You don’t need the latest headlines to prove to yourself that losing excess weight and keeping it off is difficult, especially if you’re obese. Nevertheless, it’s somewhat comforting to read studies that show the weight doesn’t come back because you lack willpower or are “weak.”
Yo-yo dieting trains your body to store fat rather than burn it. That’s because calorie restriction triggers your body’s starvation response. When your body thinks it’s starving, it stores as many calories as possible and avoids burning them.
In addition, fat cells have a “memory” of being obese and use that as their default mode. Once the fat cells have become engorged with fat, losing it triggers a panic reaction that makes them try to regain it as soon as possible.
If this endless cycle of weight loss and regain has made you cross off the resolution of losing weight from your list this year, it’s time to rethink that decision. With the proper help – including medically supervised weight loss – you can create the conditions within your body that help you attain and maintain a stable and healthy weight.
To call attention to American Heart Month, our expert nurse practitioners — Kelly Burrows, APRN FNP-C, and Lee Ann Garza, FNP — outline the seven weight loss benefits for heart health. You can get the weight-loss help you need at our Enrich Family Practice offices in Odessa, Texas.
When you’re obese or even overweight, your heart must work harder to pump blood throughout your extra body tissue. Your heart compensates by enlarging so the chambers can accommodate extra blood.
Over time, the heart muscle also begins to thicken. It may lose its ability to pump blood efficiently throughout your body, which could lead to heart failure.
When you lose weight, you relieve the pressure on your heart. Losing just 10% of your body weight can improve your cardiovascular health within 6-12 months.
When you’re obese, you’re more likely to develop peripheral artery disease (PAD), which cuts down the circulation of nourishing blood to your legs and feet, which may cause swelling in your legs that makes it harder to move.
Of course, the harder and more painful it is to move, the less likely you are to do so. A sedentary lifestyle is a recipe for further weight gain and more stress upon your heart.
Once you lose weight, it’s easier for blood to circulate to your limbs. Your ability to move also improves, which helps you become more active to keep the weight off.
Compromised blood vessels require more pressure to move blood through them. One of the greatest risk factors for a heart attack is high blood pressure, often called the silent killer because it has no symptoms. After you lose weight, though, your blood pressure decreases. Healthy blood pressure reduces your risk for heart failure.
Fatty tissue slows down your metabolism and releases hormones such as estrogen that encourage you to develop more fatty tissue. When you lose fat, your body burns it instead of storing it. It’s also easier to put on muscle, which speeds up your metabolism and burns more fat.
Losing just 10% of your body weight is enough to trigger benefits. If that seems daunting, even shedding 15 or 20 pounds can help, and those benefits last up to five years, even if you regain some of the weight.
When you have too much fat, some of it gets stored in your liver. That can create metabolism problems that interfere with your ability to use glucose (i.e., dietary sugar) as energy. Instead, you develop insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes.
However, once you lose the excess fat, your body can better process blood glucose. The lifetime dietary changes you make to lose weight also help control blood sugar.
Losing weight improves the ratio of total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein (HDL, aka the “good” cholesterol), too. One study showed that the ratio was 1.5 points lower at one and five years after a weight-loss program.
Find out how a medically supervised weight-loss program changes your lifestyle and your biomarkers to improve heart health today. Call our knowledgeable staff at 432-200-9052 or complete our online appointment form.
