Not your fault: Hormones linked to weight regain

Published on Oct 28, 2011

Any dieter knows that it's hard to keep off weight you've lost. Now a study finds that even a year after dieters shed a good chunk of weight quickly, their hormones were still insisting, 'Eat! Eat! Eat!' -- ST PHOTO: DENISE TAN

NEW YORK (AP) - Any dieter knows that it's hard to keep off weight you've lost. Now a study finds that even a year after dieters shed a good chunk of weight quickly, their hormones were still insisting, 'Eat! Eat! Eat!'

The findings suggest that dieters who have regained weight are not just slipping back into old habits, but are struggling against a persistent biological urge.

'People who regain weight should not be harsh on themselves, as eating is our most basic instinct,' Joseph Proietto of the University of Melbourne in Australia, an author of the study, said in an email. The research appears in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Weight regain is a common problem for dieters. To study what drives it, Mr Proietto and his colleagues enrolled 50 overweight or obese patients in a 10-week diet programme in Australia. They wanted to see what would happen in people who lost at least 10 per cent of their body weight. Ultimately, only 34 people lost that much and stuck with the study long enough for analysis.