and you have no way to tell it that you just want slimmer hips or a flatter stomach. All your body knows is that not enough calories are coming in, so it kicks into survival mode.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the variety of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original: You should never diet again: The science and genetics of weight loss

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