Why exercise and diet changes may not be enough to treat obesity

Health ,

To treat people who are obese, doctors need to move beyond simply telling their patients to eat less and exercise more, some researchers argue.

Instead, doctors should focus on the biological mechanisms that make it hard for obese people to lose weight, these researchers say.

When people diet, the body thinks that it's starving, so several biological mechanisms kick in to encourage people to eat more so that they gain the weight back, said Christopher Ochner, an assistant professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. For example, the body slows down the rate at which it burns calories in order to conserve fat, and there are changes in brain signaling that make people more attracted to high-calorie foods, Ochner said.

These mechanisms originally evolved to help humans survive when food was scarce, but "the problem is that those same mechanisms kick in if somebody is 400 lbs. and trying to lose 40 lbs.," Ochner said.

This reasoning explains why about 80 to 95 percent of obese people who lose weight eventually regain it, Ochner said. "In people who have been obese for many years, he noted, "body weight seems to become biologically 'stamped in' and defended." [13 Kitchen Changes That Can Help You Lose Weight]

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