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The Three ‘Why’s of Weight Loss — Homeostatic Hunger Part 1/2
Control the Hunger, not the Calories
The mid 2010s bore witness to a massive wave of optimism that obesity was about to be cured. The silver bullet was not a drug, it was bariatric surgery. A staple of American reality television, ‘My 600-lb Life’ followed patients on their weight loss journey and with ran for 12 seasons. The early results were amazing; people were losing hundreds of pounds and keeping it off. But, in the end, obesity was not cured. Not even close. What happened?
Unfortunately, people started regaining their lost weight quickly and sometimes regained more than they lost. The clearest indicator of its failure was the steadily declining number of surgeries being performed despite the rising tide of the ongoing obesity epidemic. The number of sleeve gastrectomy operations done peaked in 2014, and by 2020 (pre-Covid) and had fallen by almost 50%. The Roux-En-Y surgery peaked in popularity in 2010 and the number of surgeries has fallen by over 60%. Almost 50% of patients who got the surgery regretted that decision.
Simply, surgery could reduce how much food people could physically eat, but it didn’t reduce their hunger. The problem was never the calories. The…
