If there is one thing that is consistent about Western society, it is the
tendency towards portliness as people age. This has been going on for so
long that it is generally expected. A second more troubling tendency is
that of obesity in young and middle aged people. Obesity has been accused
of many evils in society, including high blood pressure, heart disease,
atherosclerosis, arthritis, diabetes, even cancers.... If it is such a
problem, why are so many people fat?
Everybody knows what makes people fat, don't they? Obviously it is eating
too much. That and being lazy. Sedentary lifestyles contribute to the
obesity epidemic, which causes all these terrible disease conditions.
Somebody started measuring the energy content of foods in the form of
Calories (in fact they are kilocalories), and decided that the First Law
of Thermodynamics applies to obesity: Energy in minus energy out equals
weight. If only it were that simple....
What if I were to tell you that this is all EXACTLY BACKWARDS?
This requires a long and complex explanation, which I will provide
elsewhere. Here I will summarize what I know to be true.
We get fat because we eat the WRONG FOODS. Foods that make us hungry,
rather than make us satisfied. Foods that turn on the fat storage
machinery in our bodies, rather than encourage the body to use its stored
energy (fat). Foods that trigger the hormonal stimulation in the body that
actually causes all of those disease conditions, plus more. Those foods?
CARBOHYDRATES.
If you eat a diet that is predominently carbohydrates, you train your body
to secrete massive amounts of insulin, and at the same time you damage the
body's ability to absorb that same insulin. As time goes by, the level of
insulin in the blood rises, and as the insulin level rises, the waist
measurement of nearly everyone gets bigger. For some of us the insulin
producing and using machinery breaks down completely, and we become
Diabetic.
A high level of insulin in the blood is directly related to:
- Hunger - the presence of Insulin makes you feel very hungry, and
hungry for carbs in particular
- increased Blood Pressure - due to Insulin's tendency to cause water
retention
- Storage of excess energy as fat - the presence of the hormone Insulin
tells the body to store energy as fat
- Sedentary behaviour - the body slows down under the influence of
Insulin in order to fulfil the demand to store energy as fat
- Elevated LDL cholesterol and suppressed HDL cholesterol
Ask any farmer that raises animals how you can go about fattening a steer
or a pig for market. For thousands of years they would tell you, you
feed the animal GRAIN. How does a bear gain fat in order to be a able to
hibernate all winter long? The bear eats BLUEBERRIES. Blueberries?
Yup.
Grains and fruits. Carbohydrates.
If your diet is made up predominantly of carbs; if it is made up
predominantly of starchy carbs (Potato, Pasta, Bread, Corn products), then
you very likely are already on the treadmill that results in an obese body.
If you have ever discussed being overweight with a doctor, or your mother,
or nearly everyone else, you probably were at the least treated like, and
usually told directly, that you were overweight because you eat too much,
and you don't get enough exercise. This has been the universal
condemnation of the obese forever. Brute force diets are directly
descended from this line of thinking. To lose weight, you have to
starve, and you have to ramp up your energy expenditure so that you burn
more calories than you consume. They even make reality TV shows now
where they starve people and put them through boot camp. Do the people
lose weight? Certainly. Can they keep it off? I seriously doubt it.
Obesity is NOT the cause of anything. Obesity is a SYMPTOM - a symptom
of a serious Insulin disorder. If you correct the Insulin disorder, the
body will naturally recalibrate itself, and the excess fat accumulation
will be eliminated, naturally, effectively, and without hunger or
absurdly, even dangerous levels of physical activity.
The great misfortune is that this fact seems to not be terribly well
understood by the medical establishment. When I asked my Doctor to test
my serum insulin level, at first he said he wouldn't. Thought there was
no point. Doctors cannot do anything to artificially lower your serum
insulin level - it would kill you. The only way to lower your serum
insulin level is to drastically reduce glucose-generating food consumption
(carbs), and to attack the problem of insulin resistance. Insulin
resistance is improved through exercise far more than anything else.
Some supplements help:
- Chromium Picolinate
-R+ Lipoic Acid in combination with Evening Primrose Oil
- Metformin, a standard prescription Diabetes medication.
'Exercise' does not mean killing yourself! My exercise of choice is an
ancient stationary bike; I quickly got to riding for 45 minutes a night,
which translates to 20 miles on the odometer. I ride at a decent clip
but do not push - I simply want to get the big muscles in my legs hot,
which improves my circulation and over time improves my muscle's ability
to consume the insulin/glucose that arrives at the Insulin receptors.