Your support helps us to tell the storySupport NowFrom reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.Your support makes all the difference.Weight loss continues to dominate public discourse – often framed as a matter of personal responsibility. But after nearly 15 years working in and around health and nutrition research, I’ve seen how weight is treated differently from almost every other health issue.People are routinely blamed for their body size, even though robust evidence shows that weight is shaped by a complex mix of genetics, biology, environment and socioeconomic factors. Limited access to affordable, healthy food, lack of safe places to exercise, long working hours and chronic stress – all more common in disadvantaged areas – can make maintaining a healthy weight significantly harder.Here are five things I wish more people understood about weight loss.1. It goes against our biologyObesity has been recognised as a national health priority in England since the 1990s, with numerous policies introduced in response. Yet obesity rates have not declined. This suggests that current approaches, which tend to focus on personal responsibility, are not working.Even when weight loss methods are successful, the results often don’t last. Research shows that most people who lose weight eventually regain it, and the chances of someone with obesity reaching and maintaining a “normal” body weight are very low.That’s partly because our bodies fight back when we lose weight – a response rooted in our evolutionary past. This process is called metabolic adaptation: when we reduce our energy intake and lose weight, our metabolism slows, and hunger hormones like ghrelin increase, encouraging us to eat more and regain the lost weight.This biological response made sense in our hunter-gatherer past, when feast and famine were common. But today, in a world where high-calorie, ultra-processed food is cheap and accessible, these same survival traits make it easy to gain weight – and difficult to lose it.So if you’ve struggled to lose weight or keep it off, it’s not a personal failure – it’s a predictable physiological response.2. It’s not about willpow Read More