Why do we get fat

Chapter 21 Why I Failed To Lose Weight, But You Can’t Get Fat No matter What You Eat
If insulin makes people fat, a new question arises: Why does it only make some of us fat?Why do some people try their best to lose weight but still fail, and some people obviously eat all the time but just can't gain weight?After all, each of us is secreting insulin, and insulin is an important hormone that everyone cannot live without.How is this going?

The answer lies in the fact that no hormone works in a vacuum, and insulin is no exception.The effects of hormones on any given tissue or cell depend on a combination of factors inside and outside the cell.For example, insulin also depends on enzymes like LPL (lipoprotein lipase) and HSL (hormone-sensitive lipase) to work.Hormones act differently on every cell and every tissue, even at different stages of our growth and development and life.

Insulin is a hormone that determines how the body's fuel is "divided".After a meal, insulin and the various enzymes it affects—such as LPL—determine the proportions of the various nutrients that are sent to different tissues, how much will be burned, how much will be stored, and how these proportions change with demand and Time to change.This metering change looks a bit like a fuel gauge in a car, but the "F" on the right stands for "fat" instead of "full" and the "E" on the left stands for "empty" ( empty) but “energy”.

If the needle points to "F" - this means that insulin tends to store more fat.In this case, you have a tendency to gain weight; in turn, you have less energy available for physical activity, so you also have a tendency to move less.The closer the pointer points to fat storage (F), the more calories are stored and the fatter you will become.Of course, if you don't want to move less, then you have to eat more to make up for the heat loss caused by the conversion of calories into fat.Those on the far right of the scale are the most obese people in the world.

When the pointer points in the other direction—pointing to an "E"—it means you're burning a disproportionate number of calories to your intake.There is a lot of energy you can use for physical activity, but very little is stored as fat.You will be lean, energetic and eating moderately.The closer you are to this direction, the more energy is available for physical activity, the less energy is stored, and the leaner you become.Their bodies burn calories but rarely store them, so these people really burn out energy.They may also have a strong urge to be physically active.

What determines the direction the pointer points?The answer is not as simple as how much insulin you secrete.Some people secrete more insulin than others, even after eating the same food with the same amount of sugar.These people tend to store more fat and release less energy.Their bodies work hard to keep their blood sugar levels in check, because high blood sugar is toxic, and they prefer to convert it into fat, filling up their fat cells, if necessary.

Yet another important factor: How sensitive your cells are to insulin.If your cells are very insensitive to insulin, you develop what's called "insulin resistance."

The more insulin you secrete, the more likely cells and tissues are to become resistant to insulin.Insulin resistance makes your cells less sensitive to insulin, which means you need more insulin to do the same job of clearing glucose to keep your blood sugar under control.The pancreas then has to secrete more insulin to deal with the blood sugar problem, and the result is a vicious cycle.When a cell has acquired enough glucose for energy consumption, but there is still a lot of glucose in the blood at this time, so more insulin is secreted to "urge" the cell to consume glucose-at this time your cells are likely to resist insulin. In the future, at least in the short term, there will be such a tendency.If this is the case over time, these cells will become more resistant to insulin, and the body will need more insulin to control blood sugar levels.As a result, you secrete more and more insulin, which in turn leads to worse insulin resistance.And at the same time, as your insulin levels rise, it's obvious that you're getting fatter.

So, secreting more insulin moves the needle on the fuel gauge toward storing fat.Also, even if the amount of insulin you secrete is still in a healthy range, but your body tissue has something wrong, and you have to develop resistance to insulin, then it is the same way.In response to insulin resistance, you have to secrete more insulin, and you get fatter.

In addition, cells respond differently to insulin.Fat cells, muscle cells, liver cells, they don't all resist insulin at the same time, to the same extent, or in the same way.Certain cells are more or less sensitive to insulin than others, which means that the same amount of insulin affects different tissues more or less.The responses of these tissues also vary from person to person, and even in the same individual at different ages.

The more sensitive a particular tissue is to insulin, the more glucose it will take up when insulin is secreted; if it is muscle tissue, it will store more glucose in the form of muscle glycogen, and then use it at the right time. as fuel.In the case of adipose tissue, it stores more fat.So, if your muscle cells are very insulin sensitive and your fat cells are not so sensitive, then the needle on the fuel gauge will point to the burning side.As a result, you'll be lean and physically active.If your muscle tissue is less insulin sensitive than your fat cells, then your fat tissue will successfully serve as a calorie storehouse.As a result, you will become obese and sedentary.

There's another complication here: The response of various tissues in the body to insulin levels changes over time, and even in response to what you eat.For example, as we age, the body's sensitivity to insulin becomes more and more sluggish.However, basically this will always happen to your muscle tissue before it happens to your fat tissue.In general, fat cells are more sensitive to insulin than muscle cells.So even if you were thin and active when you were young, there is a chance that your muscle cells will become resistant to insulin as you age.Once they do, your response is to secrete more insulin.

This means that the needle on the fuel gauge will shift to the right as you age, more and more calories will be converted to fat, and less and less fuel will be supplied to the rest of the body.As you enter middle age, it becomes increasingly difficult to stay thin.At the same time, you start to experience a host of other signs of metabolic disturbance: Your blood pressure and triglyceride levels both go up, your high-density lipoprotein (HDL, also known as "good cholesterol") goes down, and you Your glucose tolerance will be impaired, which means you're having trouble controlling your blood sugar.And so on, and so on.You become more sedentary as a side effect of energy being diverted into fat tissue.

Conventional wisdom holds that the reason we tend to gain weight in middle age is because our metabolism slows down.In fact, causality is reversed here.More likely, our muscles are becoming more and more resistant to insulin, causing more of the energy we absorb to be allocated to fat, leaving only a small fraction for muscle cells and organs to be used as fuel.At this point, these cells are producing less energy, which is what we mean when we say "the metabolic rate has slowed down."Our "metabolic rate" is reduced.The slowing down of metabolism is actually the result of obesity.It's not that your metabolism slows down and you gain weight, it's that obesity causes your metabolism to slow down.

There is another serious question worth exploring: Why are kids getting fatter these days?Even children today are fatter than they were 20 years ago when they are born.This is yet another aspect of the obesity epidemic that has recently received much attention around the world.Not only are there more obese children than ever before, but these children become visibly obese as early as six months after birth, a phenomenon that apparently has nothing to do with their behavior or willpower.

Fat children are mostly born to obese parents, partly due to genetic inheritance.Our genes control insulin secretion, the enzymes involved in insulin, and whether cells become resistant to insulin or not.However, there is another factor.The fetus in the womb obtains nutrients from the mother's blood through the placenta and umbilical cord.This means that the higher the mother's glycemic index, the more glucose the fetus in her womb will receive.

As the fetal pancreas grows, it becomes apparent that the fetus also needs to address glucose levels by producing more insulin.Thus, the higher a pregnant mother's blood sugar is, the more insulin she will secrete as the baby nears birth.At this point, the baby is born with more fat, tends to over-secrete insulin, and eventually the cells become resistant to insulin earlier.Such babies are bound to gain abnormally fat with age.

Obese mothers, diabetic mothers, mothers who were overweight during pregnancy, and mothers who developed diabetes during pregnancy (so-called "gestational diabetes") are almost certainly prone to having obese babies.Most of these mothers were already insulin resistant and had extremely high blood sugar levels.

Suppose an obese mother gives birth to an obese baby, and the obese baby grows up to be an obese mother... When will this generational transmission end?This has a dire consequence to suggest: as obesity spreads, we (all of us) get fat.After our time, more and more babies are "programmed" from their birth to be fat.

Therefore, when we gain weight, we need to consider far more than our own health problems.Our children, and our children's children, may have to pay the price.Each generation may find it increasingly difficult to address this issue.So, what should we do?
(End of this chapter)