Why do the kilos regain so quickly after a regime? There is a solution

A randomized, comparative, placebo-controlled trial in obese adults with a body mass index greater than 32 yields some very encouraging conclusions.

Especially for that harsh reality that seems to hit us again and again shortly after finishing a weight loss plan: The speed at which we regain the lost weight!

The study was carried out by a group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Hvidovre Hospital, and is supported by its publication in the prestigious magazine The New England Journal of Medicine, of which it is today the cover.

Four groups and one year of work
The research consisted of subjecting selected volunteers (who did not have diabetes) to a low-calorie diet for 8 weeks.

From there, participants were randomly assigned for 1 year to one of four groups that would undergo different strategies to see how their weight evolved.

- Exercise group: They underwent an exercise program of moderate to vigorous intensity, plus placebo.
- Liraglutide group: whose components would be treated with liraglutide (3,0 mg per day) but would be limited to carrying out their usual activity again.
- Combination group: Like the previous one, they would be treated with liraglutide, but they would also undergo an exercise program.
- Placebo group: They carried out their usual activity and were also treated with placebo plus usual activity.

The objective of the experiment was to find out how much they managed to maintain the weight they had lost after the eight-week low-calorie diet.

In this way, the importance of the drug liraglutide, which is an antidiabetic and an appetite suppressant, and the effectiveness of its administration combined with exercise was discovered in this maintenance.

It was the clear winning treatment.

But not only that: the experiment shows that in addition to helping people lose more kilos, the medication-exercise combination caused a significant improvement in their health, with a drop in blood sugar and blood pressure.

The martyrdom of weight recovery

It is the most common. Months of sacrifice, renunciations, hunger, willpower, effort... and when it seems to us that we are at the ideal weight and we abandon the regime... in a few days and almost without realizing it we begin to regain the kilos.

It is a maddening process due to its speed and demoralizing for new attempts in the future. At full speed we see how all the effort has disappeared and we find ourselves again with the same weight, if not more.

This is what scientists know as weight recovery after a successful initial loss in people with obesity, and it constitutes an important problem that is currently unsolved.

Because until now there was no well-documented study on which treatment method is the best to maintain healthy weight loss.