More than every second Swede is nowadays overweight. The most common trick you try to do something about your overweight or obesity is dieting. Dieting regimes all have in common that you eat fewer calories than the body needs -you end up in slight starvation and then lose weight. This works as long as you are still on your diet. The problems come instead when the dieting is finished and you will try to keep this new, lower weight.
The reason why it is now extremely difficult to keep the new lower weight is that the body has begun to defend itself against the weight loss: substances in the body that signal hunger have increased (including the starvation hormone ghrelin). However, substances that will signal saturation when we have eaten (including the hormone leptin) have been decreased. These different hormones control how the brain acts-we eat more, but do not get fed as we should be once we have eaten. Add to this that the body has also reduced its basic metabolism greatly, and you will understand why it is so difficult to keep your body weight down after a diet.
So here is one piece of bad and two pieces of better news; the bad one first-if you have lost weight by dieting seriously once in life, but then regained all the kilos again, then your body’s defense system is activated. Then you should never again try to lose weight-it will just result the same way again.