Dr. McDougall's Online Discussion Board

Amy summarizing Dr. Lisle wrote:Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind: Dr. Doug Lisle

Eating less than we want to won't work in the long run, and neither will trying to outrun your fork. You may ask Why are there weight problems in the world?, Why are humans, dogs and cats the only animals who have weight issues?
The behaviour of all animals, including us, is driven by a few basic motivational factors. Doug calls these The Motivational Triad and they consist of pleasure seeking behaviour (food & sex), pain avoidance, and energy conservation (efficiency of action). Understanding why we do things will help you avoid falling into inaccurate thinking about why you may struggle with your weight. Typical responses to the above question include emotional eating, childhood trauma, portion control, lack of exercise, stress, genes, fast food and too much snacking. Some of these lines of thought are just plain wrong, as will be explained.
The Law of Satiety: (to understand the regulation of food intake) Animals eating to full satisfaction (satiety in their natural environment) will - over time - eat neither too much nor too little for optimum health. To gain some perspective on this concept Doug compares food regulation to the regulation of air intake, or breathing. We neither breath too little or too much.
We have mechanisms that estimate caloric intake. There are stretch receptors for volume control and nutrient receptors to analyze caloric density. We are designed, or evolved, to eat just the right amount of food. However, our modern food environment has changed the food that we eat by removing much of the fibre and water which then affects the ability of those caloric estimation receptors to work properly in some people. When eating a super concentrated stimulus, like say cheese, some people's mechanisms can get it right and they stop eating and maintain a normal body size. Other people may have mechanisms that aren't quite as accurate (which provided them an evolutionary advantage in the context of famine) and when they eat the cheese they need just a few more calories of it to feel just as full as the first group. This is genetic variation. Thin people today are lucky enough to have been born with mechanisms that can unconsciously calculate their calorie intake just slightly more accurately, which can lead some of them to believe that they have superior self-discipline. Doug explains that everyone eats into the pain every once in a while, so we all know what it feels like to overeat. It's a tug-of-war between pleasure seeking and pain avoidance. A naturally slender person thinks that the overweight person must be eating into the pain all of the time. This may have them thinking that they are making better conscious choices than the apparently indulgent people around them who are wearing a bit more extra weight.
What is actually happening is that the hyper-concentrated convenience foods of today are fooling the mechanisms of a great many people. This interplay between genes and artificially concentrated food in the diet is evidenced by the slow march of the North American population to greater and greater weights over the past 40 years or so.
What should we do? Do we have to then choose to eat less (meaning restrict our intake) in order to get back to a more optimal weight? NO!
Doug introduces the concept of YOWEL circuits. "You're Overweight Eat Less". It would make sense that we have a set of mechanisms that will induce a slight decrease in hunger drive after a period of abundance. In nature, every once in a while, high caloric foods became available all at once and it behooved the recipients of that bounty to make the best of it for a period of time because scarcity was always looming in the future. However it would be dangerous to let this run on for too long so there had to be a signal to slow down the eating for other more efficient behaviours. Here Doug explains the biological underpinnings of that signal. But as we have already learned, all of these signals can be subverted if we super-charge the input stimulus.
How do we best optimize our YOWEL circuits while eating this way?
Doug's Religion of Eating:
1)Start with Salad
2)Next Veggies
3)Finally Concentrated carbs
Here's a visual from Jeff that contains some of this:


In closing, human beings sometimes appear like moths flying into the flame doing things that are obviously self-destructive, but have difficulty stopping themselves anyway. Why do we do this? Simple, we have an internal compass telling us to eat the most calorically dense foods possible and in the modern environment engineered unnatural food is just too calorically dense for most of us to eat ad libitum and stay a healthy weight (much less be healthy).
This is the Pleasure Trap.
The best thing that you can do for yourself is to continue to learn: read the books, watch the lectures and do the work. This will keep you moving in the right direction.
It gets a little bit easier and a little bit easier over time.

victw wrote:amandamechele & landog,

I started the FMD on Sunday. This is my third go with it. I am following Dr. Longo's protocol.
It's discussed in this thread.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=55140&hilit=longo

If you are curious I strongly recommend picking up a copy of the book from your library. It's an interesting read. But it was really the mice in the fasting video on Amazon that got me hooked.
https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs?t=40m18s

I'm really intrigued by the idea of giving your immune system extra gas. I am not doing bloodwork before and after - so who actually knows.
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My protein always ends up being higher than the protocol. But I'm not too worried about it.

Amy the recommendation is to extend your window. I think this week will be easy for me to do that - but normally it's hard for me because I usually do my exercise after work which means I eat a little late. I'm taking walks this week - but no hiking.

It's an experiment - an interesting experiment. Mostly reminding me that I don't have to eat just because I'm "hungry." I can wait for the appropriate place and food.

Vic

How has the week been going so far? When you lost weight in your 20s was it using the McDougall plan as well, I'm just curious? Dishes certainly do become much easier to clean, which is a great trade off to the increased chopping needs...LOL. Best wishes this week and I hope to hear from you many more times!