I'm overweight, I hardly eat anything, but I just can't shift it!

As one of my daughter’s friends would say:

“Your diet did you dirty!”

Every time you’ve gone round and round with a restrictive diet, followed by a perceived failure, followed by sabotage - only to start again the following week, you were quietly pushing your biology in precisely the opposite direction to the one you wanted it to go in.

Each time, frightening your metabolism into thinking a war was coming.

“Prepare” you’re salad screamed.

“The end is nigh!”

“Conserve energy at all costs!”

Then the diet failed (the diet - not you!), back came the carbs and the fats. Trouble is your body doesn’t trust you anymore. It thinks this could be a bluff. So despite plentiful calories - it continues to cling onto them and it continues to conserve energy.

The longer the good times roll, the closer to your original baseline your metabolism gets - but it almost never goes back to the start.

Instead, there is a new, metabolically apprehensive baseline.

In practice, this means your calorie expenditure gets progressively lower with every diet EVEN if you regain the weight afterwards.

If you started at 100kg with a basal metabolic rate of 2000 kcal, by the time you’ve been on a diet, lost 10kg and regained it again six months later, your new BMR is only 1800 kcal. In practical terms this means a diet that used to keep your weight stable at 100kg will now result in weight gain.

It’s a vicious cycle if you don’t know how to manage it.

In this week’s clinic:

• We’ll go behind the scenes on what’s causing this shift

• The hormonal culprits and what happens to them each time you diet

• Why the eat less-move more mantra is in need of a serious adjustment

• And how you can shift the balance back in your favour for the long term

* The content of these emails/posts/publications/audio files is intended as general health and wellness information, not as individual medical advice. Please consult your own doctor for advice that is specific to you and your needs.