Why Your Body Resists Losing Weight

Man's early ancestors  faced an unpredictable food supply marked with periods of famine.  At some point a certain number of people were born with a genetic and an instinctual preference for fat rich foods.  This instinct drove them to gorge on fat whenever they could, allotting them a calorie reserve needed to survive when food became scarce.   After enduring thousands of years of food scarcity your body has also developed a physiological ability to respond to a drop in calorie consumption by slowing down the metabolic rate in order to conserve calories.  This physiological characteristic plays an important role in your attempts to lose weight.  When you start a diet, your body recognizes the drop in calories as a sign of famine, immediately slowing the metabolic rate so you can survive.  Unfortunately, one of the reasons why those last ten or twenty pounds are so difficult to lose is because the slowing of your metabolic rate causes a reduction in the rate at which you burn calories.  This means that while you suffer from food deprivation, your body is conserving the fat and calories that you're trying to burn.  

The instinct to conserve fat has three instinctual behaviors, and one physiological response: 

1. We are compelled to eat high fat and calorie rich foods. 

2. We are driven to over eat when we are hungry and to gorge on rich foods if they are available.

3. It drives us to conserve calories by encouraging us to lie around avoiding any unnecessary expenditure of energy.

4. Finally, a physiological change dramatically slows the body's metabolic rate.  Calories are conserved, resulting in a slow down or even stoppage of weight loss.            

The instinct to conserve fat is always with us though most of the time it lies unnoticed until triggered by numerous stimuli including hunger and the smell and sight of fatty or rich food.  Once triggered its presence is felt through a variety of symptoms including hunger pains and increased desire for fat and calorie rich foods.  If you continue to go without sufficient calories you may experience an array of more intense physical discomforts such as stronger hunger pains, headache, weakness, fatigue, and more powerful cravings.  These are the very discomforts that defeat dieters.