How the brain controls eating and obesity.

Stephan Guyenet on How the Brain Controls Eating and Obesity

This episode with Stephan Guyenet examines the brain processes that drive appetite and eating behavior. Stephan is a neuroscientist who has studied what drives many of us to overeat and become overweight, and why it is so hard to lose weight.  He did his Ph.D. in Neurobiology at the University of Washington, and wrote the popular heath blog, Whole Health Source. In 2017 he published a highly acclaimed book about this - The Hungry Brain.  It continues to garner praise and attention, and was featured last February on the New York Times' Ezra Klein podcast. Stephan has spoken at the Ancestral Health Symposium several times on topics relating to the metabolic and neurological processes that underlie eating behavior and obesity.

Our conversation with Stephan touches on how evolution shaped our brain circuits to function in a way that is mismatched to the modern food environment.  Weight control is not a simple matter of willpower, but of better awareness to how our neurobiology and reward circuits respond to different foods.

Here is a guide to topics discussed in this podcast episode:

1:57       How Stephan got interested in the brain's role in obesity

3:12       Obesity as a modern phenomenon and it's rarity in pre-industrial societies like the Hazda

6:45       Theories on the cause of the obesity epidemic - macronutrients, processed foods, food abundance

11:31     Why It's not just about carbohydrates or refined carbs

14:10     And it's also not just about omega-6 seed oils

17:10     Food cravings and calorie dense highly palatable food

18:52     The evidence from rat studies

24:29     Food combinations and dopamine release in the brain

25:48     Sensory specific satiety

28:03     Is palatability inherent in food, hardwired in the brain, or learned through conditioning?

33:08     The mismatch between our brain reward circuits and modern processed foods

36:09     What is dopamine and how does it work in the brain to induce cravings?

45:07     How to extinguish food cravings by changing what we eat

46:47     How low carb and low fat diets can both work

48:11     The role of food flavor in appetite control

49:52     Recruiting non-conscious brain circuits to support your weight loss goals

50:33     Which diets Stephan thinks are best supported by the evidence

56:17     Satiety and calorie density

58:06     What Stefan is working on now

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ancestralhealth.substack.com