Why is weight loss so hard? Why is keeping the weight off even harder? While there are dozens of popular commercial weight loss programs and diets, their results are surprisingly similar. Over 90% of people will gain their weight back. Even with weight loss surgery, many patients will regain some or all of their weight.

If you listen to the average person, you just need to move more and eat less and you will be able to lose weight. Popular theory holds that every 3,500 calorie deficit you create leads to a pound of weight loss. Commercial weight loss programs promise 20 pounds of weight loss a month.

As you probably have discovered, these claims are not always true. If you are like most people, you have probably tried many different diets and plans to lose weight. In some cases you may have been successful - at least in the short term. But then the weight comes back. Other times, you may not have been able to lose any weight at all.

Why is this? Why can’t we just use a food diary, exercise a few times a week or keto diet our way to permanent weight loss?

Weight loss is an incredibly complicated process influenced by your:

• genetics

• age

• activity level

• medical conditions

• medications

• sleep quality

• stress level

• eating pattern

• type of foods consumed

• exercise level

• microbiome (the bacteria in your gut)

A major biological reason for our struggles with weight loss is that the body fights incredibly hard to maintain a weight set point. Our bodies are running a genetic code that was built for the caveman days - an environment where we had a lot of activity but not a lot of food.

During this time period, it made sense for parts of the body and brain to view any weight loss as a threat to survival and increase hunger and drive to obtain food. Unfortunately, this works against us in today’s environment where food is readily available and our activity levels have dropped significantly.

There are also many psychological reasons for us to eat food. We use food for comfort - for example whenever we are stressed or bored. We can also set up conditioned responses where we link two behaviours - creating a situation where we have a conditioned response to a stimulus. For example, many people struggle with eating (the conditioned response) while watching TV (the stimulus) after dinner. This is because the brain has created a circuit where eating is firmly linked to watching TV.

So how can we lose weight and keep it off given this information? How do we change our biological and psychological drives? Fortunately we understand these processes more than ever before. Click on the various categories under the weight loss tab to learn more. Or use the category descriptions and links below.

If you've lost and regained the same twenty, thirty or fifty pounds, this episode of My Weight Live is for you. Weight management specialist Dr. Anil Maheshwari talks about why this happens and reviews the medical treatments available for obesity and excess weight.

In this episode of Eat, Play, Love, Dr. Maheshwari discusses “What’s Best for Me? Exploring Evidence-Based Obesity Treatments”.