No-work weight loss

Wish it didn’t feel so hard to resist fattening foods and oversize portions? Then consider this surprising solution: Simple strategies that strengthen the brain area behind your forehead, called the prefrontal cortex, “can work like gastric bypass for your brain,” reveals renowned psychiatrist Daniel Amen, M.D., who came to this realization while analyzing more than 200,000 patient brain scans. “The same way gastric bypass restricts the amount of food you want to eat, a strong prefrontal cortex activates your internal portion controller and cravings buster.” That means slimming down becomes pretty darn effortless. “We’ve had people lose over 400 pounds in their brain-health journey,” says the doc. Meanwhile, readers experimenting with Dr. Amen’s tricks report losing up to 23 pounds in two weeks!

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The prefrontal cortex, or “PFC,” doesn’t strictly regulate our weight. “It’s the CEO of your brain,” explains Dr. Amen. “It supervises your behavior and is involved in all planning, decision-making, impulse control and followthrough. When the PFC works right, you work right. You’ll make better decisions about your job, finances, relationships—really everything.” That said, we average 227 decisions a day about food, plus hundreds more choices about things like exercise and hydration that also impact our waistline. So it’s no wonder a European study found that stimulating the PFC helps folks slim down significantly. “Weight loss is a pleasant ‘side effect’ when you optimize your PFC,” Dr. Amen notes.

Why might your PFC be struggling? Culprits include stress, poor sleep, a diet that clogs blood vessels or inflames brain tissue and even head trauma. Dr. Amen adds that excess weight itself also dampens PFC function. So if you’re carrying spare pounds, you’ll almost certainly benefit from one (or all!) of these techniques to give your PFC some TLC…

Brain boosters that slim

• Feed your PFC