The causes of obesity relapse after weight loss

Abstract

The main problem of obesity treatment is the difficulty of long-term weight maintenance. From one point of view, it can easily be explained by patients’ low compliance and absence of self-control. From another point of view, body weight is regulated not only by persons will, but also by multiple physiological mechanisms. Moreover, studies demonstrate that the attempts to reduce body weight stimulate the activation of adaptive biological process that block weight reduction.Despite the variety of obesity treatment methods, only few patients are able to achieve significant (at least 5–7%) weight loss and maintain the result. In most cases people return to the initial weight in about 3–5 years. Therefore it is relevant to study weight regain mechanisms in order to identify new effective obesity treatment strategies.The objective of this review is to summarize the information about the main issues of central, peripheral and behavioral pathogenic mechanisms which lead to disease relapse after obesity treatment and ideas for future strategies to resolve them.