Obesity-Induced Brain Changes May Be Reason Weight Control Is So Hard

Wrong.

The biggest obstacle to the successful treatment of obesity is the tendency to regain weight lost through diet and exercise, and evidence is increasing that this could be due to physiological causes. Recently, an Australian study reported that after large weight loss, appetite-regulating hormones appear to reset to levels that increase appetite.

Now a new study reported online on 27 December in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, offers further evidence. Senior author Dr. Michael W. Schwartz, professor of medicine at the University of Washington, and colleagues, report how rodents and humans with diet-induced obesity have structural changes in an area of the brain that regulates weight control.

The hypothalamus is a small, pearl-sized area of the brain that controls a large number of body functions, including body weight, which is regulated by a complex set of interactions between hormones and neurons or brain cells. There is a growing belief among scientists that these interactions, in most obese people, "conspire" to prevent permanent weight loss, and the underlying mechanisms are increasingly becoming the object of intense investigation by neuroendocrinologists.

Starvation-induced brain changes (and/or lack of self-control, slothfulness, etc.) are the causes.

See here, here, here, here, here and here.