Struggling to lose weight? Fitness coach explains why your body may be working against you

Weight loss is often perceived as a difficult and frustrating process. Everyone who has tried to lose weight will understand the struggles that come with it. According to Chennai-based fitness coach Raj Ganpath, losing weight is much harder than gaining weight. This imbalance is not a flaw in the human body but a deliberate design of how the body has evolved to function.

Ganpath also explained in an Instagram video that losing weight is a whole lot more difficult than gaining it. “Some basic survival instincts of the human body,” the fitness influencer explained.

Ganpath starts by explaining the relationship between calorie intake and body weight: “When you eat fewer calories than you burn, you create a calorie deficit and will lose weight. Weight gain occurs when people eat more calories than they burn. Creating a calorie deficit is usually much harder than creating a calorie surplus despite its apparent simplicity.

For someone who eats 2,000 calories a day, eating 500 calories less can be difficult, and 1,000 calories less can be even more difficult without feeling deprived.

Increasing calorie burn is also a challenge, the fitness coach points out. He says if you want to burn extra calories you need to do physical activities such as working out, walking and moving around. Yes, burning an extra 500 calories a day or even 1,000 calories a day is a lot of work and time.

On the other hand, calorie expenditure is relatively easier to decrease.

Missing workouts, being less active and sitting or lying down more can quickly decrease the number of calories you burn each day.

Ganpath says these two things together make it easier to gain weight and harder to lose it. The body wants to save and store energy not spend it.

This instinctive behaviour, he says, is the result of human evolution. He thinks throughout the course of human history, food scarcity was a bigger threat than weight gain. That is why the human body has evolved to encourage the storage of energy and protect against starvation.

“Had the body found it easier to burn energy rather than store it, humans would have been at greater risk of dying,” Ganpath adds. So the body’s energy conservation is a survival tactic, even compared to the dangers of obesity.

As per Raj Ganpath, being aware of these facts can help people approach their weight-loss efforts more realistically. One should not set oneself against the natural inclinations of the body, but rather try to make slow changes in diet and lifestyle.