Physiologic responses to food associated with weight-loss history

Physiologic and cognitive responses to food cues are different for successful weight-loss maintainers vs. lean adults who never had overweight or obesity, according to findings presented at the European Congress on Obesity.

“An overall dampening of motivational responses to acquire food rewards is a specific characteristic of weight-loss maintainers,” Leonie J. T. Balter, PhD, of the University of Amsterdam and the University of Birmingham, U.K., told Endocrine Today.

Balter and colleagues presented pizza to 20 weight-loss maintainers who formerly had obesity, 25 adults with obesity and 20 never-overweight lean individuals and measured heart rate and saliva production to assess physiologic responses to food cues. Mean age of participants was 29.5 years; 61.5% of the cohort were women.

To evaluate cognitive factors that assist in eating control, participants completed computerized cognitive tasks while researchers measured their motivation to win or lose food or nonfood (money).

The participants with obesity displayed an increase in heart rate and saliva production (P = .037) when presented with the food cue vs. the nonfood cue. In contrast, successful weight-loss maintainers displayed decreasing heart rate and saliva production in response to the food cue vs. the nonfood cue (P = .034). The participants who had never had overweight displayed similar responses to both cues.

When assessing cognitive control factors through computerized tasks, Balter and colleagues found that weight-loss maintainers were less affected by food rewards, but more sensitive to food punishment, defined as losing food. They observed that weight-loss maintainers were better at avoiding the loss of food than the loss of money (P = .013) or winning food (P = .038). The performances of the other weight-status groups were not significantly affected by the type of reinforcement, according to researchers.

Balter and colleagues concluded that there is an association between weight-loss history and physiologic reactivity to food. Further research is needed to determine whether physiologic responses to food can predict an individual’s ability to control food consumption.

“The findings provide a good rational for examining whether physiological responses to food and food-reward sensitivity can be used as markers to predict successful weight-loss maintenance,” Balter said. “The results suggest that strategies that focus on reducing the response to high-fat/high-sugar foods may be helpful for weight loss maintenance — how that can be achieved is open at the moment.” – by Marley Ghizzone

Reference:

Balter LJ, et al. Abstract S2.3. Presented at: European Congress on Obesity; May 23-26, 2018; Vienna.

Disclosures: Balter reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the study for all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.