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Neuroscience Explains Why Dieters Rarely Lose Weight (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: According to a new study, the chance of an obese person attaining normal body weight is 1 in 210 for men and 1 in 124 for women, increasing to 1 in 1,290 for men and 1 in 677 for women with severe obesity, suggesting that current weight management programs focused on dieting and exercise are not effective in tackling obesity. Now neuroscientist Sandra Aamodt writes in the New York Times that "in the long run dieting is rarely effective, doesn't reliably improve health and does more harm than good". And according to Aamodt, the root of the problem is not willpower but neuroscience.
Metabolic suppression is one of several powerful tools that the brain uses to keep the body within a certain weight range, called the set point. The range, which varies from person to person, is determined by genes and life experience. When dieters' weight drops below it, they not only burn fewer calories but also produce more hunger-inducing hormones and find eating more rewarding. If someone starts at 120 pounds and drops to 80, her brain rightfully declares a starvation state of emergency, using every method available to get that weight back up to normal. This coordinated brain response is a major reason that dieters find weight loss so hard to achieve and maintain. According to Aamodt dieting can actually lead to weight gain because dieting is stressful. Calorie restriction produces stress hormones, which act on fat cells to increase the amount of abdominal fat. Such fat is associated with medical problems like diabetes and heart disease, regardless of overall weight.... Aamodt recommends mindful eating -- paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain's weight-regulation system commands.
Metabolic suppression is one of several powerful tools that the brain uses to keep the body within a certain weight range, called the set point. The range, which varies from person to person, is determined by genes and life experience. When dieters' weight drops below it, they not only burn fewer calories but also produce more hunger-inducing hormones and find eating more rewarding. If someone starts at 120 pounds and drops to 80, her brain rightfully declares a starvation state of emergency, using every method available to get that weight back up to normal. This coordinated brain response is a major reason that dieters find weight loss so hard to achieve and maintain. According to Aamodt dieting can actually lead to weight gain because dieting is stressful. Calorie restriction produces stress hormones, which act on fat cells to increase the amount of abdominal fat. Such fat is associated with medical problems like diabetes and heart disease, regardless of overall weight.... Aamodt recommends mindful eating -- paying attention to signals of hunger and fullness, without judgment, to relearn how to eat only as much as the brain's weight-regulation system commands.
Worrying. Ms. Aamodt has links to the Healthy at Every Size (HAES) obesity apologists. HAES are as insane as anti-vaxxers, only they believe medical science is a worldwide racist conspiracy against fat people. Oh, and if you don't want to buy into their excuses, you're literally oppressing them.
In short, I'm worried that she appears to be peddling snake oil to people who are very, very desperate to avoid having to take personal responsibility for their unhealthy lifestyles. Diet and Exercise work -- as part of a lifestyle change. We know this, we have known this for years.
The problem is that humans are extremely, extremely poor at making judgements about food, and we have an entire industry ("Big Food") dedicated into manipulating people into overeating and eating cheaply produced unhealthy garbage.
The doctors have adjusted the definition of "obese" (apparently) to include pot-bellies and thunder thighs. They are doing this in the War on Obesity, which like other Wars on Social Problems, is based in forcing people to do what is not natural for them. They think this will work because all humans are the same, identical and grey, without any context or surrounding needs. But as you point out, people vary. For some, a little extra weight is a good thing, especially in middle age.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to find some eclairs...
The issue is that it can be perfectly healthy to eat around 900,000 calories a year, but if you eat just around 15,000 calorie per year too much, people gain 5 pound a year. That is less than 2% over target, but a weight gain of 5 pound per year, will easily cause significant issues in the long term. 15,000 calories a year is just 41 calories a day or about an half an apple every day.
People do not have to eat significant amounts of food to become fat, even tiny amounts of extra food can easily add up to significant gains. Without a closed regulation loop it is basically impossible to eat just the right amount of food. If people have broken internal regulation loop, they build their own regulation loop and permanently count calories and watch their weight to adjust the amount of calories consumed. Unfortunately there is a lot of noise in weight measurements and a broken internal regulation loop often tries to counteract external regulation. It seems that an unhealthy diet can damage the internal regulation. Gastric bands seem to help because they help to readjust the internal regulation loop and not just make it harder to consume a lot of calories.
Jan