Weight loss: How to get out of 'biochemical prison'

Don't lose heart. A new book claims there is an altogether new way to weight loss using Ayurveda.

"Diets typically deprive you of things you want- and the more you tell yourself you can't have those things, the more you want them. It is hard to eat less than you are used to eating. And it is hard to exercise if you don't have the energy", says 'The Prime, prepare and repair your body for spontaneous weight loss using Ayurveda' by Integrative Neurologists Kulreet Choudhary and Eve Adamson.

Before the unwitting dieter knows what is happening, it is back to old habits, weight goes up, energy goes down. May be it leads to thinking that one is weak and lacks will power.

"If you blame yourself for your failure to lose weight, you are pointing your finger in the wrong direction", say the authors.

"There is specific and scientific reason why diets and exercise plans feel so punitive and even impossible: you have been trapped and locked into a 'biochemical prison'. You have inadvertently become addicted to things that put you in that prison," the book says.

There is only way to fight biochemistry: with biochemistry, the authors say.

Being overweight is a biochemical issue, not a personality flaw. What the overweight do lack is an understanding of how their biochemistry is stacked against them. To lose weight all you have to do is to shift your biochemistry, bit by bit, in a different direction, they say.

Tracing food habits, the authors say that the food industry knows better than anyone how closely biochemistry is linked to food choices and over-consumption. Combining savvy marketing techniques with extensive studies of 'bliss point' or the point at which sugar, salt, and/or fat provide the most euphoric combination in a particular food, the manufacturers have created products that people, once they are hooked on them, simply can't resist.

Quoting statistics, the book, published by Harmony, says we are consuming more of just everything - 19 per cent more calories since 1983 - the bottom line being that increasing consumption especially of cheap addictive foods containing a lot of highly processed sugars and fats. Certain foods, especially processed and restaurant foods, contain a virtually irresistible mix of flavours and ingredients that light up the same parts of your brain as addictive drugs.

"As you fall under the spell of these tasty foods, you will find yourself eating more and more," the authors say.

So, what you thought was a healthy frozen entree or a fun snack food or a tasty thrive through lunch is encouraging harmful biological processes inside your body, when all you meant to do was nourish yourself with something easy and pleasant. Before you know, you are hooked to extreme sweet, extreme fat, extreme salt.

"Your body is primed in the wrong direction."

How to get out of what the authors call 'biochemical prison'?

The book says this can be achieved by what the authors call 'dieting in reverse'.

The four stages the book recommends are: activate a biochemical shift; crush cravings; ignite energy and fat and; biocheck your lifestyle habits.

The book has chapters on ancient food knowledge for the modern world; know your constitution type and eat accordingly; more Ayurvedic wisdom for rest of your life.

The author, Dr. Kulreet Choudhary and Eve Adamson are neuroscientists. Dr. Choudhary was director of Wellspring Hedalth in Scripps Memorial Hospital for ten years. She now serves as Chief Medical Officer for New Practices Inc.