The Neuroscience of Obesity

The cost of obesity is staggering, with "Americans who are 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight cost the country an estimated $147 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2008." As long as we treat obesity as a neocortical problem -- not "knowing" what to do, that rate will continue to soar. What is the solution? EBT.

Most people with severe obesity, a Body Mass Index of 40 or more, are addicted. Their brain is wired for stress and their reward centers are dysregulated, that is, their neurotransmitters are very high or very low. About half of binge eaters have a "burnout" in dopamine receptors, so they are chronically low and need to get a fix of artificial sources of pleasure –– sugary, fatty foods, or their substitutes, such as shopping, people-pleasing, rescuing others, smoking, drinking, anything that gives an abnormally strong boost of dopamine just to feel normal. Eating an apple? Forget it! Apple pie is what gives that neurotransmitter hit, that fix. The pleasure pathways have been hijacked by all that sugary, fatty food or other artificial excesses and now they need that boost just to feel normal.

Not all of us are at a BMI of 40 (yet), but even those who are overweight (BMI 25-30) or obese but not morbidly so (BMI 30 to 39.9). When we are wired for stress, the prefrontal cortex is not functioning well, and emotions, thoughts and behaviors are extreme. We can't lift ourselves out of that discouraged, needy, unrewarded, numb state with the thought of being compassionate, authentic, spiritual or any of the "eudonic" rewards that are available regardless of circumstance. We can't get the needed surge of pleasure, and the last thing we feel like doing is exercising or eating . . . veggies.

What's more the wires that trigger those unstoppable appetites are multiple, a veritable knot of them, all laid down during moments when lions were chasing us, or at least, on a chemical level we experienced that cortisol cascade. We get attached to the thoughts before and after the eating, too, the "what the heck"  or the "I deserve it" before overeating and the "I'm so bad; how could I have eating the whole thing!" afterwards. They are so familiar and so comforting in their own way. The emotional high before and low afterwards or the reverse -- the low that triggers eating and the rebellious high from having done the deed. That knot of wires that triggers the overeating does not disappear when we count calories, go to the gym or pop pills. Wires change by repeated experiences and if we are wired at 4 or 5, we do change our experiences, but they are still within the comfort range of stress: –– for example, overeating and undereating or overexercising or underexercising. We are changing but doing so more like a rat on a treadmill, working hard but not getting very far.

It's a wiring problem! We have too many wires that trigger us to stay in stress, a state in which we have unstoppable appetites for extremes, and we have too few wires that move us back to that state of well-being in which food is just food, not a fix, and we stop needing the sugar and the fat. In fact, they seem so  . . . in adequate. One of the easy ways to try these ideas for yourself is The 3-Day Solution Plan. Another is to try our introductory training, Wired for Joy, and then if you like, Wired for Freedom, the short course of the tools to rewire cravings.

Right now you can make a mental shift. That drive for sugary fatty foods is just a whacked out wire. It's not you. Admonishing yourself for overeating is so out-dated by brain science. It's a wiring matter, so what do you do? Roll up your sleeves and do some rewiring. Oddly enough, when you see the problem for what is really is, it is somewhat disconcerting. No more shame and blame. No more dieting roller coasters. Just the need to get to 1 more and more often until that new amazing state is your natural way of being. Food? Who needs it when you can be at 1!