Why do we get fat

Chapter 15 If you fail to lose weight, you will face charges of weak will?
Nowadays, officials from the Ministry of Health, health experts, nutritionists and various media are all advocating the idea that the balance between calorie intake and consumption is related to weight loss when answering the question "Why do we get fat".From this, arises a kind of original sin for the obese and those who fail to lose weight: obesity is the punishment for gluttony and laziness.Of all the pernicious arguments, none is more pernicious.This argument, so seductive as it seems, has been so misguided beyond imagination that it has persisted for 50 years.

This statement is extremely harmful.Not only does it steer attention away from the real reasons why we get fat, and is therefore partially responsible for the increasing number of obese and overweight people in the world today, but it also reinforces a false moral notion that fat people don't blame others, you all are It's your own fault.Few people are willing to admit that eating less is not enough to lose weight. We are led to believe that our body shape is directly caused by their diet and behavior, which is the most devious explanation.

Why does someone eat more calories than they burn and become obese?Especially knowing that the result of doing so will be tormented both physically and mentally.There must be a reason for doing this, something must be wrong, the problem is to find out what is wrong.

Following the logic of calorie balance, there is only one acceptable answer to the question, and that is to eat more and move less.The problem isn't with the body itself, it's not with the dozens of enzymes and hormones in our body that control our bodies and turn food into fat.If you dare to say so, this implies that there are other factors besides eating more that fundamentally determine why we gain weight.But this is intolerable to the authorities.In this case, the problem must be in the brain.More precisely, it is the self-behavior of individuals that makes obesity a moral issue.In a nutshell, eating too much and moving too little is a behavioral problem, not a physiological one.To this end, the words "gluttony" and "laziness" are also borrowed, and the facts are even more clear.

In fact, all research on weight loss has been trapped in the circular logic of calorie balance theory, and it will never come out.

When we really lose weight, but there is no effect, we will encounter the same problem.It is not difficult to eat less, why do we still face countless weight loss failures?Perhaps we have already guessed such an answer, that is, dieters in real life have the same response to dietary restriction diet as obese animals in experiments, that is, reducing energy expenditure to compensate for eating less behavior, and enduring increasing hunger feel.Then, we know that there is a corresponding possibility that the same physiological mechanism makes the body tissues of obese people who are dieting to lose weight still desperately maintain their own fat in the face of semi-starvation, which may be the primary cause of obesity.

Likewise, such interpretations are intolerable to authorities.So instead, pundits are used to blaming the failure of weight loss on the inability of obese people to maintain their dieting habits.It's a failure of willpower, it's a lack of necessary intensity in your conduct - in short, the reason you're fat is that you can't eat in moderation like a skinny person can.

You can also imagine that once overeating is seen as the root cause of weight loss failure, the moral condemnation of lack of willpower becomes the only acceptable explanation.This is also the only explanation that does not require further in-depth research.Therefore, the "problem" mentioned above-the lack of willpower, can further explain why people are still willing to eat more when they have a choice-this is the real reason why they get fat.

In the late 20s, “thanks” to Louis Newburgh, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, this insidious circle of logic began to pop up in all scientific discussions of obesity.Before Newberg, when most doctors talked about obesity, they assumed that this unmanageable symptom must be a disorder of physiological function, rather than the ultimate product of mental disorder.Newberg took the opposite view, insisting that those who gained weight had a "perverted appetite"—a "scientific" expression in those days that suggested that obese people had a tendency to consume more calories than they expended. Desire, and thin people do not have this impulse.Newberg's conclusions are based on the fact that almost all obese people are gluttons, so that they get fatter.Eventually he became America's preeminent authority on obesity.

The phenomenon is true, of course, but it has nothing to do with the cause of obesity.As I've said before, the obvious questions remain unanswered: Why do fat people eat more?Why can't these people control their desires?Why can't they eat in moderation and exercise like skinny people?The answer in Newberg’s day is the same as it is left to us today: Obese people don’t want to put in the effort themselves, they lack willpower, or they just don’t know what to do.In short, obese people, as Neuberger puts it, "have all the weaknesses of human beings, such as overindulgence and ignorance."

All medical judgments are nothing more than assumptions until they are supported by strong scientific data.But what Newberg preached to the medical community at that time was to learn to respect the image of authority and not to question their medical judgment at will.

In the years after World War II, at least in the United States, Newberg's words were regarded as the golden rule by a generation of doctors who should not have been so bad.They believe that Newberg must be right in insisting that obesity and overweight must fall into one of two possibilities: One is that one has been taught by parents to eat more food than the body needs (Newberg One interpretation of the observations is that this is a family predisposition to obesity); another could attribute the problem to "a combination of weakness of will and pleasure-seeking".Since then, this has really become the mainstream common view, although it is really simplistic, mechanical, and full of loopholes.

The only thing we've improved in recent years is that experts no longer use overtly pejorative metaphors when expressing their views on weight loss.For example, when we refer to obesity as an "eating disorder" (a term that has been popularized since the 20s), we mean that we're not actually saying that obese people lack willpower, we're just saying that they don't have the same people with such good eating habits.

The popular explanation since the 20s is that maybe those obese people simply cannot resist the temptation of delicious food, and they are indifferent to the expert advice telling them to eat enough and not to eat too much.This doesn't simply mean that they lack willpower, but that certain thoughts in the brains of obese people are more stubborn, making it harder for them to resist the smell of bread or the temptation of fried chicken than lean people.Obese people are more likely to order a large set meal and insist on eating it all, while thin people will not order a large meal from the beginning and do not necessarily insist on finishing it.

In the 20s, a weight loss treatment called "behavioral medicine" appeared in the medical field, which used psychobehavioral therapy to treat obese people.It's a rather subtle way that behavioral therapy can induce obese people to behave like thin people, that is, to eat in moderation.Of course, the amount of so-called "moderate" eating is actually set to be small enough to actually lose weight, and the amount recommended for obese people is much less than the intake of lean people of similar height and bone size.

This kind of therapy is all without effort.But to this day, many people are still the same.Advising us to eat more slowly is one type of behavioral therapy, telling us not to eat anywhere but the kitchen and dining room table is another.

Today, there are still many—let’s not say the vast majority—instances where the leading authorities on weight loss are psychologists and psychiatrists whose expertise is neurological and spiritual rather than physical.Can you imagine how many diabetic patients would die if they were treated by psychologists instead of physicians?Yet diabetes and obesity are so closely related that most people with type [-] diabetes are obese, and many obese people develop diabetes—so much so that some authorities refer to both disorders collectively as "fat sugar." disease" as if they were two sides of the same pathological "coin", which they are.

As I’ve talked about before, when we blame “economic prosperity” or a “toxic food environment” for the obesity epidemic, when we still believe that unsuccessful weight loss happens only because we don’t eat in moderation, we’re in a moral rut. Look for solutions in terms of quality. Similarly, excuses for weight loss failures will also be found in terms of moral quality.If the restaurant industry is also responsible for serving too much palatable and tempting food, it further absolves the obese.We firmly believe that it is the circumstances in which we live that make us fat, not just that we are weak-willed.So why don't lean people who also live in harmful environments gain weight?Is the answer simply that they have more willpower than others?
In the 20s, Dr. Russell Wilder of the Meyer Clinic had already raised a pertinent challenge to Neuberger's "perverted appetite theory".Today, when anyone tries to blame social circumstances or restaurant giants for our failure to lose weight, we still ask this question: there must be something other than appetite controlling weight, since most of the obese population People are always trying to lose weight.Wilder writes: "Despite all the tricks we use to fool our appetites, such as drinking cocktails and wine with meals, in the hope that we will eat less. developed with the primary goal of making people eat more than they needed. So, we shouldn't be asking ourselves, why aren't all people obese?" If some of us eat more and don't get fat, why don't they get fat , why are they skinny?As tempting as "the whole art of cooking" is, why do some of us resist obesity?Why can't some people?
In 1978, Susan Sontag published a paper titled "Metaphors of Illness" in which she discussed cancer, tuberculosis, and the victims who, at various times, were often socially "blamed" with these diseases psychological problems. "Theories such as 'illness is caused by a state of mind and can be cured by willpower,'" Sontag wrote, "have always thrived on a lack of understanding of the underlying biological causes of disease."

As long as we believe that weight loss failures are due to overeating, because they take in more calories than they expend, we automatically attribute obesity to a mental state, a flaw in character.We completely ignore the equally important human physiology.Sontag corrects this by pointing out that it is a mistake to have such ideas about any disease.When morality accusations come to the question of why we get fat, the consequences can be disastrous.

So how do we go about tackling the dilemma that obesity poses?If eating less and moving more doesn't solve the problem, and blaming obese people for lack of will is a mistake, then what exactly are we going to do to make progress in weight loss?How can we really lose weight successfully?
These are the questions I will answer in the next section.

(End of this chapter)