Why are we so fat? 

As a result of my research which has spanned over 30 years, I feel a growing realization that the way we Americans wish to live is totally unfit for the way our bodies were genetically created. Whether we like the diet industry or not (I don't, bigtime), just looking around us we will see that about 60 percent of the populace in our country is too fat - whether slightly large or very large. This is not to say that the stick thin models are any type of model for us. But considering our bodyfat percentage alone, we should be in the 20-25 percent bodyfat range. It's interesting that some long term Weight Loss Surgery patients do not achieve this medically healthy bodyfat percentage range even though their weights are within BMI limits. BMI can bite us in many ways. Weight is not significant - bodyfat percentage is the telling factor. Below are some of the reasons I've found for obesity on a societal level in the United States today:

  1. The Thrifty gene:  In people possessing the 'thrifty gene', the fact that the built in appetite suppressants (LEPTIN et al) don't seem to work may be an indication of an adaptation to former times when food was available a few times a year, and people who were "leptin resistant" (i.e. their bodies ignored the hormonal messages to stop storing fat and shut down the appetite) fared better because they could eat to gain a lot of weight when food was available which kept them alive in the lean times. People we suspect probably have "the thrifty gene" are the PIMA Indians and African Americans. Many of us others descended from German farmers etc might also have "The thrifty gene".

    It's interesting to note that the one rat study which "proved" that restricting caloric intake made the rats live longer was very flawed in that those rats in the control group which were allowed demand feeding were not set up like they are in nature. For a rat to "catch" its food, it takes a whole lot of caloric expenditure and the food is limited to the extent of the catch. In the experiment, food was available all the time (unlimited) and the rats had to expend NO calories to obtain it. A scientist who could not repeat the results when he corrected that aspect of the study, remarked that the study only showed that overfed, underexercised rats lived a slightly shorter lifespan.

    Conclusion?     Americans need to reconfigure their ideas and realize that since food is always readily available, we need to keep track of the caloric intake since our appetites may not tell us when we've had enough.
  2. Availability of fatty foods: This is something which was not even true when I was a kid. With a fast food restaurant on every corner, with microwaves and frozen foods, all of us can obtain a warm delicious meal within seconds. The foods we have today are chemically engineered to taste extremely delicious. But being very high in fat content, they are not very dense, so after we eat them, they fool our bodies into thinking we have not had enough because the stomach isn't close to being filled. In days of yore, people ate simply. Food was tasty but not chemically engineered for taste. People ate pretty much the same thing daily - and food was not readily available... a warm dinner took several hours to make. So if we had snacks, we were more likely to snack on fruit rather than doughnuts, bagels or the plethora of foods we have available to us today. Fatty food not only doesn't take up much room in the stomach, it also provides high numbers of calories. So an 'ordinary meal' which won't necessarily fill you up such as a MacDonald's hamburger, fries and a chocolate shake is 1200 calories or most of a day's allotment of calories. We don't have to eat that many extra calories per day to gain weight - for example on a slim 100 extra calories a day, we will gain 1 pound every month approx. That's 12 lbs a year. And that's 120 lbs in 10 years. I actually know very large people who gained this slowly up to 500 and 600 lbs.

    Conclusion: There is a growing body of research which shows that a more natural diet for us may consist of a vegan or lacto-vegan quisine. Vegetables (NO BUTTER PLEASE) tend to fill us up and are loaded with vitamins, minerals and even some cancer preventing chemicals. We fill up with a sufficient number of calories and yet, we are not too prone to overeat on vegetables because they are not chemically engineered to taste seductively good. IF we think of it, in former societies where meat was not plentiful, diets consisted mostly of vegetables. It's quite clear that the more we can avoid the chemically engineered foods, the better it will be for our bodies as well as for controlling obesity.

  3. Total lack of muscular movement required in daily life: Laboring jobs are being increasingly done by machines - most of us have jobs in the 'information society'. We sit at computers for 10-12 hours a day burning no calories, compressing our spines in a not-so-good-manner. Many of us work without breaks. In the morning we walk 3 steps to the john, another few steps to the car, another few to work and that's about all we'll do. The Surgeon General's Report of 1996 stated that Americans burn some 800 calories less than their parents did! 800 calories... you have to run for an hour just to be even with your parents. Despite this, fewer than 25 percent of the population exercises 3 times a week or more!

    The lack of muscular movement extends beyond our jobs. We have all sorts of labor saving devices - I remember when my Mom washed with a wringer washer and then, hung out her laundry on the line to dry - compare to the 'automatic washers' and dryers we all use today! Our entertainment is mostly sitting and watching movies or TV. We don't even get up off the sofa to change the channel. And some tell us that we burn less calories watching TV than we burn when we sleep! The idea of biking or hiking for recreation is considered a bit quaint or even 'extremist'. The idea of taking a bike to the store which is only a couple of miles away is considered strange. People who have eschewed cars for bikes are looked upon as weirdos. If anyone has ever noticed though, those full time bikers are always slim wierdos!

    Conclusion? Since our lifestyle does not provide it, we need TO ADD daily exercise. Daily! At least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise to keep heart healthy (which will also curve our obesity as well). Forty minutes to an hour DAILY, is even better! As much as we can substitute Human Power for cars and other labor saving devices, we will greatly benefit. (The atmosphere would appreciate less cars polluting the environment as well)

  4. The American Attitudes It's beginning to become clearer that our American attitudes are greatly aiding the obesity crisis. We seem to feel that avoiding physical activity is the best thing in the world. I can't tell you how many people beg to pick me up in their cars so "I won't have to ride a bike so far". I've had people wanting to go 20 miles out of their way to save me a bike ride. I want to scream at those well meaning people "DON'T YOU KNOW THAT MY BODY WANTS AND NEEDS A BIKE RIDE???".

    Another thing we do is that eating is some kind of passtime for us and we feel that if we are denied even a bit of this fatty and very unhealthy food which we crave, that we have no quality of life. This gets so bad that often parties are nothing more than eatfests! And those of us who are restricting calories or food types, stand there with our fingers up a certain part of our anatomy, wondering if anyone will notice that there is absolutely nothing happening at this so called party excepting the over consumption of a lot of unhealthy food.

    Another problem attitude we have is that discipline is a dirty word. Our gymnasts got fried by the Russian and Romanian gymnasts in the 2000 Olympics. Coach Bela Karolyi stated he felt the team lacked for the high level of discipline required to achieve the gold medal quality of gymnastics. Changing our environment including trying to incorporate movement into our sedentary lives, saying "NO" to the myriad of delectable goodies available within arm's reach and watching our caloric intake takes a whole lot of discipline. It's not that Americans don't have the ability to discipline themselves but that they feel it is not a positive thing to do this.

    We eat fat, we overconsume food for pleasure and we don't move and it's such a mystery that MOST IN USA are some kind of obese?
  5. Food addiction: The latest studies indicate that people who tend to become addicted to various substances have less dopamine receptors in the brain. There is also some evidence that eating (or drinking or drugs or whatever) tends to cause some people to produce endorphins, a natural form of heroine which is an excellent pain killer among other things. With the ready availability of chemically engineered, delicious food, food addiction is likely to be existant in some people. In some of the very obese, it might be a factor. Weight Watchers offers many tools to deal with eating disorders and food addiction.

  6. Endocrine problems: This is the most often quoted reason for extreme obesity. Research has not supported this reason as a factor in most cases. Current medical thought is that endocrine deficiencies account for less than 1 percent of extreme obesity. Medicine offers several medications which help those who do have endocrine-related obesity. It also may be that those who are 'fat and fit' like Dave Alexander do have an endocrine problem however, research tends to suggest that if a healthy lifestyle is followed, an endocrine challenged individual can have little to no health risks from related obesity.

We have research on entire populations which proves beyond a doubt that the environment determines the rate of not only, obesity, but also diabetes, heart disease and stroke. In one society in Mexico where the people have no cars, run everywhere, have active physical funtimes, have no labor saving devices and eat a simple diet with very little meat and mostly complex carbs, there is NO, NONE, ZIP heart disease in addition to no-none-zip obesity. The Mexican PIMAS show the same thing and yet, their genetic cousins up here are the fattest society in the USA. Mexicans in Mexico who walk places, have less labor saving devices and very few fast food places are reasonably lean but after they move here, they start to get VERY FAT.

And we have a diet industry which tickles our ears. Each Weight Loss Surgery website tells people what they want to hear. It's not the lifestyle, it's not the fact that they haven't moved more than three steps in decades and it's not the fact that they are consuming a bunch of high fat, high calorie, non-dense foods which our bodies are not genetically equipt to handle. No, it's not any of this. It's something they just can't help, they don't overeat or undermove, they are GENETIC! So with that in mind, they are cordially invited to come to the clinic and a surgeon will alter the body by partially destroying the digestive tract to force them to give up the American lifestyle of fatty and sweet foods. No one seems to notice that the surgeons are basically NOT having the surgery to control their obesity but are instead, altering the environment - something they often neglect to mention to their patients. And no one seems to notice that the talk among surgeons assumes that very obese people lack the ABILITY to change their lifestyles, when in fact, many of us simply did not KNOW about what obesity research had discovered! They talk of us with disgust like we are lazy fat pigs.

(I am still amazed at the difference in the treatment a lean person gets. In my recent trip to urgent care (passed a kidney stone...ouch...), they treated me like royality. Before when I looked fatter, I was treated in a shabby manner. The odd thing is I still weigh heavy at 229 lbs but no one complains or seems to notice it! Looks figure so high in our American culture!)

Alter the body or alter the environment! Altering the environment will make us live long healthy lives. Altering the body has yet to be proven safe for more than a few years.

It's a choice which few Americans make in full consent because the diet industry and the popular media withhold the facts.

by Sue Widemark

Bibliography:

The following books have information on Obesity research and some info on Weight Loss Surgery in them:

More information about the long term studies of 20,000 men can be found at (The Cooper Institute):

http://www.cooperinst.org/

Reading several magazines from cover to cover for years including "Muscle and Fitness", "Shape", "Fitness", "Fitness Swimmer" and more.

Several PBS and Discovery Health TV shows, "Obesity the Epidemic" and more.

The following books - a partial list over a 30 year period:

diet exercise books

 Healthread!