A Survival-Oriented Metabolism Is The Secret Reason You’re Overweight
You ever watched the show ‘Alone’? It’s basically just a reality show about who can starve in the wild for the longest. The people who can put on a ton of weight beforehand can last way longer than the really skinny guys before their bodies start to shut down and they have to quit. Obviously, whoever can manage to kill a large animal and store the meat has the biggest advantage, but all things equal it really is impressive how much an advantage fat storage is in a survival situation.
Why Fat Storage Happens In The Body?
Well the evolutionary point of putting on weight is to prepare for a future survival situation, not that you are in a survival situation when you are putting on the weight. Hence a theory about how stress increases weight gain (calories being equal). Our bodies are preparing for a survival situation. Sort of why global weight/bmi is also increasing as the world gets more stressful
Famines and Droughts
Back then our ancestors had to experience times of famine and times of abundance. Usually time of famine occurs during the winter period when plant based food are barely found. To survive and avoid dying from starvation, they would need to store a lot of fat that they will use as energy during time of famine. They can do so during the time of abundance, which is when the climate is warmer and allows plant based food to grow in abundance for them to eat and fatten themselves up.
Those who have genes that fails to fatten up effectively, tends to not survive the time of famine therefore people without the genes fail to produce offsprings and those that do have the genes that can increase adiposity faster can produce offsprings with the genes to help them survive later (essentially survival of the fittest). Most of us have this gene, but since we’ve got food now available throughout the year and have higher caloric value, we eat more and more and become progressively overweight (assuming we live sedentary lifestyle).
The Modern Lifestyle
Our metabolism is virtually unchanged from pre-agricultural times when we were hunter-gatherers who were active getting their food, and what little surplus we got was stored as fat for leaner times.
This worked great back then but not in modern society where a lot of people live sedentary lives and food is readily available.
How to get rid of that excess fat
The most simple and common way to lose weight is just eating less and doing more.
Fasting is extremely effective but also incredibly risky especially if you are already overweight. You just have to slowly shrink the size of your stomach by eating less food or more filling foods that have less calories.
Salads are the basic “health” food because they fill your stomach up without 1000s of calories unless you just drench it in ranch or something.
Losing weight should be an improvement, not a punishment.
Food intake should revolve around getting all the nutrients and then going for the caloric deficit needed for weight loss.
