Obesity Code Quotes

But diet and exercise are not fifty-fifty partners like macaroni and cheese. Diet is Batman and exercise is Robin. Diet does 95 per cent of the work and deserves all the attention; so, logically, it would be sensible to focus on diet. Exercise is still healthy and important—just not equally important. It has many benefits, but weight loss is not among them. Exercise is like brushing your teeth. It is good for you and should be done every day. Just don’t expect to lose weight.

Once we understand that obesity is a hormonal imbalance, we can begin to treat it. If we believe that excess calories cause obesity, then the treatment is to reduce calories. But this method has been a complete failure. However, if too much insulin causes obesity, then it becomes clear we need to lower insulin levels.

Coffee, even the decaffeinated version, appears to protect against type 2 diabetes. In a 2009 review, each additional daily cup of coffee lowered the risk of diabetes by 7 percent, even up to six cups per day.23

OBESITY IS NOT caused by an excess of calories, but instead by a body set weight that is too high because of a hormonal imbalance in the body.

The government is subsidizing, with our own tax dollars, the very foods that are making us obese. Obesity is effectively the result of government policy.

A recent study suggests that 75 per cent of the weight-loss response in obesity is predicted by insulin levels.29 Not willpower. Not caloric intake. Not peer support or peer pressure. Not exercise. Just insulin.

BREAKFAST: THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL TO SKIP?

Let’s face the truth. Low-calorie diets have been tried again and again and again. They fail every single time.

THERE ARE TWO prominent findings from all the dietary studies done over the years. First: all diets work. Second: all diets fail.

THE LAST PIECE OF THE PUZZLE THERE ARE FIVE basic steps in weight loss: Reduce your consumption of added sugars. Reduced your consumption of refined grains. Moderate your protein intake. Increase your consumption of natural fats. Increase your consumption of fiber and vinegar.

Diet is Batman and exercise is Robin. Diet does 95 percent of the work and deserves all the attention; so, logically, it would be sensible to focus on diet. Exercise is still healthy and important—just not equally important. It has many benefits, but weight loss is not among them.

The healthy snack is one of the greatest weight-loss deceptions. The myth that ‘grazing is healthy’ has attained legendary status. If we were meant to ‘graze,’ we would be cows. Grazing is the direct opposite of virtually all food traditions. Even as recently as the 1960s, most people still ate just three meals per day. Constant stimulation of insulin eventually leads to insulin resistance. (For

IF YOU WANT to avoid weight gain, remove all added sugars from your diet. On

In 1960, we ate three meals a day. There wasn’t much obesity. In 2014, we eat six meals a day. There is an obesity epidemic. So, do you really think we should eat six meals day? While

This is the ancient secret. This is the cycle of life. Fasting follows feasting. Feasting follows fasting. Diets must be intermittent, not steady. Food is a celebration of life. Every single culture in the world celebrates with large feasts. That’s normal, and it’s good. However, religion has always reminded us that we must balance our feasting with periods of fasting—“atonement,” “repentance” or “cleansing.” These ideas are ancient and time-tested. Should you eat lots of food on your birthday? Absolutely. Should you eat lots of food at a wedding? Absolutely. These are times to celebrate and indulge. But there is also a time to fast. We cannot change this cycle of life. We cannot feast all the time. We cannot fast all the time. It won’t work. It doesn’t work.

Refined carbohydrates are easy to become addicted to and overeat precisely because there are no natural satiety hormones for refined carbs. The reason, of course, is that refined carbohydrates are not natural foods but are highly processed. Their toxicity lies in that processing. p101

This is the ancient secret. This is the cycle of life. Fasting follows feasting. Feasting follows fasting. Diets must be intermittent, not steady. Food is a celebration of life. Every single culture in the world celebrates with large feasts. That’s normal, and it’s good. However, religion has always reminded us that we must balance our feasting with periods of fasting—“atonement,

Throughout most of human history, obesity has been rare. Individuals in traditional societies eating traditional diets seldom became obese, even in times of abundant food. As

Obesity is a hormonal disorder of fat regulation. Insulin is the major hormone that drives weight gain, so the rational therapy is to lower insulin levels.

If you reduce your consumption of flour and refined grains, you will substantially improve your weight-loss potential. White

There are an almost infinite number of ways that the body can dissipate excess energy instead of storing it as body fat.

Metabolic syndrome, of which obesity and type 2 diabetes are a key part, are ultimately caused by—you guessed it—too much sugar.

All the conditions we thought were problems—obesity, insulin resistance, and beta cell dysfunction—are actually the body’s solutions to a single root cause—too much sugar.

Unfortunately, we spend obsessive amounts of time and energy trying to understand what we should be eating and devote virtually no time to when we should be eating. We are only seeing half the picture.

Paracelsus (1493–1541), the founder of toxicology and one of the three fathers of modern Western medicine (along with Hippocrates and Galen), wrote, ‘Fasting is the greatest remedy—the physician within.’ Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), one of America’s founding fathers and renowned for wide knowledge, once wrote of fasting, ‘The best of all medicines is resting and fasting.

Doctors generally adhere to the Hippocratic oath, where they swear to abide by an ethical code, where they swear to act, always, in their patients’ best interests. Unless the patient is overweight. I hate going to the doctor because they seem wholly unwilling to follow the Hippocratic oath when it comes to treating obese patients. The words “first do no harm” do not apply to unruly bodies. There

In a modern twist to the classic overeating experiments, Feltham decided that he would eat 5794 calories per day and document his weight gain. But the diet he chose was not a random 5794 calories. He followed a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet of natural foods for twenty-one days. Feltham believed, based on clinical experience, that refined carbohydrates, not total calories, caused weight gain. The macronutrient breakdown of his diet was 10 percent carbohydrate, 53 percent fat and 37 percent protein. Standard calorie calculations predicted a weight gain of about 16 pounds (7.3 kilograms). Actual weight gain, however, was only about 2.8 pounds (1.3 kilograms). Even more interesting, he dropped more than 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) from his waist measurement. He gained weight, but it was lean mass.

Fasting carries significant health benefits. Metabolism increases, energy increases and blood sugars decrease. The only remaining question is this: Can you do it? I hear this one all the time. Absolutely, 100 percent yes. In fact, fasting has been a part of human culture since the dawn of our species.

Too often, our current model of obesity assumes that there is only one single true cause, and that all others are pretenders to the throne. Endless debates ensue. Too many calories cause obesity. No, too many carbohydrates. No, too much saturated fat. No, too much red meat. No, too much processed foods. No, too much high fat dairy. No, too much wheat. No, too much sugar. No, too much highly palatable foods. No, too much eating out. It goes on and on. They are all partially correct.

What would happen if the body continued to expend 3000 calories daily while taking in only 1500? Soon fat stores would be burned, then protein stores would be burned, and then you would die. Nice. The smart course of action for the body is to immediately reduce caloric expenditure to 1500 calories per day to restore balance. Caloric

There’s a simple answer to the question of what to eat at snack time. Nothing. Don’t eat snacks. Period. Simplify your life.

Therefore, the hormonal theory of obesity takes shape: chronically high cortisol raises insulin levels, which in turn leads to obesity.

Even the National Cholesterol Education Program admits, “The percentage of total fat in the diet, independent of caloric intake, has not been documented to be related to body weight.

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE TYPE 2 DIABETES is currently the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, amputations, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. But it doesn’t have to be our future. The pages of The Obesity Code and The Diabetes Code contain the knowledge to reverse type 2 diabetes. This is not the end, but only the beginning. A new hope arises. A new dawn breaks.

Simplistic arguments that “Carbs make you fat!” or “Calories make you fat!” or “Red meat makes you fat!” or “Sugar makes you fat!” do not fully capture the complexity of human obesity. The

Hormones are central to understanding obesity. Everything about human metabolism, including the body set weight, is hormonally regulated. A critical physiological variable such as body fatness is not left up to the vagaries of daily caloric intake and exercise. Instead, hormones precisely and tightly regulate body fat. We don't consciously control our body weight any more than we control our heart rates, our basal metabolic rates, our body temperatures or our breathing. These are all automatically regulated, and so is our weight. Hormones tell us when we are hungry (ghrelin). Hormones tell us we are full (peptide YY, cholecystokinin). Hormones increase energy expenditure (adrenalin). Hormones shut down energy expenditure (thyroid hormone). Obesity is a hormonal dysregulation of fat accumulation. Calories are nothing more than a proximate cause of obesity.

Instead, we believe that the fault lies in ourselves. We feel we have failed. Some silently criticize us for not adhering to the diet. Others silently think we have no willpower and offer us meaningless platitudes. Sound familiar? The failing isn’t ours. The portion-control caloric-reduction diet is virtually guaranteed to fail. Eating less does not result in lasting weight loss.

The Parable of the Cow”: Two cows were discussing the latest nutritional research, which had been done on lions. One cow says to the other, “Did you hear that we’ve been wrong these last 200 years? The latest research shows that eating grass is bad for you and eating meat is good.” So the two cows began eating meat. Shortly afterward, they got sick and they died. One year later, two lions were discussing the latest nutritional research, which was done on cows. One lion said to the other that the latest research showed that eating meat kills you and eating grass is good. So, the two lions started eating grass, and they died. What’s the moral of the story? We are not mice. We are not rats. We are not chimpanzees or spider monkeys. We are human beings, and therefore we should consider only human studies.

Type 2 diabetics drinking two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar diluted in water at bedtime reduced their fasting morning blood sugars.32 Higher doses of vinegar also seem to increase satiety, resulting in slightly lower caloric intake through the rest of the day (approximately 200 to 275 calories less). This effect was also noted for peanut products. Interestingly, peanuts also resulted in a reduction of glycemic response by 55 per cent.

Contrary to popular belief, sitting in front of the television or computer is a poor way to relieve stress. Instead, stress relief is an active process. There are many time-tested methods of stress relief, including mindfulness meditation, yoga, massage therapy and exercise. Studies on mindfulness intervention found that participants were able to use yoga, guided meditations and group discussion to successfully reduce cortisol and abdominal fat.

the toxicity in much Western food lies in the processing, rather than in the food itself. The carbohydrates in Western diets are heavily skewed toward refined grains, and are thus highly obesogenic. Eggplant, kale, spinach, carrots, broccoli, peas, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, asparagus, bell peppers, zucchini, cauliflower, avocados, lettuce, beets, cucumbers, watercress, cabbage, among others, are all extremely healthy carbohydrate-containing foods.

THE RESULTS ARE very consistent. Drugs that raise insulin levels cause weight gain. Drugs that have no effect on insulin levels are weight neutral. Drugs that lower insulin levels cause weight loss. The effect on weight is independent of the effect on blood sugar. A recent study suggests that 75 per cent of the weight-loss response in obesity is predicted by insulin levels.29 Not willpower. Not caloric intake. Not peer support or peer pressure. Not exercise. Just insulin.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies show that areas of the brain controlling emotion and cognition light up in response to food stimuli. Areas of the prefrontal cortex involved with restraint show decreased activity. In other words, it is harder for people who have lost weight to resist food. 15 This has nothing whatsoever to do with a lack of willpower or any kind of moral failure. It’s a normal hormonal fact of life. We feel hungry, cold, tired and depressed. These are all real, measurable physical effects of calorie restriction.

The succession of financial bubbles, and the amassing of personal and public debt, Whybrow views as simply an expression of the lizard-brained way of life. A color-coded map of American personal indebtedness could be laid on top of the Centers for Disease Control’s color-coded map that illustrates the fantastic rise in rates of obesity across the United States since 1985 without disturbing the general pattern. The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction; it is all of a piece. Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for a short-term reward.

that drinking diet soda was associated with a 43 percent increase in risk of vascular events (strokes and heart attacks). The 2008 Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC)10 found a 34 percent increased incidence of metabolic syndrome in diet soda users, which is consistent with data from the 2007 Framingham Heart Study,11 which showed a 50 percent higher incidence of metabolic syndrome. In 2014, Dr. Ankur Vyas from the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics 12 presented a study following 59,614 women over 8.7 years in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The study found a 30 percent increase risk of cardiovascular events (heart attacks and

So why are we unable to acknowledge the truth? Dr. Fung’s answer is simple: we doctors lie to ourselves. If type 2 diabetes is a curable disease but all our patients are getting worse on the treatments we prescribe, then we must be bad doctors. And since we did not study for so long at such great cost to become bad doctors, this failure cannot be our fault. Instead, we must believe we are doing the best for our patients, who must unfortunately be suffering from a chronically progressive and incurable disease. It is not a deliberate lie, Dr. Fung concludes, but one of cognitive dissonance—the inability to accept a blatant truth because accepting it would be too emotionally devastating.

So, if one were to restrict dietary fats, then one must increase dietary carbohydrates and vice versa. In the developed world, these carbohydrates all tend to be highly refined. Low Fat = High Carbohydrate This dilemma created significant cognitive dissonance. Refined carbohydrates could not simultaneously be both good (because they are low in fat) and bad (because they are fattening). The solution adopted by most nutrition experts was to suggest that carbohydrates were no longer fattening. Instead, calories were fattening. Without evidence or historical precedent, it was arbitrarily decided that excess calories caused weight gain, not specific foods. Fat, as the dietary villain, was now deemed fattening—a previously unknown concept. The Calories-In/Calories-Out model began to displace the prevailing “fattening carbohydrates” model.

Starting a little over a decade ago, Target began building a vast data warehouse that assigned every shopper an identification code—known internally as the “Guest ID number”—that kept tabs on how each person shopped. When a customer used a Target-issued credit card, handed over a frequent-buyer tag at the register, redeemed a coupon that was mailed to their house, filled out a survey, mailed in a refund, phoned the customer help line, opened an email from Target, visited Target.com, or purchased anything online, the company’s computers took note. A record of each purchase was linked to that shopper’s Guest ID number along with information on everything else they’d ever bought. Also linked to that Guest ID number was demographic information that Target collected or purchased from other firms, including the shopper’s age, whether they were married and had kids, which part of town they lived in, how long it took them to drive to the store, an estimate of how much money they earned, if they’d moved recently, which websites they visited, the credit cards they carried in their wallet, and their home and mobile phone numbers. Target can purchase data that indicates a shopper’s ethnicity, their job history, what magazines they read, if they have ever declared bankruptcy, the year they bought (or lost) their house, where they went to college or graduate school, and whether they prefer certain brands of coffee, toilet paper, cereal, or applesauce. There are data peddlers such as InfiniGraph that “listen” to shoppers’ online conversations on message boards and Internet forums, and track which products people mention favorably. A firm named Rapleaf sells information on shoppers’ political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, the number of cars they own, and whether they prefer religious news or deals on cigarettes. Other companies analyze photos that consumers post online, cataloging if they are obese or skinny, short or tall, hairy or bald, and what kinds of products they might want to buy as a result.

expenditure,40 lower risk of various types of cancer.41

I can safely say that the origin of every single disease is genetic. Our genes are the code to everything in our bodies, good and bad. Without genes, there would be no cancer. Without genes, there would be no obesity, diabetes or heart disease. And without genes, there would be no life. This might explain why we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to figure out which gene causes which disease and how we can silence the dangerous genes. This also explains why some perfectly healthy young women have had their breasts removed simply because they were found to carry genes that are linked to breast cancer. Much of this focus on genes, however, misses a simple but crucial point: not all genes are fully expressed all the time. If they aren't activated, or expressed, they remain biochemically dormant. Dormant genes do not have any effect on our health. This is obvious to most scientists, and many laypeople, but the significance of this idea is seldom understood. What happens to cause some genes to remain dormant, and others to express themselves? The answer: environment, especially diet. As we saw in chapter three, the genes that cause cancer were profoundly impacted by the consumption of protein. So while we can say that genes are crucial to every biological process, we have some very convincing evidence that gene expression is far more important, and gene expression is controlled by environment, especially nutrition.

Full-fat dairy will have virtually no effect on your weight.

Exercise is like brushing your teeth. It is good for you and should be done every day. Just don’t expect to lose weight.

Insulin acts on the insulin receptor to bring glucose into the cell. Insulin is the key and fits snugly into the lock (the receptor). The door opens and glucose enters. All hormones work in roughly the same fashion.

Nuts, in moderation, are another good choice for an after-dinner indulgence. Most nuts are full of healthful monounsaturated fats, have little or no carbohydrates, and are also high in fiber, which increases their potential benefit. Macadamia nuts, cashews and walnuts can all be enjoyed. Many studies show an association between increased nut consumption and better health, including reducing heart disease8 and diabetes.9 Pistachio nuts, high in the antioxidant gamma-tocopherol and vitamins such as manganese, calcium, magnesium and selenium, are widely eaten in the Mediterranean diet. A recent Spanish study found that adding 100 pistachios to one’s daily diet improved fasting glucose, insulin and insulin resistance.

The important question is this: Do artificial sweeteners increase insulin levels? Sucralose13 raises insulin by 20 percent, despite the fact that it contains no calories and no sugar. This insulin-raising effect has also been shown for other artificial sweeteners, including the “natural” sweetener stevia. Despite having a minimal effect on blood sugars, both aspartame and stevia raised insulin levels higher even than table sugar.14 Artificial sweeteners that raise insulin should be expected to be harmful, not beneficial. Artificial sweeteners may decrease calories and sugar, but not insulin. Yet it is insulin that drives weight gain and diabetes.

The key assumption of the theory that reducing caloric intake leads to weight loss is false, since decreased caloric intake inevitably leads to decreased caloric expenditure. This sequence has been proven time and again. We just keep hoping that this strategy will somehow, this time, work. It won’t. Face it. In our heart of hearts, we already know it to be true. Caloric reduction and portion-control strategies only make you tired and hungry. Worst of all... you regain all the weight you have lost. I know it. You know it.

Insulin is a key regulator of energy metabolism, and it is one of the fundamental hormones that promote fat accumulation and storage.

Without sufficient insulin, glucose builds up in the bloodstream. Type 1 diabetes results from the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, which results in extremely low levels of insulin.

As insulin goes up, the body set weight goes up. The hypothalamus sends out hormonal signals to the body to gain weight. We become hungry and eat. If we deliberately restrict caloric intake, then our total energy expenditure will decrease. The result is still the same—weight gain.

At some point, you simply cannot eat any more, and the idea of consuming two more pork chops is sickening. That feeling is your satiety hormones telling you that you’ve had enough. But what if you were offered a small slice of cake or apple pie? Doesn’t seem so hard to eat now, does it? As kids, we used to call this the second-stomach phenomenon: after the first stomach for regular food was full, we imagined that there was a second one for desserts. Somehow, despite being full, we still have room for highly refined carbohydrates like cake and pie—but not proteins or fats. Highly refined and processed foods somehow do not trigger the release of satiety hormones, and we go ahead and eat that cake.

STEP 4: INCREASE YOUR CONSUMPTION OF NATURAL FATS OF THE THREE major macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins and fats), dietary fat is the least likely to stimulate insulin. Thus, dietary fat is not inherently fattening, but potentially protective. (For more about fat as a protective factor, see chapter 18.) In choosing fats, strive for a higher proportion of natural fats. Natural, unprocessed fats include olive oil, butter, coconut oil, beef tallow and leaf lard. The highly processed vegetable oils, high in inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids, may have some detrimental health effects.

THE LAST PIECE OF THE PUZZLE THERE ARE FIVE basic steps in weight loss: 1.Reduce your consumption of added sugars. 2.Reduced your consumption of refined grains. 3.Moderate your protein intake. 4.Increase your consumption of natural fats. 5.Increase your consumption of fiber and vinegar.

Caloric intake and expenditure are intimately dependent variables. Decreasing Calories In triggers a decrease in Calories Out. A 30 per cent reduction in caloric intake results in a 30 per cent decrease in caloric expenditure. The end result is minimal weight loss.

Thiazolidinediones

Insulin causes weight gain.

Did saturated fat intake increase risk of heart disease? In a word, no. Here are the final conclusions of this forgotten jewel: ‘There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of CHD [coronary heart disease] in the study group.

Basal metabolic rate for a lightly active average male is roughly 2500 calories per day. Walking at a moderate pace (2 miles per hour) for forty-five minutes every day, would burn roughly 104 calories. In other words, that will not even consume 5 per cent of the total energy expenditure. The vast majority (95 per cent) of calories are used for basal metabolism.

As the insightful Gary Taubes wrote in his book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do about It, ‘We do not get fat because we overeat. We overeat because we get fat.’ And why do we get fat? We get fat because our body set weight thermostat is set too high. Why? Because our insulin levels are too high.

Dark chocolate also contains significant amounts of fiber and antioxidants such as polyphenols and flavanols. Studies on dark-chocolate consumption indicate that it may help reduce blood pressure,5 insulin resistance6 and heart disease.

Obesity drives itself. A long-standing obesity cycle is extremely difficult to break, and dietary changes alone may not be sufficient.

But the story gets worse. Insulin resistance, in turn, leads to higher fasting insulin levels. Fasting insulin levels are normally low. Now, instead of starting the day with low insulin after the nightly fast, we are starting with high insulin. The persistence of high insulin levels leads to even more resistance. In other words, insulin resistance itself leads to more resistance—a vicious cycle.

Insulin resistance, in turn, leads to higher fasting insulin levels. Fasting insulin levels are normally low. Now, instead of starting the day with low insulin after the nightly fast, we are starting with high insulin. The persistence of high insulin levels leads to even more resistance. In other words, insulin resistance itself leads to more resistance—a vicious cycle.

Where glucose requires insulin for maximal absorption, fructose does not. Once inside the body, only the liver can metabolize fructose. Where glucose can be dispersed throughout the body for use as energy, fructose is targeted like a guided missile to the liver.

The bottom line is that excess fructose is changed into fat in the liver. High levels of fructose will cause fatty liver. Fatty liver is absolutely crucial to the development of insulin resistance in the liver.

posted my six-part lecture “The Aetiology of Obesity” series on YouTube1 and started my blog, “Intensive Dietary Management”2 to share my findings with the general public.

Insulin and obesity are still causally linked. However, it is not at all clear that high carbohydrate intake is always the primary cause of high insulin levels. In Kitava, high carbohydrate intake did not lead to elevated insulin. The notion that carbohydrates are the only driver of insulin is incorrect. A critical piece of the puzzle had been neglected. Specifically, sugar plays a crucial role in obesity, but how does it fit in? The missing link was insulin resistance.

What about insulin resistance? At the very beginning of obesity, a person will manifest little insulin resistance, but it develops over time. The longer you are obese, the more insulin resistance you have. Gradually, that insulin resistance will cause even your fasting insulin levels to rise.

Diet is Batman and exercise is Robin. Diet does 95 per cent of the work and deserves all the attention; so, logically, it would be sensible to focus on diet. Exercise is still healthy and important—just not equally important. It has many benefits, but weight loss is not among them.

Higher levels of fat tissue produce higher levels of leptin. Traveling to the brain, it turns down hunger to prevent further fat storage.

Hormones are molecules that deliver messages to a target cell. For example, thyroid hormone delivers a message to cells in the thyroid gland to increase its activity. Insulin delivers the message to most human cells to take glucose out of the blood to use for energy.

Insulin is a storage hormone. Ample intake of food leads to insulin release. Insulin then turns on storage of sugar and fat. When there is no intake of food, insulin levels fall, and burning of sugar and fat is turned on.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that destroys the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas. Insulin falls to extremely low levels. Blood sugar increases, but the hallmark of this condition is severe weight loss. Type 1 diabetes has been described since ancient times. Aretaeus of Cappadocia, a renowned ancient Greek physician, wrote the classic description: ‘Diabetes is... a melting down of flesh and limbs into urine.’ No matter how many calories the patient ingests, he or she cannot gain any weight. Until the discovery of insulin, this disease was almost universally fatal. Insulin levels go waaayyy down. Patients lose a lot of weight.

As the insightful Gary Taubes wrote in his book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do about It, ‘We do not get fat because we overeat. We overeat because we get fat.’ And why do we get fat? We get fat because our body set weight thermostat is set too high. Why? Because our insulin levels are too high. Hormones are central to understanding obesity. Everything about human metabolism, including the body set weight, is hormonally regulated. A critical physiological variable such as body fatness is not left up to the vagaries of daily caloric intake and exercise. Instead, hormones precisely and tightly regulate body fat. We don’t consciously control our body weight any more than we control our heart rates, our basal metabolic rates, our body temperatures or our breathing. These are all automatically regulated, and so is our weight. Hormones tell us we are hungry (ghrelin). Hormones tell us we are full (peptide YY, cholecystokinin). Hormones increase energy expenditure (adrenalin). Hormones shut down energy expenditure (thyroid hormone). Obesity is a hormonal dysregulation of fat accumulation. Calories are nothing more than the proximate cause of obesity. Obesity is a hormonal, not a caloric imbalance.

Coffee: Healthier than we thought Due to its high caffeine content, coffee is sometimes considered unhealthy. However, recent research has come to the opposite conclusion,19 perhaps due to the fact that coffee is a major source of antioxidants,20 magnesium, lignans21 and chlorogenic acid.22

Coffee drinking is associated with a 10 per cent to 15 per cent reduction in total mortality.26 Large-scale studies27 found that most major causes of death, including heart disease, were reduced. Coffee may guard against the neurologic diseases Alzheimer’s,28, 29 Parkinson’s disease,30, 31 liver cirrhosis32 and liver cancer.33 A word of caution here: While these correlation studies are suggestive, they are not proof of benefit. However, they suggest that coffee may not be as harmful as we imagined.

Consider some typical comfort foods. Macaroni and cheese. Pasta. Ice cream. Apple pie. Mashed potatoes. Pancakes. Notice anything? All are highly refined carbohydrates. There is evidence that these foods activate the reward systems in our brains, which gives us ‘comfort.’ Refined carbohydrates are easy to become addicted to and overeat precisely because there are no natural satiety hormones for refined carbs. The reason, of course, is that refined carbohydrates are not natural foods but are instead highly processed. Their toxicity lies in that processing.

Our bodies possess an intricate system guiding us to eat or not. Body-fat regulation is under automatic control, like breathing. We do not consciously remind ourselves to breathe, nor do we remind our hearts to beat. The only way to achieve such control is to have homeostatic mechanisms. Since hormones control both Calories In and Calories Out, obesity is a hormonal, not a caloric, disorder.

Eating six small meals per day causes the metabolic rate to go up six times a day, but only a little. Eating three larger meals per day causes metabolic rate to go up three times a day, but a lot each time. In the end, it’s a wash. The total thermogenic effect of food over twenty-four hours for both the grazing and gorging strategies is the same: neither yields a metabolic advantage. Eating more frequent meals does not aid in weight loss.

The extra fattening effect of sugar is due to the stimulation of insulin resistance from fructose, which festers for years or even decades before it becomes obvious.

We never consider the implications of the drastic changes we have made in meal timing. Think about it this way: In 1960, we ate three meals a day. There wasn’t much obesity. In 2014, we eat six meals a day. There is an obesity epidemic.

Because nobody makes any money when you eat less.

Subjects given mandatory snacks5 would consume slightly fewer calories at the subsequent meal, but not enough to offset the extra calories of the snack itself. This finding held true for both fatty and sugary snacks. Increasing meal frequency does not result in weight loss.6 Your grandmother was right. Snacking will make you fat.

Daily consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks not only carries a significant risk of weight gain, but also increases the risk of developing diabetes by 83 percent compared to drinking less than one sugar-sweetened drink per month.

Sharon Fowler, from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, in the 2008 San Antonio Heart Study8 prospectively studied 5158 adults over eight years. She found that instead of reducing the obesity, diet beverages substantially increased the risk of it by a mind-bending 47 percent. She writes, “These findings raise the question whether [artificial sweetener] use might be fueling—rather than fighting—our escalating obesity epidemic.

Natural foods have a balance of nutrients and fiber that, over millennia, we have evolved to consume. The problem is not with each specific component of the food, but rather the overall balance. For example, suppose we bake a cake with a balance of butter, eggs, flour and sugar. Now we decide to remove completely the flour and double the eggs instead. The cake tastes horrible. Eggs are not necessarily bad. Flour is not necessarily good, but the balance is off. The same holds true for carbohydrates. The entire package of unrefined carbohydrates, with fiber, fat, protein and carbohydrate is not necessarily bad. But removing everything except the carbohydrate destroys the delicate balance and makes it harmful to human health.

Another criticism leveled at the low-carb diets is that much of the initial weight loss that dieters experience is water—which is true. High carbohydrate intake increases insulin, and insulin stimulates the kidney to reabsorb water. Lowering insulin therefore causes excretion of the excess water. But why is this bad? Who wants swollen ankles?

Obesity is a hormonal dysregulation of fat accumulation.

factors, including •genetics, •gender (basal metabolic rate is generally higher in men), •age (basal metabolic rate generally drops with age), •weight (basal metabolic rate generally increases with muscle mass), •height (basal metabolic rate generally increases with height), •diet (overfeeding or underfeeding), •body temperature, •external temperature (heating or cooling the body) and •organ function.

THE CARBOHYDRATE-INSULIN HYPOTHESIS, the idea that carbohydrates cause weight gain because of insulin secretion, was not exactly wrong. Carbohydrate-rich foods certainly do increase insulin levels to a greater extent than the other macronutrients. High insulin certainly does lead to obesity. However, the hypothesis stands incomplete. There are many problems, with the paradox of the Asian rice eater being the most obvious. Most Asians, for at least the last half-century, ate a diet based on white, polished rice, a highly refined carbohydrate. Yet until recently, obesity remained quite rare in these populations.

The reason diets are so hard and often unsuccessful is that we are constantly fighting our own body. As we lose weight, our body tries to bring it back up. The smarter solution is to identify the body’s homeostatic mechanism and adjust it downward—and there lies our challenge. Since obesity results from a high body set weight, the treatment for obesity is to lower it. But how do we lower our thermostat? The search for answers would lead to the discovery of leptin.