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.

Comments

The real reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gut bacteria.

--sf

Re:The real reason?

[jandersen]

Well, the picture is more complex than that, but gut flora is a very important factor, it seems. However, we are not talking about figuring out which single strain of bacteria is "beneficial"; it is probably a matter of finding out which combination(s) of strains produce what effect(s), and this will probably depend on the genetic and epi-genetic profile of the individual. And there are other factors as well, like life-style and habits - like, what do you eat, and do you eat until you're not hungry or until you are full? Do you start to eat when you are bored?

Another interesting fact: recent research in Denmark has demonstrated that you can change your set-point: if you lose weight through dieting and, crucially, keep the weight off for about 1 year, then your will accept this as the set-point. And, of course, you push it upwards by over-eating, without doubt, which is why mindfulness is a very good suggestion.

Re:The real reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard the Danish study on the radio (BBC R4) and it is similar to work I've heard of before, but I can't find links to the study.

The Danes claimed that you need to lose weight slowly, and then once you have lost the weight stick with the diet for at least a year so that your body learns to live with the new weight. From what I understand that the researcher was saying was that after about a year of being the weight you wanted to be, your body would stop fighting you, but that didn't mean you could go back to your old excess calorie diet.

I've managed to shift 25 kg over a year, so now I'm in my "stable zone", where I need to re-train my body to stay put at that weight - if you believe the Danes. If this report is to be believed then I can never reach stability and I'll have to force myself to starve indefinitely or I'll regain weight.

Re:The real reason?

[vel-ex-tech]

I wasn't sure if I saw that story posted here or on the other site. Must have been the other site. It was a fascinating read at the very least.

I also found that it seemed to be somewhat fatalistic and depressing. Humans want to fight against nature and remake the world as they think it should be. It seems like in the ultimate "joke's on you" moment, the very nature of people's bodies has started turning against them all over the developed world. At least this human still wants to fight against nature, to figure out what the answer must be, confident there must be an answer to be had. I don't have funding, and I doubt I'd have the first clue of what to do to figure it out. Debuggers are my thing, not microscopes.

I'm one of the lucky ones--that person everybody seems to know who can eat whatever they want and never gain a pound. Well, not so much as when I was younger and every weekend meant a trip to the arcade to play DDR. I wish I knew why or even how. There are better people in the world who deserve whatever it is about my body that would make gaining a hundred lbs or so if I need to for some reason seem as daunting to me as losing a hundred lbs and keeping it off is for many people I know. One person in particular whose struggles with their weight has turned into a full blown mental illness and utter despair, compounding the problem by wrecking the best tool they have to work through the problem: their brain. Damn shame. And here I am helplessly posting to Slashdot and cussing out ACs like that'll make a difference.

It's not to say that exercise isn't a factor, but I begin to wonder if the mentality of "head to the gym, stress the body to its breaking point for an hour or two, then back in the chair" isn't part of the larger problem. Maybe that works for cheetahs, just not so well for humans.

I think the best thing that people could work towards is a slower, more relaxed pace of life. Everybody is so tense and constantly on edge. Every little problem that comes up is the zomg sky is falling end of the damned world. We seem so completely detached from the essence of living, at least in an agricultural sense: preparing for the growing season, working the earth when plants will grow, harvesting in fall (along with the requisite fall feast), and spending the time of year when little if anything grows with loved ones, safe and confident that enough wood has been gathered and chopped and enough food has been stored away to last until the cycle is complete when spring returns.

In a hunter-gatherer sense: the Earth provides. There will always be enough. Don't horde and don't be greedy. Don't take more than you need.

I feel we've created a culture where everybody is driven like they're being chased down by a lion day after day after day after day. It's not really about the act of eating--that's not what I mean by don't take more than you need--, but it's about the endless 24/7 life-and-death brink-of-the-edge reality that is life in the "developed" world.

First world problems. Literally.

Re:The real reason?

[RatPh!nk]

Maybe. Maybe not:

http://science.sciencemag.org/...

There have been several studies to date transplanting gut flora from "skinny" rats and mice into "obese" rats and mice resulting in weight loss with the same diet composition. They have also showed the reverse to be true.

Furthermore there seems to be some evidence that sugar-alcohols and artificial sweeteners may be better food for the growth of bacteria that favors an obese phenotype.

http://www.omicsonline.org/bac... http://www.scientificamerican.... http://www.nature.com/nature/j... http://www.nature.com/news/sug...

(FWIW - I am a doctor (MD) but I am not an endocrinologist/obesity researcher)

Re:The real reason?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Rather than waster hours at the gym or the idiotic exercise of jogging, I do what came naturally a hundreds years ago ... work. It's amazing how much weight I have lost doing simple things like watching what I eat (i.e. stop buying chips, and eating Oreos in moderation), and laying pavers. Or mixing and pouring concrete by hand. Or using an ax and saw to cut down a tree and cut it to length instead of a chain saw. Installing my own flooring and kitchen cabinets instead of paying someone to do it.

THIS!

I really think in all of the discussions of the "obesity epidemic," the role of everyday exercise that happened in the context of chores and normal housework is underestimated. Yes, I think the rising levels of sugar, portion sizes, and the absence of as many "manual labor" jobs all have impacts -- but so does modern "convenience" in avoiding exercise.

I got to watch my father gradually succumb to this problem over the years. When I was young, I can remember him doing mostly manual work outside to keep up things: mowing the lawn with a push-mower, trimming the hedges with manual shears, digging up the garden each spring to turn over the soil with a shovel, raking leaves in the fall, shoveling snow off the driveway in the winter, cutting wood with manual saws and axes, etc.

And he was relatively trim. I recall helping him with many of these tasks. But over the years, riding mowers became more popular and affordable, the rototiller replaced the shovel to turn over soil, the leaf blower replaced the rake, the snowblower replaced the shovel, the wood was cut with a chain saw. And with each "convenience" it seems he put on a little weight.

I noticed this myself a few years back after I had put on a little more weight than I would like. But I bought a lot of manual tools for doing work around the house, rather than "convenient" ways to get stuff done faster. I never really liked "exercising" at the gym much -- an hour on a treadmill or exercise bike or whatever just seemed boring... and a complete waste of time.

But if you actually have to push a mower around the yard for an hour, that's good aerobic exercise. And turning over soil in the spring before planting the garden is a REAL workout with a shovel (if you have a garden of any size). And you feel like you've accomplished something.

And this is only just normal "maintenance" on your property. Add in more do-it-yourself projects, as most homeowners would do themselves decades ago, and you have a full "training program" covering all sorts of muscle groups, often combinations of aerobic exercise with weight training, etc... all just keeping up your house.

I understand some people may not enjoy this sort of thing as much as others -- some may just like spending hours at the gym or whatever. To each his own. My larger point, however, is that our "obesity epidemic" may also just be related to convenience -- both in terms of food and in avoiding the "normal" exercise that people a generation or two ago just had to do.

Re: Warning: Healthy At Every Size supporter

[Anonymous Coward]

I was obese for years. Then I started eating better and exercising... Now I am not obese and have not been for years. MAGIC.

I hate this "neuroscience explains" stuff

[umafuckit]

As a neuroscientist, I always feel a bit bad when I see headlines like "neuroscience explains X". It usually doesn't and here also it doesn't really (although that's not say the work is without merit, the blurb in the summary seems reasonable). However, neuroscience obviously doesn't tell us why people are getting so fat in the first place. This matters because it affects how to handle weight loss. I accept that different people may have different "natural weights", but this doesn't explain the steadily increasing obesity levels. Something is clearly changing with our relationship to food. Maybe it's increasing sugar levels. Maybe it's that fewer people cook and that encourages over-eating. Maybe it's increasing portion sizes. Perhaps all of those. The point is that there is a driving force to increasing obesity in the population at large, and as an overweight individual you are fighting against it (whatever it is). So if you want people to start losing weight then I reckon you need to understand very well why they're gaining it at such unprecedented levels. The food industry is, in general, not helping to clarify the issue.

I know a lot of it is in the brain:

[pecosdave]

about twelve years ago I lost 30 lbs just by deciding to. I don't know how I did it, but I decided to lose weight, decided it was going to happen, didn't change my diet or activity and 30lbs was gone in a very short period of time.

I have been unable to do it again since gaining it back.

I've found that when I'm stressed, mentally exhausted regularly and feel like I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders I gain weight easily. When I feel unburdened and things are going great I lose weight easily. Some of it is that I'm more likely to do recreational exercise when I'm less stressed, and indeed the last time I got down to a good weight that was the case, but I can't contribute it to that every yo-yo.