Why is it more difficult to lose weight today than 30 years ago?

It's easy to guess that the body mass grows if you eat more than the body burns with the help of physical activity. And although this rule has already become an axiom, there are other factors that negatively affect your weight. According to a study whose results were published in the journal Obesity Research and Clinical Practice, the decade in which you live is also important for your parameters.

Progress of the experiment

In the course of the experiment, scientists examined two main data sets: the diet and physical activity of average Americans for three decades. Then the received indicators were sorted and compared. Participants in the study were randomly selected. 14,419 Americans reported physical activity between 1988 and 2006. Another 36,400 indicated their eating habits in the period from 1971 to 2008. Thus, scientists have the opportunity to calculate body mass index, depending on calories consumed and physical activity in different years.

results

As a result, it turned out that two people of the same age who consume the same number of calories, vitamins and macronutrients, and who are in motion the same number of hours per week, have discrepancies in BMI indicators depending on the year on the calendar. For example, the body mass index of a person living in 1988 was, on average, 2.3 points lower compared to a 2006 person. Speaking more generally, average Americans today are 5-10 percent more massive than they were 20-30 years ago. And this is not due to the fact that they began to eat more and move less. There are other factors that do not allow you to quickly lose weight to modern people.

Why is it difficult for us to lose weight?

Our mothers and fathers did not encounter such problems. To bring the weight back to normal, it was enough for them to cut calories a little, not eat at night or run a couple of extra miles a week. We have to try our best to bring the body to the same conditions. Here's what one of the authors of the study, Professor Jennifer Cook says: "If at the moment you have crossed the 40-year boundary, then you will have to eat even less, and sweat in the gym even more than those forty-year-old people who lived in 1971" .

Possible causes: drugs

To explain the existing phenomenon, Dr. Cook posed three possible reasons, the first of which is to increase the consumption of medications. The pharmacological industry is working more and more actively every year. Modern people are increasingly resorting to pills, when they treat depression, heart disease and even headache. For example, the antidepressant "Prozac" became available for the first time in 1988. Since then, the use of this drug has steadily increased every year. Weight gain may be a side effect of selective serotonin reuptake inhibition drugs. The statistics reflect these figures. So, 25 percent of patients taking antidepressants, observe an increase in body weight by an average of 4.5 kilograms.

Changed by human microbiology

The human microbiome is the bacteria that inhabit its body. Some of them live in the intestines, and some types of intestinal microorganisms can make us more susceptible to weight gain and obesity. Food that has the ability to change microbiomas is meat. And here there is nothing surprising, because producers feed the bird and cattle with growth hormones and antibiotics. But compared with 1970, meat consumption in developed countries increased by 5 percent. Other factors that interfere with the distribution of species of intestinal bacteria include artificial sweeteners, as well as pesticides that are found in fruits and vegetables.

Chemicals in food packaging

According to Jennifer Cook, all pesticides and chemicals contained in modern food packaging are capable of altering hormones. This, in turn, introduces an adjustment to the way our bodies accumulate excess fat. And the more chemicals that get to us in the body, the easier they transform into excess weight. How long have you been drinking water from a plastic bottle, eating sausage or taking pills? It seems that you no longer need to complain about the low efficiency of diets and training. The world around us has long been different, we will have to get used to the new realities.