If We Only Had a Brain

A week or so ago I watched a program on TV that was horrifying.  It would have been scary enough if it was fiction, but this was a true story featured on one of the news magazine programs (can't remember which one).  The story talked about a possible new approach to dealing with obesity by implanting electrodes in the brain.

I blogged a few weeks ago about another type of brain surgery that is being explored as a way to help people lose weight, but the one featured on the program last week was yet another procedure.  What made this fascinating to me was that the program followed the progress of a woman who had the electrodes implanted in her brain.  They interviewed her before the surgery and showed her eating large amounts of unhealthy food while she explained that she just couldn't control her cravings.  She viewed this surgery as a way for her to finally bring her food cravings under control.  Prior to surgery, her head was shaved and the camera followed the procedure.  What came next was amazing . . .

Once she recovered from the surgery, they activated the electrodes and voila!  She lost weight!  After three weeks of having the electrodes activated, she had lost THREE POUNDS!!  Three pounds in three weeks and they view this as a positive result of brain surgery?  Are you kidding me????  She happily talked about how her cravings were now manageable and noted that if the settings on the electrodes were turned up too high she'd end up sick to her stomach, and if the settings were too low her cravings returned.  Her hair was just starting to grow back and she was very happy with the results of her procedure.

I had so many thoughts running through my head as I watched this that I hardly knew which thought to deal with first.  I couldn't help but wonder how many thousands of dollars had been spent on this procedure.  This is research money, so even though it didn't cost this woman or her insurance company anything, somebody somewhere paid for this procedure.  The very thought that this would ever - ever - be a treatment for obesity is, well, mind-boggling.  The cost alone would make it out of the question for most, let alone the fact that it involves BRAIN SURGERY.  With a full two-thirds of the U.S. population now overweight or obese, having electrodes implanted in the brain will never be a viable solution.

Writing as a woman who felt overwhelmed by cravings much of the time, and writing as a woman who spent over two decades morbidly obese, weighing as much as 268 and wearing a 24W/3X, I understand desperation.  I understand feeling powerless to make the changes needed.  I also understand being willing to do just about anything to get the weight off, as I was toying with mortgaging our home to pay for gastric bypass or lap band surgery when God graciously led me to this program.  So I am not judging this woman - my heart goes out to her! 

I am addressing the bigger issue here, the issue of looking for something to fix things for us with little or no effort on our part.  I may be wrong, but that is how I view brain surgery to implant electrodes to deal with cravings - as opting for a passive, and dangerous, way to deal with cravings rather than address issues that drive those cravings.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  the food part of this program is the easy part - it's the head and heart part that's difficult.  It's a no-brainer (pardon the pun!) to eat 5 Medifast meals and a lean & green every day - couldn't be more simple.  What's hard is dealing with those old cravings, food triggers and ingrained emotional eating patterns.  Those things don't disappear overnight, and I can honestly say at almost 2-1/2 years into maintenance, residual remnants crop up from time to time and must be readdressed.

We need both brain and heart surgery to not only get to a healthy weight, but to also embrace the healthy habits we need to maintain our weight loss and continue on our optimal health journey.  But rather than seek out a surgeon's scalpel, changing how we think about and emotionally relate to food happens one choice at a time.  Choose wisely :-)