Dear DOCTOR Owen:

I’ve been on a medically supervised very low calorie diet (VLCD), using a liquid type of engineered food. I have also been on many types of food-exchange diets, where I am allowed to choose from lists and amounts of food. I find that the VLCDs “calm down” my appetite and cravings after only a few days, but that exchange diets never seem to do so. Do I have an eating disorder or am I crazy? My friends say that I’m addicted to the liquid food and am compulsive besides. I don’t feel that way. What is going on with me? 

Crazy

Dear “Crazy”:

No. You’re not “crazy.” You are just expressing the same feelings that we healthcare professionals hear every day from patients who use VLCDs. I, too, notice those same things myself when I go back to taking food supplements on Mondays after high-calorie weekends in New Orleans. My “food fog” and lethargy disappear. Even my wife notices this behavioral effect. It seems to be getting more pronounced as I age and as my diabetic genes (from both parents) are kicking in.

An article in the International Journal of Obesity, Vol. 23, No. 5, demonstrated that, in almost all cases, both insulin and leptin hormone levels normalize within days of starting a VLCD. Both of these hormones have a potent behavioral effect on the brain and play an important role in hunger and satiety. When these hormone levels normalize, it certainly could cause a change in the way you would feel. I certainly feel much better when I take engineered supplements within 24 hours of “recovering” from my high-calorie weekends.

All of us can become “dependent” on feeling good. I think that your feeling of better health, which is the result of taking the food supplement, reflects the improvement in your metabolic health. Isn’t it curious, though, that while your friends and our Western culture have such a hard time in accepting that a healthy food supplement can be used as a meal replacement, they aren’t even aware that every snack or drink sold today is an “engineered” food. (Only you and I both know that those snacks and drinks are “not-so-healthy foods.”) The sentiments of your friends and our culture reflect the deep societal and professional contempt for “dieting.”

I read an enlightening book published in 1924 by the “expert” of the day, a doctor at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Basically, his viewpoint was that any attempt to manipulate diet was driven by vanity and selfish purposes. He also implied that women were principally to blame for the diet fads and “gimmicks” of that era—some of which are very similar to those of today. The book was a real “you can do anything if you put your mind to it” treatise on the “character flaws” of fat people. And this expert taught the very same medical school professors who taught me!

Your friends’ attitudes are influenced by such things as this doctor’s archaic thinking as well as by uneducated views of human behavior. The theory that instinctual behavior can be morally controlled is still very much alive and well today! If you understand the basic chemistry of how the brain functions and all the factors (including food) that affect behavior, then you will not fall into the trap of thinking that people afflicted with obesity have a character flaw, feel guilty, or develop a failure syndrome mentality.