eli5: why is gaining weight so easy but losing weight so hard
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You know how you breathe without thinking about it, but you can also control it on purpose when you hold your breath or decide to breathe quickly or slowly?
Your body does that with weight too.
Normally, it takes care of keeping you the right weight on its own. It has a “set weight” it keeps you at a weight just like your house thermostst keeps to always a certain temperature. When you need to eat, you feel really hungry till you eat more. If your body wants potassium it remembers you had bananas before and that had it, so it tells your brain you really really want a banana. When you are full, food doesnt sound nice anymore. This happens all by itself (you dont need to plan it. )
You can decide to ignore what it tells you though. You can refuse to eat the banana and have ice cream instead. Or have no snack at all.
Deciding not to listen to your body is bad. If you hold your breath too long, you can pass out. If you refuse to eat too long, you can die.
Another thing that can go wrong when you eat the wrong things too much or are sick for some reason(lile PCOS) is that the whole body weight system can get broken. You can eat only bad foods until you now really really want cake, not that banana, or chips (salt) instead of water. The thermostat can get stuck at a wrong weight… way too high or too low.
If your set weight is set wrong you body keeps doing its job to keep you at the wrong weight. Now you will be extra hungry at the wrong times or not hungry when you should be. Your weight will stay at the new “set weight” now.
You will get upset about your weight then and start trying to change weight by dieting. But that is hard because now you really really want cake and chips. Vegetables will then sound boring and yucky. If you arent careful, you might convince your body its in danger of starvation becaise of the sudden diet changes. That could make a bigger mess of it all.
As you can see a wrong body weight setting or messed up cravings can make changing your weight on purpose really hard!
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