Does Healthy Living Overcome Fat Genes?

My fiance comes from a family of overweight and obese individuals, including his extended family. With my help, he lost over 70lbs and has kept it off for the last 5 years. He hasn't just kept it off, but he is incredibly strong and looks as if he was never overweight a day in his life as he is very muscular. With hard work and discipline, anyone can do it- some just have a more difficult journey than others. I love this Melanie, I totally agree with you. I don't know that its necessarily being "lazy" as much as it is a lack of understanding of the difficulty that needs to be overcome and/or a lack of ability to completely commit to something that is not only life changing on the outside, but the inside as well. I believe it takes a complete life transformation and for some people it takes far more than that- a very, very deep emotional and spiritual journey... inner-strength must be found in order to be successful. I also believe it is something that can be incredibly difficult (not impossible) to achieve such lofty goals without professional guidance. Overall though, I completely agree with you and hope that others will read this and gain some insight and motivation!

All this discussion about fat ( or thin) genes overlooks the fact that many people overeat because their brains are hard-wired to need to eat to improve their moods. This type of eating is not an excuse for eating too much. Rather it is a natural way of improving mood without resorting to pills, nicotine or alcohol. When we eat any carbohydrate except that in fruit, our brains make serotonin. When serotonin is made, there are significant measurable improvements in mood. We published many scientific articles on this based on our MIT research. As I wrote in my book, The Serotonin Power Diet, it is important to eat low or fat free carbohydrate snacks and to eat them without protein. People gain weight because they eat fat filled carbohydrates like doughnuts, or chocolate and they eat more than a therapeutic dose. There is no way we can change our brains so we don't need to eat carbs for comfort but it is easy to prevent weight gain and also to lose weight and still get this natural source of comfort.

Sure, thats absolutely true. But thats like a drug addict..... most people can't break an addiction to food or other substances without help... I have quite a bit of experience in that area, and I have spoken on many panels and met and helped hundreds of people with a similar problem or addiction, and most of them don't just eat to feel good, they also eat because they want to escape, because they feel an "empty" feeling, they are trying to cope with a past or present abuse of some kind, etc. The "drug" (or in this case, food) becomes their lover, friend, their everything, and they generally isolate themselves from others.

Although it is an incredibe point and opens a myriad of different reasoning and theories for this kind of behavior.... it still is an issue that one must overcome, and it doesnt change the fact that overcoming a problem that is so rooted in a persons life is a difficult challenge, especially when it involves brain chemistry. Also, if someone stuck simply to a carbohydrate filled diet and didn't consume any protien, how would they NOT gain weight?? Protien is an essential building block in the weight loss process, and so are healthy fats. Healthy fats and protien keep you feeling full longer, help build muscle (which is truly the only way to lose and KEEP OFF weight, because its the only true way to change one's metabolisim) and help with cravings, but if you have cravings so strong that you are using food as a mood enhancement "drug", than you need more than just a diet change to overcome that and lose weight. You need a lifestyle change and intensive cog and mood therapy. Saying something is "natures replacement" for cocaine or heroin or alcohol is baffling- just because its not a "drug" so to speak, doesn't mean it can't be extremely harmful, dangerous, and addicting. Sex addicts destroy entire families, and sex is natural but that doesn't make sex addiction good. Not having a healthy, balanced diet causes so many health problems, its impossible to say that its not an addiction, and its impossible to say that its not an addiction that can kill people. There are people who have/had become so addicted to the "comfort" or "serotonin high" of food (which by the way is very, very similar to the high created by heroin) that they end up losing everything they own because they spend every dime on food. I've seen a woman (who was NOT using ANY alcohol, pills, nicotine, etc.) become a stripper in order to support her food addiction, hiding from her family and completely bankrupting herself, spending every dime she saved and earned on food- all for that serotonin high she got from it- which ended her in rehab seeking serious professional help to navagate through her addiction, just like an alcoholic or drug addict would.

Its almost like you're saying its a good idea to foster an addiction to something that alters a persons brain chemistry, even if only momentarily, and that I do not quite understand, I wonder if you could better explain that to remove confusion? An addict is an addict, people can destroy their lives and the lives around them with anything, natural or not- sex, food, drugs, alcohol, love, gambling, etc. Addiction is not about a specific substance, its about the behavior. Drug addicts don't seek a drug, they seek a HIGH, and thats not a good thing! Cocaine comes from a plant, marijuana IS a plant- some people argue that those are "natural". Being addicted to the "natural high" food gives you is not a good thing for most people.... I'm sure if you walk into an overeaters anonymous group and ask, or walk into an addiction treatment center that specializes in eating/food disorders and ask, they will probably be insulted and horrified at the thought of promoting seeking a high from something so addictive as food. I bet they will think that their addiction to food is something very, very serious and even deadly, and I can't imagine fostering that is a good thing. Maybe I am misunderstanding what is being said.... and I hope that I am!!

Sara, My remarks are based on about 30 years of research  with neuropsychologists and brain scientists with whom I have collaborated. My comments are based on known changes in the brain. I respect your experience but let me place them in a scientific perspective.

1) Our bodies need all nutrients and all, carbohydrates included are important for a healthy diet.

2) Serotonin which is a very important neurotransmitter in the brain, overseeing such physiological processes as pain perception, temperature regulation, satiety and mood regulation is made ONLY WHEN CARBOHYDRATES are consumed. This fact was discovered in the early l970's.  Eating any non fruit carbohydrate allows tryptophan to get into the brain. Eating proteing prevents this process. We have published studies showing that brain tryptophan and serotonin will be  lower in people who avoid eating carbohydrates or eat them only with protein.

3) Low serotonin is associated with mood changes . Increasing serotonin improves mood.

4) When people want to calm themselves down and decrease anxiety, and they eat carbohydrates, they can improve their mood. We have pubished many articles on this fact.

5) People do not feel high. They simply move from feeling LOW to feeling NORMAL. . You are mistaken when you said people feel high. They just stop feeling depressed, anxious, agitated, upset, restless, bored, and angry. Not a bad result after eating a small bowl of oatmeal.

6) We drink water every day. If we don't we may die. Is this an addiction?

Hope to continue  our discussion.

an addict is an addict is an addict. only one with addictive behavior continues to respond to an addiction, because those who are not addicts can eat a carb and not become addicted. People CAN get high from food.... have you heard of bulimia, or anorexia? If you havent, I think there is an episode of intervention about it.... the girl starts stripping because of her food addiction, she gets in thousands of dollars of debt, so on and so forth.... And even putting that to the side, most people misunderstand information, they are poorly informed or the actual research is skewed or presented in a manner that makes it easy to infer many different things. most people need tons of re-teaching as it is, there is an obesity crisis in this country, im pretty sure people are eating enough carbs. As for water, it doesnt cause a person to go from "low" serotonin to "normal" serotonin, but food can. Plus thats sort of an underhanded comment, we need air to breathe too so obviously i meant that was an addiction too. To say that people Cant become addicted to food or use it as a mood altering substance is... well... crazy. Im willing to bet if you walked into an overeaters anonymous meeting they would tell you they are food addicts. They use it to feel different, which is literally the basis of addiction- to feel differently, thus by saying someone goes from "low" to "normal" is the same thing as saying someone uses food to feel differently... because they actually ARE. You're right seritonin does improve mood, and drugs produce seritonin. Lets just give everyone with low seritonin heroin, crack, and cocaine and call it a day!! Besides all that, what actual human is happy when they have atrophied muscles from their inability to exercise or build muscle mass from their lack of protien intake? How is obesity a good thing.... and how is it not clearly proven that high carb diets cause it... oh, and generally low fat foods have thickeners and sugars pumped into them.... yum

Dear Sara, There is some really good research easy to find on the internet on genetic differences between people in regard to anxiety, vulnerabilty to depression and stress. This work has been going on for at least a decade. Look at the research papers and notice that some of us are born with an ' anxiety gene' or are' most likely to get depressed ' gene.  Some of these people may be comforted and less anxious when they eat foods like carbohydrates that increase their calmness and make them resilient to stress. Many psychologists and I assume you are of of them as you write so much about addiction, have found that carbohydrates do improve mood and their research is done giving covertly, secretly, carbohydrates to their subjects so they don't know that they are eating them. Maybe those of us who are born with an anxiety tendency learn very early on to use carbohydrates to calm ourselves; we might be chlldren who grow quiet when our parents give us a handful of cheerios. This is not an addiction.  In an addiction, brain changes can be detected . Please let we readers of this web site know where you found published scientific material showing brain changes after people eat sugar. Meanwhile for those of us who are eating sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving and cranberry sauce, enjoy. You will not become a sugar addict.