weigh-2-go.org

When I am hungry, I feel nervous. I’m like a squirrel, darting around to find a nut. In the kitchen, when I am impatient to eat what I’m cooking, I get butterflies in my stomach. (There’s an old Joan Rivers joke from back in the day when Elizabeth Taylor was fat and microwave ovens were novel: “She stands in front of the microwave and yells, ‘Hurry up!’”)

I’ve noticed lately that I have conditioned myself, conversely, to eat when I am nervous. Aha! I’m in the habit of responding to nervousness with food–whether or not the nervousness is about hunger. I bet a lot of people do something like this.

So I was interested to read a passage in “Change Your Brain, Change Your Body” by Daniel G. Amen, MD, discussing the brain’s responses to food.

MIT researchers demonstrated that simple carbohydrates, such as cookies or candy, boost seratonin levels. [Seratonin relieves anxiety, depression, and obsessive thinking.]

[Researchers Matthew Gailliot and Roy Baumeister] write that self-control failures are more likely to occur when blood sugar is low. Low blood sugar levels can make you feel hungry, irritable, or anxious–all of which make you likely to make poor choices. Many everyday behaviors can cause dips in blood sugar levels, including … consuming sugary snacks or beverages, which causes an initial spike in blood sugar then a crash about thirty minutes later.

Therefore, anxiety and eating is a vicious cycle. I eat to relieve anxiety. If I happen to eat something sweet, then my blood sugar level crashes. When it does, not only do I crave more sugar (especially if I am still anxious), but I lack the mental self-control to make a healthier choice.

I wonder if this cycle leads to all-or-nothing thinking in dieting: if I eat one cookie, then the diet is blown and I might as well have another, and another.

Being aware of this vicious cycle, and the physiological goings-on that cause it, are helping me see it when it happens and say “Stop already.”

My weakness: the drawer full of Zone Bars (evil disguised as health food) at an office where I work. Stop already.

Here’s a blog post on the Huffington Post that I wholeheartedly agree with:

Do We Need a Fattitude Adjustment?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Here’s the comment I wrote:

Amazing, the diversity of viewpoints here. Some questions not yet considered:

– I agree that parents’ behavior is at issue for childhood obesity. But “lack of willpower” doesn’t explain the phenomenon, either. Millions of adults genuinely try, but fail, to lose weight. Why?

– Yes, parents “should” control their kids’ eating, but we don’t live in a society where parents have that control. Kids feed themselves now, candy machines are everywhere, school lunches are filled with junk, and parents are too busy to cook nutritious meals with real ingredients. Fast food fits the lifestyle of parents *and* their children. How do we fix *that*?

– Sugar in its many forms is hard to escape in our food supply, and it’s an addictive substance that causes the brain to want more. (If you don’t believe this, try living without any processed/packaged food for 2 days.)

Dr. Katz, thank you for articulating an intelligent response to the “rock and a hard place” we find ourselves trapped in, as we work to fight obesity, not the people who are obese.

By the way, if the official definition of obesity is the 95th percentile, what happens when 20% of kids are obese? Do we need a definition based on symptoms instead of statistics?

This week’s Newsweek contains a series of articles about Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity. This is a timely and important issue for the First Lady to adopt–one that will surely affect the health–and health care costs–of Americans.

President Obama has issued a memorandum to create a Task Force that will work on: “(a) ensuring access to healthy, affordable food; (b) increasing physical activity in schools and communities; (c) providing healthier food in schools; and (d) empowering parents with information and tools to make good choices for themselves and their families.”

It all sounds positive, but in the American tradition, there will be a partisan debate boiling down to this: who is responsible for the obesity of a child? Do the food lobbies need more regulation, and the schools need better food and exercise programs? Or do parents and children need to take more responsibility for the children’s choices and behaviors?

It’s a complex and essential question. As much as I am a fan of personal responsibility, I believe that foods affect our behavior like drugs, and the effect is increased for children. If my belief is a fact, then it would inconsistent to invoke personal responsibility in our use of food while we regulate and legislate tobacco, alcohol, and narcotics.

Example: Is it realistic to expect kids to stay away from a candy machine in school? Can we fault parents for a lack of control when their kids spend their lunch money on candy? Would food companies voluntarily turn their backs on the schools as a market, for the sake of the nation’s health? Would school districts turn down the money they make from these machines?

I love free enterprise when it works. It works great for magazines, blue jeans, and washing machines. It does not work for addictive substances, assuming we place the highest value on our health and safety.