Is anorexia the cure for obesity? Yes... No... Well kind of

An anorexic obese person? Pfffft that has to be BS! Well as farfetched as it sounds it's not impossible. In fact anorexia may be the cure for obesity according to Dr. Loren Gianini and her team. Their opinion piece "Long-term weight loss maintenance in obesity: Possible insights from anorexia nervosa" was published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders. Here they presented how anorexia nervosa could provide the framework in understanding how to maintain long term weight loss in individuals at higher weights.

Losing weight and keeping the weight off is very uncommon amongst those of us who are obese and anyone who manages to do so is a major statistical outlier. It's so uncommon that there's a national registry for these outliers called The National Weight Control Registry (NWCR). The NWCR was set up to study obese individuals who have lost 30lbs or more and kept the weight off for over 1 year. There are roughly 10,000 people being monitored by the NWCR which is miniscule in comparison to the 7.7% of Americans are extremely obese and an astonishing 37.7% are considered obese! (https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity)

Here's where it gets a little weird. In their analysis of data gathered by the NWCR Dr. Gianini et al found an astonishing correlation between those in the NWCR and people with anorexia nervosa. They had very similar eating habits such as eating low fat diets with restricted eating and a restricted food variety. Any deviation from their restricted eating will result in rapid weight regain. Both groups maintain weight loss dispite having many characteristics which encourage weight gain such as lower resting energy expenditure, lower levels of leptin and thyroid hormone and higher levels of ghrelin. Despite the fact their metabolism is primed for weight gain, they're able to overcome it through their restricted eating habits.

So what do you think? Is anorexia the cure for obesity? Let me know in the comment section below ✌✌