In all the studying I have done for the health and fitness class I am teaching, one of the stats that has stuck out to me has been the amount of people who fail at dieting. When I say fail, that doesn't mean they don't lose weight, many of them do. What it means is that the weight they do lose they put back on and often times it includes additional weight. Statistics say that 95% of diets fail. With that rate, even if it were lower than that by 20%, its pretty conclusive that diets aren't working for the majority of those who have been on them. There is a small percentage of people it works for, and I will discuss that some other time. This is a hot topic. I have read of dozens of reason why diets fail, some are theories (theories aren't necessarily bad) some are scientific, but it does leave many scratching their head.
Please note: In an effort to keep this simple enough to understand, I won’t delve into the finer details. I will try to stick to the basics.
Also, yes, there is a lot more to this, which is why I started a blog. To continue to discuss topics that pertain to our health.
I haven’t set out to try and figure out why diets fail, rather, I have simply studied how the body processes the food we eat all the way down to the molecular level. (If you have never read up on Free Radicals and Anti-Oxidants please do!). I think that by diving into how the body works, it gives some great insight into why diets fail.
First, because this is a hot topic and a sensitive one, I know there are many who are adamant about why diets don’t work. As far as I am concerned, my opinion is on a “take it or leave it basis”. I simply do not care to argue. On that note, I am always up for a good discussion.
THE BIG PICTURE
I think when looking at the bigger picture that we see the answer right away...and that is...
WE HAVE TOO MUCH FOOD!
Yes, you heard that right. We have too much food. Whether there is too much food on our fork, on our plate, in our pantry or in our stores, we simply have more food than we need. Now before anyone thinks I am suggesting this is a bad thing, that is not what I am saying. It is a good problem to have. It is similar to what some call the “Oprah Effect.” You know, back when people would go on the Oprah Winfrey show with a product and the next day they are hit with 100,000 orders. Great right? Well, not if you cannot fulfill the orders and don’t have the infrastructure to do so.
We must understand that all throughout human history, food has been relatively hard to come by. It wasn’t long ago that if you wanted food, you had to till the soil, plant the seed, wait for the food to grow and harvest it. Then you had to worry about it going bad after a few days. If you wanted meat, you may have had to hunt for it and prepare it. Then again, worry about it going bad. Our worries back then were about food born illnesses, not things like Diabetes and High Blood Pressure. People oftentimes went without food for long periods of time. At least abundant amounts of food. They ate to survive. For millennia, it was only the rich and the royal that had food in excess, and also had to deal with obesity. The main purpose of food for most of humanity was survival, not pleasure.
My wife and I recently watched a movie that took place during the civil war. While there was a certain plot to follow, I was amazed that the underlying issue during the whole movie was the scarcity of food. People stealing crops, families worried they had enough crops to feed their livestock so they had meat in the winter. Armies, running out of food and taxing farmers in the form of food supply. This was an issue the whole movie, and for good reason. Food was scarce.
This is the story we see all throughout human history. At least until the last 100 years or so. Now, I won’t go into the origins of the boom of abundant food. A lot has to do with the science behind preserving food, the Industrial Revolution and marketing of food for pleasure. I want to deal with the idea of why having so much food has affected us so much.
You have to understand that when it comes to food, God made our bodies really efficient at one thing. Storing energy. Yes, I am a Christian so my viewpoint is that God made us. That is how I see things. But whether you believe in God or evolution the fact of the matter is, our bodies are primed for storing energy. Why you might ask? Well, it goes back to human history and the fact that food was scarce. Our bodies are designed to store food as energy (in the form of glycogen or fat, and even protein and amino acids) so that in times of food being scarce, we have a source of energy to keep us functioning. That is how our bodies have always operated, and it was important because human history shows us that things like starvation have always been a real problem.
Imagine you are back in the 1500s. You are traveling from Europe to the New World. A trip that today would take several hours, back then took several months. You had to make sure you had enough food to make it across the Atlantic so that everyone survived. Then, if you were lucky enough to make it across without running out of food, you still had to find a source of food once you arrived. Food and shelter was the most important thing on their minds back then because they were necessities that you couldn’t go too long without before dying of exposure or starvation.
Now this is just one example. All of human history has been plagued with food being scarce. To combat this, our bodies have been designed to A. Use food as energy, and B. Store any excess food we may take in as energy for long term use. With starvation an issue, storing energy has always been critical. It is how our bodies worked back then, it’s how our bodies work now. Our bodies today are the same energy storage factories they were throughout time, but our access to food has changed dramatically.
So why is this an issue? Well, it’s simple really. If our bodies were designed to store food as energy so efficiently and there is an abundance of food available and we avail ourselves to this abundance, then the natural reaction of the body is to take the excess and store it away. Our bodies are reacting to the food we eat in the same way that it would if we faced a situation where food was scarce. Our bodies are saying in effect, “Okay, we have some excess food here, let’s store it away because we may not have any food for a couple of days.” However, our bodies don’t know that times have changed. While our bodies may be concerned with where our next meal may come from, the reality is, that we will probably have breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack in between and we will probably do this every day. Many of us will consume more calories (energy from food) than we will burn, which will lead our bodies to store it away, first as glycogen then as fat ( I will get to this in a minute). Over time, this inevitably leads to weight gain.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that A. Much of the food we do eat lacks sufficient nutrients that we need and is basically useless B. The amount of these poor choices we have at our disposal and C. The marketing of these poor choices so that it has become ingrained in our society that eating this way is normal.
Now let me stop here and say this. It isn’t that these foods are bad per se, (Yes, there are many foods that can be considered bad for you) it is just that when consumed as part of the daily diet, the effects on our health can be dramatic. From obesity to heart disease to Diabetes, when our diets consistently include fast and junk food, the effects become concerning. This isn’t to say that eating a hamburger is going to kill you. Your body can manage things in moderation, it is just that when a hamburger, particularly with a side of French Fries, and covered in Cheese and fried onions (LOL, I just ate this last night) or foods similar to this, when they become your entire diet you are heading down a dark path that will eventually catch up to you.
So now, not only do we have an over abundance of food, but the food we have to choose from is high in calories so that when we consume it, our body ends up storing a great deal of it.
A little science lesson:
Okay…I have to do this because if I leave it out it would be like trying to start your car without an engine. I am going to do my best to keep it simple.
The physiology of our bodies is as such that when we eat, our bodies convert the food we eat into a form of energy that we can use called glucose. It is our body’s main source of energy. There is more too it than this, but this is the basic way our body functions. That glucose goes into our bloodstream and when coupled with the hormone insulin that our pancreas produces, it feeds our cells the energy it needs. If you take in more energy in the form of calories from food, your body stores it in your liver and your muscles in the form of Glycogen. Look at it as a short-term store of energy. In between meals, when your body needs energy and you are not consuming food, it taps this Glycogen and converts it back to glucose to be reintroduced into your bloodstream once again as energy for your cells to operate. So for example, if you eat a meal consisting of 500 calories, your body will start to burn those calories depending on your energy needs (i.e. exercising, walking, riding a bike or even sitting at a desk.) Some expend more energy than others, but the process is the same. If your body needs 300 calories in between meals, it burns the 300 and stores the 200 excess calories as Glycogen in your liver and muscles. Then you eat again and the process starts over. Now if you continue to overeat, your body simply continues storing up the extra calories as Glycogen to be used for when you quit eating and have no food in your system to convert to energy.
Okay, yes it’s a lot to take in so I suggest before you go on, read it again till you get it because it is the basis behind everything will say from hear forward.
Now contrary to popular opinion, your body does not store excess calories as fat. At least not right away. Your body’s first option for storage is in your liver and your muscles in the form of Glycogen. Glycogen is the stored form of Glucose, your body’s main source of energy. Again, as posted above, when you run out of Glucose from food, Glycogen is converted back to Glucose to be used as energy. Now here is where it gets interesting. Your Glycogen storage capacity is not endless. It has its limits. So, what happens when Glycogen reaches its storage limit? What happens when you continually take in more calories than you burn and you fill up your Glycogen storage. Well then your body has a second storage option and that is called Adipose Tissue, but more specifically what we call Adipocytes or in layman’s terms, the dreaded FAT CELLS!!! All the Adipocytes in your body are what make up Fat Tissue!
So let’s do a quick review:
Glucose: What the body converts food to for immediate energy. (Glycolysis)
Glycogen: The stored form of Glucose. Stored in your liver and muscles. An interesting note is that the larger your muscles are, the more Glycogen you can store. (Glycogenesis)
Adipose Tissue: The Fat tissue on our bodies that is made up of Fat Cells, also called Adipocytes.
Think of FAT as “Freakin’ Adipose Tissue.” When glucose is converted to fat it is called Lipogenesis.
So going back a bit, when you eat food (calories) your body uses it as immediate energy (GLUCOSE), if you don’t need all that energy, the excess is stored in your liver and muscles (GLYCOGEN) to be used in between meals as energy when you need it. Because your Glycogen storage has limits, once they are full, the excess energy/calories is stored away as fat (ADIPOSE TISSUE/ADIPOCYTES). Repeat this cycle of excess food consumption and over time the end result is an overabundance of Adipose Tissue….or FAT!
What is the key term here that determines if the food/energy/calories we consume makes it all the way into our Fat Storage/Adipose Tissue?
Well that would be the word “EXCESS.”
Hmm. Are things beginning to make sense? Do you remember back when I talked about having “Too Much Food”?
LET’S LOOK AT ADIPOSE TISSUE/FAT.
People are under the misconception that Fat is something that develops in your body. While it is true that fat cells can multiply (it’s very rare) that is not primarily how the body operates. FAT (Freakin’ Adipose Tissue) develops in the human body during the second trimester of a mother’s pregnancy and further during puberty. Yes, the fat cells in your body are there from the start. If you have ever held an infant, you know that they are just a chubby bunch of fatness!
Without going into great detail, (I may discuss triglycerides, adenosine triphosphate, mitochondria at another time), the basics of fat storage in ADIPOSE CELLS/ADIPOCYTES is that the more your body stores energy in your Fat Cells, the bigger those cells get. They go through the same process as muscles do and it is called hypertrophy, which basically means to get bigger. It isn’t that you have more fat you just have BIGGER fat cells. As all of these fat cells, and there are some 30 billion of them, get bigger, the whole of them get bigger and as that occurs, the Fat Tissue on your body increases. Imagine taking a sock and filling it with marbles. The more marbles you put in the bigger the sock gets. That is how fat cells work. The more energy stored doesn't mean you have more fat, again, you just have BIGGER FAT CELLS!
So as you take in excess food/calories/energy, and as your first level of storage fills up, your reserve storage, Fat Tissue, begins to expand as well. However, unlike your first level (Glycogen) Fat Cells don’t necessarily have a limit and will simply increase in size. So they become an almost limitless storage facility. If you have every gained a substantial amount of weight you understand this.
So take a breather for a second. It is a lot to take in. Reread if you need to but please do your best to grasp this concept.
So here we are, hopefully with a firm grasp of how the body uses energy and stores the energy it doesn’t need it until it does.
What about this idea that we have too much food?
Well, now that you know how the body processes and stores energy, then you can better understand why the over abundance of food has caused the issues it has.
Because we have an over abundance of food, the natural propensity for us humans is to overindulge, in other words consume more than what we need. Unfortunately, our bodies don’t differentiate or adjust and simply operate as they always have.
Let me give you an example. Years ago TVs were expensive. Most homes only had one and maybe a second smaller B&W one. It was like this for a long time till the advent of the Plasma/LCD/Smart TV. As technology advanced, the price of TVs plummeted. Now there is an overabundance of TVs and what do we do when there is an abundance? We overindulge. I have to admit, we are guilty of that. We currently have 9 TVs in our house and even one in the garage and one outside! When TVs were hard to come by, most families just had one. Not so much anymore.
So now when we combine several factors, namely:
1. An overabundance of food
2. Poor food choices
3. An inclination to overindulge
4. A sedentary lifestyle (one sorely lacking in exercise and physical activity)
5. A body that is just doing what it always has
6. A lack of knowledge of how the body processes food and manage energy storage and the nutrients it needs to thrive
We can now see why the struggle to lose weight, keep weight off or even just maintain your weight is such a problem. These factors rule many of our lives.
The good news is that many of the issues can be dealt with. Now, you can’t go down to your grocery store and tell them to close half the store, but you can be smart when shopping. Think about this, when you go grocery shopping and you buy snacks, do you just buy one bag of chips? If you are like most families, you probably buy potato chips, popcorn, Doritos, tortilla chips etc. How about cookies? Chococlate chips, Oreos etc. We were in Walmart the other day and saw a guy with a cart overflowing with food. Our ancestors jaws would have hit the floor seeing this. It is really up to you to decide how much food you have available. Constantly packing your pantry, fridge and freezer might seem like a exciting thing to do, but its probably tops on the list of things you need to think about.
If we lessened the amount of food we make accessible in our homes we have at the very least started the battle on the right foot. Look at your pantry and ask yourself, “Do I need all of this?” How much of this is for providing the energy we need to live and how much is strictly for pleasure?
Poor food choices are another thing we can change. Not that we are gonna shut down the nearest McDonalds but it is up to us to decide on what we eat. McDonalds can market to us as much as they want but they can’t force us to stop in for a BIG MAC. This is a bit tricky simply because if you were not raised on good nutritious food or never educated yourself on what your body needs then you haven’t even laced up your shoes to run the race. So start with educating yourself.
Indulgence.
Well that is the $64,000 question. How do we deal with temptation? Well as one who believes in God, that is ultimately how I deal with it and I would love to go into it in depth but that would take us down a long road that is really never ends. But I will say this, certain principles can apply even if you don’t believe in God. My personal take is that while there are many who have the inner discipline to “just say no” or kick their bad habits, for those of us who don’t, then the first thing I would say is gain the knowledge you need to fight the battle. Scripture is replete with wisdom for daily living.
Proverbs 24:5 says, "A wise man is full of strength, and a man of knowledge enhances his might".
This blog entry may be the beginning of that knowledge you need. Understanding how you body stores energy and fat is certainly going to help you if you need to lose weight.
A few years back I took my car for an oil change to a friend of mine. Now, I know to get oil changes every 3000 miles but like many, if I am over a few hundred miles I don’t’ worry too much. But much to my surprise, my friend kinda scolded me about being over a couple hundred miles. I was kind of taken a back by his concern until I realized, “wait, he is a mechanic, it doesn’t really matter what I think, if he is concerned then I should be.” The truth was, he knew more than I did and his knowledge gave him greater insight into what should be done.
The same is true with us. As our knowledge grows, our ability and inclination to make better choices does as well. I think about the people I know who have quit smoking. As hard as that is, the wealth of knowledge out there about the dangers of smoking certainly had an impact on their decision to quit this highly addictive and dangerous habit.
The truth is, ignorance is bliss. But only in the short term. The more knowledge I gain the more apt I am to make the right decision. If you are wise then that should be the case for you as well.
In terms of a sedentary lifestyle, one where you lack little if any physical exercise, that too is up to you. You don’t need to join a gym, or run 5 miles a day. I mean, if you do, it will certainly make the process of losing weight easier. It can amount to taking daily walks. Doing at home exercises. One of the reasons why obesity has not been a problem in human history is that at the same time food was somewhat scarce, our lifestyles were the type where there was a lot of physical activity. Particularly if you worked on a farm like many. All through human history humans walked a lot and destinations like the town square could be miles away. The energy we consumed was very often completely burned up. The advent and popularity of gyms has nearly mirrored the increase in lifestyles that had little to no physical activity. Also, remember my note from above, the more muscle you have the more Glycogen you can store. Well the good news is, if you build muscle and your Glycogen storage capacity increases, the less your body will use your ADIPOSE TISSUE to store energy. This is a whole other topic I hope to go into soon.
As far as your body is concerned, I hope this has helped you understand how the body functions when it comes to food. I would take a good hard look at it again. Try to map out your daily lifestyle and compare it with how your body functions. Remember, your body is not going to necessarily adjust to your lifestyle, so your lifestyle will need to adjust to your body and its processes. If you are overweight, chances are you are eating too much and storing too much of that energy you get from food. (Yes, certain genetic traits or medical issues can also be a reason, but I am speaking in general).So cut back on portion sizes to begin with. Remember it all boils down to how much excess you have, food choices notwithstanding. So, controlling how much you eat is critical. The reality is, it doesn’t matter what you eat, a calorie is a calorie when it comes to losing weight. With that being said, losing weight is not really the goal, being healthy is. So, making poor choices when it comes to food, even using portion control can still cause major issues down the road. I am not advocating eating everything available, just helping you understand that cutting back is the first step regardless.
To give you an example from my life, I work out 5-6 days a week about 1-1.5hrs. I do weight training and cardio. If I want to burn fat, here is the way I adjust my lifestyle to the way my body functions. When I eat, my body uses that fuel to function and give me the energy to do things like exercise. Now if I eat before I go to the gym, my body focuses on the glucose in my bloodstream to give me energy. It will use whatever amount of the calories I give it from eating. But say I don’t eat before I go to the gym. What does my body use as energy? Well, remember, I have stored energy in my liver and muscles I can use in the form of Glycogen. So my body will tap into that if I don’t have any energy from a morning meal. It is basically taking the energy from my previous meal the day before that my body has stored away.
Once my Glycogen storage is depleted, it will vary from individual, then the next level of energy my body will use for energy will be from Fat Cells, also called Ketosis. Its what the Keto diet is based on. If I am out of energy from Glucose and Glycogen, then Fat Cells/Adipose Tissue starts to burn. We don’t necessarily burn fat when we jump on the treadmill. It all depends on where our energy is being taken from. So if I go to the gym and my Glucose is empty and my Glycogen is depleted, my body will burn fat. When I eat after the gym, my Glucose level rises and my body uses that to energize me till my next meal. The process of storing Glycogen happens as well.
Does that make sense? Do you see how changing my lifestyle to adjust to my body is a better way of approaching this?
Now this is just me. I want to emphasize, EVERYBODY is different. Your lifestyle change will most likely look different than mine. Maybe dramatically. The key is this. You need a time when your Glucose levels are empty and your Glycogen levels are down so that when you burn energy, your body burns fat. (Knowing your levels are tricky, which is why I suggest taking it slow to see what works). This is typically sped up when you are fasting. But just note, fasting is anytime you are not eating, be it in between meals or while you are sleeping or on a prolonged fast, with sleeping being most likely the longest period of fasting for most people. I will caution you, check with your doctor or nutritionist before you do any sort of prolonged fasting.
Let me point out a few things before I finish up.
It is my opinion that one of the main reasons why people give up dieting is because they don’t understand that losing weight is a different process than maintaining weight. I have maintained my weight my entire life, it has been the product of years in wrestling. So I understand this process well. Losing weight means tapping into the storage of fat our bodies have, maintaining your weight once you have reached your goal is about not adding to that storage and balancing the energy you consume with the energy you burn. Your body actually works really hard at this emitting hormones to maintain this balance. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much more than that in terms of helping you to lose weight.
So as you are adjusting your lifestyle (I am a big proponent of choosing a healthy lifestyle over dieting) keep in mind, the process of losing weight is tough, but its temporary. I think many people view the weight loss process as something they must continue, but its not. It is only necessary when losing the weight. If you lose the weight by taking in less calories than you burn, the only thing you need to do to maintain that is keep a 50/50 balance of calories consumed and calories burnt. You don’t really need to continue with a calorie deficit. If you overeat today, consume less tomorrow. As long as it is balanced out in the end you will be fine.
One final thing. In light of what we have learned in this posting, one thing stands out. The reason why dieting/losing weight is so hard is because it isn’t natural. The things we have to do today to maintain a healthy weight weren’t things we needed to do all throughout human history. Weight management came without thought or intention. It was built into our lifestyles. The things that happened naturally back then, take much more thought in this day and age. Things are different and we need a much more intentional approach today.
I hope this has been helpful.
Rich
Comments