Submitted by
EBT News on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 9:19am
During the last two days, I had the opportunity to be in meetings with Kelly Brownell of the Rudd Center at Yale. Kelly has devoted himself to obesity treatment research for decades, and the talk he presented was all about how people don't change their behavior, that over time intake of fruits and vegetables and exercise/week have stayed stable. He is interesting in changing the defaults so that people are not tempted. They don't have to decide not to eat something. It's just not available to them or at such an expense that they decide against it. There is no question in my mind that the industry advantage, that they have addictive foods to sell and set it in front of people every chance they get, poses a public health risk, and I'm hopeful that some kind of flat playing field for whole foods will begin to appear. Read more »
Submitted by
EBT News on Sun, 02/21/2010 - 1:44pm
Submitted by
Laurel on Mon, 02/08/2010 - 9:50am
We call it many things. Emotional overeating, comfort eating, binge eating, sugar addiction, choc-oholic, and then the mean statements about the downstream effects, the love handles, the chubby cheeks, the loosened belt buckle. What is it REALLY? It's a wire. That wire is a "survival circuit" and if you break that circuit and, by the way, get your whole brain to be wired at 1 so you aren't always tripping that circuit, then there is peace at last. Weight loss is nearly meaningless, because if that survival circuit that is triggered the overeating isn't clipped, then another excess takes hold, and we are not free. When did you go to a commercial weight program or a diet doctor and hear that your job was to turn off the drive to overeat, to stop wanting it? If they told you that, you might have laughed or may not have believed them. When I had one of those realizations that we have when driving (probably too close to the van in front of me) or languishing in the shower (I was driving), that these circuits were wired at Brain State 5, when we are so stressed that unless you know that and target it, you will have to live with it. When a circuit is encoded in stress - of betrayal, abandonment, physical pain, metabolic upset -- it is stored behind the curtain. We can't access it because when we arouse it we have to be in Brain State 5. In that state our mind turns off! So we become prisoners of our own circuits. In EBT we are rewiring them! Our new programs (short term Boulders and Peas or Life at 1 - for weight loss), you will learn those skills. Right now I hope you will think about those circuits, the ones that we defend and don't know what to do about, because we really can't even see it, because it was wired at Brain State 5. Read more »
Submitted by
Laurel on Tue, 12/29/2009 - 3:14am
Yesterday and today, three UCSF colleagues and I have been participating in a meeting for the seven teams that have been funded by NIH to translate basic behavioral and social science discoveries into interventions to reduce obesity. EBT is the intervention of one of them. This work is in response to a U-01 which is a kind of award that is based on collaboration, allowing more creativity and five years of bringing together researchers with different projects to respond to a particularly challenging problem. The program director is Susan Czajkowski,Ph.D., Clinical Applications and Prevention Branch, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences. It took her 2.5 years of hard work to bring this project together, and she is so enthusiastic and there is hope for a new paradigm in obesity treatment. I have been really struck by the concentration of expertise in one room -- about 40 people are participating -- and a tremendous enthusiasm. People are curious, focused, creative, responsive, and . . . cooperative. I'm very grateful to Elissa Epel. Barbara Lariara and Nancy Adler for taking the initiative and put their efforts behind asking the National Institutes of Health to study EBT. We'll be sharing the updates from all the projects in coming posts! Read more »
Submitted by
Laurel on Mon, 11/30/2009 - 2:55pm
You are challenged by all the luscious foods over the holidays. Think of January with the workouts, the celery stalks, the crunches, and I don't mean food. Read more »
Submitted by
Laurel on Tue, 11/24/2009 - 12:51am
I have vivid memories of gaining 40 plus pounds with each pregnancy, as cheese and crackers soothes the nausea, and because I was ceaselessly hungry. Hormones! Read more »
