Sunday, June 14, 2009

Willpower or rather "Fillpower" is mostly what you need to reduce your weight.

A New York-based expert says that the best way to lose weight is to teach the body to stop craving for food and feel full sooner.

Dr. Louis Aronne, the director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, has expressed this view in his new book 'The Skinny'.

"Weight loss isn't about priorities, willpower or wanting it badly enough. Rather, it's about your body, your brain and your hormones. And if you don't first re-sensitize your weight-regulation mechanisms, typical approaches to weight loss, such as portion control and calorie counting, just won't work," he says.

The book, written with Alisa Bowman, reviews the latest cutting-edge weight research, and delivers recommendations based on science.

Dr. Aronne says that our bodies are programmed to resist weight loss that goes beyond roughly 7 percent of total body weight, which means that a person weighing 200 pounds may be able to lose fewer than 14 pounds before the going gets tough.

According to him, it so happens because the body's metabolism and weight-regulating hormones, such as insulin and leptin, drop faster than the body loses fat and cause the brain to think that the body's weight is near normal, when in reality a person still remains overweight.

Dr. Aronne says that this makes dieters feel hungry, even when they have eaten all the calories they need.

To overcome this obstacle, he teaches readers to use the latest advances in the science of appetite and body weight regulation to flip off an internal biological switch that is driving them to eat.

He suggests that rather than using willpower to force themselves to stop eating, readers use "fill-power".

Dr. Aronne says that his plan is easy to follow, and can help many people to lose between 10 percent and 20 percent of their weight, and most can lose 7 percent or more.

He, however, cautions that the weight loss won't be immediate, and may take several months.

The payoff, he writes: "You will know what it feels like to fill up on a normal amount of food. You will eventually be able to stop obsessing about food. You'll be able to stop forcing yourself to eat less because you'll eat less automatically."

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