In writing 1-2-3 JOY!, I thought a lot about the relationship between chemicals and circuits, not immediately a conversation topic – but really important for anyone wanting to experience optimal health.
In fact, you can make a case that the reason we have epidemics of mental health problems, addictions, chronic diseases, and obesity is that most of us don't appreciate that the most natural and efficient way to self-medicate is to switch from a circuit that spews harmful chemicals to one that unleashes healing chemicals. Yet that is what an EBTer does 10 times per day.
Do I want to switch circuits or take injections?
The weight loss drug industry provides injections to treat obesity, using artificial chemicals to mimic one obesity-related chemical. Like any artificial chemical in the body, it lacks the sensitivity to human physiology that activating circuits provides.
If a person uses EBT for weight loss, every time they spiral up, they activate a resilient circuit and a whole spate of healing chemicals. The person achieves Brain State 1, the optimal state for natural weight loss and easy behavior change. It's a beautiful orchestration accomplished by evolutionary biology, and each cell receives just the chemicals it needs for optimal health.
On the other hand, an artificial chemical is both a hack and a sledgehammer, neither of which is a beautiful orchestration. It is a hack because the drug mimics one natural chemical, glucagon-like-peptide-1, which is made in the gut and impacts gastric emptying, insulin levels, and hunger, as well as putting the body into a starvation response. It's a sledgehammer because it impacts not just the cells that cause obesity but every cell in the body, hence negative side effects and dependency – when the injections stop, the weight loss stops, and the weight gain begins.
Activating circuits to deliver healing chemicals
The EBT approach is to honor that if we are at Brain State 1, all our biochemistry meaningfully and significantly changes, so overall, we have a mild change in chemicals that promotes healthy eating, weight loss, and optimal health.
EBT treats the chronic stress that underlies weight gain. However, even more exciting is that EBT enables the user to target and rewire the specific circuits that cause overeating and the drive to hold onto extra weight. Currently, Shelby Killion and I are facilitating a 30-day EBT Intensive for weight loss. In that course, participants rewire their food and body circuits, which is extremely exciting on two levels.
One is that when each circuit is discovered, the person has a huge aha moment and finally answers the question, "Why do I overeat?" and "Why am I so resistant to losing weight?" The other is that when the circuits are rewired, people stop overeating spontaneously. They activate a certain joy and excitement about releasing weight, and the whole idea of losing weight becomes rather . . . fun. That might sound strange, but it is accurate. What's more, they are not nauseated and do not have diarrhea, muscle wasting, and other symptoms associated with the starvation response. There is neither dependency on medication nor difficulty weaning themselves off without triggering weight gain and scarcity panics.
Choosing freedom and lasting improvements in health
Personally, I would never tell someone not to go on weight loss drugs, but I prefer the natural approach and do recommend that anyone on weight loss drugs start EBT as soon as possible. The rationale is that the more a person activates their natural chemicals for suppressing appetite, the sooner they can discontinue the weight loss drugs as they discover they don't need them anymore.
Spiraling up to switch off circuits that spew dysregulation of biochemicals and weight gain and instead activating those healing chemical cascades makes sense to me. If you want to activate healing chemicals and lasting, natural weight loss, choose EBT.