Hormonal
Maintenance of a reduced body weight induces leptin-reversible changes in regional neural activity in response to visual food stimuli, specifically increasing activity in brainstem, limbic, and executive control regions while decreasing activity in the hypothalamus and cingulate gyrus, thereby driving increased hunger and food intake.
If you have lost weight, your brain is biologically wired to make you hungrier and more responsive to food cues due to lower leptin levels. This is not a failure of willpower but a physiological defense mechanism. To maintain weight loss, you may need strategies that specifically address this increased neural drive, such as environmental control or potentially future pharmacological aids that mimic leptin's effect on the brain.
Following weight loss, there were predictable changes in neural activity, many of which were reversed by leptin, in brain areas known to be involved in the regulatory, emotional, and cognitive control of food intake. Specifically, following weight loss there were leptin-reversible increases in neural activity in response to visual food cues in the brainstem, culmen, parahippocampal gyrus, inferior and middle frontal gyri, middle temporal gyrus, and lingual gyrus. There were also leptin-reversible decreases in activity in response to food cues in the hypothalamus, cingulate gyrus, and middle frontal gyrus.
Why this rating
Small sample size (n=6) and single-center design limit generalizability, but the within-subject crossover design and rigorous fMRI analysis provide high internal validity for the mechanism.
Source
Leptin reverses weight loss–induced changes in regional neural activity responses to visual food stimuli
Michael Rosenbaum et al. · Journal of Clinical Investigation · 2008
DOI 10.1172/jci35055
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