Are you curious about what actually happens to your body when you lose 4 to 5 kilos? We discuss the biggest physical changes here so that you gain insight into what it actually does to you.
When you eat more calories than your body needs to function, you gain weight. Your body converts these 'superfluous' calories into fat and stores it in your fat cells, for when a shortage arises. By eating too much for too long, more fat gets into your fat cells and you gain weight. When you lose weight, the opposite happens:you use more energy than you take in in calories, so that your body uses the stored fat to maintain your energy level. This causes your fat cells to shrink. However, this does not happen immediately:your body first burns stored carbohydrates, proteins and a large amount of water before it starts using your fat stores. This usually happens after about a week, which is usually the time when you can also see the difference in your body through the mirror.
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One of the important reasons to lose weight is to control your blood pressure. When you're overweight, your body has to work harder to keep your blood flowing throughout your body. This puts more tension on your veins. High blood pressure can cause your arteries to narrow and harden, reducing their ability to carry fresh, oxygenated blood to your heart. This puts you at greater risk of a heart attack, stroke or heart disease. Fortunately, the good news is that your blood volume quickly decreases when you lose weight. Losing 2 kilos can already make a point difference on your blood pressure, so that 4 kilos can lead to an average difference of 5 points, which makes a significant difference when it comes to the risk of heart failure.
Your hormones carry chemical messages through your bloodstream and tissues that affect your metabolism, growth and development, reproduction, sexual ability and mood. Too much body fat can unfortunately affect the normal functioning of your hormones. According to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology from 2012 that being overweight or obese in women increases the risk of hormone-receptive breast cancer. This can probably be explained by the increase in estrogen level that being overweight entails. If you lose weight and thereby lose fat cells in which estrogen is active, the hormone level decreases and with it the risk of getting breast cancer. This can be done relatively quickly:in the study, women lost 10 percent of their body weight over a period of 12 months and the estrogen level dropped by 10 to 26 percent.
Unfortunately, it's not just that losing weight has a positive effect on your hormone levels:people have a natural tendency to store body fat to prevent starvation. In order to do this, our body adapts to a calorie deficit to maintain these fat stores. For this, the hormone ghrelin is released, which makes you more hungry, and the hormone level of leptin decreases, which suppresses your feeling of hunger. So this hormonal change makes you more hungry after you lose weight, which can also make it a challenge to maintain weight once you've lost weight.
If you lose 4 to 5 pounds by exercising, your body will adapt. For example, at the start of a new sports routine, you will notice a difference in your body more quickly (read:muscle and less fat). Your body is not in shape yet, so you have to work harder and you will burn more calories than someone who does the same workout, but is in shape. So the good news is that you get fitter, the slightly less good news is that you have to gradually increase the intensity, duration and frequency of your workout to continue to achieve results.
If you are overweight, you are more likely to develop a sleep disorder. Fortunately, losing 4 kilos can already ensure that your sleep improves. For example, a 2012 study found that 77 participants who were overweight and had trouble sleeping had lost more than 5 kilos and 15 percent of their body weight after six months through diet and/or exercise. This weight loss led to an improvement in their sleep score by as much as 20 percent. In other words:losing 4 kilos will probably ensure that you sleep a lot better.
Source:Livestrong.com
