Why do we get fat

Chapter 12 Drinking Cold Water Makes You Fat?why me!
Often when we talk about body fat, it's conditioned to think of it as a yes-or-no proposition: Either more, or none at all.This is an oversimplification of a rather complex phenomenon.If you want to lose weight, you must know where and when the fat produced in our body is produced. These are important issues.When experts tell us that excess belly fat increases the risk of heart disease, but slightly excess hip fat does not, you are reminded of this importance.If two people also eat too much, that is, take in more calories than they expend, they are both at risk of dying young because of overeating, although we don't know that their fat distribution may be significantly different.

Why do some people have double chins and others don't?What is fat in hands and feet?How does waist fat appear?Why do some women have sexy fat deposits in their breasts, while others have very little?Why do some people have bigger butts?African girls with prominent fat deposits on their buttocks (despite being called "hypergluteal fat") are considered a symbol of beauty locally.These women didn't grow their butts by eating more and moving less.What I can tell you is that "excessive gluteal fat" is a genetic trait, not a product of eating less and exercising more.

If they don't, why assume that eating more and moving less is a plausible explanation for our own hip fat accumulation?
Before World War II, doctors studying obesity believed that many questions could be answered by looking at the distribution of fat in obese people.Putting these pictures of obese people into a textbook can convey the gist of the characteristics of obesity. The idea that obesity is largely genetic has been known since the 20s.If your parents were obese, you are more likely to be obese than if your parents were lean.Another theory is that members of the family are relatively similar in size.As Dr. Hilde Bruch puts it, the body type between parents and children, between siblings, is often "as significant as the similarities in looks."Of course, family resemblance is not a golden rule, just as some parents and children don't look alike.But the resemblance is so common that everyone must know that a father and son, mother and daughter in a family actually have similar body types.This is especially true between identical twins, not only similar in appearance, but also similar in fat and thin body shape.

Livestock breeders have always been vaguely aware, more than scientists, that genes are an essential factor in obesity.Just as they bred cows to increase milk production, and dogs to hunt or herd, these animal husbandry practitioners have spent decades researching how cows, pigs, and sheep can be made fatter, or leaner.This distorts our imaginations and leads us to believe that these livestock breeders can determine the intentions of moderation and the exigencies of exercise simply by manipulating genetic traits.

Take the example of beef and dairy cattle.Angus cattle are a type of beef cattle known for their high fat content, while Jersey cattle are a type of dairy cattle that are leaner and tend to have protruding ribs under the skin and relatively large udders. full.Now let's briefly consider this question: Angus beef has more fat in muscle than Jersey cows because they have been grazing longer than lean Jersey cows?Or that Angus cattle absorb nutrients more efficiently from grass than Jersey cows?Could it be that the genes of Angus cows make them eat more (eat more), and the genes of Jersey cows make them happy to run around (hyperactivity)?When Angus cattle are grazing or sleeping, Jersey cows are striding across the grass?Of course, this sounds a little absurd.

At the end of the day, what we want from a Jersey cow is an animal that maximizes the conversion of the energy they eat into milk, which is what they do.We don't want them wasting energy gaining weight.As for Angus beef cattle, we hope that it can effectively convert energy into protein and fat in the muscle, where the energy goes and accumulates.It's not so much that the two types of cattle have different lifestyles as their genes determine whether their allotted calories go to fat, muscle or milk.Apparently this is not determined by how much they eat or how much they exercise.

Therefore, a very likely explanation is that the genes that determine whether these two types of cattle are obese do not affect their appetite and desire to move, but affect how they allocate the energy they consume-converted into protein and muscle in muscle. Fat, or converted to milk.These genes do not determine how many calories the animals eat, but what they do with them.I think that's a pretty good argument against the idea of ​​calorie balance.

Another clear argument against the idea of ​​a balanced calorie intake versus expenditure is the fact that men and women gain weight in different places.Among obese people, men's fat usually accumulates above the waist, forming a beer belly; while women's fat accumulates below the waist.During puberty, women are especially prone to fat accumulation in the breasts, buttocks and thighs; men during puberty lose fat and gain muscle.

When boys become men, they become taller, more muscular, and thinner.After puberty, girls are slightly fatter than boys (6% on average), but after puberty they can be 50% fatter.German doctor Erich Grafe talked about the influence of fat distribution and gender in his textbook "Metabolic Diseases and Their Treatment" published in 1933: "The concept of energy intake is certainly not in this field. Applicable." In other words, girls enter puberty as slender as boys; after puberty, their bodies are as graceful and full as women's.The main source of her feminine figure is actually fat. She will need to consume more calories to accumulate fat, but this is not the result of overeating or lack of exercise.

There is also a rare nutritional disorder syndrome called "progressive lipodystrophy" that provides more evidence against the traditional view of obesity.

In the mid-20s, more than 50 cases of such fat disorders were discovered, mostly in women.This syndrome is characterized by a complete loss of subcutaneous fat (that is, fat stored directly under the skin) in the upper body and a severe accumulation of fat below the waist.The disorder is called "progressive" because the loss of fat from the upper body occurs slowly over time.It starts on the face and slowly moves down the neck to the shoulders, arms and torso.

A young woman suffering from this disease began to lose fat from her face at the age of 10, and lost fat to her waist at the age of 13.Two years later, she started gaining weight from the waist down.She is about 162 cm tall, weighs about 83 kg, and has a body mass index (BMI) of almost 32 [the definition of BMI is: weight (kg)/height (m) squared.A BMI of 28 or above was defined as obesity].She would certainly be considered clinically obese by today's standards, but in reality all her body fat was gathered below the waist.From the waist down she was as fat as a sumo wrestler, and above it as thin as an Olympic marathon leader.

So how does this relate to the theory of balanced calorie intake?There are relationships.If we believe that we are fat because we eat too much and thin because we eat too little, then can we say that this woman lost fat in her upper body because she ate too little, and accumulated fat in her lower body because she ate too much? ? !
This idea is obviously ridiculous.When fat loss and fat accumulation are distributed at extremes like this, half the body is obese and half is lean—they obviously have nothing to do with how much a person eats or how much they exercise.

Now, you can imagine that if this young woman went to the doctor and just had a little bit more fat on her upper body, with a little softer, rounder lines, she might be diagnosed as obese and immediately told to To lose weight, eat less and move more.This sounds very reasonable.But is it really reasonable?With these few kilograms of excess fat in the upper body, her condition can be attributed to eating too much, her unbalanced calorie intake, and being unable to control herself; without these few kilograms of excess fat in the upper body, it can be called Generalized lipodystrophy syndrome - this explanation is nonsense.

Here is another special case of modern lipodystrophy: HIV-type lipodystrophy.This is caused by the antiretroviral drugs that people start taking after they are infected with HIV virus in order to suppress the virus from developing into full-fledged AIDS.Likewise, these individuals lost subcutaneous fat on their faces, arms, legs, and buttocks, but accumulated heavily elsewhere.They develop double chins and a pronounced "buffalo" or "hump" of obesity on the upper back.Even for men, their breasts will become fuller, and they will usually have a potbellied stomach, which looks no different from a person with a beer belly.

It's hard to imagine how, in this case, the fat he was gaining had anything to do with eating too much and exercising too little.If we can't blame his beer belly on an imbalance of calories in and calories out, maybe we shouldn't blame it on our own obesity either.

(End of this chapter)