THE BOOK

The Power of your Metabolism

HOW IS BODY FAT MADE?

To be able to slim down you must understand how fat is created in your body.  The idea is that a person speeds up the rate of their metabolism to “burn” their excess body fat while avoiding the accumulation of new fat.  That’s why you HAVE to know how new fat is created in your body; so that you can avoid it.

Fat is necessary.  It is a substance that protects our organs, protects us from the cold and stores within itself lots of potential energy.  If a time came when there was a serious food shortage, the first to die of starvation would be the “skinny” people, and the last would be obese people.  When the body doesn’t have any other choice, it uses its fat as a source of energy to survive.  Bears hibernate for many months, and during this time their bodies are using their stored fat.  That’s why when bears start their hibernation they are fat and when they wake up they are very thin. Fat is a substance that stores energy for future use.

The process of the creation of body fat is the following:

The reason that diets that are high in refined carbohydrates cause weight and obesity problems is because no other group of foods produces more glucose, more quickly, than refined carbohydrates.  A large amount of glucose forces the body to produce a large quantity of the insulin hormone.  If your body cells use the glucose that they need and end up having more than enough of it left over, the body will create fat to “store” the surplus of glucose.

AN EXCESS OF REFINED CARBOHYDRATES LEADS TO WEIGHT AND OBESITY PROBLEMS

Proteins and fats also produce glucose, but they make it in very small amounts that don’t stimulate a very high production of insulin. It is the insulin that allows us to gain weight.  Insulin could be compared to a shopping cart in that it brings glucose along with it to the cells to feed them.  If the shopping carts (insulin) stays packed full of glucose, then the insulin will turn this excess glucose into fat for storage. So there it is, the cause of weight problems and obesity: an excess of glucose and insulin in your blood.  This also accounts for the high incidence of diabetes and conditions like hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).

FATS ARE NOT TO BLAME!

The general population is becoming every day more and more overweight.  However, studies done by the government and the food industry reveal that we have decreased our consumption of fats for the last 40 consecutive years.  For example, a United States federal government study called NHANES (National Health and Nutrition Examination Study) showed that the annual average consumption of fat is 19% less than it was 40 years ago.

The era of products that are fat-free, low fat and dubbed with the prefix “lite” for their low fat content have been dominating the food market for nearly 3 decades.  How is it possible that the statistics reveal we are eating less fat if we are fatter than we have ever been?

For many years we have been sold on the idea that it is fat that causes more fat.  As consumers we have believed this concept to the point that today we consume less fat than ever before.  The constant publicity has made us conscious of the reality that they want to instill in us: “fat is what makes you fat”.  However, this is only a half-truth.

A “half-truth” is something that is partly true but that is also not 100% true.  It’s like if our wife or husband were to say to us, “I love you”, when in reality what they mean is “I love you if you do whatever I say and never what I tell you not to”.  Taking that “I love you” as if it were an absolute truth would be a serious mistake.

The information that fats make us gain weight is a “half-truth”.  It has enough truth since it has been accepted as truth for many years. But, today, the percentages of weight problems and obesity of the population show that this wasn’t absolutely true.  It was only partly true.

It’s true that fat can make us fat.  But for this to be possible, the insulin hormone must be present.  Without insulin present, fat can’t make us fatter.

For example, the original Eskimos were nomadic tribes.  The food that Eskimos could eat was limited to what they could find in the North Pole region.  In the North Pole, there isn’t land to sow or grow any kinds of plants.  In the North Pole there is only snow and ice.  Eskimos always survived by hunting and fishing animals.  A nomadic Eskimo always made his breakfast, lunch and dinner with whatever he could catch by hunting or fishing.  They fed themselves on fish, seals, polar bears and caribou (a type of polar deer).  As a result, the only things that the Eskimos ate were meat and animal fat.  There weren’t carbohydrates in the North Pole, only meat and the fat that was in the fish and animals.

Taking into account the diet high in fat that the Eskimos had, we would expect to find very fat people amongst them.  However, there were never nomadic Eskimos who were overweight or obese.

There was a research scientist named Henry Stephenson who traveled to the North Pole between 1875 and 1876 and lived with the Eskimos for 2 years.  During this time, Stephenson ate the same things the Eskimos did, meat and fat.  Stephenson was very surprised by the fact that in those 2 years, in which he was eating only meat and fat, he lost more than 40 pounds and he was much more slender.  At that time, Stephenson wrote a book about his discovery of how the diet of meat and fat had decreased his body fat.

The Masai tribe in Africa has survived healthfully for many generations by living off of only their livestock for food.  The Masai eat the meat of their livestock as well as their milk and blood.  The Masai were always known and respected by other tribes as thin, well-built warriors.  Some years ago, some scientists did cholesterol tests on them and found that none of the members of the tribe had abnormally high cholesterol levels.

Due to the way that the body functions, the fat contained in foods can’t turn into body fat unless there is enough insulin present.  Insulin is only produced in large quantities when we consume refined carbohydrates.  Without the help of insulin, the fats that we eat can’t build up in our bodies.  This is why even greasy pork meat can only make us fat if we have it with some type of carbohydrate that forces our body to produce insulin.  The greasy pork meat alone can’t make us fat.

Weight and obesity problems haven’t been caused by the fat that we consume.  They’ve been caused by the combination of fats and refined carbohydrates.  For example, having pizza (bread with fat) for lunch or dinner would be a sure way to accumulate body fat. 

You can eat fats without it meaning that they are going to make you fat.  What is not smart is combining fat with refined carbohydrates.

Combining refined carbohydrates with fat is a sure way to WORSEN WHAT IS ALREADY BAD.  If you want to slim down, you have to understand that fat is not what makes you fat.  Without the help of insulin, which is created when we eat a good amount of carbohydrates, fat can’t make us fat.  Enjoy your pork chops with a nice salad. They won’t make you fat.  But be careful if you like to eat them with French fried potatoes.