Shots - Health Blog Thu October 27, 2011 Hormones And Metabolism
Conspire Against Dieters Originally published on Thu November 3,
2011 7:24 pm There are some fresh insights from Australia that
help explain why it's so difficult for dieters to keep off the
weight they lose. Willpower will only take you so far, in case
you haven't run that experiment yourself. Turns out our bodies
have a fuel gauge, not entirely unlike the gas gauge on our
cars, that tell us when it's time to tank up on food. The gauge
relies on hormones that signal to the brain when and how much to
eat. But as Dr. Louis Aronne, who directs the comprehensive
weight control program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New
York, explains, the human fuel gauge can sometimes be way off
the mark — especially for dieters. A study just published in the
New England Journal of Medicine documents a pretty extreme diet
regimen that limited 50 overweight and obese Australian
volunteers to about 550 calories a day for 10 weeks. Most of
them, though not all,