Why are we getting fatter

·       In 1970 1% of the population was obese

·       In 2012 35% of the population is obese

What has changed? We had McDonalds, Pizzas, cakes, and coke in the 70`s, but we were not as fat.

Sugar has changed. The amount and type of sweet sugary foods we eat has changed. High Fructose Corn Syrup is everywhere. It is much sweeter than sugar so you’d would think the food industry would use less of it, oh no the food industry uses the same amount as they did sugar, making the sweet foods sweeter!

I watched a programme on TV a few weeks ago, it stated that there was a:

·         16% decrease in consumption in the amount of fizzy drink that contain sugar

·         35% increase in consumption in the amount of artificially sweetened fizzy drinks

But we are still getting fatter. On the show they explained the continuing weight gain by saying the people who were drinking the sugar sweetened drinks were drinking more of them. What?  Less people drinking the sugary fizzy but we are getting fatter anyway.

Lots of the low calorie drinks are sweetened with Aspartame, which has been linked to the increase in obesity and many other health concerns as well. Aspartame heightens the pleasure seeking receptors in the brains and makes us crave more of the sweet stuff.

We are conditioned to believe that fat will make us fat and that if we eat fewer calories and increase our exercise we will lose weight. Well hello it’s not working! We are getting fatter.

The obesity crisis is almost a pandemic never mind an epidemic.

They are many factors that may contribute to the weight gain.

·         Emotional, we are living in a more stressful era

·         Hectic lifestyles

·         High birth weight

·         Diet history of our parents

One theory is a high birth weight and the health and diet of the mother.

Babies born with high birth weights are more likely to suffer from insulin resistance problems and obesity later in life. If you think about it the diet and lifestyles of our mothers and fathers in the 1900`s up to the 50 or 60`s is completely different to ours today.. Those diets would have been more natural, no processed foods, no high fructose corn syrup and a lot less stressful. They weren’t eating low fat foods either. We are breeding generations of sick and obese people

Talking about low fat foods, what happens when you take the fat out of the food? It tastes bland, that’s what, so they add in some sugar to make it taste nice. So low in fat but high in sugar and if it’s not sugar it’s an artificial sweetener.

So we are cutting back on calories, cutting back on fat, increasing exercise, but still we are getting fatter, obviously it’s not working. We need to change how we see food and how we understand food.

For instance calories, what are they, are they all the same?

The body takes the calories it gets from food and turns them into fuel. Some of the calories give you more efficient fuel. Like paper thrown on a fire, it will burn very quickly, a bit of a useless fuel really but if you throw a log on the fire it will burn for much longer.

The calories from the food we eat are the very same, is 200 kcal from a glass of coke the same as 200kcal from a piece of fruit and some nut butter or a yogurt and a piece of fruit?

We have to look at the quality of the carbohydrates we are eating and how full we feel after eating them. Simply cutting back on calories is not enough.

Everybody needs energy, and we get our energy from the food that we eat. Mainly we get the energy from carbohydrate based food. Our body uses energy all the time even while we sleep. We use energy to make hormones, to digest the food we eat and our brain uses energy to think.

So what does your body do with the energy it gets from food?

When we eat carbohydrates or high sugar foods or fruits that are high in sugar the sugar enters the blood stream and our bodies will use this sugar and convert it to fuel. The body needs to keep tight control on how much sugar is floating around in the blood. Having too much sugar in the blood is like having a high octane fuel in your blood. The damage it will do is enormous; it will damage blood vessels and arteries, and is one of the biggest causes in cardiovascular disease.  

One study on cardiovascular disease states “that it is not the butter you put on your toast that is causing the problem it’s the toast”.

So you have all this sugar floating around in your blood, your body then releases a hormone called Insulin to bring the sugar from the blood to the cell. The cell now has fuel for energy.

But what happens when the cells are full of fuel?  When your car has a full tank of petrol you can’t put anymore in, it will just overflow and spill out. When your cells are full of fuel the body stores a little bit in the muscles to use later if we run out and the rest it stores as FAT. So even though you are not eating fat you are storing fat from the starch and sugary foods you are eating. Not only that but the more you eat of these foods the more insulin you will produce.

 Insulin is a FAT STORING HORMONE, it promotes the storage of fat. Eventually your body will become resistant to insulin. You will have lots of insulin floating around storing fat and lots of sugar floating around because your body is resistant to the insulin. This is the start of Type II Diabetes and spells disaster for the cardiovascular system. Remember all that high octane fuel tearing holes in your blood vessels.

Just eating one pizza will keep your insulin levels raised for 9 hours. So for 9 hours your body is in fat storing mode! There are theories at the moment that suggest eating 5 small meals per day actually keep your insulin raised. So we should learn to hear what our body needs, Is it hungry? Is it just craving something? Does it even know what hunger is?

If you’re not resistant to the insulin and the blood sugar drops our brain gets a signal to tell us to eat, to get fuel from somewhere. That’s when we get cravings for sugar and starchy carbohydrates. You eat the sugar your blood sugar goes up very high, insulin comes out to get it out of the blood, brings some to the cells for energy, and the rest is stored as fat. How many times a day does your body do this? Keeping the blood sugar level is important. But how do we do that?

We need to learn to listen to our bodies, change the quality of the calories we eat, we need to be aware what is happening when our blood sugar drops and eat appropriately. Learn the difference between the empty calories and carbohydrates and quality protein foods and carbohydrates.