Those who have been following me for a while know that I am on a journey to lose weight and to become healthier. I really am taking this quite seriously, for it isn’t just about eating healthily and exercising, but also about trying to absorb and apply as much information on the subject as possible. For this reason, I have devoured (pun intended) as many books (and documentaries) about weight loss and health that I can get my hands on (I’m including a list of recommended material at the end of the post.)
Recently I discovered Gary Taubes’s “Why we get fat,” which will be the topic of today’s post. Gary Taubes is by all means a scientist. He studied physics at Harvard University, as well as aerospace engineering at Stanford. However, he is also a very skilled journalist. He got a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and has written for several magazines, including Science and Discover. In his “Why we get fat” Taubes seeks to explain the obesity epidemic in light of decades of scientific evidence that he feels has either been ignored or hidden from the public by the authorities and scientists alike.
More than 1 billion of the world’s adults are overweight (if you’re keeping track of the world’s demographics, you’d know that that’s 1/7 of the total population) and at least 300 million of those are considered obese (having a body mass index of over 30). As you all know, the problem with being overweight and obese is not just a matter of vanity, but most importantly one of health and wellbeing, for overweight and obese people have greater risks of suffering from chronic diseases such as: type 2 diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases (heart failure, elevated cholesterol, etc.), osteoarthritis, etc. Furthermore, the problem isn’t just a personal one, but society in general gets the backlash of it too. At the beginning of 2011, a report was published that estimated the total cost of obesity at a staggering $270 billion a year in the United States alone! (Why don’t you do something about that Obama?) Childhood obesity is also on the rise. It has more than tripled in the last 30 years! In 2008, reports in the US showed that more than 30% of children and adolescents were overweight. (Yea, it's not a pretty picture.)
Despite the fact that the US Department of Agriculture and the American Heart Association both have voiced their opinions regarding the recommended dietary guidelines for Americans, obesity is still on the rise, leading to the conclusion that something is clearly not working. For this reason, Gary Taubes dived head first into years and years of scientific reports on nutrition and health, trying to find if there was anything that scientists and physicians had missed or overlooked.
The conventional answer to the question “Why do we get fat?” is that our caloric intake is greater than our energy expenditure, or to put it simply and bluntly, we eat too much and don't move enough. However, one of the observations that particularly struck Taubes was the fact that in societies all over the world, there is increasing evidence of obesity coexisting with malnutrition. For instance, here in Honduras (and many other Latin American countries too, actually) it is quite common to see overweight mothers with severely malnourished children. One would immediately start to question how this is possible? Do mothers willingly overeat at the expense of keeping their kids undernourished? As Taubes humorously put it, “Do the mothers sneak out of the house at the middle of the night to eat a Snickers bar that they could very well have given to their children?” He argues that this would undoubtedly go against universally accepted notions of maternity. Therefore, it would probably be simpler to change the paradigm with which we think about obesity and its causes.
For Taubes, answering the question of “why we get fat?” by saying that it’s because we eat too much and don’t burn enough calories would be analogous to saying that an auditorium is crowded because a lot of people decided to go into it, but not enough people decided to go out. Taubes's point in using this comparison is to illustrate that the answer most traditionally used to answering the question of obesity is too simple and says nothing about the true reasons WHY it actually happens.
Essentially, the alternate hypothesis that he proposes is that “we don’t get fat because we overeat, we overeat because our fat tissue is accumulating excess fat.” In other words, “overeating and inactivity are compensatory effects, not causes of obesity.” For Taubes, the real explanation for why we get fat is that our fat cells have become deregulated and they’ve started to take in nutrients that should be available to other tissues, which in turn makes us hungrier and tired.
So, what can we do about it? Taubes argues that insulin is the key to it all. Insulin is one of the most important hormones involved in the metabolism of fat. For those who aren’t very good with science, let me try to explain in a simply way how fat is metabolized. Once fat enters the digestive system, it is broken down into its constituent fatty acids, which are burned for fuel. Now, when fatty acids aren’t immediately used up, they enter fat cells, where they amalgamate to form triglycerides, their unit of storage. It’s easy for the fatty acids to pass into the fat cells, but it’s hard for the triglycerides to exit (they’re too large.) Therefore, one would logically assume that in order to lose the fat deposits (and consequentially, lose weight), all one would need to do is to reverse the process; to break down the triglycerides into their constituent fatty acids so that they can exit the fat cells and be used up for energy. The only way that this happens is actually through insulin deficiency. However, as I’m sure you’re all aware, insulin deficiency can lead to diabetes.
Since insulin is secreted primarily in response to carbohydrates, Taubes’s research indicates that obesity can be cured (or at least controlled) by maintaining a low carbohydrate diet. If you’re anything like me, you were probably disappointed by his grand conclusion, for this is not a ground-breaking statement. The Atkins diet has been promising rapid weight loss for years, just as long as its adherents are willing to give up carbohydrates completely. That said, Taubes does a great job at presenting the information in a way that is methodical, but above all easy to understand. I might not eliminate carbohydrates from my diet completely, for I truly do believe in balance, but I’ll certainly try to limit them (even more than I already do.) One way of doing so is by following the low glycemic index. (http://www.southbeach-diet-plan.com/glycemicfoodchart.htm)
Personally, I’m a huge fan of the Mediterranean-style diet, with its high consumption of olive oil, legumes, nuts, fruits and vegetables, fish, and wine. I’m also trying to eat as organically as possible. However, I’ve also read up on raw food diets and vegetarianism, which in my opinion are a bit extreme, even if their adherents swear that going on these types of regiments has completely changed their lives. Again, this journey is all about learning as much as I can in order to make the best choices for myself and my health.
Recommendations.
Books:
- Michael Pollan, "Food Rules"
- Michael Pollan, "In Defense of Food"
- Arthur Agatston, "The South Beach Diet"
- Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, "Skinny Bitch"
- Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell, "The China Study"
Documentaries:
- Super Size Me
- Food, Inc.
- Foodmatters
- Forks over knives
- Supercharge me! 30 Days Raw
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