What Makes us Fat

There’s an idea that’s been accepted by the mainstream. This idea is a theory although most people don’t know that. This theroy has no inherent strength over any opposing theories. It is not supported by any controlled studies. It fails to fit much of the observable evidence. And although it at first sounds intuitive, on deeper thought it lacks common sense. What is it? It’s the idea that eating too much makes you fat.

“Say what!?” I can hear some of you saying, but bear with me. I’m going to break this argument apart so you never think about it the same way again.

Let’s start out by stating exactly what we mean by “fat”. We mean a high body-fat percentage. And we mean primarily abdominal obesity, the type that’s associated with all the degenerative diseases.

Let’s start off with the energy balance equation:
change in energy stores = calories consumed – calories expended
On the face of it this seems straightforward enough. You can’t really get around it, so any argument based on the energy balance equation has an air of certainty. But going from there to “eating too much makes you fat” is a big leap. Let’s look at some of the assumptions we’re ignoring in making this leap.

First is the direction of causality. There is a theory known as partitioning. The idea behind it is that your hormones determine which nutrients go where. If, for example, your hormonal state is such that it’s pushing energy into fat cells rather than using it for things like immune function and tissue repair, then the driver here is “change in energy stores”, not “calories consumed”. That hormones would be driving a homeostatic process seems normal, as that is how every other function in the body is regulated. No one would say a child is growing because he eats too much or a bodybuilder has too many muscles because he eats too much. But, for some reason, when it comes to weight and diet, such thinking goes out the window.

The second oversight is independence of the variables. There’s nothing that states they are independent, and the observable evidence would indicate they are not. Dieting and overeating have been shown to regularly produce lowering and raising of the metabolic rate, respectively. In fact, depending on the extremity of the diet, dieters can begin to suffer severe consequences long before desired weight comes off.

A third oversight is what’s hidden in the terms themselves. “Energy stores” could refer to adipose tissue, or it could refer to glycogen stores. And it doesn’t specify where the storage is either. Why would one person store fat primarily in the belly, and another throughout their body, unless it was hormonal? And why wouldn’t the body take the opportunity of the available extra energy to increase all its processes and max out lean tissues?

These are questions any dieter should ask, but I want to move on. Let’s look at some of the readily observable evidence. I have three points here.

First is that animals in their natural environment are usually quite lean, unless they are gaining fat for a specific purpose: i.e. hibernation or living in a cold climate. This leanness is regardless of the abundance or scarcity of food.

Second is what we know of humans in their natural environment. According to what we know of primitive cultures prior to contact with Western civilization, they did not suffer from overweight and obesity. This is documented by researchers such as T.L. Cleave, Western Price, Staffan Lindeberg, and others. This would be the case often in spite of an abundance of food. The Pima indians of the southwestern US are often upheld as examples of the “thrifty gene hypothesis”. What most people don’t realize is that the Pima, like most indiginous cultures, had an abundance of food before white men arrived. Oh, and they were not fat and diabetic.

The third point is what actually happens to people who diet. Long term dieting success rates are abysmal: 5% at the most optimistic. One has to ask the question, “why, if it’s such a simple matter of calories in vs. calories out, should it be so hard?”. Maybe it’s because the body doesn’t want to lose weight. Maybe when you eat too little, the body goes through hormonal changes to make you miserable, lethargic, and obsessed with food. And maybe when you eat too much, the opposite changes happen. In fact, this is what the evidence shows. Most dieters, in order to maintain their weight-loss, need to eat less than appetite and remain hungry. That does not sound right to me. If you’re eating too much, wouldn’t your hunger and satiety signals be telling you that? Or are the hormones out of whack? Hmm…

So the question remains… if overeating isn’t making us fat, what is? The most direct answer that any honest obesity researcher will tell you is we don’t really know yet. Body-weight regulation is turning out to be incredibly complex. But here are some of the theories I think hold promise:
Chronic stress: Most of the degenerative diseases appear to associated with inflammation, including obesity. The stress could come from lifestyle factors, chronic infections, or poor diet.
Poor nutrition: Without adequate nutrients and calories, the body does not have what it needs to regulate its internal environment.
Dieting: I actually think this is the biggest contributer. I don’t really understand how this works, but there appears to be a clear long-term increase in weight for serious dieters. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective as part of a “famine response”. The other possibility is that extreme dieting causes metabolic damage.

I really don’t think diets are healthy and I think losing weight is a cosmetic goal, not a health goal. Abdominal fat is associated with degenerative diseases, but there is no evidence that it is causal, and there is no evidence that dieting improves long term outcomes. Attempting to lose weight by restricting calories causes a lot of unfavorable hormonal changes in the body. If we take the view that excess abdominal fat is a sign of disregulation, restricting nutrients is probably the last thing we want to do.

References:
The Kitava Study
It’s Not Your Fault You’re Fat
Good Calories, Bad Calories
Medicare’s Search for Effective Obeisty Treatments
Overfeeding Experiment
Semi-Starvation Experiment
Vermont State Prison Overfeeding Experiment
Scott Abel on Metabolic Damage (email from former figure competitor)
Scott Abel on Metabolic Damage (effects of long-term dieting)