Why do we get fat

Chapter 23 Eating sugar and hoarding fat will make you fat, life is fair

My message in this book is pretty simple: If you're gaining weight, or already very fat, and you want to lose as much weight as possible without compromising your health—then you must limit sugar intake to keep blood sugar and insulin levels low.Remember, you lose fat not by cutting calories, but by cutting sugars that make you fat.Once your weight drops to a point where you are satisfied, you return to your original eating habits, and you will still gain weight soon.Some may object that only some people gain weight from sugar intake.This statement is similar to "Only a small group of people get lung cancer because of smoking."You can't change the fact that if you happen to be one of these people, you can lose weight and keep it off just by cutting back on these foods.

It's not unfair to give up delicious food to lose weight successfully; it's not unfair to pay a lot of effort to get healthy.I never said that losing weight and keeping it off doesn't cost anything.As unfortunate as it may seem, pasta, bread, pastries, French fries, sweets of all kinds, and beer—these are staples that make us fat and we have to learn to say goodbye to them.

That's right, in order to lose weight, you may need to drastically cut back on your favorite foods.This is no coincidence.Animal studies have shown that the favorite overeating food of experimental mice is precisely the most easily digestible sugar.

There's another factor: the longer the time between meals, the more energy is expended and the hungrier we'll feel.Then, the hungrier we get, the better the food tastes—wow, that's great!I'm starving!Physiologist Pavlov wrote more than a century ago: "This is the hunger."

Insulin makes us feel hungry even before we start eating.Remember, just the thought of eating (especially savory, sugar-laden sweets) triggers our insulin release.Within seconds of our first bite of a gourmet meal, there is a rapid increase in insulin secretion.This happens even before we start digesting other meals, before any iota of glucose enters the circulation.The active secretion of insulin prepares the body for the rush of glucose.Then, after the first few bites, the hunger pangs build even further.In this regard, there is a French proverb: "As long as you open your mouth, you will have an appetite."

As the appetite is satisfied after a meal, our perception of food flavors diminishes.Now, insulin acts as an appetite suppressant in the brain.Because of this characteristic, the first bite of a meal we eat always tastes particularly good, and it always feels better than the last few bites.Just the thought of eating these delicious, high-sugar foods triggers a spike in insulin.Insulin temporarily stores nutrients in the bloodstream, so we feel hungrier, so we instead indulge in that first morsel—far better than we would eat at other times.The greater the blood sugar and insulin response to a food, the more we like that food—the better we think it tastes.

This sensory response to insulin is especially pronounced in people who are obese or prone to obesity.The fatter they are, the more they crave sugar-rich foods, as insulin works harder to store fat and protein that can't be used immediately for fuel.

Once we become resistant to insulin (which always happens eventually), there is more insulin rushing along the blood vessels for most of the day.As a result, we burn only glucose from sugar for longer periods of time each day.Remember, insulin's job is to make sure that protein, fat, and glycogen (the storage form of sugar) are safely stored.It tells our cells that there is excess blood sugar to burn off.However, it doesn't.So we crave glucose.

For anyone with a sweet tooth, eating candy is no stranger.First of all, the fructose in the candy undergoes a unique metabolism in the liver, and the glucose in the candy stimulates insulin secretion, which is enough to make the person who eats salivate.

Second, there is the role of brain stimulation.When you eat sugar, it triggers a response in the brain's "reward center," according to research by Princeton University's Bartley Hoebel.The reward center is also responsible for addiction to cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, and other similar substances.All eating behaviors trigger a response in the reward center to some extent, because this is clearly an inevitable result of evolution: species should enhance the pleasure of eating to ensure their vitality.But the ability of sweets (and cocaine and nicotine, too) to hijack reward-center signaling seems almost unthinkable.If reports of animal studies are to be believed, it can be concluded that sweets, fructose syrup, etc. are as addictive as drugs.

Foods that make us fat cause us to crave it even more.But this vicious cycle can be broken, but it takes a determination to fight these cravings—just as an alcoholic can quit drinking and a smoker can quit smoking.If you want to lose weight successfully, you must have persistent efforts and seriousness.

(End of this chapter)