The Mathematics of Obesity
The energy balance equation of, food eaten equals fat stored minus exercise, is used in a very misleading way. Most assume you can manipulate it yourself by eating less and exercising more. But that ignores entirely the body's own control system. There are some lab rats that were starved to death by underfeeding, in an experiment, and whilst they starved to death they were gaining fat and died obese. Why? Because they were also receiving insulin and this told their bodies to store fat no matter what, even if they were not being fed, so they converted their muscle and organs into fat and stored that instead. They died of weak heart mucles and heart failure.
It is like a child eats extra to grow but he doesn't grow because he's eating extra, he eats extra and grows because the body's hormones are controlling things and telling the body to eat more and grow. It is all about hormones. Why do diabetics take insulin? To CONTROL their blood sugar. That's what insulin does. Insulin decides that you have to lower that blood sugar. And how does it control it and get it out of the blood stream? It tells fat cells to open up and absorb it. That's what "lowers" your blood sugar. The insulin decides to store it. And as it is storing it, your normal metabolism is still hungry. So the energy equation is used wrong. You don't get fat because you overeat, you overeat because you're getting fat.
What drives up insulin levels beyond normal, beyond what our 100,000 year old bodies are used to? Carbohydrates. You can eat fat and that'll be converted to energy and you'll want to move more. But eat carbs in the massive unusual quantities that we do, like pasta, pizza, bread, potatoes, and sugared drinks, and it all turns to sugar and insulin has to be produced in huge quantities to deal with it. Your normal blood sugar is one teaspoon of sugar. That's it. That's all we're made to deal with. So insulin goes nuts trying to deal with all that "healthy slow release energy" and eventually you get obese and you get diabetes.
The food pyramid was a huge shift towards grains (bird food) and away from fat. The fat / heart disease / lipid hypothesis was wrong 50 years ago and by committee "we have to tell the politicians what to regulate even if we aren't sure ourselves" consensus opinion ended up dominating and it is still wrong today. Eating a low fat high carb diet is a recipe not only for obesity but also depression. Just try switching to a genuine low carb high fat diet (see Sweden's latest magazine, "LCHF") and try it for yourself. After a month carbs just don't look like food anymore. Sleep better, feel lighter, feel satiated all the time (fat is filling, whilst carbs increase appetite or make you sleepy) and have more mental clarity. YMMV but that's been my experience to my surprise.
There are so many things wrong with the current dogma around the food pyramid that you have to undo many issues before you can wade your way to some clarity. But the best thing is to actually try it for a period, and see if what the proponents of LCHF and paleo say is true. Your own body can tell you.
Go and check what that research about bad fat and heart disease was actually based on, how they've repeatedly failed to show in good controlled studies that eating low fat is good for you, or that counting calories and exercising lets you lose wight. Those studies keep failing but the advocates keep hoping the next big study will show it. The start in rise in obesity coincided with the start of that advice about fat being the devil and to make most of your food plate carbs (sugar) instead. It has been a massive experiment on the public and it has gone catastrophically wrong, but rather than say that they just call people weak willed and lazy. All those carbs and sugar simply drive up your hunger whilst storing it as fat and keeping you tired.
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