According to the official account of CDC WeChat, "it's easy to lose weight, but difficult to maintain it" - I believe many people have such a feeling: they are encouraged when they lose weight, and then become depressed when they regain weight. Many people lose weight for six months and finally lose more than ten pounds, but after a year, their weight not only rebounds, but even becomes heavier than before. This is not due to insufficient personal willpower, but rather due to many physiological and psychological mechanisms at play. Weight rebound is not a "failure of willpower", but the result of physiological, behavioral, environmental, and psychological factors working together after the body "sings the opposite tune" to lose weight. Among them, the body's "anti weight loss mechanism" is often the primary driving force behind weight rebound. One is physiological level: the body's "energy-saving defense" and "memory imprint" metabolic adaptation: the more the body is reduced, the more "energy-saving" it becomes. After losing weight, the basal metabolic rate will adaptively decrease, and the body will enter an "energy-saving mode" with reduced calorie demand. This kind of "metabolic adaptation" is like a car entering a fuel-efficient mode, when it returns to its normal diet before losing weight, it is easy to convert excess calories into fat accumulation due to reduced body consumption, leading to weight rebound. More importantly, extreme dieting can lead to muscle loss, which requires consuming 13 calories per kilogram of muscle per day to maintain. Muscle loss can make metabolism worse. Hormonal imbalance: The brain is hijacked by the 'feeding signal'. The leptin secreted by adipocytes is the "satiety hormone", and when body fat decreases, leptin levels drop sharply by 30% -50%; And the secretion of hunger hormones ("hunger signals") in the stomach will significantly increase. This hormonal imbalance can cause the brain to continuously receive instructions of "energy deficiency", making it easy to feel hungry even after eating, and even reducing the willingness to exercise, physiologically driving you to eat more and move less. Fat memory: the 'fat imprint' in cells. Research has found that adipocytes have "obesity memory", and even if weight loss is successful, adipocytes will still retain their "memory" of past obesity states; Once a high-energy diet is restored, it will rapidly proliferate and increase in size, causing weight to rebound quickly. What is even more alarming is that the proportion of fat gained during rebound is much higher than the proportion of fat lost during weight loss, which may lead to the embarrassing situation of "the same weight, higher body fat". Secondly, at the behavioral level, short-term habits are difficult to compete with long-term inertia. Maintaining a strict lifestyle during the weight loss period is often challenging. Many people rely on "extreme control" when losing weight, such as only eating boiled vegetables every day. This pattern cannot be sustained: once life is busy or vigilance is relaxed, old habits such as high oil and high sugar diets and prolonged sitting will resurface. Even more covert is the return of emotional eating. The pressure eating impulse suppressed by willpower during weight loss can erupt when encountering work setbacks or emotional lows. Food becomes a "placebo" for quickly relieving anxiety, but this pleasure obtained through eating often leads to an instant loss of control over calorie intake, and "occasional indulgence" becomes the starting point of rebound. The third aspect is environmental: the ubiquitous "temptation trap". The "nutritional environment" of modern society is extremely unfriendly to weight maintenance: high sugar snacks on supermarket promotion shelves, self-service snack areas in office buildings, and 30 minute delivery fast food. These high calorie foods are not only cheap and easy to obtain, but also irresistible through taste design. The social scene is also a "disaster area": fried vegetables for friends' dinner, alcoholic drinks for company entertainment, sweet Dim sum for family banquet, "human pressure" and "atmosphere coercion" will make people unconsciously relax standards. Research shows that in social settings, per capita calorie intake increases by more than 40% compared to dining alone, and it is easy to overlook "hidden calories" (such as thicken soup and cooking oil). Fourthly, on a psychological level: cognitive biases dissolve. Long term adherence to a "task completion" mentality: most people view reducing importance as a "deadline based task," and immediately feel a sense of "liberation" after meeting the standards, which in turn triggers "retaliatory eating" towards restricted food. For example, if you haven't eaten cake for the past six months and then binge eat for several consecutive days after meeting the standard, it will instantly offset your weight loss results. The "all or nothing" mindset: A small "breaking of the rules" (such as eating an extra cookie) can trigger a psychological breakdown, thinking that "the plan has been ruined, it's better to completely indulge". This cognitive bias can amplify a single mistake into continuous abandonment, ultimately completely deviating from the healthy track. Scientific rebound prevention: constructing a "non rebound system" from four dimensions. In order to maintain long-term weight loss results, efforts need to be made from the aspects of diet, exercise, environment, and psychology to achieve systematic adjustment and consolidation, in order to transform short-term weight loss behaviors into long-term, sustainable and healthy lifestyle habits. One is to maintain dietary stability: replace "diet control" with "nutritional strategies" and gradually transition calories: after reducing weight, do not immediately restore the original food intake. You can increase your calorie intake slightly every few days and monitor your weight weekly to help with a smooth metabolic transition. High protein - high-quality carbon water combination: ensuring the intake of high-quality protein (such as fish, chicken, beans), increasing calorie consumption while reducing muscle loss. Prioritize whole grains (oats, brown rice) carbohydrates, limit refined sugars and white rice flour, and pair with 25-30 grams of dietary fiber per day to enhance satiety. Mindfulness eating technique: Follow the eating sequence of "vegetables → protein → staple food", chew slowly and swallow for more than 20 minutes, giving the brain enough time to receive satiety signals. Adopting the "80/20 rule": 80% eat healthy food, 20% flexibly consume favorite foods (such as small portions of cake once a week), and avoid overeating caused by excessive suppression. The second is exercise consolidation: using "muscle mass" to lock in "metabolic rate" strength training to increase muscle mass: 2-3 strength training sessions per week (such as dumbbells, squats, push ups) to increase muscle mass and thus improve basal metabolism. Aerobic+Intermittent Combination: Ensure at least 150 minutes of moderate to high-intensity aerobic exercise per week (such as brisk walking, swimming, cycling, etc.), interspersed with 2 HIIT training sessions (such as opening and closing jumps for 40 seconds+rest for 20 seconds, repeated for 8 groups). The fat burning effect can last for 24 hours after exercise. Activate non exercise consumption: Get up and move for 5 minutes per hour (such as climbing stairs or holding a mineral water bottle), which can burn an additional 200-300 calories per day. Choose walking instead of short distance transportation and standing for work, making daily activities "invisible sports". Thirdly, environmental intervention: actively transforming the "anti rebound environment" and optimizing family diet: placing washed cucumbers and cherry tomatoes in prominent places in the refrigerator, and hiding high calorie snacks deep in the cabinets; Prepare ready to eat healthy ingredients (ready to eat chicken breast, freeze-dried vegetables) in the kitchen to reduce the frequency of ordering takeout. Social scenario response: Eat healthy snacks before meals, prioritize vegetables and lean meat, and control total intake. Communicate with family and friends about your dietary needs and seek support. Information environment management: uninstall the food live streaming app and pay attention to health science popularization content; Develop the habit of reading the nutrition chart when shopping and avoid high-energy foods that have an energy content of 1700 kilojoules or more per 100 grams. The fourth is psychological reinforcement: replace "willpower confrontation" with "cognitive restructuring" to reshape goals: after reducing weight, immediately set new goals, such as "reducing body fat percentage by 2%", "exercising 5 times a week for 3 consecutive weeks", "mastering 10 healthy home cooked dishes", and replace weight anxiety with ability improvement. Establish a support and reward system: Join weight loss communities or find peers to supervise each other, and reward non food gifts (such as sports wristbands and books) after achieving phased goals to enhance sustained weight loss motivation. Scientific recording and warning: Use an app or weight calendar to record weight (fasting in the morning), diet, and emotions 2-3 days a week, set a "weight warning line" - adjust in a timely manner if the rebound exceeds 5% of the previous weight loss (such as losing 10 pounds and rebounding more than 0.5 pounds). Remember: Weight fluctuations of 1-2 pounds per week are normal and there is no need for excessive anxiety. The true success of weight loss is to make health a habit. Reaching the weight loss target is just the starting point, the real success lies in transforming the healthy habits during the weight loss period into a long-term, sustainable lifestyle. At that time, weight maintenance will no longer rely on "persistence", but become a natural state. Please remember: Maintaining weight requires more perseverance than losing weight. Only through continuous monitoring, flexible adjustment, and long-term persistence can we achieve healthy transformation. (New Society)