How weight loss makes us hungrier

A Norwegian study of individuals with severe obesity has found that although hormones that control both fullness and hunger increase after weight loss, it seems that hunger wins.

Why do we feel more hungry after weight loss?

The implication, the researchers conclude, is that overweight individuals who lose weight may have to learn to live with feeling hungry.

They suggest that their recent findings, which have now been published in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, support the idea that obesityshould be treated as a long-term illness.

Type 2 diabetes is treated in a similar way, and individuals with the condition are monitored closely to help them hold onto their gains.

"We have to stop treating [obesity] as a short-term illness," explains lead study author Catia Martins, an associate professor in the Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, "by giving patients some support and help, and then just letting them fend for themselves."