Regaining weight after stopping a diet is a classic for a very large number of people.
Some people may try… Unfortunately, the diet undertaken inevitably ends up leading to a resumption of kilos, whether in whole or in part.
And this, despite paying attention to their diet even at the end of the diet in question. For what ? Researchers believe they have found the origin and explanation of the famous yo yo effect.
In “survival” mode
Thus, too much calorie intake is not necessarily the cause. In fact, it’s the organism which, as I’m interested, tells us, which goes into “survival” mode in response to the drop in nutrient intake. When the diet ends, the body will make reserves, in anticipation of a possible new limitation.
It was researchers from the Max-Planck Institute in Germany and Harvard Medical School in the United States who sought to understand what was precisely going on in our brains.
Neurons that work to regain weight
In the newspaper Cell Metabolism, the researchers claim that it is a set of neurons that are activated in the arcuate nucleus, at the level of the hypothalamus. This is a region known for its management, among other things, of hunger.
A hunger that will therefore activate these neurons, which then produce a neuropeptide that promotes appetite and reduces the body’s energy consumption, ultimately leading to weight regain.
What to expect from this discovery?
And this phenomenon, observed in mice, seems to be permanent. The researchers succeeded in inhibiting the neural pathways at the origin of this feeling of hunger in mice, which made it possible to limit their weight gain after a diet.
Henning Fenselau, researcher at the Max Planck Institute and author of the study, explains:
In the long term, our goal is to find therapies that would help maintain the body weight achieved while dieting. To achieve this, we will continue to explore ways to block the mechanisms that reinforce this neural pathway in humans.
Before confirming that the same pattern exists in humans, make sure to follow a balanced diet.