No One Chooses to Be Obese or Overweight

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Recently I saw a video on Youtube that ask if being obese was a choice people make. I though it was absurd, I don’t believe people make a choice to be overweight or obese. There are so many things that influence weight gain and weight loss that are very unique to the person and what works for one person will not work for someone else.

Given the stigma that comes from being obese or overweight, plus all the increase risks for chronic illness, who would consciously choose to be fat? There are people trying to gain weight but usually it is because they are underweight or maybe a random actor for a role. I can only speak for myself, having said that I never chose to be overweight. I have been overweight or obese for the majority of my life, as young as 5 years old.

One of the reasons I love functional medicine is that it traces all the way back to when your mother was pregnant to find the real causes of whatever disease you have. In my case my mother had a rough pregnancy, she thought she was going to spontaneously abort just like she had her previous five pregnancies. A childhood full of antibiotic and corticosteroids use due to my asthma put me at higher risk for obesity. An indulgent grandmother who would try to ease my illness but cooking my favorite foods did not help the situation. On top, back then children with asthma were discouraged from exercise. Losing my grandmother and moving to another country during my teen years also did not help, as I found comfort in the SAD(Standard American Diet)  diet of my new country.

To all that add years of being shy, and using food for comfort only lead me to be obese, every time I lost the weight, I would gain it right back and even more. Add more stress from divorce, going through a Doctorate program and the result was even more weight. This is just a small snapshot of what the journey has been. At no point did I decide to be obese or overweight, it just happened.

For many of us we find ourselves in the situation where you are obese or overweight and is a big surprise. Unfortunately by the time we realize that a lifelong moments of deciding to super seize it has led us to where we are. But it is not as simple as that, Many of us become addicted to the SAD diet which has been specifically modified to do just that.

Overfed and Under Nourish

In America the most Obese people are the most under nourished. The Sad diet, the food industry has modified the foods that are most available and cheap to be very addictive, contains high amounts of fats and calories and because they are ultra processed contain almost no nutritional value like vitamins and minerals that we need to live. As early as the 1950’s American food scientists started to modify the food we eat. First, they decided that fat was the bad guy so they modified the foods to contain more carbohydrates and modify fats. Starting as early as the 1970’s the average weight of the United States people started to go up.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667%2818%2930021-5/fulltext

Portion sizes have more than doubled since the 1970’s, fast food is also cheaper and more accessible especially for lower income people. The SAD diet offers overabundance of calories but is deficient in things like vitamin C, Vitamin D, Omega 3 fats, Zinc and magnesium. About 90 % of Americans have one or more deficiencies. People who eat processed foods tend to eat more than 500 calories more than someone who eats whole foods.

Process foods are designed to give a bump in the feel good hormone, dopamine, which lasts less and less, the more you eat. To get the same effect you tend to eat more and more. If you use food to soothe yourself, you will end up eating more and gaining weight.

The Microbiome Imbalance

The Microbiome is an ecosystem of bacteria, yeast and more that lives in your gut. The point here is that if you have bad bugs in  your gut, they affect your health and weight in the wrong way. If you have good bugs, they will help you keep healthy and help you manage your weight.

When we eat ultra processed foods we feed our bad bacteria, which leads to weight gain, and other symptoms like bloating and diarrhea or constipation. The quality of your microbiome determines the quality of your health. 

An unhealthy microbiome can lead to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, autoimmunity, dementia, allergies, asthma, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s, skin disorders like acne, asthma, eczema and psoriasis, not to mention all the digestive disorders including irritable bowel, reflux or colitis. 

Sugar and starch are really bad for your Gut Microbiome. The bad guys love sugar and starch just like you do.  It promotes overgrowth of toxic bacteria and yeast, and it’s the reason for getting a “food baby” after a meal. Refined oils, which make up about 10 percent of our calories, also lead to leaky gut and trigger something called metabolic endotoxemia. In other words our metabolism is poisoned because of toxic byproducts of bad bacteria, leading to obesity and insulin resistance. 

In addition to bad fats, we over consume additives and preservatives. Some of the worst are the thickeners and emulsifiers in most processed food including carrageenan and gums. They cause leaky gut and lead to autoimmune disease. 

Medicines can have a big impact on your Microbiome, medications like antibiotics, medications that affect the acid of the stomach like Prilosec and many other medications that have an effect on the microbiome.

Inflammation

What do nearly all modern diseases have in common? Inflammation.   Depression, cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dementia, allergies, asthma, chronic fatigue, autoimmune disease, and more are all inflammatory diseases.

Our food is causing inflammation, too many inflammatory foods and not enough anti-inflammatory foods. Our immune system attempts to keep a perfect balance, always on surveillance for danger. A little bit of immune activation is good; a lot, not so much.

Obesity and chronic disease are inflammatory states, predominantly caused by our modern diet. While there are other causes of inflammation, such as toxins, allergens, infections, and stress, food plays the greatest role..

High levels of sugar and starch are the main drivers of inflammation. Sugar and starch spike blood sugar, which in turn spikes insulin. Insulin triggers a cascade of harm. It drives sugar and starch to be stored in fat cells called adipocytes in your belly and around your organs. This is not just any fat; it is a super fat that causes metabolic and hormonal disarray causing tons of inflammation. More insulin, more fat storage, more inflammation. While sugar drives inflammation, it also suppresses your immune response to infections and fuels bad bugs, resulting in leaky gut and more inflammation.

While there are many ways food can trigger inflammation, food is also the most powerful source of anti-inflammatory compounds. Many of those 25,000 + phytochemicals are powerful anti- inflammatories. The polyphenols in plant foods are among nature’s best inflammation-fighting compounds 

Environmental Toxins

Environmental toxins are often also called obesogens because they tend to cause weight gain.  Many of our common diseases are linked to an overload of toxins including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia.

More than eighty thousand chemicals have been introduced into the environment since the industrial revolution, and most have never been tested for safety. They cause inflammation, oxidative stress, damage the mitochondria, disrupt our gut function, create hormonal imbalances, and overload our detoxification systems.

In addition to air and water pollution, many toxins lurk in our food. Fatty liver is the number one cause of liver transplants. What causes fatty liver? Too much sugar and starch. Optimize your detoxification, starting with decreasing your exposure to toxins/chemicals and eat the right foods to help you detox naturally like broccoli, filter water, garlic and onion family.

Poorly Functioning Mitochondria

The food you eat breaks down into fats, protein, and carbohydrates, each which contain different nutrients that your body uses to create energy. The oxygen you breathe combines with these nutrients in these tiny little factories inside your cells called mitochondria. The food and oxygen then produce the form of energy used by our bodies called ATP. It powers everything.

The key to longevity and health is optimizing your mitochondria. Poorly functioning mitochondria are found in most chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, Parkinson’s, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia. It might also show up as fatigue, brain fog, muscle pain, intolerance to exercise, and rapid aging. 

How we feed our bodies affects the number and function of our mitochondria. While environmental toxins, infections, food allergens, an unhealthy gut microbiome, nutrient deficiencies can all damage mitochondria, the biggest factor is food. Muscle is where we have the most mitochondria. So diets that cause muscle loss – high starch and sugar and low protein diets also leave us with poor functioning mitochondria. We especially need more protein and higher quality protein as we age.

Communication Problems: Hormones

The biggest killer in the world today is cardiovascular disease, which is mostly caused by insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and/or type 2 diabetes. Clogged arteries cause heart attacks, strokes, amputations in diabetics, and even dementia. Contrary to popular understanding, this is not a plumbing problem that can be fixed by a bypass or rotor router treatments such as angioplasty or stents. It’s not cholesterol that’s the problem. It is triggered when inflammation and hormonal changes turn our cholesterol into fragile plaques that coat our arteries. 

Stress hormone- chronic inflammation lead by high cortisol levels can lead to weight gain. Cortisol will cause you to be hungry, gain belly fat and lose muscle weight.

Problems with thyroid problems can lead to weight gain and changes in metabolism. Eat foods that are high in selenium, vitamin D, and magnesium.

Sex Hormones- for women fro too much estrogens, stress, environmental toxins and dairy can cause high estrogen. Alcohol is another element that can lead to too much estrogen. On top of that women undergo menopause in which lead to estrogen/progesterone imbalance which increases their risk for cardiovascular disease.

Generic Factors/Biology

There are genes that pre-dispose you to being overweight or obese. Your resting rate and your metabolism can predispose you to gain more weight. But your genes do not determine your outcome.

We also think that some genes predispose you to be more addictive to certain foods like sugars and processed foods. Some people are very sensitive or allergic to carbohydrates. Using nutrigenomics to modulate your genes to get the results you want.

We tend to lose muscle weight with age, which can lead to more weight gain. Exercises that build muscle are a must.

Being fat is Contagious 

Behaviors are determined by our social groups. If you have friend who is obese you are 170% more likely to be obese, where if your family like sister and parents are overweight you are only about 40% more likely to be overweight. Obesity is a social disease.

So what Should we do?

Get educated about all the previous topics that can make you gain weight. Try to change what you eat, better gut microbiome guts will lead to better outcomes. Decrease calorie intake, increase whole wheat and reduce processed foods. Reduce stress, improve sleep to reduce cortisol levels.  Increase insulin sensitivity by eating whole-foods, increasing your exercise and reducing your stress. 

Lastly don’t forget about Psychological reasons why people become or stay as obese or overweight. For these people psychological help from a professional us what is recommended.

Weight maintenance will be very personal, specific to you and just because what works for one person will not work for another. Eat 70% vegetables and fruit in a whole foods way of eating to help you lose weight.

Beyond losing weight, is getting healthy and losing the weight the right way. Just because you lose weight, it doesn’t mean that you are healthy. We also have skinny unhealthy people (skinny fat). Think about getting healthy which then will lead to weight loss.



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