The End of Overeating: How to Control Insatiable Appetites & Stop Emotional Eating - Weight Loss Guide for Healthy Lifestyle & Mindful Eating Habits

Having battled weight all my adult life, these are some of the important points I took away from David Kessler's book:The food industry is the manipulator of consumers' minds and desires. As a result, restaurant food is loaded with fat, salt, and sugar. In a cyclical process, eating highly palatable foods with just the right amounts of sugar, fat and salt activates the opioid circuits in the brain and increases consumption of highly palatable food. Engaging opioid mechanisms interferes with "taste-specific satiety." You don't grow tired of the taste of a food, you just keep eating it.Humans prefer an exaggerated stimulus. Hyperpalatable foods with very energy-dense sugar and fat are the culinary equivalent of entertainment spectacles like Disneyland or Las Vegas. The amount of sugar in food today goes beyond the level we could have experienced naturally, and that means we desire it more. If we were eating these types of foods once in awhile (like we visit Disneyland once in awhile) it wouldn't be such a problem. The difficulty is that we do it so often.People have been conditioned to eat more of certain types of foods during certain times of day. Culturally, we are now expected to eat during times of the day when we normally would not have eaten. During my years teaching at one school site, we had recess aides. As a result, each morning at 9:30, we teachers would dismiss our students for recess and then gather in the lunchroom. There was the expectation that there would be a snack in that lunchroom every day: chips and guacamole, a cake (teachers were encouraged to bring a cake to share on their birthdays) or something else. We would sit and dish about our kids and munch away on the snacks at the table. I gained 15 pounds that first year of teaching, and thereafter continued a pattern that resulted in more weight gain over the next 8 years that I worked at that school. When I transferred to a new school, there were no morning recess aides. So, there was no routine to have food in the lounge as had been the case at the old school. The result: skinnier teachers with more appropriate morning eating habits. After awhile, I gave up that "morning snack" entirely. But it had become a conditioned habit.Positive associations become ingrained in us to motivate our behavior. We associate certain foods with pleasurable times in our lives. The reverse is most certainly true as well: We can associate foods with an unpleasurable experience as well. My sister will not eat scalloped potatoes and ham to this day because she vomited that particular dinner up one evening at the beginning of a bout with stomach flu.Foods high in sugar, fat and salt are altering the biological circuitry of our brains. People cannot control their responses to highly palatable foods because their brains have been changed by the foods they eat. When it comes to food, we are following an eating script that has been written into the circuits of our brains.For example, "Chili's Southwestern Egg rolls" is a "starter course" the size of a burrito. It is a tortilla, chicken, cheese, etc. all highly processed to add more fat, sugar and salt. It has a very high calorie density, and the processing means you can chew it very fast. Refined food simply melts in the mouth. Calling it an "egg roll" and a "starter course" implies that it is just something you order to eat until your dinner has been cooked. Those "egg rolls" have 810 calories, 51 grams of fat, 1250 mg of salt, and 59 carbs. But because it is so highly processed, you will eat the whole thing and your brain will not register fullness. Refined food simply melts in the mouth as though it has been pre-chewed. Processing creates a sort of "adult baby food." Foods with less "chew" don't leave us with a sense of being well fed. Food stripped of fiber (to make it easier to chew) doesn't satisfy the way a more fiber-rich version would do.So, instead we eat to be belly filled.The more the food industry behaves like the entertainment industry, the more profitable it is. Eating out has become more routine, so to compete, restaurants have to offer more "eatertainment."The food industry's goal is the make enticing food easily and constantly available, and keeps it novel so people will keep coming back for more. You could call it the "taco chip challenge" - the challenge of controlled eating in the face of constant food availability.The food industry is also constantly looking for ways to maximize profits by using poorer quality ingredients and fillers. Today's muffins are bigger, but most of the real ingredients are gone. They have been replaced by shortening or oil, powdered egg substitutes and processed sweeteners.You have been systematically conditioned to overeat by the food industry. The industry has engineered food layered with salt, fat and sugar along with cues to maintain the constant urge to reward yourself with that food until it becomes habit.Children naturally compensate to adjust the number of calories they consume during a day. If a child eats a calorie dense food, they will compensate naturally by eating less of other foods. This is the body's innate system of homeostasis. Over time, that is changing, and now studies are showing that children compensate less as they eat more and more processed (pre-chewed) foods.Food companies fool us into thinking there is not as much sugar in a food by using techniques designed to manipulate our thinking. If a food contains more sugar than any other ingredient, federal regulations dictate that sugar be listed first on the label. To avoid having to do that, the industry will put in 3, 4, or 5 different sources of sugar so sugar doesn't have to be listed first. They will put in sugar, brown sugar, fructose, HFCS, honey or molasses in some combination to move the ingredients further down the list.Social mores that used to keep us from eating in public have been lowered over time. We can walk and eat, be at work and eat, and that behavior isn't considered rude. Today, meetings and social occasions are constructed around food. There has been a breakdown in meal structure. The distinction between meals and snacks has been blurred. Snacking generally occurs without a compensating caloric reduction at mealtimes. People don't eat a smaller breakfast, lunch, or dinner just because they snack throughout the day.Recent discussion about why the French can remain thin in spite of the rich foods they consume has enlightened us to why that happens. They eat smaller portions in only 2 or 3 meals per day. They simply don't snack. They don't eat in certain environments like classrooms or meetings, and they don't engage in "vagabond feeding" like Americans do.As older patterns have broken down over time, eating for reward has overtaken eating for hunger. The satiety mechanism that takes place between meals cannot take place if you eat constantly. You lose the notion of what satiety feels like. Learning to overeat is an incremental process that grows with repeated exposure. To control our brains, we must learn to be mistrustful. We need to recognize that evolutionary behaviors that were helpful in the past have gotten out of control.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.There are 4 steps to habit reversal.Step 1 - Awareness: We need to be aware of sensory signals, stressful situations and forceful memories and their ability to make us respond to food. The question becomes, how much are you responding sensory stimuli instead of real hunger? Once you are cued, and have that initial urge, that is when you have a moment of control. Once you pay attention you have the capacity to extinguish the behavior.Step 2 - Competing behavior: Learn and develop alternative responses that are incompatible with the undesired behavior. You need to know how you will respond when presented with the undesirable behavior. You must intervene early to have the best success.Step 3 - Formulate thoughts that compete with and quiet old thoughts. Change the way you talk to yourself about food. Thinking about outcomes changes how you feel about the situation.Step 4 - Seek support, but if your support system does not reinforce your goals, you're better off going it alone.Use "if-then rules." If I encounter this cue, then I regulate my response to it this way.Rules are not the same as willpower. Willpower pits the force of reinforcing stimuli against your determination to resist. A rule makes explicit the negative consequences of giving in to your impulses, and the positive consequences of not giving in. Rules are guided by higher brain functions. Categorical rules are easiest to follow:* I don't eat French fries.* I will not have dessert.When the brain knows that a reward will not be forthcoming, it shifts its attention elsewhere.If we learn to view the pursuit of sugar, salt and fat in a negative light, and to view with equal emotional significance behavior that encourages us to turn away from it, we can change a habit.Counterconditioning is making a perceptual shift, and key to the essential principals of "Food Rehab."* Engage in planned eating.* Replace chaos with structure.* Make simple yet specific rules about what and when to eat.* Be predictable with food.A just-right meal satisfies you for about 4 hours. A just-right snack satisfies you for about 2 hours. Eat half of what you normally eat, and then pay attention to how you feel 30 minutes later and then again 90 minutes later. Adjust accordingly until you find a serving size that is enough. Beyond that you are only eating for reward, not satiety. When people are served a "meal," their perception is that they are more satisfied than if they are served the exact same food called an "appetizer."Any diet that keeps you hungry is guaranteed to fail. The most satiating micro-nutrients are meat and fiber. The least satiating is simple sugar. So you should eat whole wheat and brown rice instead of their white counterparts, meat instead of meat fillers, and an apple instead of applesauce. High fiber foods empty more slowly from the stomach, so you will feel satisfied for a longer period of time. Conversely, even though fat moves out of the stomach slowly, the body processes the feeling of fullness from fat more slowly, so it takes longer to feel full.Eat foods that occur in nature - high fiber, complex carbs, protein, and small amounts of fat.Be aware of your emotions and describe them so you can look more objectively at your mechanisms for coping with food. Ask yourself, "Will eating help me truly deal with this feeling?"Have a list of alternate responses ready for dealing with your desire to eat when you really aren't hungry. Call a friend, go for a walk, do stress reduction exercises, or anything that can distract your attention.Refuse everything you can't control! Even if it means that you have to throw it in the trash, do it so you won't have to fight temptation. One Christmas, my sister in law made tons of cookies, fudge, and peanut brittle for gifts. She gave each of us bags of this stuff, and just looking at it, I knew if I had it around my house, my family and I would eat it all. So, as soon as she left, I emptied it all into the trashcan. I felt so much better knowing that I wouldn't have to keep making the decision about whether or not to eat it every time I walked into the kitchen. It was so liberating.Have an alternate plan. Take a different route to work, avoid the lunchroom when there are treats, and be aware of cues encouraging you to eat more.Limit your exposure. In social situations, the temptations are ever-present. Remove yourself from the stimuli.Redirect your attention. Ask yourself, "What will I do instead?" Read? Write? Exercise? Garden? Sew?If I chose an activity to do every time I thought about eating something when I wasn't hungry, I would get so much accomplished. If I went into my sewing room and worked on a project every time I thought I needed a little snack (when in actuality I am probably just bored) I would have sewn hundreds of projects by now. Sewing is an activity that you simply cannot do while you eat. Watching TV is, so don't choose activities that are compatible with eating, because you will still find it hard to resist the cues to eat.Learn active resistance. Refuse to be manipulated by marketing and advertising designed to get you to eat more. The food industry just wants to make money. They are doing everything in their power to achieve that goal. They really don't care about your health and well-being. They just want you to want more food, because that's how they make money. So, you have to be the keeper of your health. Understand that they want to control your thinking as much as possible to get you to buy their food. It has nothing to do with eating for hunger. It has everything to do with providing you with entertainment for your mouth and brain.Use thought stopping. Think of the decision to eat like a television, and change the channel. Do it quickly! If you debate with yourself, you will lose the battle. Don't struggle, just get it out of your working memory. "Yes" has to become "NO" - not maybe. Engage your brain with something else. Stop the cue-urge-reward-habit cycle.Talk down the urge. Tell yourself, "Eating this will keep me in the cue-urge-reward-habit cycle."Exercise. Exercise engages the same neural regions as the other mood-enhancing rewards, and produces similar chemical responses in the brain.Make your own set of rules about food and then follow them. One of my rules, "If I don't love it, why am I eating it?" This reminds me of these cookies my principal periodically brings to staff meetings. They are bone dry, almost to the point of being stale, and they have almost no flavor. But, because they are "cookies," the teachers eat them anyway. It is not hard for me to pass them by because they just aren't even delicious. But I watch as the other people in the room devour those cookies. Why? Because they have been conditioned. These cookies are a "special treat" provided by the boss for the enjoyment of the staff. So everyone dutifully eats those miserable, stale, rock-hard lumps of processed flour and sugar, and they delude themselves into believing it is a treat. How insane is that?When I stopped eating so many chemicals in food (processed food) I realized that the "food" I was eating didn't taste like food at all. Now I would eat real strawberries, and when I tried something "strawberry-flavored" it tasted synthetic and unsatisfying.If you allow an object to be more powerful, it will always have power over you. Refuse to be manipulated. People with conditioned hypereating need to become their own food coaches.We need to move from glorification to demonization of the food industry - especially "big food."David Kessler was a commissioner at the FDA under two administrations, and a dean of the medical schools at Yale and the University of California, San Francisco.He was inspired to write "The End of Overeating", because he was frustrated with his own lack of willpower to lose weight. He figured out why by interviewing scientists, food industry insiders, a great deal of research, and infiltrating industry conferences about how to make food irresistible.Kessler calls the processed and restaurant food we eat "adult baby food", because you can woof it down in 10 bites on average. Food used to take about 25 chews per bite before you could swallow.I was thinking about that when eating goat at a barbecue recently - it took about 30 chews per bite. Because chewing takes time and gives your body a chance to say, "hey, I'm full", I felt stuffed on just a small amount of goat.Food you can chew in just ten bites is full of fat, which also gives food texture, flavor, and aroma that's hard to resist. In addition to fat, the food industry removes chews by getting rid of fiber, gristle, bran, and chops food into tiny bits drenched in high-fat dressing. Meat is made soft by "pre-chewing it" from soaking in marinades, and then spun and tumbled to pull the marinade deep into the muscle. Then suddenly you've eaten a thousand calories before you know it.If the food industry could like to fill you up like a car at a gas station, they would, but what's saving you is the fact that most people don't want to drink their doughnuts.Welcome to the world of industrialized food, where chicken is pumped up with 40% water, making the customer think they're getting a lot of bang for their buck. The chicken is then battered, breaded, and shipped in frozen cubes to restaurants where it's deep fried fast and the water replaced with fat. So that chicken you've ordered that's so soft, huge, and tender maybe isn't as healthy as you expected. Probably bits of spinach have been added to the sauce on top to make you think it's healthy as well.Chapter 3 is titled "Sugar, Fat and Salt make us eat more Sugar, Fat and Salt". It starts from day one, even newborns like sweet food. When you buy processed food or eat out, you're basically being served fatty, sugary, and salty food infused with sugar, fat, and salt, and topped with fatty, sugary, salty sauces. If you think I'm kidding, the book is laden with examples in Chapter four and throughout the book that may sicken you enough to stop eating a lot of common food served in restaurants and to read labels more carefully.Added fat is how the food industry keeps you coming back for more. Fat gives food texture, body, crunch, creaminess, merges flavors, releases flavor-enhancing chemicals, lubricates food making it easier to swallow, and lingers as a pleasurable aftertaste.But the food industry has other irresistible hooks to get you to bite. All kinds of chemicals are added to exaggerate the smell and taste, the texture, and colors. To give the industry discredit, there's an art to balancing the chemicals, sugar, fat and salt, and millions of dollars are spent testing food on people.The food industry knows you don't like chemicals, so a chocolate drink will have cocoa in the ingredients list, even though there is very little cocoa and nearly all of the chocolate smell and flavor comes from the added chemicals. David Michael & Company can even replace real fruit with a fake filling and juices full of fruit flavor.Often you don't even know you're eating fat and sugar. Kessler asked Gail Civille, who runs tasting test panels, where fat, sugar, and salt might be hidden that you wouldn't expect it. She said bread and crackers have quite a bit more than people realize.I always read the list of ingredients on labels, and have seen many types of sugar listed. Kessler explains this is because sugar would have to be listed as the first ingredient if only one sugar were used, but each type of sugar is treated as a separate ingredient, so even though sugar is the main substance, it isn't first on the list.The most upsetting part of this book are the rat studies that make it seem it's impossible to get out of the fattening sticky trap - for example rats will work for food high in fat and sugar even when they're not hungry. Rats will eat whatever quantity they're given, similar to the super-sized portions we're served.A speaker at a food conference likened some of the highly processed food we eat to cocaine and heroin speedballs. This isn't too far from the truth - scientists have observed an opiate food reward cycle. Food high in fat, sugar, and salt can change the circuitry of our brains, and alter our habits to the point where we're stuffing ourselves without any awareness of doing so., and habits are very hard to break!On a botany field trip, the Frito Lay slogan plastered on delivery trucks became a joke and we'd earnestly shout "Food for the fun of it!" when a Frito Lay truck drove by. But that's yet another way the food industry has gotten us to eat more - food as fun and entertainment.They also make products they call "Premium snacking" items, because they know many people reward themselves with junk food, often to lower stress. The industry also knows the five factors that make food irresistible, how to add excitement and novelty to tempt you, and what packaging to use to get your attention. They can layer spices and sugar, balance crunchiness and creaminess, and bitter and salty flavors into multi-sensory food you can't resist.Restaurants no longer cook food - they assemble it. Food is not fresh and healthy, it arrives pre-cooked and chopped. Garlic and onions are powdered, tomatoes dehydrated, and fresh spices are now oil extracts.The push to serve healthier food doesn't daunt the food industry a bit, in fact they see it as a way to make more money, plus show they care about you. Kessler wonders if people are actually buying healthier choices.In chapter 29 Kessler summarizes his thoughts about food that's no longer like anything our ancestors ate. The food industry pushes highly palatable combinations of sugar, fat, salt, and chemicals that condition us to seek more. He calls this "conditioned hyper-eating" because we automatically woof the widely available food down and can't control ourselves. Some people are more vulnerable to this cycle than others.Eventually he comes to the part of the book on how to lose weight. But to do so, you really have to read the entire book, because you need to understand the whole cycle so you can't be so easily manipulated, and be grossed out enough over the way food is prepared that you don't want to eat it. He also explains why most diets don't work.And even then, don't expect it to be easy. Here are just a few of his many ideas about how to lose weight that have worked for me. First, break the habit of walking into the kitchen when you come home. Second make rules - "I do not eat French fries", or "I only eat dessert on Fridays". Third, after you've served yourself food, put half of it on another plate. Wait 30 minutes. You'll be amazed at how much less food you need to eat to feel full. If it doesn't work and you're still hungry, try removing a quarter of your food the next night. You can probably remove some food and feel full half an hour later.Kessler thinks that counting calories or weighing food is impractical, and takes too much time. It's better to pay attention to how much you eat and how long it takes before you get hungry again. A meal should last about four hours, a snack about two hours.Think ahead about how you'll handle tempting situations. Visualize not eating the cookies, potato chips, or whatever it is that you can't resist. Try to eat food made from raw ingredients at home as much as possible.In the end, if you don't get exercise, it will be hard to keep weight off. Exercise acts as a substitute reward and enhances your moods positively. It can change your self-image too, into one where you see yourself as a healthy, athletic person who can say no, and get rid of your old bad habits.I thought this book was fun to read, and the dark side of how industrial food is altered chemically and changes your brain was as scary as any horror novel. The science and psychology of food is critical to understanding how to lose weight when we're surrounded by so much temptation.Lots of tips for resisting the temptation of fat-sugar-salt combinations. Easy to read and remember the cutting-edge science which explains why some foods are so moreish and impossible to leave alone. The author, David A Kessler writes as a fellow binger rather than en haut à bas. As helpful as the Robert Lustig book’Fat Chance’ . Both useful indictments of the food corporations. Read if you want stratagems to avoid or refuse junk food and overeating.This is, as you would expect, a fascinating and scholarly review of the current state of the food industry and its cynical attempts to tempt us into hyperphagia in the face of an obesity epidemic. It also provides a heartfelt and enlightened strategy for dealing with your disordered eating. Detailed analysis of some very interesting research shows how our brains (may) respond to food (or, more precisely, how the brains of some of us respond to food). I suspect, however, that new thinking and emerging science around obesity will show that Dr Kessler has missed some important points. In his insistence that a 'calorie is a calorie' and his dismissal of the 'wrongheaded' ideas which suggest otherwise, he is failing to join the dots. I am convinced that a fundamentally blinkered dogma underlies the inability of 'Science' to unearth the facts behind obesity and that this evidence-free calorific theory is hampering everyone's attempts to provide effective guidance to consumers and manufacturers alike. Mainly because it's impossible to make the facts stack up.Time after time he looks at research results and finds interesting correlation but not causality. When chapter upon chapter is repeated like this it begins to sound very persuasive. He appears to have an answer too, but what he has in mind for us is a lifetime of abstinence and a constant, if diminishing, struggle with the availability of highly-engineered food in our environment. In essence, he is telling us we are inexorably addicted and we have to take steps to live with that. I'm all in favour of personal responsibility, unless there's an easier way.What if he's based all of this on the wrong assumptions? What if, by avoiding carbohydrates but being more relaxed about fat and salt intake (these are the 3 elements he casts as an evil trinity), we can create a physiological environment that no longer sends hunger signals (cues, priming etc.) to the brain all day long? What if the very simple answer to damping down rogue neuronal activity lies in managing your insulin response? I suspect it does and wish that Kessler and Taubes would compare notes to come up with a more integrated theory that combines the findings of both arguments.He tells us his weight has fluctuated, but I doubt he's battling obesity. If he were might he be able to take more seriously the anomaly that he temptingly toys with in several places, that both under-and overweight people overeat with different results. When he asks more questions about why that might be happening, he may well be able to find answers for the people who need it.That said, it's a great read and provides a horrifying insight into the way the 'food' industry is moving. Dr Kessler is in a position of great influence and I hope he uses it to tackle the food industry with the same courage that he directed towards the tobacco companies. The biggest problem I see with that at the moment, is that no one is really sure (because there really isn't enough compelling evidence) exactly what the guidelines for a healthy diet should be.This is not your average diet book. Kessler spends most of the book thoroughly exploring the reasons and research behind WHY we overeat, including how the food industry manipulates us into wanting more of their junk food products. Overeating is not just a matter of eating food that tastes good; rather, we fall into self-destructive habits of eating which are extremely hard to break. The book is a great read, combining case examples of overeaters to relate to, interviews, statistics, and research about overeating which lead to many "aha"-moments for the reader. You will never look at food the same way again.My only qualm with this book is, as other reviewers have mentioned, that the author doesn't propose a clear-cut treatment for overeating. The steps toward treatment are sort of implied by the research on overeating presented in the book - we need to sever our emotional connection to food, avoid the cues to make us overeat, etc. - but it would've been nice to have received practical advice on how to overcome eating. The first part of the book is fantastic but the end fizzles out a bit for this reason. This book has definitely changed my life and the way I look at food. I would even say my eating habits have changed for the positive; however, I am still looking for a book which gives a more practical guide to treating my overeating in combination with the sort of excellent research that Kessler includes.Excellent book. A true awakening in the area of the choices we make in food. Understanding the cause and effect of such action. And how we can implement new behaviors to prevent overeating.Some could argue that this book is not high on solutions. But people fail to realize that you do not need a solution when you understand the workings of your mind. Because every action you take is under your control. therefore it's your responsibility, your solution on how you wish to deal with your eating habits.Once you become aware of the very things that cause you to overeat and eat. Then you will have the ability to dictate what kind of action you want to produce. It is always a decision you make between yourself.I read this book in America and it put me off American fast food completely. It is a very well written, clear, concise and damning expose of how the commonly enjoyed fast food items on American menus (and now in the UK too) are cooked, making me realise just how unhealthy it is and how the producers manage to make it addictive. By the time you have read (and fully digested) exactly how many times food is deep fried before serving you will not want to eat another burger or nacho or pizza ever again. At least, not pre-cooked and reheated in the American fashion. The title is slightly misleading, it's not a manual on how to diet, but really an explanation of why we should not want to consume the high fat, high corn syrup, refried, gargantuan offerings in the average American diner ever again.