Anyone who has ever turned to a bowl of ice cream when feeling down knows the connection between emotions and food. Indeed, even eating a bite of a favorite food can evoke feelings of pleasure. This may explain why a recent study found that shutting down the brain's emotional center in mice kept them from indulging in fat.
To be sure, behaviors and desires are hard to overcome, but a region of the brain known as the amygdala, which plays an important role in the processing of emotions, may teach us to want certain things-including sugar and fatty foods.
In the study, mice given an injection to shut down the amygdala were uninterested in eating lard. However, mice that were injected with reward chemicals known as opioids, which induce a pleasurable feeling, ate close to six times the normal amount of fat.
Researchers noted that often drug companies overlook the influence of the brain when developing drugs to curb fat. They mention that while our habits often lead us to eat regardless of appetite, it's thought that the brain controls our eating and weight by responding to factors such as blood sugar levels and hormones.
Our bodies will naturally want the amount of food that we need. This amount is matched so closely with need that a man only has to eat 4,000 calories too many in a year to gain one pound, the study points out. However, once the body becomes overweight, it adjusts to this new amount of food and resists dieting.
Obesity affects close to seven percent of the world's population. While it is thought that limiting food intake and increasing exercise are ideal ways to lose weight, researchers mentioned that neuroscientists might provide insights into potential weight loss solutions.
Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Florida, November 2002
Quite interesting that only seven percent of the world's population is obese, but more than four times that level are obese in the U.S.; a recent JAMA study showed that about 33 percent of people in the U.S. are obese.
Emotions are clearly a major reason why people are obese, as this study suggests and most of us intuitively understand. However, food cravings can be dramatically resolved by eating certain foods-foods that we are designed to eat.
In my practice, I have recently implemented the Metabolic Typing Diet, which provides customized diets according to individual body chemistry (William Wolcott's book, Metabolic Typing Diet, belongs on the shelf of everyone with any interest in nutrition at all). We have noticed amazing results with respect to weight loss and overall health improvements.
Personally, food cravings are something I have long struggled with. However, I am lucky to possess the enormous gift of self-discipline, as are many of the people who visit me, and through sheer will power have been able to strictly limit sweets and grains, as I know they will damage my body.
The frustrating thing is that, even with self-discipline, the cravings would still be there. I was metabolically typed over one year ago, but only recently have I come to understand how the program really works. My metabolic type is predominately that of a fast oxidizer. I burn fuel very fast and do terrible with nearly all grains.
I was seeking to implement foods according to this type but until recently was unable to give myself enough healthy fat. You can only have so much cod liver oil and olive oil before you overdose. Eggs were a major step in the right direction for me but even that was not enough fat.
A few weeks ago, however, I was fortunate enough to locate some Amish farmers where I could secure raw cream. This has turned my life around as I can finally give my body what it has really needed for all these years. About 40 to 50 percent of my diet is designed to be fat.
I missed some major clues earlier in my life during the 80s and 90s when my cholesterol would hover below 100. However, I never tried increasing raw dairy fat in my diet.
After adding the raw fat, not only did my food cravings literally disappear but my cold hands and feet are now normal. Living in Chicago was really getting to me, and it was getting worse every year. That is why I wanted to move somewhere warmer.
However, my entire outlook has changed now that I am warmer and my body has the appropriate fuel to burn. Because I wasn't getting enough fat, my body was always craving quick fuels, like breads and sweets, to burn to compensate for this.
This was a powerful demonstration to me that the foods you eat are only one factor in balancing the diet equation. You also need to be very careful in monitoring the ratios of the protein, fats and carbohydrates you are consuming.
I needed much more fat. I believe the raw (unpasteurized) cream was a major factor in giving me the fat I needed. I had tried simple raw milk and found that it did not work; I didn't even like the taste. It was because the protein to fat to carbohydrate ratio was still wrong. However, I absolutely love the cream. I just needed a lot more fat than my body was used to getting.
The same cream that I, and many of my nutrition staff, love is absolutely nauseating to about half of my staff as they are slow oxidizers, and the cream would devastate their health.
It is also important to understand that with Metabolic Typing there is not one correct diet for everyone. In fact, for one person the low fat, vegetarian Pritikin-type diet might clear up all of their health problems. But for someone else that very same diet might devastate their health, as they would thrive on more of an Atkins-type program.
It is absolutely amazing what a difference it made for me. The first night I shifted my plan over I woke up at 2:00 AM and bolted out of bed with incredible energy and started the day early. Normally I get up at 3:30 AM so this wasn't a major shift, but I was full of energy the entire day. I also noticed that my hands and feet warmed up considerably. Looks like I can stay in Chicago for a few more years now.
However, having built up the importance of eating specifically for your Metabolic Type, many people will still have emotional issues with food.
That is where psychological acupressure techniques like EFT come in. You can use the new, free 25-page report to help you stop the cravings. If you have not seen the new report recently, we have added photographs to help show you the correct tapping points, and you might want to review it, as it is enhanced and updated for improved usability. Additionally, for a more in-depth look at EFT, I offer my EFT Series on VHS or DVD.
If you are in the Chicago area and are looking for specific help with weight loss using EFT, our chief therapist Jody Stevens is offering her annual weight loss series with the first session scheduled for January 25, 2003.