If you’ve ever decided that it was time to make a healthy change and embarked on a weight loss journey, you’ve probably asked yourself the question once or twice (or maybe many, many times): why is losing weight so darn hard?
It’s a question that has spawned a multi-billion dollar diet industry, with a new commercialized weight loss company or fad diet popping up seemingly every other day that claims to have the answer. But despite the endless amount of weight loss options out there, so many of us still find ourselves struggling, floundering, and very often backtracking to where we started.
As it turns out, the right answer for you might not be in the newest workout technology or the latest trending diet. It might be hidden in your own body’s biometrics.
Let’s unravel all the reasons that you could be having such a hard time getting to your goal.
Common approaches to weight loss
The struggle to lose weight (and keep it off) is such a common endeavor that it often follows a pretty predictable pattern. When someone decides they want to lose some weight, this is the general direction they might go:
- They start researching the most effective ways to lose weight and get to “goal,” generally as quickly as possible. They want to feel good, and they want it ASAP!
- They find a flashy new solution, usually by word-of-mouth or through the media, and the promises it makes are alluring, to say the least. This trending diet tells them to cut out a food group and they’ll drop the pounds just like that. That weight loss challenge at the local gym guarantees they’ll be down two dress sizes in no time if they just follow the routine. Sounds amazing - they’re in!
- They enthusiastically dive headfirst into their new routine. Grocery lists get specific and strict, or they hit the gym and sweat it out every single day as their gym challenge specifies. Social events that could be detrimental to their goals are skipped and any foods that don’t fit into their new diet are snubbed. All that hard work and discipline starts to pay off; within just a couple of weeks, they start seeing some progress.
- But after a while, that initial fire starts to die out a bit, and it slowly becomes harder and harder to stick to that plan. Life might be getting in the way, with constant events and tempting options making it more and more difficult to stay strictly on course. Or they start to realize how constantly hungry and nutrient-deprived they are from their restrictive diet, and cravings for other foods get intense and hard to pass up. Whatever their own roadblocks are, they realize that their new diet/exercise routine isn’t right for their body, or it’s going to be unsustainable in the long run.
- They get discouraged when their progress starts slowing down, despite the diet’s promises. They start loosening the reins a little, then a lot. Before they know it, they end up right back to where they started.
Sound familiar? It’s such a prevalent pattern among dieters that it even has its own name: “yo-yo dieting.”
So what is it that’s going wrong when all signs initially pointed to success?
Why most diets fail
One of the main problems for most diets and weight loss programs is that they focus on immediate, short-term changes rather than addressing long-term and sustainable behavior changes. Many of these popular fad diets are also highly generalized and don’t address how people have different metabolisms and nutrition needs, which can spell disaster for both your health and your weight loss.
On its surface, weight loss is a simple “calories in versus calories out” equation, and this is the main premise behind most diets that restrict what you are allowed to eat. It’s a simple idea: the more kinds of food you can cut out of your regular eating plan, the fewer calories you’ll be consuming, and the more fat your body will burn to try and fuel itself.
But there’s a whole lot more going on when you’re trying to lose weight, and the problem is complex and multi-faceted. In fact, both your body and your mind could be working against you here:
- Behavior: There’s an interesting conundrum that many people who diet find themselves in: they can lose weight when they follow the prescribed “diet rules,” but quickly lose progress as soon as they stray away. This is a sure sign that their diet has not addressed any behavioral changes and that it’s an unsustainable way for someone to eat for the rest of their life.
In one qualitative study, obese subjects who had attempted weight loss multiple times in their life were interviewed about their experiences and opinions about dieting. Even though many of the participants cited difficulty with maintaining long-term results from dieting alone, 80% still came to the consensus that dieting was effective … when one could stick to it. Some of the more common complaints were that dieting on its own didn’t address their lifestyle or behavior, or participants blamed themselves for not “sticking to it” and getting the quick fix they wanted.
Dieting is, in a word, hard. It’s hard to constantly restrict your food choices and feel like you are depriving yourself - both of which are telltale signs that your diet is not sustainable.
- Metabolism: As you lose weight, your metabolism also starts to slow down since it no longer needs to maintain the fat and muscle tissue you’ve already lost. This can be bad news if you still have a ways to go to reach your goal weight because it may mean you need to cut your calories even more to continue progressing.
Extreme “crash” diets might also lead to significant losses of muscle mass in addition to fat. In situations where people follow extreme calorie deficits, their bodies turned to the energy stored in their tissues. Ideally, you would want your fat tissue to be broken down for this, but significant calorie deficits could lead to big losses in your muscle tissue.
And here’s why this is what you don’t want when you’re trying to lose weight: since muscle tissue is more metabolically active than fat tissue, this means that following a diet that promises quick results can ultimately backfire as your metabolism slows down in response to your weight management.
The bottom line here? If you want to make real progress and lifelong improvements to your weight and body composition, there’s no such thing as a quick fix.
Balancing hormones for weight loss
Your own hormones might also be preventing you from successful weight loss. In fact, they could be part of the reason that the diet that worked so well for your coworker just isn’t right for your body.
You can think of hormones as chemical messengers that send signals to your organs and systems for a variety of actions including fat storage and burn. Your body releases hormones in response to what’s going on in your body, including the kinds of foods and nutrients that are present. So an improperly balanced diet can then lead to an improper balance of your fat-burning hormones, which can then go on to make it harder to lose weight even if you’re following along with your diet the way you’re supposed to.
Relevant hormones here include:
- Insulin, which is released in response to sugar in your bloodstream and determines how your body stores fat
- Thyroid hormones, which are important for your metabolism but can be affected by low-carb, high-fat diets like keto.
- Leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone that decreases as you lose fat cells, triggering increased appetite and cravings
- Growth hormone, which can signal to your body to start conserving energy and preventing fat burn in periods of calorie deficit
If you’re eating a diet that doesn’t have the right balance of fat and carbs or are eating so few calories that your body reaches “starvation mode,” these hormones can wreak havoc on your metabolism and make it much, much harder to lose weight. This is why it’s so important to find the right balance of nutrients for your body, and why that balance might not be the same as it is for someone else.
How to keep weight off in the long-term
So in order to lose weight (the healthy way) and keep it off (for the long run), you have to find and adopt an eating pattern that doesn’t affect your fat-burning hormones to the point where you can no longer lose weight. You also want a balanced diet that gives you the optimal amount of dietary fat and healthy carbohydrates for your body.
One of the best ways to do this is by testing your nutrient and hormone levels. With Base’s at-home Diet Test, you can get real answers for what’s holding you back from losing weight. Whether your hormones are out of whack or your nutrients are unbalanced, Base can give you specific answers for what’s happening in your own body - and help you find solutions to make healthy lifestyle changes that stick.
Weight loss is not easy. With biological mechanisms and behavioral roadblocks alike all bent on preventing you from losing those precious energy stores, it’s no wonder that so many people throw in the towel before they reach their goal. But by understanding where your hormones and nutrition quality stands with an at-home blood test from Base, you can get key insights into exactly what’s holding you back and, most importantly, find answers so you can finally get off that yo-yo dieting roller coaster.
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