Eating itself can be addictive. Displacement is the brain’s goal. Nevertheless, cues (stimuli) are essential to trigger the displacement mechanism.

Our modern environment, especially because of omnipresent media, is jam-packed with cues that say “Eat! Eat! Eat!”

To Dr. Pretlow’s mind, the universal source of addictive behavior is displacement, an “innate, instinctual biobehavioral mechanism.”

Not all foods are associated with addictive-like eating, but some foodstuffs are literally addictive substances. It’s a matter rife with controversy.

The average American child absorbs around 16,000 TV commercials per year, a great many of them featuring food — and not good food.

In protecting children’s health, is encouraging the food industry to market healthful food to kids important, necessary, or even ethical?

Our goal should be to help children develop a healthy relationship to food. Foisting character-branded products on them undermines that effort.

One study showed that children who are already obese are more vulnerable than normal-weight children to the blandishments of TV food ads.

Rechanneling a displacement activity into another displacement activity instead is not an ultimate cure but can be extremely helpful.

Maintaining a habit is quite stressful, and addiction inevitably causes even more problems and more stress the person is trying to alleviate or avoid.

For many of us when experiencing a problem, “Eat it into submission” is the answer. Rechanneling overflow mental energy to a non-destructive behavior can help.

Finding higher-quality, productive, creative, attractive, meaningful displacements that give you a chance to use your skills can be life-saving.

In addition to dealing with the sources of the displacement, it also is possible to replace the displacement with another displacement that is less destructive.

It’s a good idea for parents to let a child follow an enthusiasm, no matter how silly or useless it might seem.

One of the purposes of Brainweighve app is to teach users how to rechannel the overflow brain energy to non-harmful displacement behaviors.

The Brainweighve app can help silence the “food noise,” the annoying and omnipresent background chatter that can plague those trying to lose weight.

There are other ways than drugs to stop intrusive thoughts, including “food noise.” Dr. Pretlow has one solution, an app called BrainWeighve.

The new weight-loss drugs are good at silencing “food noise.” But there are other ways to make that intrusive voice shut up, no medication needed.

The consensus seems to be that when a person discontinues taking -tide drug, the weight returns quicker than it was accumulated in the first place.

Food noise is a newsworthy subject right now because so many people are taking the new GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. So, what is it and what causes food noise?

Many articles about the GLP-1 drugs share a similar trait, namely the invention or use of verbiage that doesn’t quite mean what it seems to. Read the samples.

Giving a break to the weight-loss drug makers is not the most effective incentive, and is not conducive to real progress.

Promotion of new weight-loss drugs includes using some intentionally confusing language to obscure such facts as the potential severity of side effects.

Some people carry on eating after they’re full, which may be a clue as to how much compulsive eating is accounted for by behavioral addiction.

Like many other things in life, obesity is multifactorial. One factor is, some folks are not reachable by logic, or even by an appeal to their self-interest.

Here are some interesting results of a brand new multi-author meta-analysis of information on personality traits associated with childhood obesity.

One problem with people is: Often it is not that difficult to put a finger on What Is Wrong, but sometimes people want to take a deep dive into the cesspit and spend a monumental amount of energy, endlessly elaborating on what is wrong. Another way to …

For the past few months, the -tide drugs (GLP-1 agonists) have dominated obesity news. The debate over the new weight-loss drugs is ongoing.

First came the “Ozempic face.” Predictably, the “Ozempic butt” was not far behind. Then, there is the term “Ozempic shaming.”

Medications like Wegovy and Ozempic are designed for chronic, continuous, potentially life-long use. They are not short-term solutions. Learn more.