Why do we get fat

Chapter 29 The Truth Emerges: The Essence of Healthy Weight Loss (1)
Now that the answer is clear that sugar makes us fat, the best (and perhaps) only way to lose weight is to eat foods rich in sugar sparingly.For those who are already obese, this means that if you want to lose weight, the best way to get thinner is to avoid sugar intake.This logic is quite simple and clear, but our doctors insist on telling us that this way of losing weight is not worth the candle.In this way, my proposal becomes unbelievable and dangerous.We need to find another way.

Here are the three main arguments against a sugar-restricted diet right now:
1. This is a scam.Because this weight loss method guarantees that you don't need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight, which violates the laws of thermodynamics and the purpose of balancing calorie intake and consumption.

2. This weight loss method does not consider dietary balance.It limits the intake of an entire nutrient class, namely sugars.And one of the laws of healthy eating is to achieve dietary balance in food intake.

3. This weight loss method does not avoid high fat. Increased intake of saturated fatty acids will increase cholesterol and cause heart disease.

This chapter allows us to discuss each of these criticisms one by one and see if they hold water on their own.

The truth about the so-called hoax

Most opponents of sugar-restricted diets begin with the belief that the diet's advocates are grandstanding and deceiving the credulous common man.Eating and drinking all you want can also lose weight?impossible!

But now, through most of the book's argument, we know what happens when we restrict our sugar intake, and why it leads to weight loss, especially fat loss—independent of the calories we eat from fat and protein , which has nothing to do with the laws of physics.I won't repeat them here.

The truth about the so-called unbalanced diet

If refined sugars and sugars like starches were really the main cause of our obesity, then the controversy over dietary imbalance would be moot.Because apart from avoiding excessive intake of sugar, it is difficult to have other ways to reasonably solve the problem.Doctors advise us to quit smoking because it causes lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease, without considering whether not smoking will ruin our full lives.Doctors want us to be healthy more than this.Therefore, we should limit sugar because sugar will make us fat and cause some other chronic diseases, which is also the same logic.

If you cut the same amount of calories from food, or like our traditional weight loss point of view, limit fat intake first, but in fact fat and protein will not make us fat, eating more sugar will make us fat.Therefore, weight loss methods that limit fat and protein are not effective.Even if it does work, the hunger pangs will be so persistent that you simply can't hold on to it and keep it from rebounding.But if you limit your sugar intake only, when you feel hungry, you can replenish your intake of fat and protein without getting fat.The advantage of restricting sugar to lose weight is to avoid starvation.If you could lose weight without starving, would you prefer a diet that required constant semi-starvation?
Also, the argument that a sugar-restricted diet starves the body of important nutrients doesn't hold water.First of all, the food you want to avoid is those refined sugars that are easy to make people fat, not green leafy vegetables, and the main provider of minerals, vitamins and amino acids is green leafy vegetables, we do not limit the intake of nutrients and sugars from green leafy vegetables (mainly dietary fiber).This concern about lack of vitamins or minerals is extremely one-sided.Second, limit intake of fattening refined sugars, such as starches and candies, which are foods that lack key nutrients.Of course, some food suppliers add B vitamins and folic acid to refined flour, and such refined sugars that have been "fortified" do not count, such as "fortified" white bread.

Even if you believe that losing weight requires reducing your calorie intake, for that reason you should also be cutting out fattening sugars rather than cutting out fat and protein first.If you diet to reduce your total calorie intake by, say, eating one-third less each day than before, you also risk reducing your essential nutrients by one-third.Then, what should be considered is to eat only one-third of calories, but not lose the corresponding nutrients.A diet that eats less sugar, flour, potatoes, or beer and doesn't restrict meat, eggs, or leafy greens can do just that.An adult man can get all the amino acids he needs from the wheat he eats, but he has to "fill up" himself with 1000 grams of wheat every day; and to get the same amount of amino acids, he can get the same amount of amino acids from 350 grams of meat. Done.

Since the 20s, people have questioned the consumption of animal products, believing that they contain saturated fatty acids and are harmful to health.Even so, it is impossible for nutritionists to deny that meat contains all the amino acids, all the essential fatty acids and 60 of the 13 essential vitamins necessary for humans.Meat is a concentrated source of vitamin A and vitamin E, and also contains substances necessary for the body to synthesize a variety of B vitamins.Vitamin B12 and vitamin D are moreover only found in animal products, although you could also argue that we can synthesize enough vitamin D from exposure to the sun.Vitamin C is a relatively deficient vitamin in animal products.However, the mechanism of vitamin C entering cells is similar to that of glucose entering cells, and there will be competition in the same cell.In this way, the higher our blood sugar level, the more glucose can enter the cells, and the fewer places for vitamin C to pass through.Insulin secretion is also regulated by the kidneys to inhibit cellular uptake of vitamin C.This means that when we consume more sugars, more vitamin C will be excreted in urine, and the less vitamin C will be used.When sugar intake is greatly reduced, the small amounts of vitamin C found in animal products are better utilized by the body and ultimately meet human needs.

From an evolutionary point of view, this explanation also makes sense.Human populations living far from the equator endure winters that last for several months, with a period of freezing once a year.At this time, apart from the animals hunted by primitive humans, there was nothing else to eat. The idea that primitive people can get their daily vitamin C by drinking orange juice or eating fresh vegetables is very naive and ridiculous.Therefore, it is not surprising that humans have evolved a mechanism to obtain sufficient vitamin C from a sugar-free and meat-rich diet.

Another radical version of this idea is that there are no "essential" sugars.Nutritionists say that a healthy diet requires an intake of about 120 grams of sugar per day, because the brain and central nervous system burn about 120 grams of sugar per day as fuel.However, the energy of the brain is not provided solely by carbohydrates.When the diet is deficient in sugar, the brain and central nervous system turn on molecules called ketones, which are synthesized in the liver from the fatty acids we eat and mobilized by fat tissue and some amino acids.If the diet is completely free of sugar, about 75% of the energy needed by the brain will be provided by ketones.That's why the somewhat harsh, carbohydrate-restricted diet is known as the "ketogenic" diet.The remaining 25% of the energy required by the brain comes from glycerol released from adipose tissue and glucose synthesized from amino acids in the liver.

When we burn our own fat for fuel (at the end of the day, we want it to be fuel), the liver takes some of the fat and turns it into ketones, which the brain burns for energy.This is a natural process.When we miss a meal, most notably at dinner or sleep, when the body is fueled by burning fat stored during the day.As we continue to fast at night, we will gradually mobilize more fat, and the liver will produce more ketones to meet the needs of the brain.

But when ketone levels in the body get too high, "ketosis" occurs, and nutritionists consider it a pathological condition.Since ketone is an acidic substance, if it is kept too high in the body, it will cause coma in severe cases.However, as long as there is no excessive hunger, the increase in ketone levels is within the natural range and does not constitute a pathological change.Our ketone levels on an empty stomach before breakfast are 5 mg per deciliter, and those on extremely strict sugar-restricted diets have ketone levels between 5 mg per deciliter and 20 mg per deciliter.Due to insulin resistance, diabetic patients cannot use glucose normally, resulting in metabolic disorders, and then lead to diabetic ketoacidosis, with ketone levels generally exceeding 200 mg per deciliter.

If we only eat half the amount of refined sugars per day (around 60 grams), then the ketone levels in the body will be similar to the natural process.The researchers report that the brain and central nervous system actually manage ketones more efficiently than glucose.

We have pointed out that 99.9% of human dietary history does not contain sugar. When we do not eat sugar, we will produce a slight ketosis, which can be defined as the normal state of human metabolism.

The truth about so-called heart disease

Will a diet that restricts carbohydrates and does not restrict fat and protein cause heart disease risk?This important question cannot be avoided in any discussion of the pros and cons of restricting sugar for weight loss.The idea that you'll lose weight by restricting sugar is bound to be outraged at first, because it's believed to be unachievable.If we believed that limiting sugar would lead to weight loss, we'd replace "heart-healthy" sugars—for example, whole-grain bread and potatoes—with foods like meat, eggs, and possibly cheese.Since the former are also mostly a source of saturated fatty acids, by this logic, this diet raises our cholesterol, especially LDL, which is generally considered the "bad" cholesterol, and we suffer from heart disease and early death risk will increase.

This is the thread of reasoning that prompted Gene Mayer's "Holocaust" metaphor, and why most doctors and medical organizations still consider sugar-restricted diets barbaric.

There is plenty of evidence to prove their views wrong.First, we need to question: Does cutting out fattening sugars, which make us thinner, also lead to heart disease?If we eat less sugar, we replace those reduced calories with fat, and we certainly do, less of one means more of the other.Likewise, when you decide that eating fat clogs your arteries and causes heart disease, you try to eat as much sugar as possible—to offset your fat intake by eating more sugar.

Then we have come to the conclusion that eating less sugar can lose weight, but at the same time eating more fat makes us prone to heart disease and premature death.If you want to lose weight naturally, you have to bear the risk of heart disease.

The authorities make a mathematical case for this: Fat is the most energy-dense nutrient in the diet, making it a key obesity-promoting factor.There are 9 calories per gram of fat and only 4 calories per gram of protein or sugar.Because of its high energy density, you'll be more gullible into eating more fat than lower-density carbohydrates or protein.For example, if you eat 10 grams of fat with your lunch, you will consume 10 more calories than if you eat 50 grams of protein or sugar.According to this statement, your body only cares about "eating 10 grams", not how much nutrients those 10 grams provide or how much fuel it actually uses.

The idea is unbelievably stupid.Imagine that the evolution of organisms has lasted for hundreds of millions of years, but now we think that only the size of the food we eat or the size of the stomach cavity determines how much nutrients and fuel are needed for each meal.Not only does this sound impossible, experiments have shown it to be impossible.

Before the 20s, sugar-restricted weight loss was repeatedly touted as making people lose weight, not gain weight.Then in the 60s, fat was suddenly formalized as a diet killer, with saturated fatty acids clogging our arteries and making us fat when eaten in excess.Isn't that weird?
In 1984, the American Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute launched a "public health campaign" aimed at advocating that a low-fat diet could provide effective protection against coronary heart disease.The success of this campaign has made the "low-fat weight loss doctrine" officially a firm doctrine, unshakable.The surprising fact is that officials at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute aren't all that confident about the link between fat and heart disease.The following are descriptions by Nancy Ernst and Robert Levy, two of the top experts in the discipline of cholesterol and cardiology.

There are indications that a low-fat diet can lower blood cholesterol levels.However, there is no conclusive evidence that this decrease is independent of other concomitant changes in the diet... However, it is safe to say that since 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories, 1 gram of protein or carbohydrates provides only about 4 calories. Calories, so, fat is the main source of calories in the diet.Then, if you want to lose weight or maintain weight, you must focus on the fat content of your diet.

So, we're told to eat less fat, and we try to do so, or at least we want to.According to the USDA, intake of saturated fatty acids declined steadily in the years following the Public Health Campaign.

However, instead of getting thinner, we got fatter.

To make matters worse, heart disease rates did not decrease, contrary to expectations.Even though we eat less fat, the situation does not improve, which has been proved by a large number of studies. In November 2009, Elena Kuklina of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and her colleagues published an experimental report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors cited a large amount of evidence that Americans Per capita LDL cholesterol has fallen year by year (in line with dietary recommendations to avoid saturated fats, and the government even spends billions of dollars each year promoting cholesterol-lowering drugs), while heart attacks have not followed suit.

The low-fat, high-sugar diet did not lead to weight loss, and even heart disease was not well controlled.In contrast, obesity and diabetes, both of which increase the risk of heart disease, remain rampant, near epidemics.Every reasonable person should question the soundness of accepted weight loss advice.But people are not used to admitting to being wrong when they suddenly discover that evidence they have long believed to be true turns out to be wrong.

We start to be obedient, start to eat less fat and more sugar, even if we don't want to lose weight, we at least hope that we will stay away from heart disease.So, should we be skeptical when we hear that "fat is our confidant's big problem" again?
The Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute spent $5000 million to test the efficacy of cholesterol-lowering drugs on heart disease.Experts have spent 20 years and invested a lot of money trying to prove the hypothesis that by lowering cholesterol and implementing a low-fat diet can prevent heart disease.However, the results of the experiment showed that they failed - "heart attack, experiment collapsed".It would be too expensive to try again, and even if the institute could afford it, it would take at least another 10 years.But once they have strong evidence that lowering cholesterol with drugs saves lives, they're willing to jump in again, as if a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet is a worthwhile gamble.

The spirit is commendable, but the consequences are not good.Researchers continue to work to prove that cholesterol-lowering drugs can prevent heart attacks, allowing some people to live longer (at least for those at high risk of heart attacks).But that still doesn't prove that a low-fat diet has the same effect.

(End of this chapter)