Since childhood I have been overweight, but in my late teenage years, I have become outright obese. It seems to me that I feel like an addiction when it comes to food. My emotional state regarding food is that I will eat until my stomach is unable to eat any more, as if I don't know when I've had enough. I have been unable to control my eating despite much research about dieting. I therefore propose the following experiment, I shall volunteer myself to be a subject for said experiment, but feel free to join in if you want, but if you do please provide adequate progress reports. However I do not as of yet have enough information to begin this experiment.
The experiment shall be as follows:
Subject goes on a complete meal replacement program intended for long or even indefinite time. This meal replacement program shall be liquid, nutritional fluid taken orally twice per day, ensuring that the subject is provided with adequate nutrition.
The goal of the experiment shall be an examination of the emotional state of the subject, when the subject no longer eats food of any kind. The hypothesis is that the subject will experience emotions like those of any other addict who have stopped a long term abuse. If so this will imply that overweight is, at least in some, a result of an addition like relationship towards, this rendering the usual method for dealing with obesity useless, since they all seem to rely on eating other things, not realizing that it's the eating itself that's the problem.
From a practical standpoint once an adequate food replacement product is identified and purchased, meals and eating will no longer be part of the subjects daily routine. If in the long or short term this results in immense and permanent weight loss it will further imply that food addiction is, or rather was, the cause of the obesity. If this is the case even in only a minority of obesity patients, new treatments can be developed with better and better food replacement products.
The difference between the hypothetical food addict and say an alcoholic is that the alcoholic can in fact live without alcohol, whereas the food addict cannot live without food. Thus a replacement for the food is required.
This brings us to my reason for visiting this website forum: What product will be appropriate for this experiment? Most food replacement program rely on products that are nearly food facsimiles thus defeating the purpose of this experiment. The food replacement product should meet the following demands:
Have a combined caloric content of 2000 - 2500 calories per day
Contain fibre, protein, fat and etc. in such quantities as to satisfy to human body's nutritional requirements.
If not enough vitamins are available such can be compensated for through traditional vitamin pills.
I look forward to any feedback you can give me. I would especially like feedback of the following:
Do you think that the hypothesis outlined above is reasonable?
Do you have any idea about how to go design a complete food replacement program?
Assuming the problems outlined above could be overcome what do you think the outcome of this experiment could be?
The experiment shall be as follows:
Subject goes on a complete meal replacement program intended for long or even indefinite time. This meal replacement program shall be liquid, nutritional fluid taken orally twice per day, ensuring that the subject is provided with adequate nutrition.
The goal of the experiment shall be an examination of the emotional state of the subject, when the subject no longer eats food of any kind. The hypothesis is that the subject will experience emotions like those of any other addict who have stopped a long term abuse. If so this will imply that overweight is, at least in some, a result of an addition like relationship towards, this rendering the usual method for dealing with obesity useless, since they all seem to rely on eating other things, not realizing that it's the eating itself that's the problem.
From a practical standpoint once an adequate food replacement product is identified and purchased, meals and eating will no longer be part of the subjects daily routine. If in the long or short term this results in immense and permanent weight loss it will further imply that food addiction is, or rather was, the cause of the obesity. If this is the case even in only a minority of obesity patients, new treatments can be developed with better and better food replacement products.
The difference between the hypothetical food addict and say an alcoholic is that the alcoholic can in fact live without alcohol, whereas the food addict cannot live without food. Thus a replacement for the food is required.
This brings us to my reason for visiting this website forum: What product will be appropriate for this experiment? Most food replacement program rely on products that are nearly food facsimiles thus defeating the purpose of this experiment. The food replacement product should meet the following demands:
Have a combined caloric content of 2000 - 2500 calories per day
Contain fibre, protein, fat and etc. in such quantities as to satisfy to human body's nutritional requirements.
If not enough vitamins are available such can be compensated for through traditional vitamin pills.
I look forward to any feedback you can give me. I would especially like feedback of the following:
Do you think that the hypothesis outlined above is reasonable?
Do you have any idea about how to go design a complete food replacement program?
Assuming the problems outlined above could be overcome what do you think the outcome of this experiment could be?
