Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, and you are listening to the Nutrition Diva podcast.

Thanks for listening today.

If you have excess body weight, the standard advice is to eat less and move more.

Of course, we all know this is easier said than done.

For one thing, it takes a lot of work to change deeply ingrained habits and behavior patterns.

It's hard to move more when our workplaces are designed for sitting and their neighborhoods

are designed for driving.

It's hard to eat less when you're constantly surrounded by hyper-palatable food, and

it's also challenging to eat less when you've learned to use food to cope with stress or

soothe your emotions.

These are all issues that a good behavior modification program can help you with, but it's

also really hard to eat less when your brain is sending you the wrong signals about

whether you've had enough to eat.

Hunger, which is the urge to eat or seek food, and satiation, that feeling that you're

full and you don't want more food, are both regulated in the hypothalamus.

This is the most primitive part of the brain.

The hypothalamus responds to hormonal signals being sent from different organs all over

your body via various chemical messengers.

And when this system is working as it should, our hunger increases when our body needs energy

and decreases when it doesn't, and the result is a stable body weight.

But sometimes that system goes awry.

Dr. Gabriel Smolars is an endocrinologist specializing in the treatment of obesity, and

...