As a kid, were you more of a rule follower or a rule breaker? Regardless of how we start out, most of us learn to become people who more or less do what we’re supposed to do, because there are real benefits to following rules and real costs to ignoring them. Still, in the game of life, following the rules for success will help get you part of the way but, unfairly or not, circumstances have a way of intervening and sometimes the incorrigible rule-breakers get ahead while rule followers can find themselves on the sidelines. At Beverly Hills Physicians we know that, while the game of life general isn’t always as fair as it should be, obesity is just a plain old cheater.

The reason we’re thinking of this was yet another new article, this time in PopSugar, in which a weight loss expert offers four common sense rules for eating sensibly and, presumably, dropping pounds. However, we suspect our expert knows that her rules are outstanding suggestions for people who are trying to eat in a healthy manner, and following them to the letter might lower the risk of a weight gain, but they won’t do much to help heavy people become slender.

The problem is that obesity is extremely sneaky. The moment we begin to lose weight, our body starts to manufacture more hunger hormones. The result is that, though we might intellectually know we’re eating enough, our body keeps generating cravings to eat more than we should, and most people find excuses to flout the rules. It’s not because they’re weak or lacking character, it’s just that few of us can ignore those nagging hungry feelings and it’s much easier simply to eat more. So, maybe we’ll follow a terrific rule for party and buffet dining – never eat more than we can fit on one plate – but we’ll load that plate high with the most fattening selections possible. Or we will mess with the entirely sound idea of always following an unhealthy meal with a healthy one by eating way too much of otherwise healthy food.

Bariatric surgeries like the gastric sleeve make it easier to resist cravings by reducing the size of the stomach. Naturally, that makes overeating uncomfortable because there’s less room, but it also turns out that the amount of hunger hormones the body manufactures can be drastically lower after surgery.  That makes it a lot easier to simply do what most of us already know we should. With the help of a procedure, just for once following the rules might actually get us someplace.