Lose weight by controlling these hormones | Bariatric surgeon Dr. Andrew Jenkinson

Welcome to ZOE Science and Nutrition, where world leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health. Doctor. Andrew Jenkinson is a highly respected bariatric surgeon, an international authority on weight regulation and metabolism, and the best selling author of Why We Eat Too Much. With over a 100 scientific publications and two decades of experience treating obesity, his insights combine cutting edge science with deep clinical expertise. Andrew, thank you for joining me today. It's a pleasure, Jonathan. We like to kick off our show here at ZOE with a rapid fire Q and A with questions that come from our listeners. Are you willing to give it a go? Of course. And we have some quite strict rules. We need you to say yes or no, or if you have to, a one sentence answer. Mhmm. Is gaining weight as we age inevitable? No. For most people, will calorie counting work for long term weight loss? No. Can our hormones cause us to overeat? Yes. Should obesity be considered a disease? Yes. If we aren't living with obesity, could many of us lose weight and keep it off without drugs? Definitely. Does your metabolism slow down when you lose weight? Yes. And finally, what's the most common myth about obesity that you hear? That losing weight is all about calories. Well I can't wait to get into this and we have discussed weight loss on the podcast before but it's still one of our most requested topic from listeners, which tells you how much we all feel that it's really important to us as individuals. Many of us are fighting with it even if, you know, in fact, we aren't viewing ourselves as overweight. And And we're all desperate, I think, to understand what's going on inside our bodies and how to make lasting changes. When I was brought up, I was told that weight gain was all about willpower. So it was like eat less, move more, and the problem's solved. What does the latest science say about that? The popular opinion is that, yeah, it is all about willpower. It still is. You know? This is the popular opinion. And this is the opinion amongst a lot of doctors and, you politicians and policy leaders which is a big problem. The sort of method it's all about the calories is, you know, when you look at the very very basics of thermodynamics, a e. How big an object is how much energy it stores it sort of it chimes it's okay the first law of thermodynamics energy in minus energy out equals energy stored but it's a lot more complicated than that We need to take into account negative feedback systems and what we call in medical terminology homeostasis so the body trying to keep things on an even keel. Now I think I might be a little bit older than you but when I was at school there used to be probably in, you …