Cravings for fatty foods traced to gut-brain connection
zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu
zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu
Any dietary craving likely have, in addition to mere psychological triggers, likely has some biological triggers. A biological trigger related to food craving often ends up being called a "gut-brain connection" no matter what (including if it is blood chemistry).
Since May when I started wellbutrin for depression, that mixed w/ my vyvanse for ADHD has made me feel so much better. I tried SSRI's and they just gave me ED.
I've organically lost 50 pounds since May without even dropping soda, I just don't eat junk food, and a few days I've forgotten to eat at all when my wife was out of town. Literally, I have no cravings. Haven't tried adjusting anything in my diet, haven't thought about it, just haven't wanted anything chocolate or sweet, except maybe when I'm not intensely focused on work (i.e. get bored). I actually feel a little perturbed when my family wants dinner because I'd rather not eat and do something more enjoyable.
I'm planning on going back on keto and adding fitness (only thing I've had success w/), which by itself always stopped cravings but at the cost of keeping track of carbs and what not, and switching to crystal light (I have a hatred for the taste or lack thereof of water , I've tried and tried different types etc, <5 cal lemonade packet though and I can down those, and my dr's have said that's way better than soda). Side note I think my water aversion is related my bitter aversion (Beer, coffee, etc taste like shit - i can stomach beer sometimes depending on brand, but I'd rather have a margarita).
You simply put coke in a glass bottle you get a totally less chemical taste. Probably a lot less bpa in your blood too.
I'll often get a fountain water 32oz though and add a sugar free lemonade packet and the sourness even if it's not sweet makes me drink more of it .
I'm not sure if you're supposed to drink distilled water but I tried it and it tasted the best of all the gallon waters at the store. I think it was because it was the most tasteless...
It is, uh, not entirely ideal to drink completely decriminalized water because if you're not getting those minerals from other sources they tend to get depleted over time. Much more of an issue for, say, a post-menopausal woman than a younger person.
Distilled or RO water might be your best bet.
Those ZeroWater filters produce a very similar result.
I dislike the taste of most not-completely-clean water, but for me it's just a dislike, I do it plenty. Might be you should just force yourself to do it and you'll get used to it after a while. If you deprive yourself of sugary flavored water for a while it will start to taste strange to be having something so sweet, but it'll take a few weeks.
I only drink out of glass (mostly) because of personal preference. It would surprise me if my personal preference had some basis in objective reality.
You overcame leptin resistance
> water aversion
Water consumption is CRITICAL for long term weight loss. Minimum 1 liter per day. Ideally a gallon or more per day.
Been reading labels ever since and apparently coconut water is becoming a 10% base for a lot of new gen drinks. Body Armor is 40 cal. I found a new to me one, Prime Hydration, that’s 25 cal for 16 oz and 10 mg sodium and has real flavor!!
For everyone else their body probably doesn’t need all those sugars and salts in their hydration.
With Dexedrine I’d turn into a bit of a mindless drone. It was gross. Vivanse didn’t feel great at first (maybe because it felt like it did nothing compared to Dexedrine, but I’ve come to find it far more helpful.
I haven’t taken it in a couple months and the cravings for sweet/fat are still gone, but I’m not sure if it’s because the medication helped guide me towards better habits while I was on it.
In any case, glad to hear you’ve made so much progress. That must be seriously life changing. It’s not about how many years we live, but how much life we live in the years we get. Those pounds you lost go a long way in boosting quality of life, and the effort that takes is admirable.
There are some theories out there at least partially supported by experiments that some gut bacteria are extorting behavior from us with their exudates. Give me sugar I make you happy.
They said cravings, not healthy hunger.
I haven’t had a sweet tooth most of my adult life, but recently started picking up cake or ice cream on grocery runs. I was baffled by this fairly abrupt change in taste. Until I stepped on a scale. Even eating what I thought was voraciously, I'd lost more weight than I wanted. I needed more calories in my diet to maintain body mass, and I craved sugary foods to compensate. Now I know if I crave sugars I don’t have a particular taste for, it’s a good sign I’m not eating enough.
Other people have similar experiences with other cravings, eg red meat when they’re anemic. Pets also eat unusual things when something is missing, or wrong in their digestion.
All of which confirms your point as much as it challenges it. But I’m more inclined to be sympathetic to people whose food cravings indicate negative health circumstances, than to judge them.
Our ability to regulate is hijacked by all kinds of things. Without that influence I think people can trust their cravings, but in the real world day to day it seems to be risky to encourage people to trust their urges.
What you were doing makes sense. I’m just not sure the majority of people should eat cake when they want it.
It could have been a number of other reasons and you're attributing it to the wrong one.
Seriously folks when you go from 1/3 to a 1/2 cup of mustard per meal it totally changes your life, it changed mine.
Raw onions are a super food (especially red), I could eat them with anything.
Also a major fan of good mustard here!
Another thing is that the outer layers of onions contain crazy amounts of antioxidants which also decrease during cooking. Unfortunately the inner layers, especially in white and yellow onions, have very low levels of antioxidants.
Anyway they are a great food either way. I partially meant they’re a super food in terms of flavour, too. They’re amazing in the right dishes and I think they’re under used and under appreciated (at least where I live).
A cool thing about antioxidants in plants is that you tend to find them in places that the plant wants to protect itself from something. With berries it seems to prevent fungal growth and rot to keep the berries viable for consumption longer, onions’ outer layers prevent infiltration of similar issues, some leaves of plants as well. I find it all really fascinating. Especially fascinating that we’ve adapted to benefit from consuming these protective mechanisms in plants.
But in all seriousness, this was already known. We are wired from evolution to de drawn to fatty foods, from the caveman times when food was a scarce luxury, and fats were a dense source of calories that could keep out bodies going for longer especially in harsh climates, therefore eating as much fat as you could find was a must for survival. In the middle age paintings, a lot of women were on the plus side as the body fat was a sign of health, wealth, good nutrition, fertility and capacity to carry out pregnancies and feed babies.
But in our modern sedentary world where calories are abundant (in the west at least) fatty foods are more of a health risk than a benefit for the general population.
But still, I love the taste of fatty foods and loathe the taste of the low-fat variants. Cappucino just tastes like crap with soy/low-fat milk. Cheese and butter tastes amazing. Fatty fish and foul is a delight. Beef cuts with lots of marbling is better. And in general, foods cooked in animal fat are something else. To me at least, other people might have different tastes. But now I know I can blame my caveman ancestors for my cravings.
There's also this new keto diet that sprung up in the weight-loss, body-building circles a while back, based on this theory that we should feed like our caveman ancestors, using only proteins and fats with zero carbs. I'm not an expert so I cannot comment on this diet though.
Even cheese is incredibly difficult to get obese from. Ask the keto people if they could eat 300g of cheese in the first week, most average people struggle with a mere 100g.
It was similar to how I felt when I'd first had weight loss surgery in 2012 when I was 690 (I'm a big guy, so I was still very mobile at 690, just probably 50 pounds maybe from not being so, and in pain/etc - I was 32 then, dropped to 500 in 2 years, and stayed between 415-515 ever since.
Few years ago, I was doing crossfit, and keto and dropped to my lowest of 400 in 3 months from my starting weight of 515. Depression/anxiety from covid sent me back up to 515, and since may I've lost 50 pounds still drinking soda or whatever I want. Just not eating junk food, or sweets and probably eating less meals altogether. I also have switched to bottled soda, as I tend to drink less when I have to take a lid off something rather than sip from a straw.
TLDR: I have much experience with this and when in ketosis fats are actually probably good for you, fat is always better for you than sugar, the low-fat fads have a history of being funded by the sugar industry. Low fat oreos that have the same amount of sugar will not make you weigh less. Period. If they cut out 100% of the fat, but none of the sugar you'd probably not lose a pound eating the same amount, hell you might gain weight if the fat actually made you eat less which it can do, but probably not when ghrellin is increased by the sugar intake.
I could live off sticks of cheese, and 2 pounds of brisket per week probably and switch to flavored water over soda and lose 100 lbs easy and I'd struggle to hit 1200 calories. When I'm full of sugar I can easily hit 2-3k, I can't eat a lot at once but cakes are 'slider foods' and can basically go down easy 24/7. If I go to dinner w/ wife we usually get one main dish and a side to split between her, myself and two toddlers. My "sleeve" only allows so much 'heavy' food at once, so I get full fast. I get full faster if I don't drink w/ my meals, as that pushes it through my stomach faster.
There's definitely some change that happens on keto, but I think the problem is maybe if you mix high fat AND high sugar, well sugar is evil period, but that's probably when you metabolise things differently and break things down differently. If fat/protein is your only food source no sugar, you start breaking down your own fat stores more and generally take in less calories.
I dare anyone to eat sugar for 2 weeks, then switch to keto for 2 weeks and try to ingest the same amount of calories. It's impossible. You're lucky if you could do half, probably.
Your namesake avoids the problem entirely.
https://blackbeltmag.com/chuck-norris-anti-aging/dinner
> [Chuck Norris] stopped eating red meat, processed oils, and fat some time ago.
When your carb deprived you don't crave sugar, bread, etc. THESE are what really put fat on, also things like candy, soda, hostess cakes, etc.. all of which are the kinda fatty things I crave and keep me obese. Though I've organically lost 50 pounds since May, just by trying a new depression med - Wellbutrin, which makes sense since it's used for smoking cessation, and increases dopamine levels which is basically why I probably ate foods like that in the first place (to feel good).
If I add some exercise, and better diet I'd probably lose a lot more. I haven't even cut soda, I just don't desire sweets or food at all--which I didn't think was possible except when I'm in ketosis, but apparently the mind/body link is bigger than I thought. Never realized how much my depression controlled me.
All the e.g. veggie-heavy dishes we eat that don't elicit a groan either call for lots of fat to begin with (say, cream or coconut milk curry sauces) or are ones I've modified by adding a bunch of e.g. butter. It's even a reliable trick for taking things like soups from "meh" to "wow, that's great!"—generous splash of cream, or butter, or oil.
As far as I can tell the full eating-healthy rule should be, "eat food, mostly plants, not too much—and add shitloads of fat to it if you don't want to dread every single meal". I'd love to know other effective "cheats" that don't turn every dish into a calorie-bomb. Though I guess omitting the fat makes the "not too much" part super-easy.
The issue i think more is calorie in/calorie out as well as switching your metabolism some. Keto-eating does this really well.
Low fat was the fad diet of the 80s/90s everything was low fat this or that, and it was the biggest growth in obesity ever. Sugar / Starches is what really leads to obesity not fatty foods. 'fatty' is a misnomer, I mean it just means animal 'fats', doesn't mean it causes you to become 'fatter'.
I've been eating steak for dinner for a long time, and yes it's expensive. But I feel great, and I lost weight.
Where I live pastoral farming is much easier than cropping, so beef and lamb are good choice. But I live in hill country.
On the plains it is not so.
(Sorry George Monbiot, you twit, agricultural land is not fungible)
Because if you are doing it in good faith, I am sad to inform you the difference in number of individuals is an order of magnitude.
Tibetans do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_tea
Californians, who love pretending to be Tibetan, call it bulletproof coffee.
You're correct that mouse studies aren't perfect, but nor are they worthless.
Anecdotally, a family member got a gastric bypass and had the food cravings they'd struggled with for decades go away overnight.
For instance, I've heard of people craving grapes before to get the Vitamin C maybe (just an example), but if a human lived in an area without grapes, presumably they'd crave the closest local equivalent that'd get the vitamin they needed?
That the gut and the brain are somehow linked isn't a big reveal either.
I'm just failing to see what the big deal with this research paper is.
(And demonstrated it not to be a taste-based craving, which is neat too.)
Consider the possibility that it’s appearance in the journal Nature means more than a shallow dismissal is called for.