Losing Weight Is All In Your Head...So Now What?

People are getting more sophisticated about it, but it used to be that people with weight issues were
told that losing weight was a matter of "will power." The only problem is that there are some drives that go beyond ordinary self-control.

Alcoholics Anonymous made a major step forward nearly eight decades back when it came up with the idea that compulsive drinkers were powerless over alcohol; it really does appear to be true that the way someone with an alcohol addiction metabolizes, and therefore thinks about, alcohol is very different from the way an ordinary, non-problematic drinker does. For some individuals, it's nearly impossible to simply stop at one, two, or even three drinks. Something rather similar appears to be going on with obese people and food.

However, while the alcoholic can simply stop consuming booze completely, severely obese people are expected to continue eating, but to eat a lot less. Moreover, we're learning more and more than obese people are getting brain signals that it seems safe to say that anyone would have a hard time resisting because they really feel like genuine hunger. So far, weight loss surgery is the only reliable way we've found so far to cut through this Gordian knot of a problem.

Now, however, we're reading articles in various places about psychological approaches to weight loss. We know that procedures like lap bands and gastric sleeve surgery are not for everyone; we have only good thoughts for sincere practitioners who are attempting to take other routes to help people loose unwanted pounds. However, from what we're reading at various web sites, a lot of them seem blissfully unaware of the new research on such hormones and brain chemicals as ghrelin and lepton that really do seem to be present in differing concentrations in overweight and obese people. These kind of differences might be an enormous part of why changing the way people think about food is vastly easier said than done.

The good news is that we're learning more and more about how hormones and other factors impact the brain, and all kinds of new therapies may be in the offing over the long run. In the short term, however, we do know that various types of weight loss surgery, can have profound influences on how our brain makes us eat.

If you're interested in learning how bariatric procedures might be able to permanently alter the way you think about and react to food, please call us at (800) 868-5946 or reach us through our contact page.