Your Hypothalamus is Just Not that Into Losing Weight

Sometimes Facebook is great. Your friends will post super hilarious things, like this: 

Awesome ad for the Rockwell Relay Race. Thanks Ranger Dave!

Other times, people post videos like this:

(if you don't have 12:42 minutes to watch this, I will summarize below {also, if you don't have 12:42 to watch this, you should probably find another blog to read, because I am long winded})

Summary

• Diets don't work. 
• Diets don't work long term.
• Dieting as a kid means that you are probably going to be overweight as an adult.
• Our set points, where our brain thinks we should weigh, can go up, but don't come down.
• Nearly all diets fail and we gain the weight back after 5 years. (The Juice challenge was four years ago...)

Bum-to-the-um-to-the-er.

This is not what I hoped to be writing in my 300th blog post, y'all.

I felt the same way when I personally realized the experience documented in the classic American film, He's Just Not That In To You. You had the sneaking suspicion, all along, that he wasn't that into you, but your crazy-brain kept telling you that he was just busy or whatever. No. Men are simple. If they want to hang out with you, they will. If they don't, they won't.

Bodies. Same. Bodies are designed to gain and maintain weight to help us deal with famine and starvation, so like I have said all along, if I am ever stranded on a raft in the middle of the Pacific (this is something I consider a lot because In the Heart of the Sea is one of my favorite books), I am so going to outlive all those skinny people. But, your hypothalamus is just not that into weight loss.* 

I mean, I have had the sneaking suspicion this was true, but you just don't want to believe it. We want to believe he will call! And, we want to believe that our bodies can be different. 

If we accept this premise, well, we can stop obsessing, stop waiting by the scale, stop beating ourselves up. And all that energy we put into trying to control everything that we eat can be put to better uses, like knitting, or crying. 

Of course, it wasn't a completely bummer-life-TED talk because there was this interesting chart. 

If you work on these: 

Eat your fruits and vegetables, ride mountain bikes in suits, don't smoke, and drink big glasses of wine less often.

Even if you are fat, even if you are obese, you are just about as likely to die as normal weight people.  

Yay!?

I mean, this is great news and all, but I want to be able to buy better cycling shorts, you know what I am saying?

Of course, the upside of all of this is the idea of mindful eating, which makes perfect sense. Eat when you are hungry. Don't when you are not hungry. Stop eating when you are full. Duh-phiany.

This is something I can work on. Just being quiet, listening to my body, and trying to take good care of it.

Luckily, my bod seems to enjoy eating fruits and vegetables and riding bikes. And, while dieting doesn't usually work, exercise always works if the goal is to be more fit and happy. 

*Side note. I once had a crazy doctor explain to me that if I wanted to stop feeling hungry and only eat a certain number of calories, I just had to stick to that number of calories (1500, let's say) perfectly for 120. If I could do that, then I would no longer be hungry for more calories (2,000 say). He compared it to alcoholism and explained it was based on the hypothalamus. 

Which, after watching this, his claim seemed a bit more plausible. Except for a couple obvious facts. 1) There are a lot of factors in eating and drinking that go beyond simple hunger and or thirst. 2) Eating perfectly for 120 days seems next to impossible if you are trying to live a "normal" life.