DIET ADDICTION COULD BE DRIVING U.S. OBESITY EPIDEMIC, RESEARCH SUGGESTS…

DIETING MAY BE ADDICTIVE, PACK ON POUNDS

By Sean Kenniff, MD

Healthapalooza.com

Americans spend roughly $47 million dollars each year on Twinkies, and another $32 billion on pizza. That’s a lot of dough. So it is hard to imagine the kind of food that outsells all those pizzas and Twinkies combined. According to food industry statistics, diet products do just that. Each year U.S. consumers spend more than $40 billion trying to shake off the pounds with diet shakes, pills, and programs.

But take a look around, and take a good look in the mirror. Diets don’t work well for anybody—they don’t even work for rich and famous celebrities. After losing 160 pounds in 2005, talk show queen Oprah Winfrey regained all of her weight by 2009. Actress Kirstie Alley famously lost 75 pounds by using the diet program Jenny Craig. She gained it all back within three years. Dodger ex-manager Tommy Lasorda slimmed down using Slim Fast, and so did NFL Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells. Both men saw weight loss victory quickly turn to defeat.

“While virtually all diets result in weight loss in the short term, 95-98 percent of people who go on a diet will gain the weight back,” says Judith Matz, co-author of The Diet Survivor’s Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self Care. “According to the research, two-thirds will end up heavier than their pre-diet weight.”

Matz says repeated phases of food deprivation, commonly called dieting, slows metabolism and makes our bodies store fat more efficiently. Recent evidence also suggests repeated dieting can alter brain chemistry in a similar fashion to drug or alcohol addiction.

“Diets give a high,” Matz says, “There is a virtuous feeling; you are on top of the world.”

So can you be addicted to dieting? And can a “diet addiction” be making you fatter?

The idea that a “diet addiction” could be driving our obesity epidemic is not a new one. Scientists have long known behaviors of yo-yo dieters—like food compulsions, obsessions, guilt, and shame, closely resemble the behaviors of relapsing addicts. What drives people to use drugs or alcohol in the first place, drives many others to extreme diets or eating disorders—genetics, emotional strain, mental illness, peer pressure and insecurity all playing important roles. Like alcoholics and drug addicts, dieters will often do destructive things to their bodies just to be thinner. Many abuse water pills, amphetamines, and laxatives to stay thin, or continue to smoke cigarettes out of fear that quitting will lead to weight gain. Still others resort to the dangerous bingeing and purging of bulimia.

But perhaps the most compelling evidence of diet addiction comes from experiments conducted by Dr. Pietro Cottone and Dr. Valentina Sabino at the Boston University School of Medicine. They studied the neurobiological responses of 155 rats. One group of rats was fed the standard, bland-tasting rat chow. Another group of rats was fed in diet cycles of standard rat chow for five days, followed by two days of a tasty, high sugar, chocolate flavored chow. The standard chow quickly became unacceptable to rats in the diet-cycled group, and they exhibited anxiety behaviors until they were able to get a fix of the chocolate chow. But when Dr. Cottone and Dr. Sabino examined the stress pathways in the brains of the rats, they found the “addictive” stress response was not caused by the tasty food, but rather by the deprivation phase. They found a key stress neurotransmitter, called CRF, was creating a negative emotional state nearly identical to that seen in animals withdrawing then bingeing on drugs or alcohol.

And it’s believed this same abnormal stress response could be one reason why so many people fail miserably on their diets, yet try and try again.

“CRF activation during abstinence from palatable foods induces a negative emotional state which is responsible for signs of anxiety and contributes to relapse to ‘forbidden foods,” Dr. Sabino said in a press release.

So how do you know if you are a diet addict?

ARE YOU A DIET ADDICT?

1.    Have you repeatedly tried and failed to control your weight with diets?

2.    Has dieting interfered with your life, social activities or employment?

3.    Do you have constant thoughts about dieting?

4.    Do you jump from diet to diet?

5.    Do you feel shame when you fail on your diet?

6.    Have you ever dieted dangerously?

If you answered yes to two or more of these questions you could be a diet addict.

But what about those people who are persistent and successful at dieting, like 65 year-old computer professional, Rose Lynn? She failed at Atkins, South Beach, and Weight Watchers, but recently lost fifty pounds on Nutra-System.

“I don’t believe the diets failed,” Lynn says, “I believe I failed to be ready and committed.”

Football Coach Jim Napoli lost forty pounds on the same diet program, after failing miserably on Atkins. “I lost weight, but I was mean as I’ve ever been, from the minute I woke up, until the minute I went to bed,” he says.

Funnyman and morning DJ Jeff Martin, who lost nearly thirty pounds on Quick Weight Loss, takes a more absurdist view on dieting, saying, “Try the garlic, limburger cheese, scallions, and red onion diet. From a distance, you will LOOK thinner.”

Will their success lead to long term weight loss? Matz says, slim chance—a two to five percent chance to be specific. Matz claims the secret to lifelong thinness is to break the diet addiction for good. Don’t avoid your favorite foods, because deprivation triggers overeating. Instead eat them in moderation. And honor your hunger. Hunger is your body’s natural way of telling you to eat. But be wary of emotional eating. If hunger is not your problem, then eating is not your answer.

Sean Kenniff, MD is a neurologist, television health journalist and radio host in South Florida.

To contact Judith Matz, or for more information about The Diet Survivor’s Handbook: 60 Lessons in Eating, Acceptance and Self Care, visit www.dietsurvivors.com or you can read her blog at www.dietsurvivorsgroup@blogspot.com

Dr. Pietro Cottone and Dr. Sabino Valentina can be reached by contacting the Boston University School of Medicine.