| Why is it difficult to lose weight? |
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Society tends to attribute too much of obesity to laziness and gluttony whereas we should consider it as a disease process. It is not a defect in the personality or character of the patient. Obesity’s increasing prevalence is probably due to an obesity supportive environment with behavioural and biological influences. At the extreme end of the scale, the morbidly obese, are thought to have a significant genetic component to their disorder. Both the brain and gut work in together to prevent conventional attempts to lose weight. Weight regulation is controlled centrally by certain parts of the brain (hypothalamus and brain stem); weight loss provokes a compensatory response from gut hormones (e.g. ghrelin) to increase the appetite. Internal mechanisms therefore cause the body to grudgingly lose weight and when large amounts of weight is lost, post-starvation hunger and overeating occurs with resultant disproportionate fat gain. This is why medical treatment programmes fail 95% to 97% of the time (National Institutes of Health Study 1992).
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