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Authors: Sam Wang, Sandra Aamodt
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hundred calories a day to their diets
without gaining weight. This means that a small breakfast pays for itself in metabolic
improvement. People who eat the same number of calories gain less weight if they eat in the
morning than if they eat in the evening. Of course, it’s important to make sure that your
frequent meals are actually small! Total calorie intake remains a major determinant of
weight, whenever you eat.
A history of repeated weight gain and loss makes it more difficult to maintain a healthy
weight. People who’ve lost at least ten pounds have to eat less (forever) than people who
have always been slim. In one study, formerly overweight people had to eat 15 percent
fewer calories than their always-thin counterparts to maintain the same weight. For this
reason, one of the best gifts you can give your children is to feed them a healthy diet when
they’re small. Early food exposure influences dietary preferences in adulthood, and eating
habits formed in childhood follow many of us around for the rest of our lives.
Contrary to popular belief, eating correctly doesn’t involve deprivation and hunger. If
you are constantly hungry, you’re probably not eating right. Your brain’s hunger sensors
respond to stomach fullness and to fat and sugar in the bloodstream. To reduce hunger, try
combining a large amount of low-calorie food like salad or vegetable soup with a small
amount of fat. Finally, find some passion in your life beyond eating. It’s much easier to keep
your weight down if you have other interesting things to think about. Trips between the
television and refrigerator do not count as exercise or as a hobby.
In several large clinical trials, obese people who took rimonabant for one year lost about ten
pounds more than people who were given a placebo. Treated patients also showed a significant
increase in HDL (“good”) cholesterol and a decrease in triglycerides, which was partly independent
of the weight loss, suggesting that rimonabant has direct effects on lipid metabolism that might reduce
heart attack risk. This isn’t the kind of weight loss that would change anyone’s life, but if it’s widely
used, the drug is likely to reduce the medical cost of obesity complications. Unfortunately, people in
the trial who went off the drug typically gained all the weight back in the following year, so it may
need to be taken chronically to maintain weight loss. That’s good news for the drug company but bad
news for patients.
The receptor that is blocked by rimonabant does not exist to be activated by marijuana, of course,
but by brain-synthesized neurotransmitters that are known as endogenous cannabinoids or
endocannabinoids. One study reported that people with a mutation in an enzyme that breaks down one
of the endocannabinoids, who thus have abnormally high levels of receptor activation, are
significantly more likely to be overweight than people without the mutation. This evidence suggests
that the cannabinoid system may influence the genetic risk of obesity in the general population. A later
study failed to confirm this finding, though, so it’s not yet clear whether these mutations are important
in many cases of human obesity.
Is the current epidemic of obesity in the U.S. caused by individual differences in genes that help
regulate food intake? Not exactly. The efficiency of your cannabinoid and melanocortin systems
probably does influence your personal risk of becoming obese, but, in general, people get fat in the
modern world because their brains are helping them to store up fat in anticipation of the next big
famine. When faced with an excess of good-tasting food, laboratory animals tend to get fat, and so do
people. Genetic differences probably determine which people gain weight early in this process and
which people require a stronger stimulus, but constant exposure to an excess of tasty food will
eventually break down almost anyone’s willpower. For
without gaining weight. This means that a small breakfast pays for itself in metabolic
improvement. People who eat the same number of calories gain less weight if they eat in the
morning than if they eat in the evening. Of course, it’s important to make sure that your
frequent meals are actually small! Total calorie intake remains a major determinant of
weight, whenever you eat.
A history of repeated weight gain and loss makes it more difficult to maintain a healthy
weight. People who’ve lost at least ten pounds have to eat less (forever) than people who
have always been slim. In one study, formerly overweight people had to eat 15 percent
fewer calories than their always-thin counterparts to maintain the same weight. For this
reason, one of the best gifts you can give your children is to feed them a healthy diet when
they’re small. Early food exposure influences dietary preferences in adulthood, and eating
habits formed in childhood follow many of us around for the rest of our lives.
Contrary to popular belief, eating correctly doesn’t involve deprivation and hunger. If
you are constantly hungry, you’re probably not eating right. Your brain’s hunger sensors
respond to stomach fullness and to fat and sugar in the bloodstream. To reduce hunger, try
combining a large amount of low-calorie food like salad or vegetable soup with a small
amount of fat. Finally, find some passion in your life beyond eating. It’s much easier to keep
your weight down if you have other interesting things to think about. Trips between the
television and refrigerator do not count as exercise or as a hobby.
In several large clinical trials, obese people who took rimonabant for one year lost about ten
pounds more than people who were given a placebo. Treated patients also showed a significant
increase in HDL (“good”) cholesterol and a decrease in triglycerides, which was partly independent
of the weight loss, suggesting that rimonabant has direct effects on lipid metabolism that might reduce
heart attack risk. This isn’t the kind of weight loss that would change anyone’s life, but if it’s widely
used, the drug is likely to reduce the medical cost of obesity complications. Unfortunately, people in
the trial who went off the drug typically gained all the weight back in the following year, so it may
need to be taken chronically to maintain weight loss. That’s good news for the drug company but bad
news for patients.
The receptor that is blocked by rimonabant does not exist to be activated by marijuana, of course,
but by brain-synthesized neurotransmitters that are known as endogenous cannabinoids or
endocannabinoids. One study reported that people with a mutation in an enzyme that breaks down one
of the endocannabinoids, who thus have abnormally high levels of receptor activation, are
significantly more likely to be overweight than people without the mutation. This evidence suggests
that the cannabinoid system may influence the genetic risk of obesity in the general population. A later
study failed to confirm this finding, though, so it’s not yet clear whether these mutations are important
in many cases of human obesity.
Is the current epidemic of obesity in the U.S. caused by individual differences in genes that help
regulate food intake? Not exactly. The efficiency of your cannabinoid and melanocortin systems
probably does influence your personal risk of becoming obese, but, in general, people get fat in the
modern world because their brains are helping them to store up fat in anticipation of the next big
famine. When faced with an excess of good-tasting food, laboratory animals tend to get fat, and so do
people. Genetic differences probably determine which people gain weight early in this process and
which people require a stronger stimulus, but constant exposure to an excess of tasty food will
eventually break down almost anyone’s willpower. For
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