RECURRENT EPISODES OF BINGE EATING IS LIKELY THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE INDUCTION OF OBESITY SYNDROME

From wants to demands

Thank you to all who commented on my previous post.

Please understand that I think we need to look at Obesity in a completely different light. All the “cures” people kindly offered, were exactly what I proposed they actually are. They are treatments that, if stopped, would result in the patient very quickly returning to a symptomatic state of Obesity Syndrome (yes, I believe it is a Syndrome).

Also, claims that certain diets can help prevent Obesity are, of course, true. The same way that certain diets can help prevent a number of diseases. The point being, not to let Obesity be induced in the first place.

I would like to quote from a paper from 2018 about the long-term management of Obesity.

The patient’s perception of ongoing diet maintenance despite no further weight loss may arise because the physiological regulation of appetite occurs in brain regions that operate below the patient’s conscious awareness. Thus, signals to the brain that increase appetite with weight loss could introduce subconscious biases such as portion sizes creeping upwards over time. Such a slow drift upwards in energy intake would be difficult to detect given the large 20–30% fluctuations in energy intake from day to day. Furthermore, a relatively persistent effort is required to avoid overeating to match the increased appetite that grows in proportion to the weight lost. For example, the model-calculated intervention effort for the simulated patient who experiences the weight plateau at six months followed by weight regain maintains more than ~70% of their initial intervention effort until the plateau. Perhaps self-reported diet maintenance before and after the weight plateau is more representative of the patients’ relatively persistent effort to avoid overeating in response to their increased appetite. New technologies using repeated weight monitoring can be used calculate changes in calorie intake and effort over time and help guide individuals participating in a weight loss intervention.

From a purely calorie balance perspective, a patient who maintains lost weight after the first year of an intervention may be eating only about 100 kcal/d fewer than a patient who experiences long-term weight regain. However, such a small difference in food intake behavior is somewhat misleading considering that prevention of weight regain requires about 300–500 kcal/d of increased persistent effort to counter the ongoing slowing of metabolism and increased appetite associated with the lost weight. The more typical pattern of long-term weight regain is characterized by a waning effort to sustain the intervention.

There are likely many factors that account for the ability of some patients to achieve and maintain large weight losses over the long term whereas others experience substantial weight regain. Unravelling the biological, psychosocial, educational, and environmental determinants of such individual variability will be an active area of obesity research for the foreseeable future.

Maintenance of lost weight and long-term management of obesity
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/

What is most interesting here is that it appears that REDUCING caloric intake INCREASES appetite in an exponential manner. Therefore, the GREATER the number of average daily calories from which the weight reduction program STARTS, the GREATER the appetite increases as calories are reduced and weight is shed.

So, what would lead to a higher average number of daily calories?

Binge eating.

I have talked with hundreds of Obese individuals. When I ask them why they think they became Obese, one comment was common to all. Without exception. They all had excessive recurrent episodes of binge eating. Whether it was due to psychological issues, or the effects of a diet comprised of readily available highly processed/calorie dense foods, Obese individuals interviewed all expressed a problem with recurrent episodes of binge eating.

So, the next steps.

We need to identify the epigenetic changes that recurrent binge eating causes.

We need to identify the activities within the brain associated with recurrent binge eating.

We need to determine how long/how frequently binge eating occurs before it induces these changes, if happening.

If this proves true, then the reason why weight loss for the Obese may be so difficult, is that it is NOT in “the head.” It may be that PSYCHOLOGICAL/DIETARY ISSUES CREATE A BIOLOGICAL NEED FOR EXCESSIVE CALORIC INTAKE.

From wants to demands.