If losing weight feels like a never-ending battle, new research may explain why: Diets that restrict calories can actually make it harder to lose weight and keep it off.
Cutting calories increases production of cortisol, the stress hormone, which is linked to added belly fat, a new study finds.
“For the first time in humans, we are finding out that cutting your calories increases cortisol,” said lead researcher A. Janet Tomiyama, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of California, San Francisco.
“We think this may be one reason dieters tend to have a hard time keeping weight off in the long-term,” she said.
People who count calories feel stressed, she said, but it’s the reduction in calories that increases cortisol, which, in turn, stresses the body and leads to weight retention.
“No matter how you cut calories, whether that’s doing it on your own, or doing something like Nutrisystem or Jenny Craig, it doesn’t matter, it’s still going to increase your cortisol level,” she said.
At any given time, 47 percent of U.S. adults are dieting, but up to 64 percent gain back more weight than they lost, according to background information in the report published online April 6 in Psychosomatic Medicine.
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