Visualization for Weight Loss -The Gabriel Method

Appendix: The Chemistry of the FAT Programs

and it will seek to maintain that weight. If your weight exceeds your body’s set-point, you’ll become less hungry and eat less until your body weight falls back down to its set-point level. If your body weight falls below the set-point, you’ll become hun- gry and eat more until your body weight achieves the desired set-point level again. Many people who believe in an internal set-point take a fatalistic view that it’s a number that cannot be altered. However, it makes more sense that the level of our internal set-point is determined not only by genetics but also by environmental and emotional stress factors—so our internal set-point shifts, depend- ing upon the survival stresses we have in our lives. One study conducted by Dallman et al strongly supports the notion that our internal set-point is largely dependent upon stress. 8 In this study, researchers hooked up rats to electrodes that bioelectrically simulated the chronic, low-level stress of the mod- ern human experience. The rats then had a choice of eating their normal food or high-calorie food, and drinking regular water or sugar water. The stressed rats chose higher calorie food and sugar water over their normal diet. They also gained a substantial amount of weight. The control rats chose their normal diet and did not gain any weight. Furthermore, when the electrodes were removed from the rats, they went back to eating their usual diet, and their weight eventually returned to normal. The stress had temporarily shifted their internal set-point, and when the stress was removed, their set-point shifted back. I believe that our internal set-point determines our sensitivity to leptin. Whenever your body shifts its set-point, all it has to do to enforce this shift is simply adjust its sensitivity level to lep- tin. If your body decides for survival reasons that your internal set-point should shift toward being fatter, you’ll become leptin resistant. Anytime your body decides it is more advantageous to be thinner, it will become more sensitive to leptin. It’s really a very simple and elegant program. In this book, when I say that “the body has activated the FAT Programs,” what I mean is that the internal set-point has shifted

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