Books We Love

Dr. David Kessler fought a chocolate-chip cookie, and the cookie won.  As he describes in his brilliant new book, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, he brought it home from the bakery, stuck it on a plate, and monitored himself throughout the afternoon as he tried to go about his day without eating it–he fixated on it, tried to read the paper, found his hand unconsciously migrating closer to it, even fled to a different part of the house to try and duck its magnetic pull. He felt triumphant when he successfully left the house without having eaten it.  What happened next?

“Hours later, I headed to Caffe Greco…A large glass jar filled with homemade cookies sat on the counter. I ordered  an orange-chocolate cookie and ate it at once.”

Why, he wondered, did his determination collapse?  Why do so many of us eat and eat and eat–and don’t know why?

People get fat because they eat more calories than thin people.  Fine, but why?  Kessler’s research showed that it was back in 1980 that “Big Food” started manipulating the amount of fat, salt, and sugar in foods.  The result? “Hyperpalatable”–that’s super-yummy to me and you–foods that mess with our brain’s neurochemical reward centers.   Restaurants and food manufacturers aim to layer the “three points of the compass”–fat, sugar, salt–into their offerings.

Kessler hypothesizes that we all have a “settling point”–a point where our weight settles–that depends on how much we want to seek out food and how readily we can obtain and eat it.  Our constant access to all that salt, sugar, and fat keeps pushing up our settling point.  These super-yummy foods activate our natural opioids–the same “feel-good” chemicals that make heroin such a happy high. In the short run–attention, emotional eaters–those opioids can calm and de-stress us. But these foods are too good at their jobs–they prime us to never, ever feel satisfied, to always want more.  Moreover, these super-yummy foods don’t turn off another important neurochemical, dopamine. “If opioids give food its pleasure and help keep us eating, dopamine motivates our behavior and impels us toward food.” Rewarding foods–deliberately engineered to keep us stimulated and interested–are literally re-wiring our brains. (This was why we invented the “dopamine button”–our idea was that if you’re in food-seeking mode, you can satisfy your body’s dopamine-driven search mode by pushing the button, then getting your opioid “hit” from something funny instead of yummy.)

Dopamine influences two kinds of behavior that make us eat: goal-directed and habit-driven behavior.  Goal-directed behavior is what kicks in when I’m driving home from work, thinking about the ice cream in the fridge.  I’m gonna come home, change into my sweats, take the carton out of the freezer, grab a bowl and spoon, park myself in front of “Glee” and chill. I’ve activated the mental process that makes it easy for me to overeat, although I could theoretically interrupt my thoughts and say, Stop! Have an apple instead! If I repeat my food-seeking behavior often enough, my brain will  turn this into a habit-driven behavior.  Then, any cue–getting into my car to head home, putting on my sweats–can cue the automatic trek to the freezer. Once super-yummy food and force of habit have unconsciously trained my brain to “default” to junk food eating, it’s really tough to resist.

Kessler explains how food manufacturers make it even tougher for me to break the habit. Layering all that sugar, fat, and salt into foods is bad enough.  They also chop it up, season it highly, and toss in a sprig of parsley to give a high-cal dish a “halo effect”. One food consultant revealed, “When you’re eating these things, you’ve had 500,600, 800, 900 calories before you know it.”  Kessler calls it “conditioned hypereating”:  “Chronic exposure to highly palatable foods changes our brains, conditioning us to seek continued stimulation. Over time, a powerful drive for a combination of sugar, fat, and salt competes with our conscious capacity to say no.”

So how do we jump off this train?  “Intervention begins with the knowledge that we have a moment of choice–but only a moment–to recognize what is about to happen and do something else instead.” We’ve got to learn to refuse a cue’s invitation to eat–that Happy Meal made me happy, I’m stressed, I’m starving–before we plummet into the cascade of stimulus, response, and more stimulus.  Kessler recommends 4 steps:

*  Awareness–Figure out the situations that lead you to eat; literally catalogue the stimuli, the situations, the cues that start the chain.

*  Competing behaviors–Do something different to break the chain. Instead of coming home, changing into your sweats, and grabbing the ice cream, don’t even enter the kitchen. Drive a different way home so you don’t pass the delicious-smelling bakery. Start a new, healthier chain of activities that can become a habit.

*  Competing thoughts–Rewrite the script in your head.  Instead of, “That ice cream’s gonna taste so good,” tell yourself, “I don’t have to eat that ice cream; I’ll have this instead and I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

*  Support–Gather people around you–like maybe folks who want to Bitch Yourself Thin!–to make you accountable for new, better habits.

Kessler advocates for “if-then” rules.  “If” I’m in the airport, then I’m going to avoid Cinnabon.”  When our brains know that a reward won’t be coming, they’ll turn their attention elsewhere.  A weight-loss specialist advises, “Play the tape to the end.”  The beginning of our tapes tells us–Oh, wow, that Cinnabon is gonna taste so great! The end of the tape is, Oh, and you’re going to feel crappy afterward and your hands will be sticky for the entire flight.

Kessler’s take-home is:  Conditioned hypereating is a “biological challenge, not a character flaw”.  We won’t recover until we recognize that it’s not about willpower! This is a chronic problem we have to learn to manage, not a condition we can “cure”.  Every time we eat that sugary/fatty/salty whatever, it’s harder to resist the next temptation. We have to break the “cue-urge-reward-habit cycle”.  Any diet that leaves us feeling deprived, unhappy, or hungry won’t work because we can’t learn a new behavior if it doesn’t lead to a new reward.  Relapses happen; it takes hard work to break bad habits, but we can learn not to give food the ultimate authority in our lives.

Kessler offers beautifully clear explanations of how brain chemistry affects our eating, and how today’s processed foods make it really hard to break the cycle of overeating.  His insider tips from food consultants will give you pause about going to Chili’s, Outback Steakhouse, Cheesecake Factory, TGIF and the like–at least not without a clear battle plan. I kept turning the pages, thinking, This makes so much sense!  Now I get it! I haven’t really done justice to how well Kessler presents all this research in his eminently readable way, and I’ve given short shrift to the solutions in his book, which are truly helpful.  If you want you and your brain to get on the same page about eating, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite is essential reading.

{ 0 comments }