If you have a long history of repeated diets, you have most likely turned your body into an extremely efficient, sophisticated fat-storing machine!
The body does not know about weight loss - it only understands the threat of starvation. Its main concern is survival. When insufficient quantities of fuel are consumed, it naturally thinks it may be facing starvation, so it begins to create and store fat in a highly efficient manner.
This is an important point that bears repeating. People interested in losing weight need to understand how their body operates. The body likes fat. It likes to create it and hold onto it and does not like to burn it.
When people go on starvation weight loss programs, most of the weight loss that occurs is muscle loss - the body does not want to lose fat when it is starving. People lose weight rapidly, which makes them happy. This happiness, unfortunately, is short-lived because there is a rapid regaining. Less muscle tissue means less room for carbohydrate (sugar) storage (as glycogen), so any excess is apt to be stored in the fat cells. And less muscle means less fat is burned, since muscle is the fat-burning tissue of the body.
Added to this, the body becomes even more efficient at storing fat. The bottom line is: cutting calories is probably not the best weight loss approach for long-term weight management.
Fat is a very efficient fuel - it burns at nine calories per gram - and the body wisely reserves its most efficient fuel for last.
(This is an excerpt from "The Miracle of Bio-Identical Hormones" by Michael E. Platt, 2007)
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