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Bail Reform Misinformation – How Your Body Fights Weight Loss

And Why It Wants to Gain Weight Back

Weight management is a key component of a healthy life. While many people successfully maintain healthy weights through a balance of nutrition and activity, weight loss can be vital for the 71 percent of Americans who are overweight or suffering from obesity. However, weight loss – particularly extreme weight loss – is more complicated than consuming fewer calories than you burn. As many as 90 percent of people who have lost a considerable amount of weight will gain it back.

Sustainable weight management is possible and understanding how your body responds to weight loss efforts can help you establish realistic expectations on your journey.

Here are 8 things you may not know about your body and weight loss.

1. Your Metabolism Will Slow Down to Store Fat

The more you work out or manage your calorie intake to lose weight, the more your metabolism wants to compensate by slowing down to maintain your current weight. Metabolic compensation kicks in to preserve and store fat for future energy. Some physicians theorize this is because the human body has evolved to value storing fat and energy and to interpret a shortage of calories as sign of distress or famine.

2. Your Hormones Will Increase Drive to Eat

Unfortunately, metabolic compensation isn’t your body’s only strategy to prevent weight loss or encourage weight gain. Hunger hormones – leptin and ghrelin – are also at play. Fat cells produce leptin, which tells your brain when you’re full. Fat cells also shrink when you lose weight, producing less leptin and meaning you don’t feel as full. Strike one. Ghrelin, produced by the stomach, tells the brain it’s time to refuel. When you lose weight, ghrelin levels rise, prompting you to want to eat more frequently. Strike two. Research suggests that neither leptin levels nor ghrelin levels return to a normal baseline for at least a year. Learn more about the benefits that exipure provides.

3. Your Brain Won’t Register How Much You’re Eating

In addition to your metabolism and hormones, the neural circuitry in your brain is fighting weight loss too. Food has a greater reward value after you’ve lost weight and the part of the brain that regulates food restraint becomes less active – meaning that while you’re eating more to feel full (courtesy of leptin), you’re also less aware of how much you’re eating.

4. Your Genes May or May Not Be Helping

More than 400 genes have been linked to obesity and weight gain and they can affect appetite, metabolism, cravings and body-fat distribution. The exact degree to which you can be genetically predisposed to weight gain or obesity is unclear, but genes have been associated with difficulty losing weight even as you increase physical activity or low-calorie diets. Much like weight management on the whole, addressing a genetic predisposition for obesity is much easier from a preventive standpoint than a reactionary one.

5. Your Body Is Extra Prepared for Your Second Try

When your body gets sick, it creates antibodies to the illness so that the next time, the immune system is prepared. Unfortunately, it reacts in a similar way to weight loss. If you’ve lost weight in the past due to exercise or diet changes and attempt those same strategies again to lose weight, your body – again, mainly hormones and metabolism – will adjust to prevent similar damage and you’ll see fewer weight loss results.

6. Your Weight Has a Favorite Number

Some scientists subscribe to the idea that your body has a set weight point and all of the above – your metabolism, hormones, brain – will adjust to maintain that weight. The theory goes that people can have naturally higher or lower set weights than others and genetics, aging, history of weight loss and other hormonal shifts can all impact your set weight. Moreover, set points can rise but very rarely do they lower. Similarly, they are much easier to maintain – because your body wants to – than reduce, which is why maintaining a healthy weight is easier than losing weight.

 

8 Comments

  1. Jeffrey Catron on December 9, 2016 at 3:34 pm

    Well said! I’ve often said the same thing in regards to private counsel vs. public defenders.



  2. Juan Chavez on December 9, 2016 at 5:56 pm

    Anthony what is your thoughts on publicly funding secured Bail for indigent nonviolent defendants. Instead of tax payers paying $6750 to house a defendant at $75 a day for 90 days, paying a one time premium to a paid surety. If the paid surety fails to safe guard the adjudication process the State stands to make 10x the amount. Pretrial services does not ensure court appearance and does not under law of the ability to arrest. It simply ensures the defendant is not doing drugs.. proponents of Bail reform say if a defendant fails to appear in court they will get a warrant. The problem with this logic is that the defendant may get arrested three years later and the district attorney will have no leg to stand on to prosecute them.. who knows if the police officer will still be working if they have good contact information for the victims..



  3. William Hampton on December 9, 2016 at 8:56 pm

    Thanks for the information Tony.



  4. Glenda Stroobant on December 10, 2016 at 1:06 pm

    Well stated.



  5. Scott MacLean on December 23, 2016 at 12:26 pm

    Tony, a well researched and presented article. I would add that the prerequisite position that is held by criminal justice reformers should be challenged as well. Nowhere in their argument regarding indigents do they acknowledge that there is an underground drug economy that is untraceable. They also fail to acknowledge that the purported indigents sitting in jail support their families, if they did, they would not still. E there. Lastly, and most important, often families of defendants that have drug abuse issues, do not want them released. They want them to stay there and get clean. Those of us that have experience in the bail industry k ow that there is no better con man than a junky in jail.
    I am of the opinion that once a person enters the criminal justice system, we have already failed. To address anything other than proactive measures instead of reactive responses, is similar to Don Quixote fighting his wind mills.



  6. […] the recent bail reform debacle in the state of New Jersey fully underway a number of issues that have been seething below […]



  7. […] the recent bail reform debacle in the state of New Jersey fully underway a number of issues that have been seething below […]



  8. […] ← Bail Reform Misinformation […]



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