Weight Loss

It seems like 99.9% of the population wants to shed a few kilos right now. There also seems to be an endless number of diets and ways to choose from — low carb, keto, intermittent fasting, and delivered-to-your-door meal plans. How can you possibly know which weight loss path is right for you? And why is it so darn hard to get started?

Before we dive into how weight loss works, let’s first focus on why weight gain happens in the first place and what you need to know about it.

Understanding Unintentional Weight Gain

Unintentional weight gain occurs when you put on weight without increasing your consumption of food or liquid and without decreasing your activity. This occurs when you’re not trying to gain weight. It’s often due to fluid retention, abnormal growths, constipation, or pregnancy.

Unintentional weight gain can be periodic, continuous, or rapid. Periodic unintentional weight gain includes regular fluctuations in weight. One example of unintentional weight gain is experienced during a woman’s menstrual cycle. Periodic, but longer-term unintentional weight gain is often the result of pregnancy, which lasts nine months.

Rapid unintentional weight gain may be due to medication side effects. Many cases of unintentional weight gain are harmless. But some symptoms experienced along with rapid weight gain may signal a medical emergency.

What causes unintentional weight gain?

• Pregnancy

One of the most common causes of unintentional weight gain is pregnancy. But many women do intentionally eat more to support the growth of the baby. During pregnancy, most women put on weight as the baby grows.

This extra weight consists of the baby, placenta, amniotic fluid, increased blood supply, and an enlarging uterus.

• Hormonal changes

Typically between the ages of 45 and 55, women enter a stage called menopause. During a woman’s reproductive years, estrogen — one of the hormones responsible for regulating menstruation and ovulation — begins to decline. Once menopause occurs, estrogen is too low to induce menstruation. A decrease in estrogen can cause women in menopause to experience weight gain around the abdominal region and the hips. Aside from the hormonal changes of menopause, women diagnosed with the polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) may also experience weight gain.

Hormonal changes in your middle years can also cause your metabolism to slow down, leading to weight gain.

Other medical conditions affecting hormone levels can cause weight gain in both sexes. These include:

1. hypothyroidism
2. increased cortisol (stress hormone) production, such as that in Cushing’s syndrome
3. increased aldosterone production

• Menstruation

Periodic weight gain is often due to the menstrual cycle. Women may experience water retention and bloating around the time of their period. Changing levels in estrogen and progesterone may cause gain weight. Usually, this is a weight increase of a few pounds.

This type of weight gain subsides when the menstrual period ends for the month. It often reappears the next month after the menstrual period starts again, and sometimes during ovulation.

• Fluid retention

Unexplained rapid weight gain may be the result of fluid retention. This leads to fluid swelling, also known as edema, which can cause your limbs, hands, feet, face, or abdomen to look swollen.

People with heart failure, kidney disease, liver disease, or those taking certain medications may experience this type of weight gain.

You should always report rapid or significant weight gain and fluid retention to your doctor, even if no other symptoms are present.

• Medications

Unintentional weight gain can be due to certain medications, including:

• corticosteroids
• antidepressants
• antipsychotic medications
• birth control pills

What are the symptoms of unintentional weight gain?

Understanding Weight Loss

By now, you’ve probably heard about quite a few wacky weight loss advice, tips, and tricks. Whether it’s to drink vegetable juice daily or substitute meals with weight loss “bars.” And usually, those recommendations are publicized by people without any health expertise. But like there are a ton of misguided weight loss suggestions out there to be bypassed, there are also a lot of fair, research-backed, and expert-approved advice for people who look at weight loss as a subjective goal.

Whether you want to lose weight for a special occasion or simply improve your health, weight loss is a common goal. No matter what the regime is, a diet, a workout routine, or yoga asanas, it’s only going to work if you’re consistent. The only tip that’s ever going to work is sticking to it.

How Weight Loss Occurs

Weight loss transpires when you unfailingly ingest fewer calories than you burn each day. Contrarily, weight gain occurs when you unfailingly eat more calories than you burn. So basically, any food or beverage you devour has a particular calorie count and it needs to be watched with respect to your overall calorie intake.

• If the number of calories you ingest equals the number of calories you burn, you maintain your body weight.
• If you want to lose weight, you must create a negative calorie balance by consuming fewer calories than you burn or burning more calories through increased activity.

Factors Affecting Weight Loss

Several factors influence the rate at which you lose weight.

Gender

Your fat-to-muscle ratio significantly affects your ability to lose weight.

Because women typically have a more prominent fat-to-muscle ratio than men, they have a 5–10% lower RMR than men of the same height.

This means that women generally burn 5–10% fewer calories than men at rest. Thus, men tend to lose weight quicker than women following a diet equal in calories.

Age

One of the many bodily changes that transpire with aging is alterations in body composition — fat mass increases and muscle mass decreases.

This change, along with other factors like the declining calorie needs of your major organs, contributes to a lower RMR.

In fact, adults over age 70 can have RMRs that are 20–25% lower than those of younger adults. This decrease in RMR can make weight loss increasingly difficult with age.

Starting Point

Your initial body mass and composition may also influence how fast you can anticipate losing weight. It’s essential to understand that different fundamental weight losses (in pounds) can correspond to the same relative (%) weight loss in different individuals. Eventually, weight loss is a complex process.

Although a chubbier person may lose double the amount of weight, a person with less weight may lose an equivalent percentage of their body weight. For example, a person weighing 300 pounds (136 kg) may lose 10 pounds (4.5 kg) after lowering their daily intake by 1,000 calories and boosting physical activity for 2 weeks.

Calorie deficit

You must create a negative calorie balance to lose weight. The extent of this calorie deficit affects how quickly you lose weight. For example, consuming 500 fewer calories per day for 8 weeks will likely result in greater weight loss than eating 200 fewer calories per day. However, be sure not to make your calorie deficit too large.

Doing so would not only be unsustainable but also put you at risk for nutrient deficiencies. What’s more, it might make you more likely to lose weight in the form of muscle mass rather than fat mass.

Sleep

Sleep tends to be an overlooked yet crucial component of weight loss. Chronic sleep loss can significantly hinder weight loss and the speed at which you shed pounds. Just one night of sleep deprivation has been shown to increase your desire for high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods, such as cookies, cakes, sugary beverages, and chips.

One 2-week study randomized participants on a calorie-restricted diet to sleep either 5.5 or 8.5 hours each night. Those who slept 5.5 hours lost 55% less body fat and 60% more lean body mass than those who slept 8.5 hours per night. Consequently, chronic sleep deprivation is strongly linked to type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and certain cancers.

Other factors

Several other factors can affect your weight loss rate, including:

• Medications. Many medications, such as antidepressants and other antipsychotics, can promote weight gain or hinder weight loss.
• Medical conditions. Illnesses, including depression and hypothyroidism, a condition in which your thyroid gland produces too few metabolism-regulating hormones, can slow weight loss and encourage weight gain.
• Family history and genes. There is a well-established genetic component associated with people who have overweight or obese, and it may affect weight loss.
• Yo-yo dieting. This pattern of losing and regaining weight can make weight loss increasingly difficult with each attempt, due to a decrease in RMR.

Easy Ways to Lose Weight

There is a lot of flawed weight loss data on the internet. Much of what is suggested is debatable at best, and not based on any actual science. Nevertheless, there are several natural methods that have actually been proven to work.

• Add Protein to Your Diet
• Eat Whole, Single-Ingredient Foods
• Avoid Processed Foods
• Stock Up on Healthy Foods and Snacks
• Limit Your Intake of Added Sugar
• Drink Water
• Avoid Liquid Calories
• Limit Your Intake of Refined Carbs
• Fast Intermittently
• Eat More Fruits and Vegetables
• Count Calories Once in a While
• Try a Low-Carb Diet
• Add Eggs to Your Diet
• Get Enough Sleep
• Eat More Fiber
• Do Some Sort of Cardio
• Add Resistance Exercises
• Practice Mindful Eating

Common Mistakes When Trying to Lose Weight

• Focusing only on the scale