Why do we get fat

Chapter 1 Author's Note: Misleading health experts are the bane of weight loss failures
It took more than 10 years to complete this book.I started by writing a series of columns for Science and The New York Times Magazine, focusing on how contemporary nutrition and medicine remained stagnant in addressing obesity.Later, after years of in-depth research and content expansion, I gradually compiled them into books.

I have been trying to explain to you one thing: After World War II, the number of European scientists and doctors engaged in nutrition and obesity research dropped sharply. The research of these two disciplines has lost its direction. However, any attempt to correct their research direction will be opposed.As a result, researchers have not only wasted decades of time, energy, and money, but also caused untold harm to the general public by going in the wrong direction.Today, the authorities in the field of public health widely accept the wrong research conclusions from the nutritional sciences, and "faithfully" give the public wrong advice based on them.For example, advice on what to eat and what not to eat if we want to maintain a normal weight and live a long and healthy life.And, in the face of ever-increasing evidence against them, they remain unmoved by their judgment.

One of the reasons for writing this book is that researchers who study obesity and nutrition, who have read my books, or heard my lectures, or even discussed certain points with me directly, they often say to me , the topics I explore—such as why we get fat, and how diet affects heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic diseases—have huge implications.They agree with me that the nutrition advice we've been hearing for half a century must be wrong.We all agree that these authority-challenging ideas need to be validated and, more importantly, popularized.

I believe this is already the most urgent thing at the moment.Hundreds of millions of people already suffer the consequences of chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes.If more and more people are becoming obese, and even diabetic, because they received the wrong nutritional advice, we must not delay and cover up the problem.

Although it will take time to reverse the views of today's nutrition authorities, it may be a decade or more after these studies are confirmed.But at least it will allow public health authorities to actively revise official interpretations of why we get fat, how fat causes disease, and what we need to do to fix obesity.After I gave a talk at NYU, a nutrition professor told me that it would take a lifetime for people to adopt the dietary changes I was advocating.

There is an urgent need to solve the problem of obesity for the masses, and in order to accelerate the process of revealing the answers, I wrote this book.This book puts forward new questions and perspectives on the general advice of contemporary nutrition on obesity and other issues.I have made arguments for each of these suggestions.If my doubt is correct, then let me publish the correct answer as soon as possible.

The second reason for writing this book is that readers have also written to tell me that they have changed their diet and lifestyle after following my advice.They lost weight with little effort and kept it off; physical examination reports showed a dramatic improvement in heart disease risk.This seemed impossible to them before.Some even reported that they no longer needed treatment for high blood pressure and diabetes, and that they felt better and had more energy.In short, for the first time in a long time, they feel really healthy.

Along with these letters from readers comes a request.That is, I hope that I will write a more easy-to-understand healthy weight loss book, which can be easily understood by every husband or wife, elderly parents, and every relative and friend.The doctors hoped that I could write a book that didn't require a lot of time and energy to use their brains to read, so that they could show it to their parents, patients, and even other colleagues.

So, I decided to write this book, "Why Are We Getting Fat?" ".Through this book, you will learn, for the first time, why we gain weight and what we can do to change it.

I hope you can think rationally, you need to keep asking yourself whether what I say makes sense.The purpose of this book is to refute the views of some of the authorities in the field of public nutrition and health.I will share the necessary information with you, and equip you with logical reasoning, so that you can rely on your own judgment to change, not gain weight, and be healthier.

If you accept my point of view and adjust your diet accordingly, you will most likely be at odds with what your doctor tells you, and you will certainly be at odds with what health organizations and government agencies have agreed to as a healthy diet.In that sense, any action taken after reading this book is at your own risk.However, if you read this book and give it to your doctor to decide which parts to work on, the risk will be reduced.You can also spread this book to more people, because not only individuals will bear the distress of obesity, but also the number of obese people and diabetic patients has been increasing all over the world. Obesity is a major public health problem.If we really understand how we got into obesity, this book can help us fix the problem, not perpetuate it.

—Gary Taubis
April 2010

(End of this chapter)