When we set the goal of losing weight, we usually resort to the classic theoretical formula, and true clear, is to count ingested calories and spent calories, that is, to focus on our basal metabolism with a caloric deficit through a hypocaloric diet.

Of course this equation works and is the par excellence basis for controlling our weight. The problem of this issue begins when we stop following this calculation and despite “not happening again”, controlling more or less what we eat, the undesirable rebound effect appears, spoiling what we have achieved and sometimes even more. Learn how to solve the rebound effect.

Everything is not based on calorie counting

Finding the perfect balance for our body and controlling the calories we eat and how we spend them, with the help of exercise, is perfect; But if we are looking for weight loss: we have an iron will for the rest of our days or we must understand the human body and its biological regulators.

As the first option I consider to be more than complicated, I think we should opt for the second, which can be a great help to understand how our body is regulated and help from the inside to get lose weight without concluding in a rebound effect.

In fact, according to studies (study1, study2), 90-95% of people who go on a diet to achieve weight loss, fail in their purpose or even win more, so I think it is more than relevant data for Choose an alternative route to the traditional one that gives us some more useful information to get it.

The mechanism of the hypothalamus

Studies have shown that two people who have a consumption difference of 25,000 calories in just three months, have a virtually similar weight decrease. How can this be?

If we continue to analyze, other research has shown that following a different diet, a person who consumes 300 calories a day more than another (with similar needs and physical characteristics) manages to lose even more fat than the subject with lower calorie intake. Crazy, right?

The body tends to regulate when the energy received is altered or its fat reserves are altered

We will only be able to understand these data if we go into our own metabolism and our regulatory systems, that is, in understanding what our body is doing to maintain weight in these people who ingest more calories .

THE ENERGY REGULATOR

This is because our body has ways of regulating energy expenditure internally beyond exercise. This is where the role of the hypothalamus comes into play : the great energy regulator.

The hypothalamus is governed within what he considers your proper weight which, of course, in most cases will not match first with your ideal because otherwise … there would be problems. For this, it oscillates within a range of available fat or energy, which is known as set point.

If we follow a diet too restricted in calories, we will leave that set point where our hypothalamus moves and the alarms will jump responding with strong resistance, since the original regulation range is altered, and if we manage to control this variation is When the fearsome rebound effect will appear.

Leptin-hypothalamus connection

Within this adipostat or regulation system, another concept comes into play, in addition to the hypothalamus, which we have talked about on occasion, leptin : hormone secreted by fat and indicator for the hypothalamus of the amount of energy available in our body.

Leptin could be said to be in charge of sending the information and the hypothalamus to respond, so that if the report of levels of fat sent is very low, the answer is the appetite and the subsequent regulation of the metabolism not to spend too much energy, That is, the internal mechanism is slowed down.

For this reason, when during a period of diet we exaggeratedly restricting our calorie intake, we lose the sensitivity to leptin the body does not assimilate that we have enough energy because it does not perceive a sensation of satiety (although we do have it and fat levels are high ) And continues to ask for more and more, raising the new set point in some more “kilitos” that will happen to be the new ideal fat range in which the great regulator, the hypothalamus, is going to move.