The basic truth of weight-loss is that one must figure out a way to somehow live with eating less than one wishes. This can be accomplished in many different ways. Most “Experts” have developed their own ideas about what works best, and they don’t hesitate to share them with us.

The concepts of losing weight are relatively easy when compared to the implementation of the eating-or-not-eating methods that are required to actually lose weight and to maintain that weight-loss.

But “easy” isn’t simple, and not only do the “experts” disagree on many weight-loss concepts, each of them has an agenda, a belief, about what is the “correct” way to implement weight-loss eating. Many times these “expert” beliefs oppose each other.

Articles by “experts” contain basic facts mixed with possibilities, and this combination is mixed with opinion. One problem for people with weight-problems is that it is almost impossible for us to separate FACT from THEORY from OPINION. Often the reasoning of an “expert” can seem very convincing .. but once we actually try to implement an individual eating solution an “expert” proposes, we find it to be personally unworkable.

Although I find the “WHY” to be interesting, it is basically useless to me unless the “HOW” is something I can accomplish long-term.  We aren't all the same, and each of us must figure out our own individual solution.

Most “experts” start with basic FACTS, and then move on to various THEORIES, and then move on to their own OPINIONS. Here at DietHobby, I often post copies of articles which I find personally interesting, and which offer solutions that might be workable for some. This doesn’t mean that I accept or agree with every Theory that is proposed in every article that I post here in DietHobby. It also doesn’t mean that I find that particular Solution to be workable for me, personally.

Here’s an interesting article by an “expert” who is an advocate of reducing the “reward” value of the food one chooses to eat.

Seduced by Food: Obesity and the Human Brain
                by Stephan Guyenet

In 1960-1962, the US government collected height and weight measurements from thousands of US citizens. Using these numbers, they estimated that the prevalence of obesity among US adults at the time was 13 percent. Fast forward to the year 2007-2008, and in the same demographic group, the prevalence of obesity was 34 percent . Most of this increase has occurred since 1980, when obesity rates have more than doubled among US adults, and extreme obesity has more than tripled. Welcome to the ‘obesity epidemic’. Today, more than one third of US adults are considered obese, an additional third are overweight, and largely as a consequence, each child born today has an estimated one in three risk of developing diabetes in his or her lifetime.

Since the obesity epidemic is a serious threat to public health and well-being, scientists have made it a research priority, and our understanding of its causes and consequences is rapidly expanding. Obesity can be the result of many interacting factors, including genetic makeup, developmental factors, physical inactivity, stress, insufficient sleep, social factors and smoking cessation. But dietary changes are clearly an outsized contributor. The obesity epidemic has closely paralleled a large (~20%) increase in per capita calorie intake, and according to the best available mathematical models, this increase can single-handedly account for the increase in body fatness over the last 30 years

Calories are interesting, but let’s delve deeper. We didn’t just wake up one day and decide to eat more—something is driving our increased food intake. But what? Research accumulated over the last two centuries has revealed that the answer lies in the intricacies of the human brain.

The Human Brain and Obesity

In 1840, a German doctor named B. Mohr made a critical observation while performing autopsies on obese subjects: some of them had damage in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus (B. Mohr. Wschr Heilkd, 6:565–574. 1840). Over the ensuing century and a half, researchers gradually uncovered a network of circuits in the hypothalamus dedicated to maintaining the stability (homeostasis) of body fat stores, by regulating food intake, energy expenditure, and the deposition of energy in fat tissue. This research culminated in the discovery of an extraordinary hormone called leptin in 1994. Produced by fat tissue in proportion to its mass, leptin enters the circulation and acts in the hypothalamus to regulate body fat stores. If you consistently restrict food intake, fat mass declines and so does leptin, and this signals the hypothalamus to stimulate hunger and make the body use calories more efficiently, in an attempt to regain lost body fat . Conversely, if you consistently overeat, the increase in fat mass and leptin suppresses appetite and increases calorie use until body fat stores have declined back to baseline. Leptin and a few other hormones are part of a negative feedback loop that acts unconsciously to keep fat mass in a specific range, sort of like a thermostat does for temperature. This is called the ‘energy homeostasis system’.

So if we have this built-in system to regulate body fatness, how does anyone become obese? Some researchers believe the energy homeostasis system defends against fat loss more effectively than fat gain. However, most obese people regulate their body fat just fine, but their brains ‘defend’ it at a higher level than a lean person. Going back to the thermostat analogy, in obese people it’s like the ‘temperature’ has been gradually turned up. That’s why it’s so hard to maintain weight loss—when body fat stores decline, the brain thinks it’s starving even if fat mass remains high—and it acts to regain the lost fat. If we want to understand how to prevent and treat obesity, first we have to understand why obese people defend a higher level of fat mass than lean people.

The most Fattening Diet in the World

To understand how this happens, let’s turn to animal research. Although rodents aren’t humans, they resemble us in many ways. Just like humans, rodents evolved to regulate body fat around an ‘optimal’ level to maximize survival and reproduction, and their systems for doing this are very similar to ours. Rodents also offer us the ability to control variables much more tightly than in human research. There are many ways to make a rat obese, but some are more effective than others. High-fat pelleted diets, composed of refined ingredients, are most common because they’re reliably fattening and their composition can be tightly controlled. But another diet, seldom used, is the most fattening of all: the ’cafeteria diet’. This diet has a lot to tell us about the expanding American waistline.

First described in 1976 by Anthony Sclafani, the cafeteria diet is basically a rat-sized buffet of human junk food, in addition to regular rat chow. The menu for a recent cafeteria diet study included such delectable items as Froot Loops, mini hot dogs, peanut butter cookies, Cheez-its, Cocoa Puffs, nacho cheese Doritos, cake, and BBQ pork rinds. These are what's known in the business as ‘palatable’, or pleasurable to the taste. On this regimen, rats ignored their regular chow, ate junk food to excess and gained fat at an extraordinary rate, far outpacing two comparison groups fed high-fat or high-sugar pelleted diets. Yes, human junk food happens to be the most effective way to overwhelm the body fat homeostasis system in rats, and neither fat nor sugar alone is able to fully explain why it’s so fattening. Importantly, over time, rats become highly motivated to obtain this diet—so motivated they’ll voluntarily endure extreme cold temperatures and electric shocks to obtain it, even when regular bland rodent pellets are freely available.

The cafeteria diet is an exaggerated version of an unhealthy human diet, and not many people eat quite that poorly. However, have a look at the top six calorie sources in the current US diet, in order of calorie contribution: grain-based desserts (cake, cookies, etc.), yeast breads, chicken-based dishes, sweetened beverages, pizza and alcoholic beverages. Our eating habits aren’t as different from the cafeteria diet as we might like to believe.
In 1992, Eric Ravussin and collaborators tried to repeat the rodent experiment in humans. They gave volunteers unlimited access to a large variety of palatable energy-dense foods, in a setting where the researchers could monitor exactly what was eaten. Over the course of the next week, the volunteers more than doubled their usual calorie intake, gaining an average of five pounds. Further studies showed a similar effect. Just as in rats, exposing humans to a large variety of palatable energy-dense foods causes an increase in food intake and rapid fat gain. To explain this, we need to bring our attention back to the brain.

My Neurons Made Me Fat

To understand why junk food causes fat gain in rats and humans, we have to explore two other circuits in the brain, beginning with the reward system. The reward system acts to gauge the desirability of food (among other stimuli) and reinforce and motivate behaviors that favor the acquisition of desirable food. For example, if you eat a strong cheese for the first time, maybe it won't taste very good to you. As it's digested, your reward system gets wind that it's full of calories, and the next few times you eat it, it tastes better and better until you like the flavor. This is called an acquired taste, and the reward system is what does the acquiring, motivating you to obtain a food it has deemed safe and desirable. This is the same process that allows children to learn to like vegetables—which are low-calorie, often bitter foods that are initially unpalatable-- if they’re repeatedly paired with fat, salt or some other desirable quality. The reward system does the same thing with foods/beverages that contain drugs, such as coffee and beer, gradually making bitter fluids palatable and then delicious.

Eventually, you may go out of your way to purchase the cheese or beer at the grocery store, and maybe you'll consume cheese or beer even if you aren't hungry or thirsty, simply because you like it. This is an example of the reward system reinforcing and motivating behaviors related to foods it considers desirable. What does the reward system consider desirable? Calorie density, fat, starch, sugar, salt, free glutamate (umami), certain textures (easily chewed, soft or crunchy, solid fat), certain flavors, an absence of bitterness, food variety, and drugs such as alcohol and caffeine. Our brains are highly attuned to these qualities because they’re all elements of nutritious, calorie-dense foods that would have sustained our ancestors in a natural environment, but today, the exaggerated combinations of these qualities used by processed food manufacturers, chefs and sometimes even home cooks overstimulate our natural reward pathways. Commercial foods are professionally designed to maximize reward, because reward is precisely what keeps you coming back for more. Processed junk foods such as ice cream, fast food, sweetened soda, cookies, cake, candy, pizza and deep fried foods are all archetypal hyper-rewarding foods.

Palatability is a related concept—it’s determined in part by inborn preferences (e.g., a taste for sugar and energy dense foods), and in part by the reward system (acquired tastes). Palatability is governed by the hedonic system in the brain, which is closely integrated with the reward system. Imagine yourself sitting at the dinner table, stuffed after a large meal. Then the cake and ice cream appear, and suddenly you have enough room left for another 250 calories of food. Would you have eaten a large, unseasoned baked potato (250 calories) if someone had put one in front of you at that point? Foods that stimulate the hedonic system have a well known ability to increase food intake, and this effect can be replicated using drugs that activate these circuits directly. The reward system is what motivates you to get food and put it to your lips, every time you eat. When scientists shut it down in mice, they stop seeking food, even though they’ll still eat if it’s put into their mouths. The hedonic system influences how much you eat once you begin a meal.

Together, reward and hedonic circuitry in the brain determine in large part how often you seek food, what foods you select, and how much you eat at a sitting.

Reward and hedonic systems, if stimulated in the right way by food or drugs, can increase food intake and body fatness. The marijuana ‘munchies’ (whose existence have been confirmed by science) are a good example of what happens when they’re chemically stimulated via the CB1 cannabinoid receptor in the brain. One of the most effective weight loss drugs ever developed, Rimonabant, is basically ‘reverse marijuana’, blocking the very same CB1 receptor that marijuana activates. Although it clearly reduces food intake and body fatness, it has failed to gain FDA approval because of negative psychological side effects (big surprise).

The ability of reward and palatability to influence food intake and body weight is mediated by connections between reward/hedonic and energy homeostasis systems. For example, if you haven’t eaten in a while, your brain detects declining energy stores and acts to increase food intake. It does this by increasing your motivation to obtain food, and your enjoyment of food once you obtain it— known as ‘hunger’, this sensation is caused in large part by energy homeostasis systems activating reward and hedonic systems. But the connection goes both ways. Reward and hedonic systems also influence energy homeostasis systems, such that excessively rewarding/palatable food can increase food intake and the level of body fat that’s ‘defended’ by the brain. According to findings from my own research group (lab of Michael W. Schwartz) and others, the hypothalamus can also develop inflammation and chronic cellular damage that likely contributes to the defense of a higher fat mass as well, contributing to fat gain and making fat loss more difficult, but the reason for this is not yet clear.

Addiction is what happens when the reward system is over-stimulated by drugs, sex, food or other high-reward stimuli. In susceptible people (about 3 percent of the US population), highly palatable/rewarding foods are quite literally addictive, leading to binge eating behavior. For the rest of us, these foods may not literally be addictive, but they do often drive us to eat them more than we think we should, despite negative consequences to our weight and health.

Living in a Toxic Food Environment

How has the American diet changed over the years, as obesity rates have soared? Taking a broad perspective, the largest change is that our food has become more like the ‘cafeteria diet’, awash in a large variety of packaged foods, restaurant meals and sweetened beverages.

Diet trials have shown that a ‘simple’ diet, low in palatability and reward value, reduces hunger and causes fat loss in obese humans and animals, apparently by lowering the ‘defended’ level of fat mass. This may be a reason why virtually any diet in which food choices are restricted (e.g., Paleo, vegan, fruitarian), including diametrically opposed approaches like low-fat and low-carbohydrate diets, can reduce food intake and body fatness in clinical trials. As stated by Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “The common denominator of such diets is that neither allows consumption of the very caloric and seductive foods that combine high fat with high carbohydrates”. Hyper-rewarding/palatable foods—candy, chocolate, ice cream, chips, cookies, cakes, fast food, sweetened beverages and pizza—are uniquely fattening and should be the first foods to go in any fat loss attempt. Some people will benefit from further simplifying the diet.

Dietary changes over the last several decades have contributed to the obesity epidemic. The solution to this problem is at once simple and challenging. Returning to a diet of simple home-cooked food, made from minimally refined ingredients, would probably stop the obesity epidemic in its tracks, although it would not be enough to return all currently obese people to a lean state. The challenge is finding the time and discipline to do this while commercial junk foods and sweetened beverages are tasty, cheap and constantly under our noses.

Stephan Guyenet is an obesity researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle. He writes about nutrition and health at his blog Whole Health Source.

For those who are eating out during the Holidays, and become tempted to treat themselves to a dessert, the list below will give you some clues as to how many calories are in such tasty treats:

 

 

Cinnabon Pecanbon - 1,080 calories, 19 teaspoons of sugar
 

• McDonald's Large Rolo McFlurry - 830 calories,
  26 teaspoons of sugar.
   
• Denny's Oreo Blender Blaster - 890 calories,
  19.25 teaspoons of sugar
   
• Coldstone Creamery Gotta Have It Oreo Creme Ice Cream - 1,060 calories,
  22.75 teaspoons of sugar
   
• Dairy Queen Banana Cream Pie Blizzard - 1,090 calories,
  29 teaspoons of sugar
   
• Chili's Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie - 1,250 calories,
  40.75 teaspoons of sugar
   
• Applebee's Chocolate Chip Cookie Sundae - 1,550 calories,
  52 teaspoons of sugar
   
• Outback Steakhouse Chocolate Thunder From Down Under - 1,554 calories,
  33 teaspoons of sugar
  
  
   
• Cheesecake Factory Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake - 1,679 calories,
  51.5 teaspoons of sugar 
  
  
   
  The Keg Carrot Cake a la mode - 2,344 calories,
  65 teaspoons of sugar (just 7 teaspoons shy of 1.5 cups) 

For those who have trouble learning to eat slowly,
here is a lesson on how to play with your food
while observing appropriate Thanksgiving Etiquette.

Examples of One Serving.

Sometimes I read an article that interests or amuses me so much, that I just have to include it here at DietHobby. 

    Here is one such article: 

How I lost 40 lbs doing everything wrong
             by Erik Davis. 11/14/12

I’ve been on a quest to lose weight over the last 6 months. It had been a long time coming, and I’d put it off for too many years. But while I have been achieving my goals, it’s got to be a statistical fluke, because I’ve done just about everything wrong!

1. I ate wheat!

Apparently, I didn’t get the message that my “addiction to wheat” is making me “fat and unhealthy”, because I kept right on eating it. Wheat breads, pita, even the dreaded enriched-flour pasta — all of these remained part of my diet. What a dolt I was! If only I’d bought a copy of William Davis’ best-selling book Wheat Belly, I’d have known that 100 million Americans (and presumably ~10M Canadians) experience some form of adverse health effect from eating wheat — from minor rashes to high blood sugar to unattractive stomach bulges. Or I could have listened to any of the countless nutritionists and alt-health gurus recommending gluten-free diets for non-celiac sufferers like me.

But I guess I was living under a rock. Really dodged a bullet there.

2.  I ate other carbs too!

“You’ve lost weight,” friends would say. “What have you been doing — cutting out carbs?” It was a question I kept hearing over and over again, yet somehow I never clued in that I should have been on a low-carb diet. After all, everyone knows carbs are what make us fat. Yet I kept on eating them — starchy tubers, rice of all colours and hues, gluten-laden rye breads and barley. In fact, carbs made up over half of my calories — and two-thirds of my food by weight!

Had I never heard of Robert Atkins or The Zone? This cat has far more than nine lives, let me tell you.

3. I used artificial sweeteners!

Boy should I have listened to Dr. Oz — he says that artificial sweeteners are the #1 habit making me fat! He recommends “natural alternatives” like honey, agave and coconut sap syrup. Yet stupid me, I figured that because those alternatives were largely comprised of glucose and fructose, they were just as bad as sugar — I completely forgot they were natural!

4.  I didn’t cleanse!

Stayed downright dirty. Little did I know that Vitalife Clinic in Toronto says it can help me shed pounds through the magic of hydrotherapy, as does Toronto Colonics, D’avignon Digestive Health Cente, and dozens of other “wellness” clinics throughout the city.

Or that Total Cleanse — also right here in Toronto! — sells pre-made juice cleanse products with healthy-sounding names like “Green Energy”. And they all come with a promise to help me lose weight!

Such amazing resources within arm’s reach — and all so reasonably priced — yet I did not avail myself of any of them. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

5.  I skipped the superfoods and supplements

I could have taken 13 acai berries, 2 tbsp of mango seed fiber, a jigger of extra virgin coconut oil, 4g of bitter orange, half a sheet of dried seaweed, a pinch of cayenne, and a cup of green tea, blended it all into a delicious smoothie, and used it to wash down my Glucomannan, which Dr. Oz assures me is the best diet pill on the market.

Or I could have tried any of the other really sciency sounding OTC weight loss pills like Lipocal, Lipoclen, Lipovox, Slimvox, Slimquick, Ambislim, Anoretix, Stimuretix, Colonetix or Colonoxy, which would have melted my pounds away by reducing hunger, speeding my metabolism, improving my digestive function, stopping carb absorption, adjusting my hormonal balance, purifying and revitalizing my body, helping me sleep better, and/or hijacking my hypothalamus, allowing me to see results twice as fast! three times as fast! seven times as fast! all without diet or exercise!

But not me. I always do things the hard way.

How did I get so turned around?

I guess my mistake was listening to the science.

Take diet composition for example. The best studies continue to say that all diets work equally well at taking off weight to the extent they reduce calories, and that macro-nutrient composition (carbs vs. protein vs. fat) doesn’t matter for weight loss. So I just got a calorie tracker app for my phone, focused on achieving a steady targeted reduction every day, and ate what I wanted until I hit the mark. Well, that’s not totally true — I did spend some time trying to understand which foods made me feel fuller for the fewest calories, and as a result focused on foods that:

• had more fibre, which I found more filling. So while I still ate some refined flour and sweets, most of my carbs came from whole grain foods.
  

• were less nutritionally dense, i.e. lower calories by volume, which again I found more filling. In practice, this meant a lot more fruits and vegetables.
  

• included protein, because many obesity researchers and clinicians believe that regular hits of protein throughout the day aid satiety.

I figured that since all of this was consistent with what every public health agency and lifestyle-disease organization recommends anyway, it was a pretty safe bet. I didn’t know I might end up being the thinnest wheat belly sufferer on record!

Or take artificial sweeteners. I listened to the solid science showing that sweetened beverages don’t affect satiety, and thus add calories without making us feel fuller — so much so that juice and pop became the only things I cut out of my diet entirely. But would I listen to the weakly-controlled, low-powered studies that found artificial sweeteners confuse the body’s regulatory system and make us eat more? Dr. Oz certainly did, but I was far too arrogant to listen! Instead, I took the advice of less-famous-and-therefore-certainly-less-trustworthy obesity clinicians like Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, who states that:

"For many, liquid calories, are the low hanging fruit of weight management – easy to reduce and consequently, I think it’s certainly worth your own personal exploration of liquid calories, and if indeed you’re drinking huge amounts of them, especially sugar sweetened ones, as a step-down strategy if you think you can use artificially sweetened beverages as you reduce the sweet drinks overall, I say go for it."

Even so, I should have been scared off by the commonly-heard refrain that artificial sweeteners are dangerous. But I figured that after decades of widespread use, the failure to show they caused any particular health problem was enough to give them a qualified pass. I mean, sure, I agree that water is probably a healthier choice than Coke Zero, but the enjoyment I got from it made it easier to stick to my calorie goals, so I kept drinking. So shortsighted!

Now as for cleanses, I blame skepticism for my myopia here. One of the first skeptical articles I ever read was the Skeptoid episode on cleanses, and it’s biased me against them ever since. I also figured that any weight that came off that easily was likely to go back on just as easily. Not sure how a jewish atheist like me developed such a firmly protestant outlook, but I do indeed value a work ethic.

I guess that was my problem with superfoods and supplements too — just too easy. After all, I couldn’t prove that none of them work — it’s impossible to keep up with all the new products on the market each year. I just knew that (barring ephedra, which has a terrible safety profile) I’d never seen any that had been shown to work. Some pretty clearly didn’t — even the NCCAM, hardly a skeptic organization, said that there was no reason to believe that acai berries or green tea could help me lose weight. Bitter orange might, but it contains a similar active ingredient to ephedra, and is likely just as risky. And I’ve looked into coconut oil before and found no evidence it’s useful for much of anything other than deep frying spring rolls.

I was also persuaded, so foolishly, by a 2004 systematic review of weight loss supplements conducted by Edzard Ernst and Max Pittler. It concluded that “the evidence for most dietary supplements as aids in reducing body weight is not convincing. None of the reviewed dietary supplements can be recommended for over-the-counter use.” Another review in the same year at Harvard Medical School came to similar conclusions.

What about Dr. Oz’s favorite supplement Glucomannan? To be honest, it’s not the craziest thing he’s recommended — glucomannan is a fibre supplement, and fibre does seem to aid satiety as I mentioned. But researchers consistently find that beneficial nutrients in food don’t often convey the same benefits in supplement form. And since Glucomannan was evaluated in the reviews linked above that recommended no supplementation, I let the science be my guide. Reckless, I know.

In the end, I was lucky — none of these mistakes stopped me from achieving my weight loss goals. But it’s not a path I’d recommend — after all, can you really expect science to look after your interests? It doesn’t even have anything to sell you!

                       Erik Davis is a technology professional based in Toronto. 
                                    www . skepticnorth.com