"Eating Too Much"

This is an off the cuff rebuttal of the idea that we “eat too much”. It’s an idea that is deeply ingrained in our culture and sneaks into the phrasing of everyday language in ways we don’t even notice… even for people that don’t believe calorie restriction leads to weight loss.

But I’d like to really ask the question, are we eating too much? Well, usually when we say that, we mean that a person will get fat and then acquire all the health conditions that associate with obesity. Never mind the dubious assumption that the amount of adipose tissue is causal or even correlates with ill health, you have to ask yourself whether calorie consumption would even be the primary driver of fat storage. Why not of muscle growth? Why not of a faster metabolic rate? Why not of more stamina, awareness, or immunity to disease.

But the real clincher: you have to ask yourself, shouldn’t the body be able to keep track and regulate everything using hormones. The answer is most certainly yes, because if it were not, the human race (and every other species that needs to eat for that matter) would’ve been toast long before civilization ever got off the ground.

And that’s where even using phrases like “eating too much” gets tricky, because it implies such a thing is even possible, that the energy storage systems would not be working towards homeostasis over the long term. Unless of course, fat people are just not hungry and feeling stuffed all the time, but just eat anyway. Yeah, that must be it.

So if “eating too much” is what makes you fat, “eating too little” must be what makes you thin. There are certainly plenty of people trying this. The problem with this is most people attempting this seem to suffer the converse of the symptoms listed above: loss of lean tissue, slowdown in the metabolic rate, etc. It makes sense when you think about it. From an evolutionary perspective, the body has to be able to deal with widely varying amounts of calorie intakes over long periods of time, and still maintain homeostasis, just like it has to do with all nutrients.

So if “eating too little” causes these responses in people, then presumably the reverse is also true. From an evolutionary perspective, we’d expect the body to take full of advantage of a calorie and nutrient surplus. Sex drive, lean body mass, etc. should all go up. But here’s the rub for all you chronic dieters. It’s well known that the body isn’t simply going to do this coming out of a starvation state. It’s instead going to store fat for quite a while, which is an appropriate adaptive response to the conditions of chronic dieting.

Some of the more astute out there may have noticed that weight gain occurs under times of stress, but then still rationalize it with sentiments like “stress makes people want to eat more”. But shouldn’t we consider that stress itself might be a primary driver in weight gain, considering that cortisol is one of the main hormones involved in the deposition of belly fat.

And it’s interesting too that animals in captivity seem uncannily to develop obesity and all the Western diseases. And it’s not due to the amount of calories.

So we have to ask the question, if obesity does correlate with Western diseases, then why? Is it because stress causes both belly fat and illness and we are all under some form of chronic stress? Is it because modern processed foods cause hormonal disruption which causes both? Is it because calorie deprivation (i.e. dieting) puts the body in a starvation response which then causes poor health and belly fat growth (later on)?

Personally, I’ve come to the point of never trying to “eat too little”. I certainly want my body to know whatever it needs is available. I don’t want it cutting back immune function or libido just so I can be “skinny fat”. I could go on, but I’ll end here.

Further Reading:
Calorie restriction is not effective for weight loss.