The side effects of dieting and the failure of Allison.

A University of Toronto study found that people who scored high on a dieting tendency test tended to overeat before starting a new diet plan. The study also showed that dieters not only failed to lose weight but also experienced significant discomfort.

Below is a comparison of Cindy and Marty's physical intelligence with Allison's dieting. Allison, 32, divorced, a secretary, scored 27 on a dieting tendency test. She described her long history of dieting; Allison was already a "chubby little girl" by age 10. Her mother, Mrs. S, was also a habitual dieter and worried about Allison's inability to change her appearance, so she pressured her to diet. Besides restricting the types of food Allison ate, Mrs. S often talked to her daughter about the importance of being slim. When Allison succumbed to food temptations, Mrs. S became frustrated, reminding her daughter that being slim was a prerequisite for beauty, attractiveness, and success. Throughout her adolescence, Allison diligently followed any dieting suggestions her mother made, but inevitably, whatever weight she lost, she gained back, often with an extra few pounds.

After graduation, Allison married her high school sweetheart, Derek, and took a job as a secretary. Her husband took over Mrs. S's duties, pointing out new dieting methods to try, reminding her to avoid forbidden foods, and making "humorous" yet sarcastic comments about her body, especially her thighs. To please Derek, Allison joined Weight Watchers (a well-known American weight loss organization with branches in dozens of countries worldwide, advocating a points-based weight loss method) and lost 20 pounds. However, after a few months, she became discouraged because her weight loss stopped, and Derek was still unhappy with her thighs.

She read numerous bestselling diet books and tried many diet methods featured in women's magazines, but the weight she lost always came back. Faced with the constant rebound, Allison didn't give up hope. After learning that a colleague's friend had lost weight by taking all-natural supplements, Allison went to a health food store. The enthusiastic clerk sold her some herbal supplements and explained in detail how to use them. However, Allison was disappointed again.

Besides failing to lose weight, dieting has many side effects. During her diet, Allison felt deprived and was constantly hungry. As soon as she stopped dieting, she inevitably ate everything she wanted, and then felt guilty and hopeless. Derek also complained about her bad temper during her diet. While there were multiple reasons for her conflict with Derek, Allison admitted that her bad temper during her diet was one of them.

To change your eating habits and complete some of the exercises in this book, you'll need a notebook. This notebook, which you can call your "body and mind notebook," will be used to record your thoughts, scores, and answers. Please write down your answers to the following questions in your notebook to review your dieting history:

Is your experience similar to Allison's, Marty's, or Cindy's?

How many times have you gone on a diet?

Write about a particularly successful dieting experience, describing how you felt physically and emotionally during that period.

Have you ever tried to forget about hunger?

When did you stop dieting? Think back to what made you give up.

After giving up dieting, did you reward yourself with the foods you craved during the diet or splurge?

How do you feel physically and emotionally after giving up dieting?

How long does it take for you to regain the weight you lost?

If you've ever been a dieter and experienced some or all of the side effects of dieting, are you prepared to take a different approach?

Don't wait for the next miracle diet to appear; now might be the time for you to break free from the entire dieting process and enhance your physical and mental intelligence.

Perhaps you're still unconvinced, or perhaps you still pin your hopes for weight loss on a groundbreaking scientific discovery that requires no dieting, exercise, or any effort. Of course, we can be sure that someone will discover a "cure" for obesity someday.

Common misconceptions about weight loss

Does your interest piquate when you see an article about obesity in the newspaper? The search for new treatments for obesity seems to have become an integral part of weekly news coverage. You've probably read hundreds of articles about obesity and methods for controlling weight gain. While you may be skeptical of some claims, you might still hope that this time a painless way to lose weight has truly been discovered.

In December 1994, The New York Times featured a front-page article by Natalie Angier titled "Researchers Link Human Obesity to Genetic Defect." The report stated that the discovery would eventually lead to new and more effective treatments for weight problems, but researchers cautioned that it would take at least 5-10 years to bring the current findings to clinical use. Unfortunately, more than a decade has passed since then, and the research results have still not been used clinically. Early enthusiasm led Amgen (a biotechnology company) to pay $20 million to license these findings into drugs, but no drugs have been produced to date.

Injecting leptin, a protein hormone associated with obesity genes, into obese mice significantly reduced their weight, but its effect on humans was negligible.

You may have recently read articles about ghrelin (a growth hormone-releasing peptide) and the peptide YY3-36, both of which are hormones associated with hunger. Studies suggest that medications that lower ghrelin levels can help people lose weight. Similarly, the YY3-36 peptide can reduce hunger pangs, and nasal sprays can reduce appetite, but it will take many years for drugs based on these hormones to be approved for the market. Even if new discoveries become treatments, they may only be one of many factors affecting appetite.

On May 23, 2002, Denise Grady published an article in The New York Times titled "Hormones Related to Appetite: On Weight Control." The article quoted Dr. Jules Hirsh, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University: "There are so many fat-generating circuits that even if you block one, others will take over its work and produce the fat that people want to lose."

While reducing hunger pangs can help control food intake, it won't affect food consumption caused by worry or stress rather than hunger. According to new findings, a cure for obesity is unlikely in the near future. Instead of waiting, it's better to start improving your physical and mental capabilities now.

Existing research suggests that obesity is similar to fever. Just as there can be dozens of reasons for an elevated temperature, there are also dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different reasons for weight gain. Because human obesity has many genetic, psychological, and social causes, there is no single treatment that can make an obese person slim. It's not necessary to understand every single cause of weight gain in order to lose weight, but understanding the mechanisms that commonly lead to weight gain is beneficial for weight loss.

The combination of phentermine and fenfluramine (fenphen) was widely used in the 1990s. However, fenfluramine was withdrawn from the market after it was discovered that this combination could cause valvular heart disease; phentermine itself does not cause these problems. Amfepramone is another drug that increases the levels of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Compared to a placebo, both it and phentermine have a weight-loss effect, but both are addictive. Therefore, they are only permitted for short-term use, generally less than 12 weeks per year.

Over-the-counter medications often include ephedrine, such as ephedra (also known as mahuang), or caffeine, such as guarana and kolanut. Both are stimulants that can temporarily suppress appetite or increase metabolism. Ephedra is a key ingredient in several well-known herbs, used by 25 million Americans. It is quite dangerous; the deaths of some professional and semi-professional athletes may be linked to it, and it may have caused side effects in 100,000 people.

Therefore, the FDA banned the drug in 2004. Aside from a few customers proudly pointing to their old, baggy pants, there is no other evidence that over-the-counter drugs or supplements such as chronium picolinate and chitosan are effective for weight loss. While there is no doubt that some people experience temporary weight loss with these products, others have also lost weight by taking clover, sugar pills, or other forms of placebos.

The most fundamental medical method for weight loss is obesity surgery. It is estimated that approximately 144,000 people underwent this type of surgery in 2004. The most common Roux-en-Y procedure (a traditional gastric bypass surgery that uses stomach suturing and small bowel shortening techniques to greatly reduce the size of the stomach) reduces the stomach's volume to only two large tablespoons of food, and then replaces most of the small intestine with a bypass so that only a small amount of digested food is absorbed.

Surgery is not recommended for people with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 40, severe depression, or poor appetite. 10%-20% of surgical patients experience complications requiring further surgery. Approximately 1% die during surgery. However, nearly 90% of patients can reduce their excess weight by more than half through surgery. Of course, surgery is not magic. A doctor leading obesity surgery at one of the best hospitals in San Diego says that even after surgery, you will need to change your diet and exercise habits.

Human evolution and McDonald's Happy Meal

Long, long ago, when humans first appeared, our ancestors obtained food through hunting and gathering. Due to the unpredictable nature of animal migrations, climate, and other natural forces, early humans sometimes faced abundance and other times famine, with no animals to kill and no plants to gather. To survive, our ancestors would fill their stomachs whenever possible, hoping that stored fat would allow them to weather any future famines. At that time, humans adapted to their environment by eating as much as possible whenever the opportunity presented itself. Those early humans who successfully stored fat survived and produced offspring with the same ability. Those less capable of this perished.

Over a long process, humans have evolved several overlapping mechanisms to efficiently store energy as fat, enabling them to survive and reproduce. You may not like this genetic gift of being prone to weight gain and difficult to lose, but we have no choice but to accept it; otherwise, there would be no humans, and you wouldn't be here complaining.

The genetic predisposition to fat accumulation was very useful to our ancestors, allowing us to live in environments where food was cheap, plentiful, and easily accessible. However, this genetic structure makes it difficult for us to cope with the new world we live in, where a 24/7 network of drive-thru fast food services offers cheap, delicious, large portions of high-fat, high-calorie meals.

Our genetic makeup wasn't designed for us to deal with ubiquitous vending machines, microwaveable food, live television, and garage door openers. According to Professor David Katz of Yale School of Medicine, we're not in a suitable food environment, much like a polar bear in the Sahara Desert in midsummer.

We can shave a polar bear's fur, give it chilled drinks, and put it in front of a fan, but the polar bear still cannot adapt comfortably to such an environment. Scientific efforts to find drugs to lower body temperature or alter the polar bear's biological structure are doomed to failure because the mechanisms that keep polar bears warm are inherent to them and different from the aforementioned artificially created environments. Similarly, storing energy through fat is an inherent mechanism unique to humans.

While it may sound pessimistic, it's determined by genetics, and recognizing this helps alleviate mental stress. The difficulty we face in losing weight isn't a personality flaw or a moral deficiency; it's a biological characteristic designed to cope with harsh environments. You might be able to use medical means to make minor alterations to your biological characteristics, but you'd still be living in an environment where weight loss isn't easy. On the other hand, if you possess bodily intelligence, you can create significant changes to your environment, reducing the conflict between your genes and the environment. This allows you to better regulate your weight.