Always Hungry? Quotes

“fat cells much more than passive storage sites for excess calories. Fat cells take in or release calories only when instructed to do so by external signals—and the master control is insulin. Too much insulin causes weight gain, whereas too little causes weight loss. So if we think about obesity as a disorder involving fat cells, then a radically different view emerges: Overeating doesn’t make us fat. The process of becoming fat makes us overeat.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“Here’s the basic strategy: 1.  Turn off the starvation response by eating whenever you’re hungry and until fully satisfied. 2.  Tame your fat cells with a diet that lowers insulin levels, reduces inflammation (insulin’s troublemaker twin), and redirects calories to the rest of your body. 3.  Follow a simple lifestyle prescription focused on enjoyable physical activities, sleep, and stress relief to improve metabolism and support permanent behavior change.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“People who regularly consume artificial sweeteners may find naturally sweet foods (like fruit) unappealing, and unsweet foods (like vegetables) intolerable. Artificial sweeteners may also cause insulin secretion, driving calories into fat cells and stimulating hunger.62 In addition, fat cells have been reported to contain sweet taste receptors—similar to those on the tongue. Artificial sweeteners may promote fat cell growth by stimulating these receptors or in other ways.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“Insulin’s effects on calorie storage are so potent that we can consider it the ultimate fat cell fertilizer. For example, rats given insulin infusions developed low blood glucose (hypoglycemia), ate more, and gained weight. Even when their food was restricted to that of the control animals, they still became fatter.9 Conversely, mice genetically engineered to produce less insulin had healthier fat cells, burned off more calories, and resisted weight gain, even when given a diet that makes normal mice fat.10”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“the ideas presented in this book culminate a century of research questioning the calorie balance model of obesity, and represent a fundamentally different way to understand why we gain weight and what we can do about it.7”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“Just as calories differ according to how they affect the body, so too do carbohydrates. All carbohydrates break down into sugar, but the rate at which this occurs in the digestive tract varies tremendously from food to food. This difference forms the basis for the glycemic index (GI).
The GI ranks carbohydrate-containing foods according to how they affect blood glucose, from 0 (no affect at all) to 100 (equal to glucose). Gram for gram, most starchy foods raise blood glucose to very high levels and therefore have high GI values. In fact, highly processed grain products – like white bread, white rice, and prepared breakfast cereals – and the modern white potato digest so quickly that their GI ratings are even greater than table sugar (sucrose). So for breakfast, you could have a bowl of cornflakes with no added sugar, or a bowl of sugar with no added cornflakes. They would taste different but, below the neck, act more or less the same.
A related concept is the glycemic load (GL), which accounts for the different carbohydrate content of foods typically consumed. Watermelon has a high GI, but relatively little carbohydrate in a standard serving, producing a moderate GL. In contrast, white potato has a high GI and lots of carbohydrate in a serving, producing a high GL. If this sounds a bit complicated, think of GI as describing how foods rank in a laboratory setting, whereas GL as applying more directly to a real-life setting. Research has shown that the GL reliably predicts, to within about 90 percent, how blood glucose will change after an actual meal – much better than simply counting carbohydrates as people with diabetes have been taught to do.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“Forget calories. Focus on quality. Let your body do the rest.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“In a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,79 we followed 276 middle-aged adults in Quebec for six years, dividing them into categories based on diet. Overall, the participants gained about 6 pounds (quite typical for this age group), but with huge individual variation—ranging from a 20-pound weight loss to a 30-pound weight gain. For those consuming a high-carbohydrate/low-fat diet, Insulin-30 strongly predicted this variation. That is, people with low insulin secretion gained on average virtually no weight, whereas those with high insulin secretion gained on average more than 10 pounds. In contrast, Insulin-30 had no relationship to weight gain among those consuming a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“as I see it, the similarities among all concentrated sugars and refined starch outweigh their metabolic differences.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“The saturated fats in dairy appear to be healthier than those in red meat.34 Shorter chain saturated fatty acids, such as the kind found in coconut, are metabolized quickly and don’t stick around long enough to cause much trouble. And to make matters even more complicated, the amount and type of carbohydrate in the diet influences how dietary fat affects blood lipids, with saturated fat and processed carbohydrate being an especially dangerous combination.35 So without bread, butter may be relatively benign.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“we seem to have a choice—bypass the gastrointestinal tract or bypass the highly processed diet.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“The one nutrient we don’t need at all is carbohydrate.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“This situation is similar to edema, a condition in which fluid leaks out of the blood vessels and accumulates elsewhere in the body (for example, in the legs), causing swelling. Despite having too much water in the body, people with edema may experience unquenchable thirst, because there’s not enough water in the blood, where it’s needed. Telling people with edema to drink less is no more effective than food restriction for weight loss, because it ignores the underlying cause. Insulin (and other influences, as we’ll discuss later) has programmed fat cells into calorie-storage overdrive. People chronically overeat because they’re trying to keep enough calories in the blood to feed the brain, compensating for those being siphoned off by overstimulated fat cells.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“fundamental principle of the body’s weight-control systems: Impose a change in behavior (for example, by restricting food), and biology fights back (with increased hunger). Change biology, however, and behavior adapts naturally—suggesting a more effective approach to long-term weight management.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“In full disclosure, this diet—like all other diets—hasn’t been fully proven. The pilot project didn’t include a control group and wasn’t intended as scientific research. We can’t be sure how these outcomes would apply to the general public. But the ideas presented in this book culminate a century of research questioning the calorie balance model of obesity, and represent a fundamentally different way to understand why we gain weight and what we can do about it.7 For those of you with a scientific bent, I’ve included hundreds of supporting studies from many research teams among the references.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“Recent studies show that highly processed carbohydrates adversely affect metabolism and body weight in ways that can’t be explained by their calorie content alone. Conversely, nuts, olive oil, and dark chocolate—some of the most calorie-dense foods in existence—appear to prevent obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. In truth, the obesity epidemic is not about willpower or weakness of character. All this time, we’ve been diligently following the diet rules, but the rulebook was wrong!”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“Although the focus on calorie balance rarely produces weight loss, it regularly causes suffering. If all calories are alike, then there are no “bad foods,” and the onus is on us to exert self-control. This view blames people with excess weight (who are presumed to lack knowledge, discipline,”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“There’s also some indication that replacing carbohydrate with plant rather than animal foods has special health benefits. Among approximately eighty thousand women in the Nurses’ Health Study consuming lower-carbohydrate diets, high consumption of vegetable protein and fat was associated with a 30 percent lower risk for heart disease over twenty years, whereas high consumption of animal protein and fat appear to provide no such protection.

One explanation for this finding is that the relative amounts of amino acids in animal protein stimulate more insulin and less glucagon release than those in plant protein – a hormone combination that has detrimental effects on serum cholesterol and fat-cell metabolism. Other possible downsides of a modern, animal-based diet include a less healthful profile of dietary fats, excessive iron absorption (especially for men), and chronic exposure to hormones, preservatives, and environmental pollutants.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“Part One ALWAYS HUNGRY, NEVER LOSING WEIGHT In 1905, during his term as secretary of war, William Taft weighed 314 pounds. On his doctor’s advice, Taft began a low-calorie/low-fat diet and exercise program bearing striking similarity to standard weight loss treatment today. Soon, he reported feeling “continuously hungry.” At his presidential inauguration three years later, Taft weighed 354 pounds.1”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“Without carbohydrate, insulin secretion plummets and the body switches from the sugar glucose to ketones (chemicals derived directly from fat) as its main fuel. Some”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“THE APPROACHING TSUNAMI OF OBESITY-RELATED DISEASE Stories about obesity appear regularly in the media, but what gets lost in all the attention is just how quickly this epidemic has emerged. Fifty years ago, 13 percent of adults in the United States had a BMI in the obese range.22 Today, that figure is 35 percent. An additional 34 percent are overweight, leaving fewer than one in three adults in the normal weight range.23 The epidemic has spared no segment of society or region of the country, although people in lower-income communities and belonging to some racial-ethnic groups have suffered most severely.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“Turn off the starvation response by eating whenever you’re hungry and until fully satisfied. 2.  Tame your fat cells with a diet that lowers insulin levels, reduces inflammation (insulin’s troublemaker twin), and redirects calories to the rest of your body. 3.  Follow a simple lifestyle prescription focused on enjoyable physical activities, sleep, and stress relief to improve metabolism and support permanent behavior change.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“all too often contributes”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“That’s the nature of addiction. For many people, eating involves constant swings from unpleasantly hungry to uncomfortably full. On this roller-coaster ride, highly processed food may provide a few minutes of enjoyment, but it quickly sets us up for the next downward swing, with negative effects on our physical and mental well-being.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“Like many young doctors, I had received virtually no instruction in nutrition. Then, as now, medical schools focused almost exclusively on drugs and surgery, even though lifestyle causes most cases of heart disease and other chronic disabling conditions. In”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“The heavier a mother became in pregnancy, the heavier her offspring were likely to be, both at birth and in mid-childhood, possibly accounting for several hundred thousand annual cases of obesity worldwide.”
― David Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer Cravings, Retrain Your Fat Cells, and Lose Weight Permanently

“The concentration of sodium in the blood is controlled to within a very narrow range. When intake rises, the kidneys excrete the excess. When intake falls below 3 to 4 grams a day, the body compensates by activating powerful hormones, called the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), which helps the kidneys hold on tightly to salt.65 The problem is, receptors for RAS are present not only in the kidneys, but also in fat cells, muscle, the pancreas, the lining of the blood vessels, and elsewhere. Overactivity of this system has been shown to cause fat cell dysfunction, insulin resistance, and inflammation—the fundamental problems linking obesity to diabetes and heart disease.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“In possibly the only clinical trial of its kind, seventeen South African adults were instructed to follow diets consisting primarily of fruit for a minimum of twelve weeks, with small amounts of nuts to satisfy nutritional requirements. The participants consumed on average twenty servings a day or more, likely containing at least 200 grams fructose. At the end of the study, the investigators observed virtually no adverse effects. To the contrary, body weight and other heart disease risk factors tended to improve despite this massive dose of fructose.57”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“Several studies have documented insulin resistance, higher triglycerides, higher blood pressure, and increased belly fat among research participants given diets with about 150 grams of fructose per day compared to diets with an equivalent amount of glucose.54 However, these studies have been criticized for providing unrealistically large amounts of fructose, triple the average intake of about 50 grams.55 Moreover, high consumption of fruit—the primary natural source of fructose—is associated with better, not worse outcomes in observational studies.56”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently

“So for breakfast, you could have a bowl of cornflakes with no added sugar, or a bowl of sugar with no added cornflakes. They would taste different but, below the neck, act more or less the same.”
― David S. Ludwig, Always Hungry?: Conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and lose weight permanently