Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to lose weight? The answer has to do with evolution, energy, and food availability. Our bodies are designed to store fat as energy to prevent starvation. It’s a holdover from our evolutionary past when food was scarce, and our ancestors needed to be able to survive...
Food is one of our greatest pleasures and for good reasons. It stimulates the reward system in our brains, like drugs and alcohol, providing pleasure, contentment, and a sense of satisfaction. The mechanism behind positive emotions is that drugs and food act on the dopamine circuits in our brains. Dopamine is our “happiness hormone.”...
Recent obesity management guidelines suggest that behavioral therapies should be the first line of treatment for obesity. Behavioral change helps people develop sustainable healthy habits that can improve their diet, physical activity, and health in general. Calories deficit, eating fewer calories than we burn, is the heart of any obesity or weight loss treatment....
Do people become obese because they overeat, or do they overeat because they are obese? The body has a system in place to maintain energy balance, just as there is a system to keep the body temperature stable. When we are hot, sweat glands release more sweat, removing heat energy through evaporation. When we...
