ArticleEvolution, medicine, and public health2016
An adaptive response to uncertainty can lead to weight gain during dieting attempts.
Article in Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ability to predict irregular periods of food depriviation improves body-weight regulation and reduces weight gain in food-insecure starlings.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Natural Foraging Selection and Gut Microecology of Two Subterranean Rodents from the Eurasian Steppe in China.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Experimental biology can inform our understanding of food insecurity.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells toxicity and allergy effects: In vivo assessment.PloS one · 2024Article
- Experiences of discrimination are associated with microbiome and transcriptome alterations in the gut.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Natural selection and human adiposity: crafty genotype, thrifty phenotype.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- How Discrimination Gets Under the Skin: Biological Determinants of Discrimination Associated With Dysregulation of the Brain-Gut Microbiome System and Psychological Symptoms.Biological psychiatry · 2023Article
- The impact of early body-weight variability on long-term weight maintenance: exploratory results from the NoHoW weight-loss maintenance intervention.International journal of obesity (2005) · 2021Article
- Echoes of Early Life: Recent Insights From Mathematical Modeling.Child development · 2018Review
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
objectivesPeoples' attempts to lose weight by low calorie diets often result in weight gain because of over-compensatory overeating during lapses. Animals usually respond to a change in food availability by adjusting their foraging effort and altering how much energy reserves they store. But in many situations the long-term availability of food is uncertain, so animals may attempt to estimate it to decide the appropriate level of fat storage. METHODOLOGY: We report the results of a conceptual model of feeding in which the animal knows whether food is currently abundant or limited, but does not know the proportion of time, there will be an abundance in the long-term and has to learn it.
resultsIf the food supply is limited much of the time, such as during cycles of dieting attempts, the optimal response is to gain a lot of weight when food is abundant. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: This implies that recurring attempts to diet, by signalling to the body that the food supply is often insufficient, will lead to a greater fat storage than if food was always abundant. Our results shed light on the widespread phenomenon of weight gain during weight cycling and indicate possible interventions that may reduce the incidence of obesity.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.