The Science
New Scientific Principles Underlying The Instinct Diet
The Instinct Diet is a new scientific platform for weight control. The defining principle of this new approach is that foods and eating habits need to work easily with our instinctive neurobiology of eating. Popularized in The Instinct Diet and The "I" Diet books, the diet is designed to offer a qualitative leap forward in weight control: greater weight loss, enhanced prevention of weight regain, and development of healthy food preferences to enhance enjoyment.
The transformational potential of the Instinct approach is seen in the first clinical assessments. As illustrated below, average weight loss on other programs is usually low at 7.5 pounds totally (and drop out is high, ≈50% in the first month). In contrast, weight loss in the first Instinct dieters recently averaged 30 pounds, over a period of 5-6 months, and >90% completed an 8-week program without dropping out.
While weight loss of Instinct dieters is incredibly good and shows that The Instinct Diet is a major new advance in weight regulation, an even more important benefit of the diet appears to be that 90% of Instinct dieters are maintaining their weight loss. This is because the typical Instinct dieter experiences profound changes in food preferences and continues to eat Instinct foods long after weight loss because the food design around neurobiological principles has been successful in ensuring ongoing enjoyment. "Instinctive eating" for weight loss thus creates sustainable new food habits that are maintained by satisfaction and food enjoyment, which in turn facilitate ongoing success with weight control.
How does The Instinct Diet achieve its extraordinary success? The starting point to understanding the success of this new approach to weight control is that it is based on a uniquely sophisticated integration of solid, uncontroversial research. There have been major advances in the science of weight regulation over the past decade, but most diet doctors are knowledgeable at most in a only a very narrow subspecialty of weight control research whereas Dr. Roberts has researched weight control herself for 18 years and has developed the particular skill of bringing together detailed weight regulation information from different subspecialties. The Instinct Diet is thus a very simply-to-follow diet but it is based on a much more informed and accurate picture of how weight regulation is influenced by specific aspects of food, psychology and the environment. This integration of complex information is lacking in other diet books and programs on the market today and is an essential key for true success in permanent weight control.
The Instinct Diet recognizes that there are three 'feeding centers' in the brain that control hunger-satiety, reward, and pleasure, and that activity in each of the centers can and should be modulated by careful control of the composition and physical structure of consumed foods. This is because there are several different signaling mechanisms that tell the brain how the body is doing for food, and different nutrients and food properties differentially affect the different signaling mechanisms. For example, research in Dr. Roberts' laboratory and others have demonstrated controlling effects of specific types of dietary fiber, food volume, protein, and glycemic index, and additional effects of micro-aspects of food composition such as types of proteins and food structure have also been identified. Furthermore, the Instinct Diet recognizes that activity in each of the three feeding centers needs to be taken into account, because each center plays a different essential role in the short-term and long-term regulation of food choices, energy intake and ultimately, body weight.
From these complicated scientific beginnings, the simply, easy-to-follow Instinct Diet was born! Five important food 'instincts' are explained that help us control the 3 feeding centers in the brain:
- Hunger
- Availability
- Calorie Density
- Familiarity
- Variety
Just give it a try. This diet can change your life, as it has already for so many happy Instinct Dieters.
