Drag your thoughts away from your guilt. By the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
It’s the healthiest thing a body can do.
—MARY TWAIN
Your mind, emotions, stress level, and brain chemistry have a tremendous ability to affect your health, symptoms, and ultimately your body’s ability to lose weight. In scientific terms, it’s called neuroendocrinology—that is, the relationship between your neurological system comprised of the brain and nerves and your endocrine system consisting of the hormones. In simple terms, it’s the mind–body relationship, and it’s an important part of your overall efforts to achieve a healthy, lasting weight loss.
There are a number of mind–body challenges and brain chemistry issues that you should be aware of; all of them are able to derail your weight-loss efforts if not identified and treated.
MIND/BODY/BRAIN CHEMISTRY CHALLENGES
Brain Hormones
Melatonin, a hormone produced by the brain’s pineal gland, helps regulate sleeping and waking. Melatonin levels typically rise in the evening, stay high during the night, then decline in the morning as you awaken. Melatonin typically declines with age and can become almost undetectable in some older people. Reduced light during winter months also causes melatonin levels to remain unnaturally high, which makes you feel sleepy and can cause depression, fatigue, and reduced activity. Some experts believe that low-dose melatonin supplementation (1–2 mg per night) can be safe and effective at helping replace low levels of melatonin. But long-term use of this hormone is still being assessed.
A sense of hunger can be intricately tied to your brain chemistry. Your hypothalamus senses you need energy and issues the various neurotransmitters including neuropeptide Y (NPY) that deliver one key message: eat carbohydrates. The surge of NPY is what you experience as a sensation of hunger. Once the brain senses you’ve eaten enough carbohydrates, it releases serotonin to tell the body that you’ve had enough. This serotonin gives you a sense of well-being.
There are some situations, including illness, stress, and depression, where your body may be unable to produce or detect serotonin. These chemical imbalances can interfere with your ability to lose weight, and these sorts of dysfunctions in the feedback system appear to be more common in people who have thyroid disease. In these cases, antidepressants can sometimes help restore the proper production of and response to serotonin.
Chronic Stress
When you are under chronic stress, you flood your body with cortisol—a hormone that stimulates appetite. At the same time, the increased adrenaline increases fatty acid and blood sugar levels, stimulating the body to store those extra calories primarily as fat in the deep abdominal area—the worst place to gain weight from a health standpoint. The abdominal fat makes you more insulin resistant and produces various inflammatory markers that increase your risk of diabetes, insulin resistance, and heart disease.
Poor self-image contributes to chronic stress. One survey found that 56% of American women and 43% of men disliked their overall appearance. Not only does this sort of negative self-image add to chronic stress but it can damage your social, professional, and sexual life—and create a weight-loss block.
One way to tell if chronic stress is contributing to your weight is your waist measurement. If you’re a man with a waist size greater than 40 inches or a woman with a waist wider than 35 inches, you’re most likely at risk.
Using Food as a Drug
Many of us use food to medicate our stress or problems. We eat to alleviate stress, to feel comforted, to relax, to relieve frustration and boredom, to procrastinate, and even when we’re really happy. Are you using food emotionally as therapy? If you feel that most problems can be made better by your favorite food or that special occasions deserve special foods or treats, or if food makes you feel less angry or stressed, then you are likely an emotional eater. Part of successful weight loss is to identify emotional triggers that may cause you to eat and find tools—besides food and a fork—that can help defuse these triggers.
In his excellent book titled Dr. Bob Arnot’s Revolutionary Weight Control Program, Arnot actually compares food to recreational drugs.
What’s the difference between a diner downing a 16-ounce fat-drenched steak with onion rings at a major steak house and taking a slug of heroin? Dosage. Both are hitting brain cells with opiates…. Refined carbohydrates…are digested quickly and cause alarge rise in blood sugar. While you’ll notice the fastest impact on serotonin levels, this is a short-lived strategy and can cause rapid gains in weight. These foods are the dietary equivalent of “crack,” since you’d have to hammer yourself all day long with them to keep feeling good.
Unfortunately, many people do get high on food all day long. A sweet roll and coffee for breakfast—pretty much mainlining sugar and caffeine. Then a sandwich with chips or fries and a sugary cola for lunch—more carbohydrates and caffeine. Then a double latte and a giant cookie as an afternoon snack. Home for dinner of a big bowl of pasta followed by a bowl of microwave popcorn in front of the television. It’s an all-day carbohydrate/caffeine festival. Some even add nicotine to the mix for extra stimulation when the sugar highs wear off.
People who eat like this—and there are many out there!—are using food to help manipulate their brain chemistry and hormones. And, if it works well enough, it’s possible to become addicted to the hit of “drugs” from various types of foods and ways of eating. Obviously, eating this way is a major impediment to weight loss.
MIND/BODY/BRAIN CHEMISTRY SOLUTIONS
A New Attitude
First, you need to confront your inner critic and stop talking to yourself negatively. You would never put up with someone else telling you that you are fat, unattractive, lazy, worthless, or any of the other negatives you may be heaping on yourself due to your weight.
Second, find a part of your body that you do like and regularly praise yourself. It doesn’t matter if you have terrific-looking feet or really great eyes or the best-shaped calves in town—just pick one part of your body and continually tell yourself how terrific that part is. If you like even one part of yourself, it’s a start.
Third, stop putting your life on hold simply because you want to lose weight. Many of us make weight loss into some sort of oasis in the desert that we are traveling toward.
When I lose weight, I’ll start going to the beach again.
When I lose weight, I’ll reunite with my old friend.
When I lose weight, I’ll make an effort to find a new romance.
When I lose weight, we’ll finally schedule the wedding.
When I lose weight, I’ll finally try to get a new job.
And so on….
Life is too short to keep putting everyone and everything on hold until some day in the future when you achieve your “perfect” weight. Give yourself permission to live, make changes, and do the things you enjoy today!
Herbal Solutions
There are a variety of herbs that can aid in mind–body balancing. Reducing stress should be one of your most important mind–body goals in terms of your overall weight-loss program. Holistic physician Hyla Cass, coauthor of Natural Highs, shares these herbal and supplement suggestions for relaxation:
You can start with kava 60–75 mg (kavalactones), increasing to two if that’s what works for you. If you still don’t feel relaxed, try, or add, any of the following, preferably one at a time to gauge your response. (If you do end up taking them all, reduce the dose of each by one-half, or take a combination formula.)
One herbal formula developed by holistic physician Jacob Teitelbaum, combines many of the above components. Teitelbaum’s specially formulated Fatigued to Fantastic!® Revitalizing Sleep Formula functions as an herbal sleep aid. It can also work as a daytime supplement for relaxation and stress reduction. It contains valerian, passionflower, L-theanine, hops, wild lettuce, and Jamaica dogwood, which help with relaxation and healthful sleep if taken at nighttime. I have found this formulation particularly helpful during periods when I’m under more stress than usual or nights when I’m finding it difficult to get to sleep.
For balancing brain chemistry, you may want to consider supplements known as CraniYums, which claim to help people stay on their diets by safely and effectively increasing the brain’s natural appetite, mood, and energy regulators (the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine). I’ve tried them, and they do seem to help with cravings, especially carbohydrate cravings.
When it comes to depression, remember that serious clinical depression or bipolar disease need to be overseen and treated by a physician. If you are experiencing significant symptoms of depression or anxiety, see your practitioner for guidance.
If you are in a down mood, there are some herbal supplements that can help pick you up, energize you, and help lift minor depression. Cass suggests these herbal and supplemental natural mood lifters:
Dr. Cass also suggests that the following products can be added one at a time to see how you respond:
Prescription Drugs
When it comes to dealing with depression or anxiety, there are a number of prescription drugs that can be used. Depression that doesn’t respond to herbal or natural remedies may warrant use of an antidepressant medication. If you’re dealing with excess weight and are considering taking an antidepressant, be sure to discuss with your prescribing practitioner that you want one of the medications that isn’t likely to cause more weight gain. While every patient is different and there are reports of people gaining and/or losing weight on every single different antidepressant, the drugs considered least likely to generate weight gain include nefazodone (Serzone), bupropion (Wellbutrin), and venlafaxine (Effexor). The Prozac-type medications, which include Zoloft, Paxil, and Luvox, may cause some short-term weight loss, but in the long-term they tend to cause weight gain in some people.
While your doctor will work with you to find the right antidepressant, he or she may start with bupropion (Wellbutrin), which is also prescribed as Zyban to help stop smoking. Much as the drug is used to help reduce cigarette cravings, it appears to help with binge eating and carbohydrate cravings associated with hormonal changes. Bupropion is considered the antidepressant drug that is most likely to help adjunct to a weight-loss effort. The calming effect on compulsive behavior may also be responsible for helping with weight loss. Some various research results are as follows:
The most common side effects of bupropion are insomnia, anxiety, agitation, headache, dry mouth, nausea, constipation, abdominal pain, pharyngitis, and dizziness. Less common side effects may include chest pain, heart palpitations, flushed skin, migraine headache, diarrhea, anorexia, vomiting, muscle pain, joint pain, tremors, nervousness, sleepiness, decreased memory, sweating, rash, increased urinary frequency, and ringing in the ears. There is a very small risk of seizure with the drug, so patients with seizure disorders should not take bupropion. If you have had bulimia or anorexia nervosa, you should also not take bupropion. Taking monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors and bupropion is not recommended. The monthly cost ranges from $70 to $115 and may be covered by insurance in some cases.
Stress-Reduction Drugs
Sometimes anxiety is chronically debilitating. At this point, some physicians would recommend medication. The medications used most often to treat anxiety include
Some of these medications can be addictive and have a variety of side effects, so be sure to thoroughly discuss with your practitioner any plans to take an antianxiety drug. Talk about your options and the pros and cons of various drugs before you decide.
Cognitive Behavior Techniques
Cognitive behavior therapy is not about sitting on a therapist’s couch for years exploring early childhood experiences. It is practical and solution oriented, with the goal of helping you to rework the way you think about and therefore react to different situations. It is particularly helpful for people who are attempting to lose weight or maintain a weight loss. There are a number of specific behavioral strategies you can learn and practice with the aid of a therapist or support group.
Getting “Inhibited”
According to research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, what’s known as your inhibition when it comes to eating snacks and high-calorie foods is linked to your likelihood of being overweight. In the Tufts University study, three specific behaviors—restraint, disinhibition, and hunger—were examined in a group of more than 600 women.
Restraint is being able to specifically reduce and restrict your food intake in order to maintain or lose weight. Disinhibition is a tendency to eat too much when something tempting is there or when there are other factors that reduce your inhibitions (e.g., stress or fatigue) whether or not you are hungry. Hunger is simply your sensitivity to feelings that you need food.
Interestingly, the researchers found that the higher the level of disinhibition, the higher the weight. Disinhibition eating is very strongly linked to obesity. The researchers told Reuters Health that being disinhibited about food also typically added up to weight gain of 30 pounds or more over 25 years, up to about age 60.
People who are disinhibited constantly face the desire to eat everything offered to them, or to eat an entire serving or large portion of a desirable food. Instead, however, it’s best to practice restraint. Stop and ask yourself very specifically: Am I hungry? If you decide you truly are hungry, have a small portion or taste, then stop. Being a restrained eater can help to minimize the negative effects of disinhibition.
When I read about this study, it was as if the researchers were speaking to me! My father’s side of the family is Armenian/Assyrian—a culture where food is love, celebration, hospitality, comfort, and medicine. I can’t even imagine walking into my father’s house without food being offered. After breakfast, the discussion is what you’re going to eat for lunch. And before lunch is cleared away, we’re talking about dinner. When I’m with my family, I start thinking why not eat. I deserve to celebrate, relax, and enjoy myself. I go into full disinhibition mode.
I imagine many of you come from similar families, where food is used to express so many things, and the idea of pushing away from the table when there’s something good to eat is unheard of. It’s tempting to think this is your background and you’re doomed to live just like your family. But it’s not so. Interestingly, I’m married to Mr. Restrained Eater. He and his family eat when they are hungry, and only what’s needed. Certainly they celebrate a special occasion at a restaurant or make a birthday cake—they are not austere. But most of the time, they eat to live rather than live to eat.
Even if you grew up and are right now a full-scale disinhibited eater, after a few weeks of restrained eating, it becomes second nature. The cravings fade, especially for sweets and starchy carbohydrates like bread and rice, and you get in the groove of eating to live. I rarely have to stop and think about if I am hungry because my blood sugar is balanced. I know exactly what I’m going to eat most days, how much and how many portions I can eat, and whether I need to get in more vegetables, fruit, protein, and so on, before the day is through, in order to complete my day’s totals.
Even if you’re currently in disinhibition mode, stop the next time you automatically reach for something high-calorie or high-fat, or are presented with a large portion of food, and ask yourself if you’re actually hungry. It’s a simple but very powerful technique to get started toward healthier eating.
Sleep
Sleep is absolutely essential to weight loss. Studies suggest that sleep loss may increase hunger and affect the body’s metabolism, which may make it more difficult to maintain or lose weight. Specifically, the less sleep you get, the more cortisol is released. And that hormone stimulates hunger. At the same time, insufficient sleep may interfere with the body’s ability to metabolize carbohydrates and may cause high blood levels of glucose, leading to higher insulin levels and greater fat storage. Inadequate sleep also drives down leptin levels, and low levels of leptin cause the body to crave carbohydrates.
One important study published in the journal Lancet in 1999 showed that even in young, healthy people a sleep deficit of 3 to 4 hours a night over the course of a week had a triple-whammy effect on the body, interfering with the ability to process carbohydrates, manage stress, and maintain a proper balance of hormones. In the study, the men ages 18 to 27 spent 16 consecutive nights in a clinical research center. For the first 3 nights, they spent 8 hours in bed; for the next 6 nights, they stayed in bed for 4 hours; and for the last 7 nights, they were in bed for 12 hours. During the sleep-restricted second week, the men showed a substantial loss in their ability to process glucose accompanied by a rise in insulin. In fact, insulin rose so much that the men had levels associated with a prediabetic state.
Dr. Michael Thorpy, director of the Sleep-Wake Disorders Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, has said, “Sleep loss is associated with striking alterations in hormone levels that regulate the appetite and may be a contributing factor to obesity. Any American making a resolution to lose weight…should probably consider a parallel commitment for getting more sleep.”
In addition to changes in sleep quantity, reductions in sleep quality can also affect weight. For example, decreased amounts of restorative deep or slow-wave sleep have been associated with significantly reduced levels of growth hormone—a protein that helps regulate the body’s proportions of fat and muscle.
Dr. John Winkelman, medical director of the Sleep Health Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says, “Sleep loss disrupts a complex and interwoven series of metabolic and hormonal processes and may be a contributing factor to obesity. What most people do not realize is that better sleep habits may be instrumental to the success of any weight management plan.”
Unfortunately, many of us aren’t getting the sleep we need. A 2002 Sleep in America poll sponsored by the National Sleep Foundation found that less than one in three adults is getting 8 or more hours of sleep per night on weeknights. Many studies have shown that the majority of us need around 8 hours per night, or we start to suffer the effects of chronic sleep deprivation.
Getting sufficient sleep is essential. In addition to talking to your practitioner about the use of herbal and prescription sleep aids, here are some other tips on getting a good night’s sleep:
Breathing
It goes by a variety of names. In yoga, it’s pranayama, the art and science of breathing. In marketing language, it’s Breathercise or Oxycise. Some of the diet centers are even incorporating it into their programs. Whatever you call it, a program of deep breathing exercises that are designed to take in more oxygen and release more carbon dioxide with each breath seem to help people with hypothyroidism to lose weight.
We know that hypothyroidism affects the strength of the respiratory muscles. Hypothyroidism is also known to increase reactivity of the bronchial passages, even if you don’t have asthma. Even when treated, a substantial percentage of people with hypothyroidism report shortness of breath, feeling like they’re not getting enough oxygen, or even needing to yawn to get more air as continuing symptoms.
For many of us, the ability to take in and process oxygen may be forever changed once hypothyroidism sets in. Even when fully treated, I suspect that most of us still don’t take in and process oxygen fully. That is why specific attention to breathing seems to help some people with hypothyroidism. And learning how to breathe is about as inexpensive as it can be. All you need is some air and a pair of lungs to start. And no one can say that learning to breathe better isn’t good for you, thyroid problem or not.
Breathing experts point to numerous health benefits of systematic breathing practice, including increased oxygen delivery to the cells, which helps provide sufficient energy to fuel metabolism, improve digestion, decrease fatigue, create more energy, reduce stress, and promote relaxation. If you’re interested in trying out better breathing for yourself, you can start by learning deep abdominal breathing. Here’s a simple breathing exercise to try: Lay on your back, body relaxed. Put your hand on your abdomen. Take a deep, slow breath through your nose, filling your belly so that your hand rises. Then exhale slowly, letting all the air out of your belly. Inhale again, filling the abdomen until your hand rises. Again, exhale. Feel the breath energy rising from the abdomen to the throat and back down again to the abdomen.
You can start practicing this deep abdominal breathing anywhere: sitting in the car, standing in line, taking a shower. It’s a first step toward incorporating deep breathing into your daily life. Several times a day, stop and just focus on your breathing. Take a few deep abdominal breaths. Every time you feel tired, try taking five deep abdominal breaths. See if these ventures in breathing practice help you feel a bit more energetic or alert. If you want to delve into breathing to help your metabolism, I strongly recommend breathing coach Pam Grout’s Jumpstart Your Metabolism, a wonderful book that has everything you need to know.
More and more interest is now focusing on specialized yoga breathing techniques that have the ability to change the autonomic nervous system in various ways. For example, one study looked at three different pranayamas (yoga breathing techniques). One group did breathing in and out of the right nostril (the other nostril is pressed closed with a finger), one group did breathing in and out of the left nostril, and a third group did alternate nostril breathing. Yoga experts believe that these types of breathing help balance the metabolism; generate increased energy, concentration, and mood; and help to balance endocrine disorders. In one study, these practices were carried out as 27 respiratory cycles repeated four times a day over the course of a month. At the end of the month-long practice, the right nostril pranayama group showed a 37% increase in their baseline oxygen consumption. The left nostril group showed a 24% increase, and the alternate nostril group showed an 18% increase. The increase in oxygen consumption can help make the metabolism more efficient.
Here are brief guidelines on how to do nostril breathing:
That is one cycle of nostril breathing. Repeat the cycle daily starting with a 1-to 2-minute session and working up to several sessions of 10 minutes each.
Emotional Freedom Technique
In his best-selling book, The No-Grain Diet, Dr. Joseph Mercola talks about a unique way to beat cravings: the emotional freedom technique (EFT). EFT is basically a form of body work that he has referred to as “psychological acupressure,” which can help battle a desire or craving for particular foods. It involves tapping on particular spots of the head and chest combined with affirmations.
EFT was created over a decade ago. It’s based on the same general concepts that acupuncture and acupressure have relied on for 5,000 years—the idea that energy that flows through the body and regulates health can be channeled and directed to places where it is most needed physically and emotionally.
Tapping with the fingertips is used to input energy onto specific meridians on the head and chest while you think about your specific problem—whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, a craving, a pain, or whatever—and voice positive affirmations. This combination of tapping the energy meridians and voicing positive affirmations is meant to clear the short circuit—the emotional block—from your body’s bioenergy system, thus restoring your mind and body’s balance.
I had an opportunity to review Dr. Mercola’s free online EFT course, as well as the multi-DVD/video course he has produced on EFT and sells on his Web site and at seminars. After watching for about an hour, I found it pretty silly. But I had watched him walk through the technique several times on the DVD and try it on various volunteers who were taped at one of his in-person seminars, so I decided that I would try the EFT technique myself.
After watching for about an hour, I had mastered the tapping spots for EFT and figured out an affirmation that fit with a persistent eye tic problem. I followed the process, which took less than a minute. I stopped. I waited for the tic to start back up. No tic. I waited for a few minutes, fully expecting the tic to reoccur. No tic. I went back to watching the DVD, fully expecting that once I diverted my attention from the tic, it would come right back. I watched for another hour, and no tic. Three months later, it still hasn’t come back. A few weeks later when some heart palpitations were bothering me (I have mitral valve prolapse), I again thought about the EFT technique. I’d taken a beta blocker and done some relaxation exercise, and nothing was helping. I tried EFT, and within minutes, my palpitations were gone. I’ve now also used EFT to successfully deal with a craving for chocolate and for stress. I’ve used it on my husband and child for assorted ailments and stressors. It has worked every time.
Dr. Mercola considers EFT one of the key principles of healthy diet and weight loss. According to Mercola, EFT may be helpful in a number of aspects of weight loss, including
You can learn how to do EFT by reading the free manual at Dr. Mercola’s Web site (see appendix A); you don’t need to watch the DVDs or videos, as I did. But if you want to really delve into it more fully, they can take you to the next level.
Other Stress Reducers
There are a number of other ways to help relieve anxiety and stress, boost mood, and balance brain chemistry to create the optimal mind–body connection for weight loss.