Having a hard time watching what you eat because you’re always hungry? We feel your pain. NY Times writer Anahad O’Connor, posted a question and answer session with Dr. David Ludwig regarding his new book, “Always Hungry?” See some of what he had to say below.
Dr. Ludwig is an obesity expert and professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He states that “Weight gain begins when people eat the wrong types of food, which throws their hormones out of whack and sets off a cycle of cravings, hunger and bingeing”. In his new book, “Always Hungry?” he argues that “The primary driver of obesity today is not an excess of calories per se, but an excess of high glycemic foods like sugar, refined grains and other processed carbohydrates”.
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Q.
What is the basic message of your book?
A.
The basic premise is that overeating doesn’t make you fat. The process of getting fat makes you overeat. It may sound radical, but there’s literally a century of science to support this point. Simply cutting back on calories as we’ve been told actually makes the situation worse. When we cut back on calories, our body responds by increasing hunger and slowing metabolism. It responds in an effort to save calories. And that makes weight loss progressively more and more difficult on a standard low calorie diet. It creates a battle between mind and metabolism that we’re doomed to lose.
Q.
But we’ve all been told that obesity is caused by eating too much. Is that not the case?
A.
We think of obesity as a state of excess, but it’s really more akin to a state of starvation. If the fat cells are storing too many calories, the brain doesn’t have access to enough to make sure that metabolism runs properly. So the brain makes us hungry in an attempt to solve that problem, and we overeat and feel better temporarily. But if the fat cells continue to take in too many calories, then we get stuck in this never-ending cycle of overeating and weight gain. The problem isn’t that there are too many calories in the fat cells, it’s that there’s too few in the bloodstream, and cutting back on calories can’t work.
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Q.
If it’s not overeating, then what is the underlying cause of obesity?
A.
It’s the low fat, very high carbohydrate diet that we’ve been eating for the last 40 years, which raises levels of the hormone insulin and programs fat cells to go into calorie storage overdrive. I like to think of insulin as the ultimate fat cell fertilizer.
When someone with Type 1 diabetes first comes to attention, their blood sugar is high because they can’t make enough insulin. They invariably have lost weight. They may be eating 5,000 calories a day, and they’re still losing weight. You can’t gain weight without insulin. The opposite is also true. If you give someone with diabetes too much insulin, they will inevitably gain weight. Insulin programs the body to store calories, and most of those calories get stored in the fat cells. If you’ve got too much insulin, you’re going to store too many calories. This has been very well established scientifically.
Q.
How do you get your obese patients to lower their insulin?
A.
The quickest way to lower insulin is to cut back on processed carbohydrates and to get the right balance of protein and fat in your diet. A high fat diet is really the fastest way to shift metabolism. It lowers insulin, calms fat cells down and gets people out of the cycle of hunger, craving and overeating.
Q.
How does this program work?
A.
Our program has three phases. First we tell people to give up processed carbohydrates, added sugars and all grain products for two weeks. The carbohydrates you eat should be a range of nonstarchy vegetables, fruits and beans. After two weeks, we reintroduce whole kernel grains, potatoes – except for white potatoes – and a little bit of added sugars. You do this until your weight comes down to a new, lower set point. It could be a few weeks, or it could be many months for someone who has a more significant weight problem.
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Q.
Ultimately, what do you want people to take away from this book?
A.
Until we address the underlying drivers of weight gain – which are fat cells stuck in calorie storage overdrive – we are going to be in a battle between mind and metabolism that we just can’t win. Cutting back on calories won’t do it. That doesn’t change biology. To change biology, you have to change the kinds of foods you’re eating.
This sounds like something we could live with. Most of the guys here at ForMen would much rather make these relatively easy changes than have to obsessively count calories and feel hungry all the time. How about you?
Curated article from:
NY Times
