eli5: why is gaining weight so easy but losing weight so hard
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It’s not. Eat more kilojoules than you burn in a day you put on weight, eat less you lose weight.
Math.
To gain a pound of weight, you need to consume (eat) 3,500 more calories than you expend (use to keep yourself alive). That’s a lot of food, but it’s not *that* much food – think an entree and a slice of cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. If you were diligent and dedicated, you could gain a pound a day, although you might not enjoy it after a while. Once you had some practice, you might be able to gain as much as a pound and a half a day.
To lose a pound, you have to expend (through living and exercise) 3,500 calories more than you consume (eat). I personally expend about 2,000 calories a day, so even eating nothing I couldn’t lose a pound a day. Eating nothing for more than a week or so can kill you due to electrolyte imbalance; even people on medically supervised very low calorie diets usually don’t go below 500. And it’s hard to exercise enough to burn significant calories without eating, particularly over long periods.
(There are a lot of fine distinctions I’m glossing over, like loss of lean mass vs loss of fat mass, limits to the number of calories that can be metabolized over 24 hours, homeostatic mechanisms that tend to make you expend more or fewer calories when food is plentiful vs scarce.)
It’s pretty much just as easy either way. It’s just generally easier to accidentally eat too much all the time. One burger can be as much calories as some people eat in a day.
It’s all about calories in/calories out. If you eat more than you burn, you will gain weight. If you burn more than you eat, you will lose weight.
Some people have a hard time not eating more, and can’t stand being hungry. People who “can’t” gain weight have a hard time eating, and aren’t comfortable full. They could gain weight if they really tried.
It’s all about fighting your cravings. I have a hard time eating, and find it hard to gain weight. Sometimes I like the feeling of being hungry, and I know that feeling full will take away my focus. I could gain weight—it’s not like I can’t—I just don’t.
Tbh our bodies are smart and designed not to starve, historically dying of undereating was far more common than dying of overeating, and that’s true for living organisms at large.
So most things adapted to eat whenever possible… the catch is that smart human beings created industrialized farming, and now we make waaaaaay more food than our bodies were ready for, and it has significantly more energy content.
To crap on the question though, losing weight is objectively easier. Your body burns energy on its own, in order to gain weight you actually have to do something.
Something worth mentioning that I haven’t seen here yet is why it’s so hard to *keep* weight off.
Think of fat cells as being like balloons. When you gain weight for the first time, you body creates new fat cells. When you lose weight, the fat cells don’t go away, they deflate. Then, when you start regaining weight, your deflated fat cells reinflate, which takes considerably less enery than building new ones.
The average life span of a fat cell is 7 years. Therefore, your body’s “default” weight is going to be whatever was your heaviest weight was in the past 7 years.
If you are asking what I think you are, you gain and lose weight at pretty much the same pace. What makes losing weight more difficult is the conscious effort you are putting into it, it’s on your mind (I wonder how many calories are in that, what’s the portion size, what will leave me feeling the fullest for the least calories). Eating without thinking can cause over eating and you are less focused on the details, which in turn makes you gain weight if you aren’t burning the amount of calories to be in a deficit. This is all circumstantial. If you have a slow metabolism like me (RIP) this is usually how it works with me.
The body has a built-in system to regulated weight; the fat cells secrete leptin and the brain regulates hunger based on how much leptin there is in the blood.
That’s how the system is supposed to work. However, many (most?) people are insulin resistant and also leptin resistant – that means that the brain is ignoring the signal that leptin is sending.
I think those who are saying the body wants to gain as possible are incorrect. While there are animals that play that game – rhinos and elephants are examples – most animals balance the advantage of extra fat to get through times when food is scarce, most balance that with being able to move quickly and get away from predators and/or chase prey. If we look at aboriginal peoples, the vast majority of them look quite thin.
Because we are surrounded by cheap food engineered to be appealing and accessible. Our environment was built to sell stuff, including food. Weight loss in contrast doesn’t make anyone rich— it can be free.
Historically it was the opposite. We’re not wired to live in a world where food is so easy to get
I’m trying to lose weight, carb cycling (2 low carb days, then 1 high(er) carb day), with exercise. Not going overboard on the exercise, mostly walking, stretching and Cardio at home, but expending more than I’m consuming. This is the first time I’ve ever committed to losing weight, and it’s so hard. I’m always hungry. Always tired. I want to give up cuz I’m down only a pound, with 19 to go to my goal, but it’s so damn hard.
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