NeuroSlim

By Michael Alvear

INTRODUCING THE FIRST NO-DIET WEIGHT LOSS PROGRAM POWERED BY NEUROSCIENCE.

What if, instead of dieting, you learned a neuroscience technique that weakens your cravings for fattening food?

What if, instead of dieting, you used breakthroughs in neuroscience
to reduce your hunger by 20% or more?

What if, instead of dieting, you used neuroscience to develop intense cravings for fruits and vegetables?

Just those 3 techniques would help you lose a lot of weight. But neuroscientists have published DOZENS of evidence-based, peer-reviewed, no-diet weight loss techniques that can help you go further.

INSTEAD OF DIETING, CHANGE YOUR EATING HABITS
With the evidence-based techniques in this book, developed by the finest minds in neuroscience, you can:

• Reduce hunger
• Stop overeating
• Break your addiction to sugar
• Quit sodas and juices
• Cease salty snacks
• Eat less without feeling deprived
• Weaken cravings for fattening food
• Intensify cravings for fruits and vegetables

...without dieting or deprivation

EVERY TECHNIQUE IN THIS BOOK IS BACKED BY PEER-REVIEWED STUDIES
With over 200+ academic citations, including links to every study, you can see which scientists developed the insights, tools and techniques in Neuroslim, how these scientists came to their conclusions and which academic journals published their works.

A SCIENCE-BACKED ALTERNATIVE TO DIETING
Author Michael Alvear’s team of weight loss researchers searched through thousands of peer-reviewed studies, found the most important neuroscientific discoveries and created a logical, easy-to-implement weight loss program out of them.

YOU’VE TRIED DIETING. IT’S TIME FOR SOMETHING NEW.
NeuroSlim is not a diet. There are no recipes, meal plans, or nutritional advice. There isn’t a list of foods to eat or avoid.

It isn’t therapy or a support group, either. You will not be asked to “process” your feelings about food, revisit formative experiences with family meals or explore your body image issues.

NeuroSlim is a portal for remodeling your eating habits, reducing unnecessary hunger, quitting sugar, weakening cravings for fattening food and developing intense cravings for healthy ones. All through evidence-based techniques developed by the finest minds in neuroscience.

Free Yourself From Eating Habits That Keep You Overweight.

MIDWEST BOOK REVIEWS
“A top recommendation. Easy to read, apply, and enjoy, NeuroSlim should be required reading for anyone tired of the usual programs and approaches. Hard to put down.”

KIRKUS REVIEWS
“A quirky and useful guide to gradually adopting healthier eating habits."

INDIEREADER
"The pitching of this weight loss guide as a kind of scientific heist is arresting...Alvear, gifted with a breezy, conversational style of writing, carries the reader with engaging and encouraging prose."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Alvear
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985164336

Michael Alvear

MICHAEL ALVEAR co-hosted the TV series The Sex Inspectors, which aired on HBO. His commentaries have been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered and he made appearances on The Tyra Banks Show and The Today Show. His columns have appeared in The New York Times and Newsweek and he blogs for The Huffington Post.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

WHO DO WE STEAL FROM

AND WHAT DO WE TAKE?

Somebody else has solved your problem.

This is the unofficial slogan in the small but growing field of cross-industry innovation experts. It’s the belief that somebody somewhere has solved a similar problem and your job is to leap over your industry’s calcified mindset, find out who did it, draw analogies, transfer the approach, and adapt it to your needs.

Hotels didn’t come up with Airbnb, taxis didn’t invent Lyft, and bookstores didn’t envision Amazon. Candlemakers didn’t produce the lightbulb, carriage manufacturers didn’t create autos and the post office didn’t invent email.

Orthodoxy doesn’t produce disruptive innovations. After decades of writing about health for WebMD, Salon.com and The New York Times I can tell you there’s nothing but orthodoxy running through the diet industry.

The diet doctors, weight loss authors, medical academies, and research institutions that make up the diet weight loss industrial complex look only to each other for inspiration. Thus, they end up copycatting ideas with the same massive failure rate. Depending on which of the last three systematic reviews of dieting studies you believe in, the failure rate is 80%, 90% or 95%.

Clearly, the dieting industry is not going to innovate weight loss. For that, we must do what many business leaders, scientists and medical professionals do—look outside of their industries for inspiration.

Start With A Question

How do we even begin searching for, identifying, and then applying cross-industry innovations to weight loss? I asked several innovation experts and they all gave me the same answer: You start by asking what problem you’re trying to solve.

Conventional thinkers in Diet World roll their eyes whenever I mention this. Isn’t it obvious? They say pedantically. We’re eating food that makes us fat! We make the wrong choices! We’re ignorant of what’s healthy and what’s not!

Because orthodoxy has defined the problem as faulty decision-making born out of ignorance, it is obsessed, fixated, on educating us. That’s why almost every book answers some form of this question: Which foods make us fat and which ones make us healthy?

Each year this orthodoxy produces a firehose of new diet books that sprays the public with contradictions. Fat makes us fat. No, sugar makes us fat. Actually, it’s carbs. Screw it, eat Keto. No, go vegan. Watch out for wheat! Try Atkins. No, Mediterranean!

Every diet book is a different version of eat this not that. Noting dieting’s massive 80-95% failure rate, the innovation experts I talked to say the orthodoxy in weight loss is making a classic mis­take: It’s trying to solve the wrong problem.

Meaning, we can’t get to our destination (an innovative weight loss solution) if we’re perched on the same hill (the current perception that a lack of knowledge is the cause of our weight problem).

How do we find a new perch? I asked one expert. Ask different questions, she said, referring to an Albert Einstein quote favored by cross-industry specialists:

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes to determine the proper question to ask. Once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes.

Let’s Go With Einstein

What if we’re asking the wrong questions about weight loss? Should we only be asking which trans fats we should eat? Or which foods have the lowest glycemic index? Or if they’re GMO? Or if keto is better than counting calories?

It’s not that these questions aren’t useful, but are they the ones we should be asking? Perhaps we’re better off redefining the problem so we can ask better questions. Here’s an example: What if the problem isn’t a lack of education but a lack of know-how?

Don’t most of us already know we should avoid fast food, processed foods, sodas, and juice drinks? Don’t we know we should be eating more fruits and vegetables? Don’t we know we should choose an apple over a donut?

What we don’t know is how to overcome the forces that prevent us from applying this knowledge. If we pursue this new line of inquiry then a slew of questions awaits us:

How do I stop craving foods that are bad for me?

How do I cut back on sugar when it’s in everything?

How can I eat smaller portions of food without feeling deprived?

How do I neutralize triggers to emotional eating?

How can I get myself to like healthy foods?

How do I say no to sweets without feeling cheated?

How do I deal with overwhelming hunger pangs?

How can I stop overeating?

How do I resist unhealthy foods when billions are spent marketing them to me?

How do I stop impulse eating?

How can I more accurately gauge when I’m full?

How can I change my body’s weight set point?

How do I stop eating to comfort myself?

How do I motivate myself to cook something healthy?

How can I control my stress eating?

How do I make myself eat an apple when I want a donut?

How do I control compulsive eating behaviors?

How do I stop using food as a coping mechanism?

How do I tell the difference between cravings and hunger?

Clearly, these questions can’t be answered by what the diet industry specializes in: A list of foods to eat or avoid.

How in the world is eating more vegetables going to help you get control of emotional eating? How is going vegan or eating keto going to help you say no to desserts you’re dying to have? How is avoiding wheat or cutting out trans fats going to help you avoid a panic attack when you see what a small portion the restaurant just served you?

Knowing what to eat doesn’t help when you’re being trampled by The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Stress, Mood, Craving and Compulsion).

The emotional, psychological, physiological, and biological forces pressing on our food decisions are enormous. Yet the best advice the dieting world can give us is eat less, exercise more?

Tell that to the Four Horsemen galloping toward the blinking HOT DONUTS sign.

Our New, Redefined Problem

Going forward, we’re throwing our lot with Einstein’s observation that a problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.

We’re abandoning the orthodoxy’s insistence that the problem is one of education. Instead, we are defining the problem this way: How do we stop what we already know we should stop and how do we start what we already know we should begin?

When my innovation consultants looked at the list of questions you see above, they rubbed their hands with glee. These are terrific questions, one said, Not just because they seem to get at the heart of the matter but because they’re telling you where to look for innovative solutions.

What do you mean? I asked.

Well, she said as she ran her finger down the list of questions, A common thread seems to be the inability to control addictive cravings. Who, outside of the diet industry, deals with addiction?

Drug rehab specialists, I said.

Exactly, she said. Why don’t you start there?

Answering New and Better Questions

The cross-science solutions you’re about to read are easy to implement but they do require effort. The good news is that you won’t suffer. You won’t obsess. You won’t be anxious. It won’t hurt. You won’t feel cheated or deprived. Or that you sacrificed too much.

You won’t have to shut your eyes and brace for impact every time you cross paths with a bucket of fried chicken. You won’t deprive yourself of favorite foods or white-knuckle your way through 5- alarm cravings.

But applying these cross-science solutions does require patience, a willingness to rearrange your thinking and create new eating habits.

The Immediacy Trap

The weight loss industry promises quick results the way Lucy promises to hold the football for Charlie Brown. Like our loveable cartoon character, we go for glory only to end up on our backs.

Why do we believe in quick fixes to problems that took a long time to form? According to epidemiologists at the CDC, Americans gain 1 or 2 pounds a year from early adulthood through middle age, with much of the increase concentrated in the 20s.

This means if you’re twenty pounds overweight it took an average of 10 to 20 years to get there. Why would you think you could shrink in a few weeks what took decades to expand?

To succeed you must come to terms with the fact that you won’t lose weight quickly. Got an upcoming event you want to slim down for—a high school reunion, a weekend at the beach, a keynote address? Forget it. Not going to happen.

Cross-science innovations don’t offer quick fixes; they offer gradual adjustments that lead to permanent change. It is here however, in the realm of permanent results, that you can find solace. For it is here that a bargain can be struck: A quick but temporary reduction in weight for a slow but permanent one.

If you’re willing to trade speed for permanency then it’s time to begin our journey. The first step is to heed innovation managers who insist that somebody else has solved our weight problem.

Let’s find out who.

CHAPTER TWO

OUR FIRST ROBBERY:

STEVE JOBS

Setting a goal to lose weight almost always results in failure. At first glance, this makes no sense. Setting goals can be highly motivating. They provide clarity, a target to aim for, and a way to measure success. What could possibly be wrong with saying, I want to lose 20 lbs, or lose three inches off my waist?

As it turns out, everything.

To understand why, we turn to our first cross-industry innovation, courtesy of the company that makes iPhones. Apple founder Steve Jobs often said it wasn’t a focus on goals that made Apple a cash cow; it was an emphasis on mission.

Almost all companies set a rather obvious goal—make money. But Jobs replaced that goal with a mission: Enrich people’s lives.

He once said this about Microsoft after Apple squashed their music player: Our goal was to build an insanely great product. Their goal was to make money.

Apple traded a conventional goal for a noble purpose and the result was astounding: A company which did not have money as its goal, made way more of it than companies that did.

How This Applies To Losing Weight

Can we do the same with weight loss? Can we trade the conventional goal of I want to lose 20 lbs into a mission that would result in losing 20 lbs? Can we find a mission bigger than a weight loss goal that would paradoxically create more weight loss than if we aimed for it?

Welcome to your first cross-industry innovation.

Studies show that there is a non-diet objective we can commit ourselves to that always results in weight loss: Our health, our sense of well-being.

Healthy people with a strong sense of well-being don’t need to go on diets. They lose weight, and keep it off, as a consequence of being healthy. They have escaped the same physical, emotional, and societal forces that trap so many of us in unhealthy eating patterns. Yes, they pay attention to what they eat, but mostly they’ve learned to master their cravings, break their addiction to sugar, and feel full with smaller portions.

If dieters are oak trees that snap in the winds of a strong craving, people with a strong sense of well-being are reeds that bend just enough to indulge in unhealthy foods then gracefully return to foods that support their health and well-being.

Just as Steve Jobs produced money by enriching people’s lives, we’re going to produce weight loss by enriching our well-being. This means we must stop dieting and commit ourselves to the entirety of our welfare.

Shifting From Weight Loss To Well-Being

Notice your reaction to the idea of elevating well-being over weight loss. Are you rubbing your hands in anticipation or rolling your eyes in frustration? The most common reaction runs along the lines of, I’m horrified by how much weight I’ve gained, how fat I look, and how people are judging my appearance and you want me to focus on well-being? ARE YOU INSANE?!!!!

This is a perfectly natural reaction after a lifetime of programming telling us that dieting is the only way to lose weight. The dieting mentality is like a computer virus that overwrites new files with its own code. You type out stop dieting and it autofills You’ll gain 100 pounds.

Perhaps the fear of casting your lot with well-being comes from its Don’t Worry Be Happy undertones. The haziness of the term can make you think you’ll be fighting evil with room deodorant, like you won’t have a chance against binging, sugar addictions, snack fixations and all the other intractable problems of losing weight.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Well-being forces you to address those issues. You cannot enhance the quality of your life when it’s hobbled by hypertension, heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis. You cannot achieve well-being with a diet requiring insulin, statins, blood thinners, diuretics, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, alpha blockers, and vasodilators.

A commitment to well-being requires us to find solutions to our weight gain. What it does not require is doubling down on a strategy that got us here in the first place.

Well-being doesn’t ask that you resign yourself to your current weight. It doesn’t ask you to give up the dream of a thinner body. It’s simply an alternative path to realizing your objectives.

And it’s a path with a hell of a lot more resources. A weight loss consciousness believes in deprivation and gives you one resource to keep yourself in line—willpower. It is a lifelong test of how much pain you can take.

A well-being consciousness believes in abundance and gives you multiple resources to solve an array of different problems. It is a testament to how much pain you can avoid.

As you can see from the chart below, your choice isn’t dieting or nothing; it’s dieting or a methodical set of proven solutions.

Onwards

Our first order of business is to replace a limiting goal (I want to lose weight) with an expansive mission (I want a better quality of life). By focusing on well-being we’re going to produce weight loss.

Once you commit to your well-being a profound realization takes shape: Dieting has no place in your mission. In fact, dieting is a threat to your mission. It is antithetical to even the idea of good health.

Let’s find out why.

CHAPTER THREE

STOP DIETING

Let’s ransack a recent discovery in biology. Not long ago a land­mark study provided evidence that our bodies resist dieting with fat-promoting biological responses. Dr. Rudolph L. Leibel, co-discoverer of leptin (the satiety hormone), found that dieting triggers signals from the brain to increase hunger and slow meta­bolism.

Follow-up studies replicated Dr. Leibel’s results and it wasn’t long before a scientific consensus formed: The body responds to dieting with a fight or flight syndrome, producing unwelcome physiological responses that cause weight gain.

What exactly sets off your body’s fight or flight response? Food scarcity and/or food insecurity. Your body cannot tell whether it’s starving because you’re dieting or because food disappeared from the savannah. It goes into survival mode by slowing metabolism (to conserve energy) and increasing hunger (to motivate you to find food).

The harder you try to lose weight the harder your body fights back. Dr. Leibel’s research showed that dieting can slow your metabolism by 15%. This explains a common dieting experience: You lose weight quickly and then slowly gain it back even though you’re sticking to the diet.

This is the quandary that all dieters face: the