Sandra is a neuroscientist and she talks about how your mind has a strong idea of what your weight “should” be. This is called your “set point” and does a lot to explain why dieting doesn’t work. What she’s found is that you mind can allow its “set point” to go up, but very rarely allow it to go down. She says the most important thing is to avoid letting you weight go up because it’s difficult to actually get it back down and that after dieting, most people will end up the same weight or heavier (40% will be heavier) 5 years after they started.
I don’t agree with everything Sandra says, but I’ll need to look into it some more. She made this quote during the talk and it rings true with me;
…changing the food environment will be the most effect treatment for weight gain…
At the end of the talk she discusses mindfulness while eating. There’s a lot of value in this. I find it very powerful, but also very hard to do. Sandra says she it took her a year to learn how to do it.
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