Book why we get fat

Eventually, our bodies compensate. Men and women gain weight and lose weight differently which tells us that sex hormones play a role in regulating body fat. If an animal that requires enormous gobs of fat for its winter fuel were to require excessive amounts of food to accumulate that fat, then one bad summer would have long ago wiped out the entire species.

A body will require excess calories to satisfy the demands of the growth—to build a bigger body—and it will figure out a way to get them, by increasing his appetite or decreasing his energy expenditure or both. As these carbohydrates are digested, they appear in the bloodstream in the form of glucose, which is the sugar in blood sugar. The more time passes after a meal, the more fat you will burn and the less glucose.

Another way to think of this is that your fat cells work as energy buffers. LPL is the enzyme that sticks out from the membranes of different cells and then pulls fat out of the bloodstream and into the cells. This prompts the release of fat from our fat tissue, so we can burn it in our muscle cells, which need the fuel.

Not only do our muscles crave protein after a workout to restock and rebuild, but our fat is actively restocking, too. The rest of the body tries to compensate for this energy drain, and our appetite increases. When insulin levels go up, we store fat. When they come down, we mobilize the fat and use it for fuel.

Given the same food containing the same amount of carbohydrates, some people will secrete more insulin than others, and those who do are likely to put on more fat and have less energy. Not all foods that contain carbohydrates are equally fattening. This is a crucial point.

The most fattening foods are the ones that have the greatest effect on our blood sugar and insulin levels. These are the concentrated sources of carbohydrates, and particularly those that we can digest quickly: anything made of refined flour bread, cereals, and pasta , liquid carbohydrates beers, fruit juices, and sodas , and starches potatoes, rice, and corn. These foods flood the bloodstream quickly with glucose. Blood sugar shoots up; insulin shoots up. Post your question.

Safe and Secure Payments. Easy returns. You might be interested in. Back to top. Gary, it seems to me, applies this critical outlook more to high-carb, low-fat diets than to the Atkins diet, which he celebrates for helping him and many others lose weight "almost effortlessly. One problem, Gary says, is that many people become addicted to carbs, and their craving makes them fall off the Atkins wagon. Switching from a high-carb, low-fat diet to the Atkins system, Gary also acknowledges in Why We Get Fat , can trigger "weakness, fatigue, nausea, dehydration, diarrhea, constipation," among other side effects.

Gary assures readers that they'll reap the benefits if they just stick to Atkins, but he slams advocates of less-fat, more-exercise diets for giving people this same just-stick-to-it advice. Gary is a big guy, 1. Exercise didn't help him slim down, he said, but the Atkins diet did. Because Gary cites his personal experience as evidence, I can cite mine as counterevidence.

I'm 1. I eat lots of carbs, including pasta, bread, rice, potatoes, cookies, cake, pie and three teaspoons of sugar in coffee at least twice a day.

I weigh 77 kilograms pounds. I'm just one of those lucky folks, Gary says, whose genes let them chow down carbs without getting fat. Here is another more significant exception: Many Asian people consume lots of carbs, especially rice, without getting fat.

Well, Gary says, that's because these Asians don't ingest as much highly processed sugar—contained in soft drinks, for example—as Americans do. But then why not just cut out these sugary foods instead of almost all carbs? But now we're moving away from the dramatic, celebratory claim that the Atkins diet solves obesity to a more complex perspective: For many people high-carb diets are fine, and the low-carb Atkins diet isn't; different diets work for different people.

Reviewing Why We Get Fat in The New York Times , Abigail Zuger, a physician, notes that "in virtually all head-to-head comparisons of various diet plans, the average long-term results have invariably been quite similar—mediocre all around. Toward the end of our Bloggingheads interview, I asked Gary about his family's diet. And there have not been many good studies of the circulatory health of people on this diet; Only one has been done Fleming RM. The effect of high-protein diets on coronary blood flow.

So here we have a journalist who is giving nutritional advice. He has never treated a single patient, and he is ignorant of the long-term effects of the regime he espouses. View all 7 comments. Jan 29, Trevor I sometimes get notified of comments rated it really liked it Shelves: food , science. I want start this one with a disclaimer. I really know virtually nothing about human dietary requirements and anyone that takes advice from me on this subject is a fool. Also, the depth of my ignorance is such that this guy who knows infinitely more than I probably ever will on this subject could make me believe that a diet rich in horse droppings would make me taller.

All the same, and with my general ignorance presented as a given, I have to say I found this a very interesting book and quite I want start this one with a disclaimer.

All the same, and with my general ignorance presented as a given, I have to say I found this a very interesting book and quite convincing. The other disclaimer is that my mother and sister are somewhat obsessed with low cholesterol diets. The fundamental idea that lies behind the generally accepted theory of why we get fat is that it is all about a misbalance between the energy we take in via our food and the energy we expend in working during the day.

He makes the point early in the book that if you mess this balance up by as little as a bite of toast a day then over a twenty-year period you will end up obese. He is really very good at reducing to the absurd the generally accepted theories of why we get fat. The problem is that we humans prefer really simple metaphors that also link nicely to the world we live in. Our bodies are likely to be compared to a car. By his stressing how it is almost impossible to balance calories in and calories out he then turns his attention to exercise.

It seems reasonable that if you want to lose weight the best way to achieve it would be to burn your fat off through exercising. The problem is that exercise makes you hungry. So, yet again you need to somehow balance calories in and calories out and if you are like me and have tried to do this you will know that it is virtually impossible.

Central to his argument is the idea that not all food is good food. The calories in and calories out idea is that you could get all of our calories from coke and as long as you were burning off the same number of calories during the day your weight will remain the same.

Essentially there are two mechanisms that are used to power our bodies and these come into conflict and help to make us obese. The first is how our bodies respond to sugars and carbohydrates. These foods are easy to digest and easy to get energy from, so our bodies digest them first. In response our bodies produce insulin — but one of the things insulin also does is to stop our cells from burning the fat they have stored in them and rather to store more fat in our cells.

With increasing levels of insulin in our blood our bodies never get around to burning the energy reserves that are stored as fat within our cells. This process has a kind of irony about it.

But our bodies still need energy — so even though we ought to be sated, we crave more food, particularly carbohydrate rich food that can quickly be turned into blood sugar for an energy boost.

This again spikes our insulin levels, which again makes it impossible for us to get to the energy stored as fat. So, instead we lay down more fat and feel hungrier still. The method of overcoming this vicious cycle is to stop eating carbohydrates and this will then allow our bodies to reduce the amount of insulin in our blood and thereby allow our bodies to start burning our grossly increased fat reserves.

Insulin, then, is the problem — essentially, this guy is saying that obesity is a kind of diabetes. But he goes further — he says that many of the diseases that are associated with Western diets are effectively forms of diabetes. So, how to get thin and live a healthier life?

Well, this is the uncomfortable part of the story for me. We have to give up sugars and carbohydrates and to eat much more meat and fat. He claims that meat, rather than vegetables and starch, was the key to our diet as hunter-gatherers. And as such we have evolved to eat lots of meat and certainly not lots of bread. What he says makes sense. If any of you have some link to something that debunks this viewpoint, I would be keen to read it. And my interest in all this?

The high meat and high fat diet does have lots of things going for it — not least the promise that it allows you to lose weight without feeling hungry all of the time. The promise of an easy way to maintain a healthy weight and avoid the associated problems of increasing body weight is very appealing — but at the risk of sounding particularly Protestant, it all does sound a little too easy. This is a very interesting book. The problem is that it is supposed to be the snappier version of Good Calories, Bad Calories — but if this is snappy I dread to think what that book must be like.

This could really have been cut in half again without much loss, but I do understand he is trying to cover all arguments against and I have to say he does do that. All the same, if what he has to say is even only half true then much of the dietary advice that has been given to us for around 50 years is not only useless, but actually counterproductive. View all 39 comments. Jan 29, Ricki Lindsay rated it it was ok. Drink it daily before 10 am! In engineering, there a problem-solving technique called "5 whys".

If you have a problem, you don't just ask why and answer that question, you go 5 levels deeper. In health matters, more levels would be great, but here we go just one level deeper that common sense. This book starts by criticizing the popular answer to 'why we get fat' - namely that we get fat because we consume more calories than we spend.

The author say it's certainly true, but it's not particularly useful in practice, because neither diet nor exercise work too well in the long run, and because explicitly counting calories is near to impossible. There surely must be very accurate weight regulation mechanism, and it just gets broken sometimes. So, the book proceeds to second "why" - why the regulation mechanism malfunctions. It is claimed that insulin is the reason. It rises when we eat carbohydrates and causes fat and excess carbohydrates to be stored into fat cells.

It drops when there are no more carbohydrates to use, and that switches the body to using stored fat. Seems straight-forward. And then it is said that the more carbohydrates we eat, the more fat we accumulate in the long run. The explanation makes little sense. Sure, if I eat more than I immediately need, extra energy is either stored or discarded. If insulin is a mechanism for storing extra energy, then blaming it for helping to store that energy makes no sense.

If the body generates more insulin that is necessary, then why? That question is never answered. There is some discussion of insulin resistance, but rather superficial, too. If we accept that insulin is the right answer for the second why, no next question is asked. But insulin might not even be the right answer.

Just typing "insulin and obesity" into Google finds sources that claim the link is not proven at all. For example, one source say that for Pima people, used in the book as example of very obese in general, high insulin predicts less fat, not more. The book, however, is very certain on its claims, and never mentions any research that might contradict that.

To summarize, this is one-sided and not too deep discussion. Oct 24, Jessi rated it really liked it Shelves: weight-loss , non-fiction. First Line: "In , a young German pediatrician named Hilde Bruch moved to America, settled in New York City, and was 'startled,' as she later wrote, by the number of fat children she saw - 'really fat ones, not only in clinics, but on the streets and subways, and in schools.

I am not yet certain whether I am willing to buy into his arguments, b First Line: "In , a young German pediatrician named Hilde Bruch moved to America, settled in New York City, and was 'startled,' as she later wrote, by the number of fat children she saw - 'really fat ones, not only in clinics, but on the streets and subways, and in schools.

I am not yet certain whether I am willing to buy into his arguments, but there are three things that are making me at least consider that he might be right or partially right. He begins the book by asking all readers to analyze the material his book and any others and to make decisions for them.

Most fad diet books tend to just take the stance that they are absolutely right and never remind us to use our brains. For every argument that I came up with while reading this book, he addresses it at some point and provides data to back up his theories.

I have been trying to lose weight through recommended methods low-fat diets, calorie cutting, and exercise for almost nine years and have watched many of my family and friends with the same struggle.

With chances like that, I am willing to consider a different method and give it a try. I will also say that this book is simply a fascinating read. I don't think I have ever been so enthralled with a non-fiction book especially one steeped in science that I literally couldn't put it down, so this was a first for me.

From these four which sometimes contradict each other, I constructed a diet with unlimited meats and veggies, no processed sugars, grains, or legumes and limited amounts of nuts, berries, dairy, and root vegetables. I am exercising but only in ways that I enjoy, specifically yoga and hiking. Since Jan I have lost 24 lbs, 1 pant size, and I feel much more energetic.

I have had a few slip ups, but not many and when I do eat sugar or carb heavy items I'm almost immediately exhausted and grouchy. I am at the lowest weight I have been in nine years and my success makes it much easier to stick with it.

I've got 66 lbs to go and for the first time I have hope that I'll actually make it and maintain it. View all 5 comments.

Apr 21, Richard marked it as to-read Recommended to Richard by: People that eat. Shelves: read-these-reviews-first , science , nonfiction , food. Plain corn syrup, on the other hand, is effectively just glucose—no fructose. Therein lies, apparently, a key difference. When the liver is presented with fructose, it preferentially metabolizes it, dramatically elevating insulin and related hormones.

Whole fruits still have fiber , which apparently slows down intestinal absorption so much that it doesn't overwhelm the liver the way a soda does. But fruit juices? Where is that from? Not fat, so much — that represents only 45 calories out of the total. Where is that coming from? Mostly soda. One can of Coca Cola or other soft drink is about calories. I hope the book goes into more detail on metabolic and biochemistry. I fondly remember the Krebs Cycle from my high school physiology class, and I really like knowing the science behind all this stuff.

For those of you just looking for the highlights, read the New York Times article, and then watch the video. View 2 comments. Aug 11, Mariah Roze rated it liked it. Gary Taubes shares his knowledge of not what only makes us fat, but what also keeps some people leaner than others. He emphasized how weight isn't only an overeating problem. It can also be caused by genetics, hormones and much more. We need to be careful of the assumptions that we make, because many people that are obese especially are because of one of these health issues.

This book was an eye-opener to me and broke down all the assumptions that I have made about food and bodies. Jul 30, Lee Klein rated it really liked it. You'd think that shoving lard down your gullet wouldn't be better for you your weight and your heart and triglyceride levels and blood pressure than an equivalent amount of bread, even whole grain stuff, but it's counterintuitively true -- this book includes a few really interesting, counterintuitive, scientificially proven again and again assertions eg, we don't get fat because our metabolism slows; our metabolism slows because we're getting fat.

Sucks to have grown up during the food pyramid era, with its fattening base of grain. Easy to eat this way now that it's summer but the test will come when it's time for stouts and pizza in the fall and winter. Oh if only porters were brewed from porterhouse steak instead of grains. View all 14 comments. Jan 09, Suzanne rated it it was ok. Although I am inclined to agree with Taube that low-calorie diets and exercise do not lead to weightloss, based on personal experience as well as some new research, I find his argument for a primarily meat-based diet unconvincing.

The primary weakness of the work is the lack of any scientific evidence to support his conclusions, but it also suffers from severe bias. He carefully presents only that data which will support his claims, and ignores reams of contradictory data. He claims that pre-hist Although I am inclined to agree with Taube that low-calorie diets and exercise do not lead to weightloss, based on personal experience as well as some new research, I find his argument for a primarily meat-based diet unconvincing.

He claims that pre-historic humans lived primarily on meat, but gives no support for that claim, and ignores any evidence that would suggest otherwise. The meat that is provided by the men is wild game, which is low in fat and an uncertain source of food.

The only way that he can make his case is to skip thousands of years of human civilization and known history. Certainly historic humans, if we can go by the business records of the Sumarians as well as the Bible, lived on beans, grains, fruits and vegetables. Logically, if humans were not eating cereal grains, why did they settled down to farming in the first place? And if starchy vegetables, fruits and grains are to blame for obesity, why didn't the epidemic begin around 2, B. Why weren't the Irish the fattest people on the planet once they began living primarily on potatoes?

He holds up the example of the Pima Indians, yet ignores the known fact that their native diet consists primarily of beans, corn, squash. And if fruit leads one to be fat, why aren't Europeans massive?