Why Your Brain Craves Carbs
And How Stress Causes Weight Gain

Weight gain is frequently blamed on bad diet choices, emotional over-eating or a too-busy-to-exercise lifestyle. The simple truth is that your brain craves carbs because it is looking for glucose, its primary energy source and Tryptophan, the nutritional building block of the calming neurohormone Serotonin.

When your body is under stress due to deadlines, fears, uncertainties, financial worries etc., it produces high levels of Adrenalin (Epinephrine) and Norepinephrine (NE). These stress Hormones prepare the body for emergency action, shifting blood flow to the skeletal muscles and away from the extremities, turning up nervous impulses that control movement and turning off nervous system control of digestion. This emergency stress response can have short-term protective benefits, but long-term detrimental effects when it occurs too frequently.

Being Overweight May Not Be Your Fault
Conventional wisdom says that being fat comes from lack of willpower, laziness, or a fast-paced lifestyle that prevents healthy eating and exercise. However, stress may be the real culprit. Stress could be causing you to crave carbohydrates. Consider the types of food you tend to crave when stressed—usually carbohydrate-rich and often sugary cookies, cakes, pastries, pasta, etc. Perhaps the body is really craving Tryptophan, the amino acid in carbohydrates that the body uses to make Serotonin, the anti-stress, feel-good hormone. It is the counter balance to Adrenalin and NE. When these stress hormones get too high Serotonin is released to bring them back down. When they come down, you calm down.

Nervous Eating – A Sign of Neuro-Deficiency
Serotonin is the brain's mood-calming neurotransmitter. Stress may be driving your carbohydrate cravings to boost the level of Serotonin, since Serotonin is made from the amino acid Tryptophan found mainly in carbohydrates. This craving for carbohydrates is not necessarily bad, except that most Americans are grabbing refined carbohydrates that are high in sugar rather than complex, whole grain carbohydrates that are high in fiber and low in sugar. Eating lots of refined carbohydrates leads to high insulin levels that trigger the body to store the excess sugar as fat, leading to obesity, diabetes and other diseases.

The current high protein – low carb diets will cause you to shed a few pounds, temporarily, but they are contributing the growing epidemic of anxiety and depression. The Atkins style diet prohibits carbs, the main source of Tryptophan, and pushes heavy consumption of meats that block Tryptophan from betting into the brain.

Food Choices
In order to get the Tryptophan that we need to make Serotonin, you need to eat more whole grains, including 100% whole wheat breads and pasta and whole grain brown rice. Complex carbohydrates contain 50% more Tryptophan than refined white breads or white rice and provide vital fiber as well as essential vitamins and minerals the body needs to prevent other chronic diseases.

Additionally, Tryptophan is easily inhibited from getting into the brain by several amino acids found in meats. For this reason, if you want to get any Tryptophan into your nervous system to satisfy your appetite or to make Serotonin, you need to eat less meat and more vegetarian meals. For optimal Tryptophan assimilation and utilization, grains should be consumed with vegetables or fruit and not with meat or cheese.

New research indicates that the epidemics of obesity, anxiety and depression are in fact all caused by the one-two punch of high stress and low Tryptophan. If your body gets enough Tryptophan it will convert it into 5-HydroxyTryptophan (5-HTP) and then into Serotonin. When your Serotonin goes up your stress hormones come down and so does your appetite. The cure to obesity, anxiety and depression may be found in, avoiding all refined carbohydrates, eating only whole grains and eating less meat. Complex carbohydrates should make up 65% of our calories. We should be eating 6-11 servings of whole grains every day in order to get the calming amino acid, fiber, vitamins and minerals that we need to fight stress and stay healthy.

Don’t Be Deceived
Read the labels. Look for 100% Whole Grain breads and Whole Grain rice. Unless it says 100% Whole Grain, it’s not. It might be as little as 1%, but the label can still claim that its “Whole Wheat.” Don’t be deceived. Bread manufacturers will take out 99% of the bran along with 25 vitamins and minerals, then add a token amount of only 8 vitamins and minerals back. Why do they bother? Marketing. They do it just so that they can call it “Enriched Bread.” So why do we buy it, because it tastes like pastry and we want to believe the lie so we can justify continuing to eat it when we really know its bad for us.

5-HTP Produces Significant Weight Loss
In summary, stress raises the hormone Cortisol which causes sugars to be stored as fat. In order to counter stress your body attempts to make more Serotonin. Eventually stress depletes Serotonin, which causes a craving for Whole Grains. Eating refined grains only makes the problem worse. You can boost your Serotonin level by eating 100% Whole Grains when you are not eating meat or cheese.

Alternately, a dietary supplement of 5-HydroxyTryptophan (5-HTP) extracted from the seeds of the plant Griffonia simplicifolia is the fastest way to raise your Serotonin level. 5-HTP is an intermediate precursor to the neurotransmitter Serotonin that is made in the body from Tryptophan. If your body can’t get or make enough 5-HTP, it is nice to know that there is a safe and effective supplement that you can take to make up the difference.

5-HTP has been shown in three clinical trials to reduce appetite, decrease cravings for carbohydrates and fat and promote significant weight loss. In a 12-week double-blind study, overweight women who took 600–900 mg of 5-HTP per day lost significantly more weight than did women who received a placebo. In another study, obese people with Type 2 Diabetes were given 750 mg of 5-HTP per day for two weeks and no other dietary restrictions. In this double blind clinical trail, the participants receiving the 5-HTP reduced their carbohydrate and fat intake significantly and lost an average of 4.8 lbs per month, compared to 0.4 pounds in the placebo group. To learn more about 5-HTP, please click here:

Check Out Your BMI
If your Body Mass Index (BMI) is 25-29 your are considered overweight. Anything over 30 is considered obese. Body mass is calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in meters squared. For example, a 5 ft. 5 in. woman weighing 180 lbs has a BMI of 30, as does a 6 ft. 2 in. man weighing 233 lbs. More than 9 million Americans are considered morbidly obese, meaning they are more than 100 pounds overweight.

According to the latest figures from the Surgeon General David Satcher, more than 61% of all adults can be classified as fat (either overweight or obese), 27% are considered obese, double the level 20 years ago. As many as 300,000 deaths may be attributed to obesity in the United States each year. But the problem is not just a concern for adults. The prevalence of obesity for adolescents has nearly tripled in the past two decades. According to the latest available figures, 25% of American children are overweight or obese and 11% of children are frankly obese.

Obesity is strongly associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, heart and respiratory failure, breast, prostate and gut cancer, gallstones and arthritis. Obese individuals have a 50 to 100 percent greater risk of premature death from all causes compared to individuals without excess weight.

Check Your BMI: