You’ve heard it over and over a million times…you’re eating more than you burn off!
Really!?!?
Thanks Mr. Obvious.
So many people walk around acting like experts in the area
of fat loss, from personal trainers to dieticians, to your next-door
neighbor. Their advice is always the
same…cut back on what you’re eating and
become more active…the catch is, as I’ve said in Part I, II and III of
this series…THIS DOES NOT WORK AND IS
NOT THE SOLUTION TO FAT LOSS.
People who believe and propagate this nonsense demonstrate a lack of understanding of basic human physiology. However, many crown themselves experts simply because they read fitness magazines, watch the news and The Biggest Loser. These sound bite experts are very dangerous. The worst culprits are the exercise junkies who have always been “fit” (half of this is genetics) and thus feel they should advise everyone on how they should eat and work out. You know, the type who is afraid of fat and advocates a low fat diet with lots of grains, vegetables, fruits and lean meats. They are the same ones who you’ll see bee bopping into a Starbucks at 7am after their 5 mile run and asking for a nonfat soy latte with a banana and a bottle of juice. Gotta load up on all that caffeine and sugar to refuel after the workout, calories in calories out! In reality, they need the caffeine and sugar so they can continue to race through their overscheduled life that involves little or no sleep. Unfortunately for them, and those whom they influence…this is the absolute worst type of lifestyle and eating plan they could follow. When they hit 40 they are the ones who are the moody, unhappy, old looking, tired but wired individuals, who despite feeling miserable, think they are Heath or Helen Health Nut who know the secrets to health and longevity. This is one type of person created by the eat less exercise more and calories in calories out myths. The other is the one who is overwhelmed by all of this insanity and just says screw it, I’m going to eat whatever I want and enjoy my life.
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Even with these aforementioned extremes, created by years of
beating people over the head with eat less exercise more dogma, most people, even those who are
overweight keep a relatively similar
weight for years. How can this be? Particularly, as I alluded to in a previous
post, because just 20 calories too much
or too little in a day can add up to a gain or loss of 2 pounds a year. Do you really think most people can control
their food intake at a margin of under 1% of their daily calorie intake over
the course of many years? Not a
chance. But this is what you would need
to buy into if you believe the calories in calories out; eat less exercise more
idea to be true.
You would also have
to assume that what you eat and what you expend have little or no influence on
each other. This is quite foolish,
as everything in your body is related…things work together in a system, not in
isolation. You eat less, your body will
burn less and store more…you burn more your body will tell you to eat more and
back and forth it goes…never amounting to more than a token pound or two up or pound
or two down. Clearly, it’s not as simple as cutting back your
food a little and being more active.
Rather, fat loss is much more involved, as you can see with
the following statement from the NIH “obesity is a complex, multifactorial chronic
disease that develops from an interaction of genotype and the environment…our
understanding of how and why obesity develops is incomplete but involves the
integration of social, behavioral, cultural, physiological, metabolic and
genetic factors.” After reading
that statement, it kind of puts a damper on hopes for a simple straightforward fat
loss solution. Frustrating, isn’t
it? Very frustrating! You do what the “experts” tell you and your
results are nonexistent.
The fact that it is so complicated and frustrating, in my
opinion, contributes significantly to keeping the simplistic eat less exercise
more calories in calories out idea alive and well in the minds of most. It’s
just easier to blame will power, blame food makers, blame technology, blame
anything…rather than change a long held belief that is well established in
people’s minds.
Before I explain the real cause of obesity, let me first address
the whole “it’s your behavior” mindset surrounding obesity. Many of the “experts” on obesity are psychologists
and psychiatrists who’ve been putting the blame solely on human behavior for a
long time.
As an aside…does it
really make sense that people trained in the ways of the mind are the “experts”
on obesity? Not to say there isn’t
any psychological component to obesity, but to look at it strictly from a
behavioral standpoint is quite silly when it’s clear there is a biological
component as well. You wouldn’t call
your accountant when you have a plumbing issue, so why then would you look to
people trained in the ways of the mind to solve a problem rooted primarily in
human biology?
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| What Does He Know About Weight Loss? |
This whole behavioral notion got started way back in the
1920’s by Louis Newburgh, who became an authority on obesity. He never delved deeper to see what else may
have been behind the issue. Then by the 1970’s
all kinds of unproven behavioral
therapies (eating slowly, eating at the kitchen table etc.) began being used to
supposedly make overweight people eat like lean people. Not those these are bad things, but they
aren’t fat loss solutions.
Now why is there this
overwhelming urge to continually pin the cause of obesity squarely on behavior? For one, it’s a very convenient way to
perpetuate the whole calories in calories out myth. If it really were that simple, what excuse other
than behavior would there be for not eating less and exercising more?
Secondly, if they were to look at the problem from all
angles they would have to admit that laying
the blame on behavior and one’s character, without considering the other
glaring realities, is flat wrong, and does more harm than good. It’s not just will power and behavior…there’s human biology behind this that most
of the “experts” never talk about. No
one likes to admit mistakes, particularly when they’ve been touted as facts for
decades, with whole industries and billions of dollars hinging on them. What is the motivation to step up and admit
the truth? Perhaps character. These same “experts” who want to talk about
people’s behavior and character, or lack thereof, causing them to be fat might
just want to look in the mirror. If they want to talk character, then how
about bringing out the whole truth, despite the fact that it would possibly
destroy their reputation, and livelihoods.
Just think about how many people are being hoodwinked into believing the
calories in calories out lie…putting all their energy into something that has
no merit. When instead they could focus
their energy on understanding the real causes and solutions to obesity.
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| This stuff is carefully regulated |
The real cause of
obesity centers upon fat tissue regulation.
One’s body fat is very carefully regulated and it doesn’t take much for
this regulation to get out of balance and cause you to get fatter. For an example, look no further than the
differences between men and women when it comes to body fat distribution. What
has to be understood, however, is the fact that it’s not overeating that causes
you to get fatter, it’s getting fatter that causes you to overeat. You may be questioning this in your mind,
likely because you’ve never heard it before.
But it doesn’t change this biological fact. This
has been demonstrated in research done over more than 80 yrs. Think about teenagers, you wouldn’t say they
grow taller because they eat too much and exercise too little. Why then would this be an explanation for
growing fat? It wouldn’t be…it’s just
you’ve been fed this line forever, so you believe it even though it’s been
proven false over and over again. If something
is growing it needs more material to grow…and thus the motivation to eat more. With a
lean person, their body is programmed to burn calories in their muscle cells,
whereas a fat person’s body is programmed to pull those same calories into fat
cells. The more calories going into
fat cells the more the person needs to eat, because the rest of the body is
starving for nutrients and energy. Thus
the drive to eat more, particularly when you try to cut back on food…because
again if there is an imbalance with fat regulation those calories, no matter
how few, will get pulled into the fat cells.
Why would this happen?
Like I alluded to before, something is off with the
regulation of fat tissue. This regulation is done by hormones and
enzymes, which are chemicals that tell your body what to do, and how quickly to
do it. In people who are fat, their
fat cells are way too excited about getting fatter due to hormones and enzymes
disproportionately working to build fat, whereas lean people’s hormones and
enzymes work to burn fat.
Here’s basically how
this works.
You think about eating and your body releases the hormone
insulin, which is the primary regulator of fat tissue…it decides where you need
to put the carbs, fat and protein you eat.
When you eat a large amount of
carbohydrates, particularly quick digesting, refined ones your body must
release a lot of insulin to keep blood sugar under control. Because of this need to keep blood sugar
under control your body sends the fats you eat to fat cells for later use. Guess what?
If you eat a lot of carbs, which
most people do, you’ll never get around to burning the fats and thus your fat
cells become bigger and more numerous.
In fact, because you don’t need that much glucose to begin with your
body has to break down and store all that sugar as fat.
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| Fat Regulation is a Simple Subject |
Insulin regulates
your fat through 2 enzymes, LPL and HSL.
LPL works to move fat into your fat cells for storage and HSL works to
release fat from your fat cells for burning.
Essentially, the more insulin you
have running around the more LPL will be active…hence you will be storing more
fat. The less insulin you have running
around, the more HSL will be working to release fat from your fat cells for
burning.
Insulin regulation
problems are the reason why diabetics get fatter independently of diet. In fact, in a 2008 study published in the New
England Journal of Medicine, type 2 diabetics on insulin gained an average of 8
pounds and 1 out of 3 gained more than 20 pounds in 3.5 years.
Of course there are other mechanisms and hormones that play
a role, but insulin is the main one and
the one you can actively control based on the quantity and quality of carbs you
consume. And insulin affects how the
other hormones work when it comes to fat regulation. For example, the stress hormone cortisol
stimulates the fat storage enzyme LPL when insulin is high and HSL the fat
burning enzyme when insulin is low.
Additionally, there are many factors which influence your insulin
response to particular foods, and this varies from person to person based on
genetics, age etc. However, despite this
fact, there really are actions you can
take to keep your insulin levels under control, and along with it your fat
tissue regulation. This will be the
topic of the 5th and final post in this series, so stay tuned for
some fat loss solutions that actually work.
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