How can you lose weight by creating new food neural pathways to your brain and changing your habits?

Dr. Kessler's book "The End of Overeating. Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite" is on the shelves of book-stores now published by Rodale.

The BBC interviewed Dr. Kessler yesterday. He described the junk food neural pathway and stated that you can't replace the old pathways that control your eating habits. You have to build a new response mechanism for your brain's pleasure centre and the capacity to do so is now known.

Dr. Kessler also mentioned that he would still strangle a Mars Bar if put under sufficient pressure!

The interview exposed a witty interesting man with a great understanding of how the mind can be reached, if we approach the eating problem with the right understanding of how taste works and is manipulated.

He has lost weight steadily himself using the theory and importantly, he sounded happy and well adjusted in the interview he gave on BBC radio promoting the theory.

In the interview he explained that he had suffered from obesity even though he had access to FDA information on drugs and diet solutions, spending years looking for a solution to why he would binge eat his way back to weight problems.

He described how he discovered (scientifically) that he could change his neural pathways so that craving for the "bliss point" could be reduced and the desire for good food that helps with weight loss tastes increased.

The good doctor shows that the reason some people have so much trouble with weight loss is that their neural pathways have been hijacked!

The average person it seems is hooked on too much sugar salt and fat at a neural level because the food has been "engineered" to appeal so much that it is irresistable.

The neural pathways that connect to the "pleasure centre" of our brains becomes hard wired to these tastes apparently.

Dr. Kessler is scathing of the fast food, restaurants and processed food manufacturers targeting what he calls a "bliss point" of taste. They do this by using a combination of fat sugar and salt that makes the food taste spectacular to the consumer with no regard to the damage it does to the body.

Food scientists have been able to figure out exactly the combination of sugar fat and salt that triggers this response from our brains.

Dr. Kessler has spent 7 years working on why he could not resist eating food which he knew was fattening and bad for his health.

It was his own weight, which fluctuated wildly, that provided a strong incentive to make his discovery.

Dr. Kessler's book is a New York Times best selling title but it is no diet book, it's a no nonsense approach to the causes of over eating fat salt and sugar saturated foods .

He offers explanations as to how you can use new knowledge of how your brain works to overcome obesity using a shift in perception, rather than plain willpower.

I like this approach, it makes more sense than endless diets. It removes the guilt by offering a plausible explanation for over eating that will be a huge relief to many.

I also believe his way of approaching the re education of our programmed responses to bad food is useful.