Millions of Americans are struggling with obesity and according to the National Institutes of Health 68.8% of adults are overweight or obese. Why are Americans having so much difficulty maintaining a healthy weight? A significant factor contributing to the obesity epidemic in this country is to the way we are eating. We are eating too much and too much of the wrong foods. Physical activity also plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy body composition but in this article we will focus only on food and the impact it has on body weight.  Specifically, we will look at weight loss from a functional medicine perspective and how appetite control can be enhanced, thus improving your odds of successfully losing body fat and keeping it off.

What causes obesity? Becoming overweight or obese results from an energy imbalance. Your body requires a specific amount of energy (called calories) from food to maintain healthy body function. Your body will tend to maintain the same amount of body fat when the number of calories consumed is equal to the number of calories burned. If you eat fewer calories than those that are burned, you will lose weight and if you eat more you will gain weight. This is basically the formula for losing or gaining weight. While there are certain health issues that will affect how well your body burns calories (like hypothyroidism) this same calorie in and calorie burned concept can be utilized. Since most overweight people are simply consuming too many calories, how can we help people eat less but not feel like they are starving?

Why can’t I lose weight?

Would you agree that if you were able to eat fewer calories you could lose weight? You would in fact lose weight and you have probably already tried some sort of diet that restricted calorie intake. How did that work out for you? Were you able to successfully reduce the amount of food you were eating and sustain that way of eating for an extended period of time? For most people, the answer is “no” and if you had been able to do this successfully you probably would not be reading this article.  Many people are eating too much because their body is telling them to eat when they don’t need to. The body is not functioning the way it should; the regulation of food eaten and food burned is out of balance. The body is demanding more food than it can use. Why might it be doing this?

Does obesity start in the brain?

What does your brain and its production of brain chemicals have to do with weight loss? Appetite is simply defined as the desire to eat food; sometimes this is due to hunger but many times it is due to an imbalance of the chemicals produced by the brain. The part of your brain that controls appetite is called the hypothalamus; it tells you when you need to eat and when to stop eating. It also tells you when you are thirsty, controls metabolism, regulates body heat production and even controls your hormones! The hypothalamus is one of the most vital parts of your brain and it must have sufficient levels of neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) to function properly and regulate healthy body function. The message you need to take from this is that if your brain is not able to produce enough neurotransmitters, you will have difficulty controlling the amount of food you eat.

If your brain is not producing sufficient levels of neurotransmitters, your brain may be screaming at you to eat food when it is not actually needed by the body!  This is where functional medicine may be able to provide a unique solution to obesity and the inability to lose weight.

The most important brain chemicals for controlling appetite are serotonin and norepinephrine. In fact, drugs that have been prescribed for weight loss affect these same chemicals. The only problem with these drugs are that they tend to lose their effectiveness over time and carry significant health risks. The good news is that serotonin and norepinephrine levels can be balanced using a functional medicine approach and without the use of drugs.

Many people who are overweight simply are not getting sufficient amounts of the nutrients required to make enough of these brain chemicals. Your inability to lose weight may actually be the result of a brain-nutrient deficiency and not a lack of willpower! Until you provide your brain with what it needs to function properly, you will struggle to lose weight and keep it off, no matter what type of diet you choose to follow.

 For more information on balancing your brain chemistry, weight loss, functional medicine or Dr. Sexton please contact our office or visit our website.

Do your own research, inform yourself and ask lots of questions. When collecting information you MUST consider the source. There is no shortage of false, misleading, outdated, profit-driven and utterly biased information in healthcare today; even from the most respected sources.