Why We Eat Too Much, Have an Easier Time Gaining Than Losing Weight, and Expend Too Little Energy: Suggestions for Counteracting or Mitigating These Problems

Abstract

The intent of this review is to survey physiological, psychological, and societal obstacles to the control of eating and body weight maintenance and offer some evidence-based solutions. Physiological obstacles are genetic and therefore not amenable to direct abatement. They include an absence of feedback control against gaining weight; a non-homeostatic relationship between motivations to be physically active and weight gain; dependence of hunger and satiation on the volume of food ingested by mouth and processed by the gastrointestinal tract and not on circulating metabolites and putative hunger or satiation hormones. Further, stomach size increases from overeating and binging, and there is difficulty in maintaining weight reductions due to a decline in resting metabolism, increased hunger, and enhanced efficiency of energy storage. Finally, we bear the evolutionary burden of extraordinary human capacity to store body fat. Of the psychological barriers, human craving for palatable food, tendency to overeat in company of others, and gullibility to overeat when offered large portions, can be overcome consciously. The tendency to eat an unnecessary number of meals during the wakeful period can be mitigated by time-restricted feeding to a 6–10 hour period. Social barriers of replacing individual physical work by labor-saving appliances, designing built environments more suitable for car than active transportation; government food macronutrient advice that increases insulin resistance; overabundance of inexpensive food; and profit-driven efforts by the food industry to market energy-dense and nutritionally compromised food are best overcome by informed individual macronutrient choices and appropriate timing of exercise with respect to meals, both of which can decrease insulin resistance. The best defense against overeating, weight gain, and inactivity is the understanding of factors eliciting them and of strategies that can avoid and mitigate them.

Effectiveness of an Artificial Intelligence-Assisted App for Improving Eating Behaviors: Mixed Methods Evaluation

“…Eating habits contribute to overweight and obesity [49,50]. Encouraged by an obesogenic environment, overeating is commonly triggered by situational factors such as food novelty or variety, social company (eg, eating with certain people), affect emotional states (which trigger emotional eating), and distractions (eg, concurrent tasks) [30,[50][51][52][53]. Other studies have suggested that people at risk for obesity exhibit hyperresponsivity in the neural reward system to calorie-dense foods, which is associated with increased food consumption [54].…”

Are gastrointestinal signals the principal guides to human appetite and energy balance?

“…Since the thesis of this review is that gastro-intestinal signals are the principal guides to human appetite and energy balance, how should individuals implement this guidance?. Here is a list of suggested options: Resist environmental pressure to overeat whether caused by social facilitation during holidays, highly palatable foods, or commercial pressure to eat oversized portions in restaurants 73 . Follow “hara hachi bu” policy to eat only to 80% of stomach fullness as practiced by the long-lived Japanese on the island of Okinawa 74 ; Avoid habitual stomach overloading by overconsumption to prevent stomach hypertrophy 69 , 70 ; Be mindful of genetic obstacles to regulating body weight and body fat by substituting daily weighings of your body mass as a dependable low-tech feedback of management of energy balance 75 ; Incorporate deliberate physical activity (both aerobic locomotion and weight lifting) by embracing helpful technology of wearable activity monitors.…”

“…Resist environmental pressure to overeat whether caused by social facilitation during holidays, highly palatable foods, or commercial pressure to eat oversized portions in restaurants 73 . Follow “hara hachi bu” policy to eat only to 80% of stomach fullness as practiced by the long-lived Japanese on the island of Okinawa 74 ;…”

Tudo além de comer na arte de engordar

“…A leptina seria a nossa heroína, ela atua gerando o aumento da queima de energia e diminuindo a ingestão alimentar, consequentemente, favorecendo o emagrecimento, ou pelo menos, o não acúmulo de gordura (HALL e GUO, 2017). Em contrapartida, a grelina seria a nossa vilã, ela aumenta o apetite (BORER, 2021).…”