What I Mean by "Weight Loss Isn't Possible"

Let me start by saying that your body LOVES you. It will literally fight to the death to keep you alive, no matter what you do to it. Our bodies have always been this way, even since the time of cave people. Back then, food wasn't always consistently available and, during times of famine, the human body would compensate for a lack of food with powerful biological and psychological mechanisms that would keep humans alive until they could find nourishment. Well guess what? Today, our bodies implement the same tactics to keep you alive during a diet.

Certified intuitive eating counselor Krista Murias recently posted on Instagram, "your body doesn't know the difference between your weight loss diet's calorie deficit and famine. When you eat less in order to lose weight, your body springs into action to save you from what it perceives as the threat of starvation." This includes many subtle techniques that the body uses to regulate its energy balance. 

For example, we have tracked the hormones that send messages that your body sends to your brain to control appetite. What we have found is that, when experiencing a calorie deficit, these hormones will actually change a person's appetite so that they will want to eat more. Some people will eventually give in to these cravings, maybe going so far as to binge, and gain all of the weight back that they lost. They think to themselves, "oh I am such a failure" and beat themselves up for their lack of willpower. For these people, the important thing is to remember that it wasn't a result of a lack of willpower. Their body was just trying to keep them alive.

Then there are those who are somehow able to ignore this increase in appetite. Of course, sending these messages takes up a lot of energy- wasted energy- and what happens is that their body will go into protective mode. In an effort to conserve energy, their body will stop sending these messages to the brain and they will experience no appetite at all. This is what happened to me during the peak of my eating disorder. I had been ignoring my appetite for so long that it eventually went away completely. Back then I was so proud of myself for not wanting to eat when, in reality, I should have been very, very concerned.

Once your body ceases to experience appetite cues, it will kick things up a notch and become more aggressive in managing its energy stores. For example, it will slow down temperature regulation so that you're not as effective at managing body heat. This is why people with eating disorders often feel very cold, which included me at some point. I remember having to put on two pairs of pajama pants at night because I was so cold. It was insane. Again, I was proud of myself. My family would praise me by saying, "It's because you're so skinny now!" Little did they know that it was actually because my body was trying to save me.

Your body also slows down your urge to move and makes movement incredibly tiring. It will take an incredible amount of energy just to walk to the grocery store, or take a shower, or even get dressed. I remember one horrible day in particular when I was out to lunch with my family and, I was so physically exhausted that I could not even lift up my arms to grab my fork and pretend to eat. It was one of the scariest things I've ever experienced.

Don't get me wrong, you will experience weight loss while dieting....at least, at the beginning. Over the long run, however, weight will be regained even while your habits are maintained. You can be doing everything "right" in your efforts to lose weight, but your body will undermine everything you are doing so that your weight loss stalls or that you gain the weight back.

I remember getting to a certain weight and then this number stalling, despite the fact that I was literally starving myself. This was something my father could not understand when I told him how little I was eating. "You'd be dead if you've really only been eating X calories per day for the past year," I remember him saying. I quickly explained that my body had begun to save my ass and had sprung into action to keep me from losing any more weight. It was protecting me from what it thought was a famine, when in reality I was just depriving myself. But he was right. Had my body not been the amazing powerhouse that it is, I probably would not be alive today.

Now let me clarify something, because you're probably thinking "but I've lost some weight before! It definitely is possible!" Intentional weight loss is what is not possible. Your body is constantly changing, day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year. You might move to an apartment that has a longer walk to the subway and get some more exercise in on a daily basis, thus causing you to lose some weight. You might go off of a medication that had increased your appetite and experience a decrease in appetite, thus causing you to lose weight.There are many reasons why you might have lost weight. But if you really stop to think about it, you'll realize that the weight loss was never something that you caused yourself.

So next time you want to beat yourself up for not losing enough weight or for breaking your diet or for not wanting to go the gym, remember that it is not your fault. Your body doesn't know the difference between "diet" and "famine." It will go into starvation mode (which, by the way, around 1500 calories a day is semi-starvation so...feed yourself) and implement primitive energy saving techniques to keep you alive. It WANTS you alive, and so does the world.