The Fundamental Problem With Dieting and Why It Does Not Work The complaints of diets being ineffective or temporary resonate throughout the continent. Millions of copies of various fad diets adorn the shelves of every bookstore and short stories pad the pages of magazines. All pursuing a goal that can never be reached. The goal is to be able to lose weight quickly or easily without gaining it back in a matter of days. People complain that even looking at a hot-fudge Sunday makes them gain a pound. When you consider the fundamental problem, it becomes obvious that all fad diets are doomed to fail. The fundamental problem is expecting our bodies to disobey nature’s rules for survival. Consider first that humans did not pop into existence as implied by literal translations of the Old Testament or paintings by 16th century masters. Then consider the fundamental process of energy transfers in living; recognize the foundation of good nutrition; and plan to control weight fluctuations without going hungry. Despite paintings by Rembrandt, Michelangelo and Botticelli, human beings are not far removed from Neanderthals. Take a picture of Jim, Lucy Lawless or me to the exhibit of prehistoric man at the Smithsonian museum of natural history and compare. The resemblance is uncanny. In those days we were predatory animals who figured out how to use tools. It wasn’t until relatively recently that we became civilized and figured out how to make slaves plant and harvest food for us. However, even with livestock breeding and cultivation, we still had to endure periods of feast and famine. Not with as much difficulty as the Neanderthals, but there were plenty of ‘lean times’. Only in modern history do we enjoy periods that are all feasts. So we intentionally suffer famine. We thank the invention of electric refrigeration and trans-equatorial shipments of fresh produce. But our bodies are still efficient and economical machines designed to hunt, feast and tolerate starving. And there lies the problem. As predators, we had to tolerate the periods when this week’s dinner decided to stay in the woods. We had to tolerate when flash floods, bugs or bacteria destroyed entire crops. Yes, millions of people starved to death. The few who survived carried the necessary genes for famine tolerance. Those genes saved our ancestors. But now they plague us. I won’t argue that there is a percentage who carried the genes to be barbaric bastards and survived because they stole the competition’s food (or just ate the competition). Obviously, I agree with the concepts of heredity and natural selection. However, I disagree with applying it to using Mom’s figure is the reason for being chunky too. If Mom is a 5’4” size 18 and you are too, then you can credit heredity for being 5’4”. But you can’t include the size 18 feature. You may have inherited a low metabolism, but not a propensity to eat more than you burn. Your eating habits, portion sizing, menu selection and cooking style are handed down as tradition, not heredity. It is your choice to cook and eat the same as Mom and it is your choice to also be “a little on the heavy side”. Our metabolism and weight fluctuations can be understood by an analogy to a bucket with a whole in the bottom. Imagine a bucket with a thumb-sized hole and you are scooping water from the creek to fill the bucket. You dump a scoop into the bucket and it slowly leaks out the hole. If you scoop quickly the bucket fills and too slowly the bucket empties. Our bodies behave very similarly. The foods we consume are like the scoops of water. The energy we burn by ordinary living is the hole. The fluctuating level of water is the size of our butts. We eat, digest, work, play, burn what we need and store the rest. If the bucket has a 3-finger sized hole, it will require rapid scooping to keep a minimum level of water. Some people have metabolisms that are like that. They eat constantly, guzzle 2-liter cokes, buy chocolate chips in bulk, look like poster children for C.A.R.E. and have Chihuahuas for pets. Some people inherit metabolisms that relate to a bucket with a pencil-sized hole. If they also eat constantly, guzzle 2-liter cokes and buy chocolate chips in bulk, they take up 2 seats on the airplane. The rest of us have buckets with thumb-sized holes and we scoop at comfortable rates. Each individual has to govern eating habits to balance intake with energy consumption. If your metabolism is naturally very high or you have a very high activity job, then a 2500 calorie diet would be for weight loss. On the other hand, if your metabolism is low and you are a confirmed couch potato, 2500 calories will add to the padding. After a while, with no change in diet, your weight changes will level out, even in an upward direction. This is because your total calorie needs will change with your weight. For example: An average 170 # person who lives comfortably on 2500 calories is ordered to strap on a 50# scuba belt and wear it all day every day. He or she will find that eating 3000 calories will not cause a weight gain because the extra calories are being used for carrying around the heavy waist. Everything would be just wonderful if we did not occasionally get carried away with enjoying the feasts from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. Or we have mothers who won’t let us leave the table without a clean plate. Or we find comfort in eating certain foods like Hershey bars, cheese twists and biggy-fries. High carbohydrate diets are said to be somewhat addictive. Also, we would have less of a national obesity problem if the federal guidelines did not recommend high-carbo diets. Our national advisors have published the ‘nutrition pyramid’ and effectively replaced our pint sized scoops with 2-liter mega-scoops. How can we expect our ‘bucket’ to drain if only two scoops fills it? We try by only using a fraction of the scoop. The traditional calorie reduction diet is moderately successful, but we starve. Carbohydrates, whether in the form of simple sugars or complex starches, are easily digested and go into our bloodstream as glucose. The cells need glucose and oxygen to do their functions and continue staying a cell. Without it, muscle cells do not function, organ cells lose hormone balance, brain cells lose connections and we just feel AWFUL. We are not grazing animals and eat all day long. We eat in bursts. Under the control of our pancreas and thyroid, our livers work as the buffer to keep the glucose level constant. Some foods, such as fruit juice, pepsi, and sweet tea, convert to glucose and absorb immediately. Others, such as pasta, convert more slowly and spike the sugar after an hour. The liver stashes the extra sugar and releases it, as it is needed. When the storage capacity is exceeded, the extra molecules are linked backed together and reassembled as oils. Our fat cells then store it in the anticipation that dinner may decide to stay in the woods. Keep in mind that we are still Neanderthals. While dinner stays in the woods, we get fundamental nutrients from roots and berries. Our fat cells slowly release the oil and it is unlinked, supplementing the low glucose. Then when dinner comes out of the woods, we have the energy to chase it down, or run from it. I am not recommending a copy of the Atkins diet. Your body does not do well with avoiding carbohydrates completely. Elevated ketone levels put a strain on our kidneys and liver. Nutrition 101 is correct that we need a balanced diet. But unless your ambition is to build mass in your hips, thighs and an extra chin then the balance needs to be with protiens as the base and carbos at the top of the pyramid. Some carbos are important for weight loss diets, too. The mechanism that converts the oil stored in a fat cell goes through several steps and the presence of a sugar molecule is part of a step. At first, the fat cells release the oils at a fairly fast rate. If the dinner comes out of the woods tomorrow or we want to use the time to make more Neanderthals, our energy level and metabolism rate is doing rather well. But sometimes, dinner stays in the woods or the black sheep Neanderthal cousins steal it. Our ancestors who couldn’t take going hungry for very long… well they’re not really our ancestors are they? The ones, who DID survive to become our ancestors, carried the genes to tolerate starving. What that gene does is to automatically lower our metabolism and decrease the need for releasing the oil. We still survive and have the energy to catch dinner, make more Neanderthals or escape from being dinner for the saber-toothed tiger. What nature does is to make the thumb-sized hole shrink down to a finger-sized hole as soon as it detects that there are insufficient scoops dumping into the bucket. As the level gets lower, the hole shrinks to pinkie sized. (uh oh) Everybody who tries to lose weight by fasting, or 800-calorie diets, notices that a few pounds drop the first 2 days. “Yippee!” we shriek with glee. It goes that way for several days. But a couple weeks later our Neanderthal dad’s genes decide we need to save on gas and effectively cuts the credit card. We find we are starving and the scale does not show much, if any, change. “Bummer!” we mope. Face it, it won’t change. Your Neanderthal dad won’t let it. You have a choice. You can fool mom, or you can tell her to kiss off. Telling mom “Kiss off!”, as usual, comes with consequences. Having your stomach stapled such that the capacity dwindles to the size of a baseball, is the equivalent of giving Mother Nature the finger. She will spank you with a life long case of indigestion, oil intolerance, and other ailments because the second step in your digestive system is permanently screwed up. The alternative choice is to just fool her a little bit. You can synthesize a higher metabolism. You drill out the bucket’s pinkie size hole into thumb size again. Not a hard guess on how to do it, is it? Yes, it is to exercise. Even a low impact, low stress version as easy as walking will raise your metabolism to recreate the calorie demand and release the energy your body stores in fat cells. To lose weight, you must burn more calories than you consume. To maintain good health you must also consume the nutrients needed to keep your blood chemistry in good balance. Many people think that is an impossible situation. How can you do both? It is easier than you think. You reduce the calories that come in the form of simple sugars and carbohydrates, and increase the calories that come in the form of minerals and amino acids. Turn the pyramid upside down and eat 700 to 400 calories worth of lean meat, 200 calories of carbohydrates, and all the green beans, brocolli, spinach, brussel sprouts and lettuce as you can hold. Spread the meals across the day and do not eat anything within 2 hours of bedtime. Then walk around the block twice. I have witnessed people dropping 30 pounds in the first two months and continuing to lose at the rate of a pound per week over a year. Once you have reached the desired goal, increase the total calories until your weight does not continue to drop. When it rises, drop the total by 200 calories. Keep the ratio of carbohydrates to proteins the same. Recognize that every can of Coke is 160 calories of pure carbo. I prefer to drink water instead and eat the 160 carbo calories in the form of chocolate cake. It is a documented fact that, as far as your padded posterior is concerned, there is no difference between the 270 calories in a nuke-n-puke fettuccini, a Snickers bar, and 2 cans of Pepsi. Even the innocent baked potatoe is 500 calories of pure carb even before making it palatable with 250 calories of sour cream and bacon bits. Whether they are complex carbohydrate calories or simple sugar calories, three hours after consumption they have all gone through your liver as sugars. Some will be used to energize your metabolism and the rest are heading to take up semi-permanent residence on your hips. Avoid the attraction of flavored drinks that are loaded with sugar. Your body needs 4 pints of fluids per day. So it should be no surprise that a 2 liter bottle of Coke is drained in a day. Do the math folks. Multiply the serving by the calories per serving and you know that those drinks added nearly 800 calories of all carbo, no protein, no minerals and no vitamins. That means you are sacrificing a third of your diet that could instead be tasteful and nutritious food. Try a menu like this… Breakfast – eggs or any vitamin fortified cereal like total/wheaties. (Eggs are better if your cholesterol is OK.) For lunch – Pack a sandwich with 2 leaves lettuce, sliced tomato, ham/turkey (go light on the mayo.) For dinner – Grill a chicken breast sprinkled with onion powder and garlic. Grate half an ounce of fresh Parmesan cheese on top and cover long enough to melt. 1/3 cup of corn 2/3 cup of green beans. Instead of chips, fries, nuke-n-pukes, 10 bucks and starvation… you can have the above for $6, lose a pound/week and feel well fed. Tough choice??? Go back to essays menu return to HOME If you have comments, questions or suggestions, please email [email protected]
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