Why Diets Make Us Fat
Since my ulcerative colitis episodes, weight has been a mystery to me. I would lose weight and gain weight and I couldn't do anything about it. When I didn't eat much, I got weird (I often say that I even feel like I lost a few IQ points during that time, although I haven't found any studies that point to that). And while I wanted to gain weight, the net was full of diets to lose weight. A very strange environment. This book helped me to make peace with all that.
The author, Sandra Aamodt, is a neurobiologist. She's been on tons of diets, all of them unsuccessful, and she's studied the phenomenon and finally managed to find a healthy weight and make peace with her body. This woman knows what she is talking about.
She demonstrates, with the support of multiple studies, thatwe can't consciously control our weight. As she says, if diets were effective, we would all be thin by now...
Our brain determines a weight range, and when we go over or under it (and especially when we go under it), it triggers a series of phenomena that make us go back to our previous weight. There is of course hunger, which we can try hard to ignore or control, but there is also the basic metabolism, energy expenditure, etc. This explains why people who eat less and train more reach a plateau. No matter how hard they try, they don't lose weight, and they are hungry all the time. To blame people in these cases is to be completely out to lunch.
Worse yet, dieting can make us fat, because when we eat less and expend more energy, our body goes into starvation mode. It wants to save as much energy as possible, and that's what will inevitably happen. All it takes is a moment of stress, depression, relaxation, or any other kind of slackening to deviate from our diet and quietly regain the lost weight. Or, if we are really motivated and we persist despite the distress alarms, our body will take care of it.
The solutions
There are two solutions. If we absolutely want to be leaner than our brain wants, we can be hungry all the time. Then we have to accept the fact that we will probably develop an obsession with food, that we will run out of energy, and that the rest of our life will revolve around it.
Or, we make peace with ourselves and we honor our hunger. No more, no less. We eat what we want, and when we are tired of eating, we stop.
Easier? Not necessarily, especially when you are used to dieting and hating your body. More relaxing? Certainly.
Since I finished this book, I've been trying this. To not think about what I eat. I no longer weigh myself, I exercise to be healthy, and I eat what I want.
The result: when I eat more one day, I eat less the next. I eat a lot of salads, because I like it, I'm more muscular, I'm fitter, and I'm free to think about other things than food. And I'm certainly not fatter than I was before.
Note
As my psychologist mother, who has worked with girls with eating disorders, pointed out to me, mindful eating does not necessarily mean that you will lose weight. It means that you will reach the healthy weight range targeted by the brain, and this range can (and surely will) be higher than you would like.
But peace of mind is priceless.
Sandra Aamodt
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