Losing weight is hard. Here are 5 things to keep in mind – CTV

Jan. 30, 2024

If you think it’s hard to lose weight and keep it off, you are not alone — and you are also 100% correct. Long-term weight loss is really difficult to achieve, studies have found.

Estimates vary, but it’s believed that more than 80% of people who lose a substantial amount of weight regain it within five years.

But failure to shed pounds is often not about lacking the willpower to make important lifestyle changes, such as eating healthier, reducing calories and increasing physical activity. The dirty little secret is that our bodies are programmed by evolution to hold on to fat.

“We evolved not to lose weight intentionally,” paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman told CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently on the podcast Chasing Life. Lieberman, a professor and chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, studies why the human body looks and functions the way it does.

Read more: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/losing-weight-is-hard-here-are-5-things-to-keep-in-mind-1.6747873