Male Speaker: Why is it so hard to keep weight off once one loses it?
Dr. William McCarthy: Losing weight is really going against everything the body is made for. Our bodies are geared to eat. It's self preserving. Body fats serves a purpose, is to store fat. Our bodies are made to go through famines, wars, new ice-ages or global warming. We are made to live without food for extended periods of time, but the reverse side of that is our body is made to hoard food.
So, when times are good, we eat. Right now, we are in the time of plenty. There is food everywhere. So, in order to lose weight, we have to sit there and be faced with all of the same foods. We have patterns of behavior, we have genetics, we have all of these things that we are fighting. We have eating habits that have been developed from childhood. So, once we lose the weight, we don t change any of these factors, we don t suddenly become a thin person and just forget it. That s why weight is put back on so quickly once a person loses weight. It's a continual effort to lose weight. I really almost look at it as trying to keep weight off, it's almost as if we take an alcoholic to the bar, sat him there and say, you can't have a drink.
So, when we try to lose weight, we have to look at it long-term, we have to make permanent changes otherwise, if you do what you have been doing, you will regain the weight.
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