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Neurobiology or the Pleasure Diet

The basic principle, "the more you eat, the more you want to eat".

This is what nutritionist Laurent Chevallier says. Understand that we do not only ingest what is strictly necessary for our body (like the Easter egg that we atomized yesterday after dinner). But the news in terms of weight gain is that researchers are no longer relying solely on the calories of foods and the fast sugars/slow sugars dichotomy, which remain important, because it is indeed the overeating of caloric products. fattening. But we are now thinking about our eating habits, linked above all to PLEASURE. It happens in our brain and it changes the way we do things.

The circuit of pleasure.

The way we eat is closely linked to it. Whether we're buying a new pair of pumps for our sister's 30th birthday party, climbing the curtains with our lover or gorging ourselves on high-calorie food, all of this sends neural signals linked to a group of brain areas, the pleasure circuit. A substance is produced, dopamine, a neurotransmitter like adrenaline.

Addictive behavior.

According to studies, we learn that the brain of an obese person and that of a drug addict have similarities in the level of dopamine receptors, produced in response to pleasant stimuli. In both cases, the receptors are diminished. Consequence:we take drugs or we eat by compulsion, to compensate for the dopamine deficit. “Not all foods are addictive, but most processed, palatable foods are,” says Addiction Brain Imaging Specialist Professor Gene-Jack Wang. Good news, we are not helped...

Review the diet.

This is the whole point of this new way of doing things. Losing weight with neurobiology therefore means acting according to what triggers our desire to eat and no longer just brutally and definitively eliminating sugars, fat, etc. Clearly, we take the problem at its root and we divert our brain from food compulsions. An overweight person, addicted to sweets, will turn to compotes or fruit, instead of sweets, Nutella or pastries. And if we are more addicted to salty, we will then reduce our portions with the possibility of refilling.