Your body doesn’t like to lose weight.

“Our bodies are evolutionarily built to survive famine,” said Dr. Sue Pedersen, an endocrinologist and obesity medicine specialist.

As you shed pounds, you start making more hormones that induce hunger, and fewer hormones that suppress it, she said. For many, energy burn decreases, too.

“All of that promotes us to feel very hungry and want to go out and find food and have more cravings,” Pedersen continued, “because our body wants us to survive the famine.”

But what if you could get a little help fighting those cravings?

That’s the idea behind an approach being advocated by some doctors to treat obesity: using interventions that target not just what’s on your plate, but what’s in your brain.

Diets

Lifestyle interventions, like diet and exercise, are the “cornerstone” of obesity treatment, Pedersen said.

“Nothing works without that.”

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