Fatboy – The Art of Being Fat

Hi everyone. Today, I decided to start a miniseries called Fatboy. In this series, I’m going to explore different topics related to obesity. For me, this is meant to be a hands-on, pragmatic project that can actually offer a way to lose weight. After many years of failed attempts at losing weight and trying different diets, I’ve realized that I need to take a different approach. It’s not enough to simply follow a diet or exercise for a certain period of time. What is needed is a multimodal approach and a complete change in lifestyle.

Some time ago, I said I wanted to try an experiment: to somehow block the impulse to eat late at night before going to bed. I started looking at this reflex as something psychological, almost like an addiction, where the release of dopamine makes the act of eating addictive. Since realizing this, I somehow eat less than I used to after 11 p.m. I’m not sure my wife would agree with that statement, but the reality is that I do eat less. And even when I do eat something, the feeling of hunger isn’t quite the same anymore, which makes it clear to me that there is an important psychological component involved.

Many years ago, I used to smoke like a tractor. Up to 30 cigarettes a day, until Laura was about to be born. When my wife became pregnant, I quit from one day to the next. I probably wouldn’t have done it for myself. If I had gotten sick and died… well, that’s life. I had lived my life. But for Laura… somehow, the thought of her growing up without a father created a barrier that was simply too strong to cross. I stopped smoking overnight without feeling any real sense of addiction. There are many people who go through withdrawal, who struggle with both physical and psychological dependence, who try again and again to quit smoking and simply can’t. And yet I stopped instantly, without any problem. The reality is that I had found my psychological anchor. I had found something important enough to stop, to inhibit the dopamine release in my brain. That’s the only explanation I have.

What if food addiction and obesity involve a similar process, where the brain triggers an intense release of dopamine to push you toward an action? Dopamine is what gives you that craving for a hamburger or a cigarette, serving mainly in that initial phase that drives you to act. During the action itself, however, endorphins are released, and their effect is much less intense. This could explain why we can crave a hamburger or a cigarette so intensely, only to feel somewhat disappointed once we actually eat it or smoke it. In our brain, the craving was much more intense than the reward of the action itself. Once the action is completed, the loop closes through another release of dopamine. In this way, our brain rewards us for following the craving and reinforces the behavior, making the addiction stronger.

Today, most people are addicted to food. Most suffer from one form of obesity or another. I don’t suffer from it! I’m practically their king. But I’m also aware that I need to do something about it. And that is how a new subseries of this blog is born today. Why? First of all, because it’s my blog and I can write whatever I want on it. Second, because this is something I absolutely need.

My idea is to analyze obesity as a multifactorial problem: pharmacological addiction, psychological dependence, metabolic changes, and lifestyle. Last night, while writing my previous post, I had this idea of looking closely at the actual medical changes taking place. I want to understand the different ramifications of metabolic syndrome and why exactly we become so dependent on food. The ultimate goal is, logically, to lose weight, but at the same time to carve a path through territory that, at least for me, is still unexplored. And if there happen to be a few other fat guys walking behind me, maybe they can follow the path too.

You might be wondering how I chose the title. Fatboy is the miniseries about obesity, while The Art of Being Fat is exactly what the name suggests: an art. Between you and me, it simply has to be an art! How else could someone dedicate so much time to an activity, practice it with such remarkable consistency, and make absolutely sure they don’t accidentally lose weight, unless they truly believed in the mission? Luckily for us, the food industry is there to support us, helping us along with all kinds of flavor enhancers. Otherwise, our job would have been much harder.

I’m going to end this post here. For the next one, I’m thinking about writing about the physiology of fat cells. I believe that before we can understand why something has gone wrong, we first need to understand how it is supposed to work when everything is functioning normally. Hopefully, by the end of this series, we’ll all be a little less fat.