The latest research on obesity paints a grim picture for people who have struggled with excessive weight their entire lives. This article explains how long term weight loss is much rarer than most people – including health care experts – realize. People who lose weight and keep it off for years represent a very small minority of all the people who make the attenpt to reach and maintain a healthy weight.
In my current and previous positions, I’ve worked with many people who struggled with eating healthy for a large part of their adolescent and adult lives. They’d tell me that that they’d gone through multiple periods of healthy eating and unhealthy eating. Often this resulted in multiple periods of weight loss and weight gain.
They’d often tell me that they knew what foods they should eat and which foods they should limit or avoid., but they didn’t know how to do it for an extended period. Or they didn’t know why they could not continue to eat healthy once they started.
I didn’t have much help for them until I discovered the “Dietary Pleasure Trap” by Dr. Doug Lisle and Dr. Alan Goldhamer.
In their book, Dr. Lisle and Dr. Goldhamer describe the Dietary Pleasure Trap as the hidden force that undermines health and happiness.
I believe that every dietitian needs to read this book. In fact, anyone who has ever struggled with excessive weight would benefit from this book.
Most people understand that a healthy diet includes lots of fruits, veggies, whole grains and legumes. Most people understand that a diet high in animal products and highly processed foods promotes chronic diseases.
So why is a Whole Food Plant Based diet so hard to follow?
Doctors Lisle and Goldhamer attribute it to the Dietary Pleasure Trap.
To understand the Pleasure Trap, we have to learn a little bit about how our brain and nervous system are wired.
Our neural circuits and biochemistry, which evolved over thousands and thousands of years, govern our natural motivational systems. It’s our modern food environment that entraps our natural motivational systems.
The Pleasure Trap exists because our neural circuits evolved with the purpose of giving us the best chance to survive and reproduce. They give feedback by means of good and bad feelings which guide us toward our natural desire to feel as good as possible for as much of the time as possible.
These neural circuits make up a motivational system that is a three part mechanism that Dr. Lisle and Dr. Goldhamer call the Motivational Triad
The Motivational Triad encourages us to:
1. Seek pleasure
2. Avoid Pain
3. Conserve Energy
These components are embedded in the genes of every human and complex animal who ever lived and they are our primary motivators. They are powerful motivators.
Unfortunately, since nature’s plan for guiding creatures toward survival and reproduction is a system dependent on what feels good, the door is wide open for perceptual errors – errors that can leave creatures ensnared in traps.
Lisle and Goldhamer provide numerous examples that help explain why these traps have such powerfully negative influences on human behavior and ultimately on human health and happiness.
It it is very difficult to escape from the Dietary Pleasure Trap – as the obesity research confirms. However Lisle and Goldhamer provide hope. If you are unable to read the Pleasure Trap, you may find the following videos helpful.
Dr. Goldhamer – The Pleasure Trap
Dr. Lisle – How to Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind
Also, The National Weight Control Registry studies the characteristics of folks who have succeeded in losing weight and keeping it off. You may want to check it out
It’s important to remember that most people who’ve lost and regained weight multiple times, did NOT try a Whole Food Plant Based diet. I believe that patients of Lifestyle Medical Doctors like Dr. John McDougall and Dr. Joel Fuhrman, are much more successful at weight loss/maintenance than the general public. One of the reasons is that Dr. McDougall and Dr. Fuhrman are both aware of the Dietary Pleasure Trap and they share this knowledge with their patients.
E Excerpt from Laurie Endicott Thomas’s amazing book Thin Diabetes – Fat Diabetes by clicking here!
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