You’re Fat Because You’re Starving

by Dr. Craig A. Maxwell

Why am I overweight?” I’ve heard this question many times in my practice from patients who can’t seem to lose weight no matter how hard they try. It’s frustrating when shedding those extra pounds seems next to impossible.

 

So what if I told you you’re overweight because you’re starving?

 

I know it may sound strange but even though you eat plenty every day, you’re never getting enough necessary nutrition to keep you fit and trim. It seems like you’re always hungry and though you try to control it, you eventually cave in and binge.

 

Until you break this vicious cycle, you won’t be able to reach your weight-loss goals.

 

The Standard American Diet is Why You’re Struggling to Lose Weight

 

The Standard American Diet (SAD) consists of a high intake of red meat raised and packaged by factory farms, “fast” food meals, refined-flour donuts, snack cakes, chips, cookies, candy, and diet soda.

 

These really aren’t foods so much as food-like products. What’s worse, these products are manufactured with certain chemical ingredients designed to make you crave them and want more.

 

Let’s look at some of the top food ingredients that make you fat:

 

• High Fructose Corn Syrup

 

According to an article published in the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, this common sweetener may have a temporal relation to the epidemic of obesity in America. High fructose corn syrup makes you gain weight by interfering with a critical hormone called leptin. Leptin is secreted by your fat cells that send a signal to your brain to let you know you’re full.

 

Excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup interferes with this process, contributing to a condition called ‘leptin resistance’. This is why you feel hungry all the time. No matter how much you eat, you’re not getting that critical signal that should let you know you’ve had enough.

 

HFCS also wreaks havoc with your insulin levels, which can result in the development of diabetes. If you eat enough sugar long enough, your body will pump out more and more insulin to keep up with demand. After a while, your cells stop paying attention to the signals and those critical regulatory messages are completely ignored.

 

In my opinion, high fructose corn syrup is the perfect food additive to trick your body into slowly destroying itself!

 

• Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

 

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is one of the most addictive food additives on the market because it creates that “meaty,” savory flavor your body naturally craves. These food additives have only been available for the market for the past 50 years or so. Thousands of years before that, we were craving and eating meat.

 

Food manufacturers have taken advantage of that natural survival instinct by creating a product that artificially stimulates the craving for meat without offering any of the actual nutrients organic, grass-fed meat provides.

 

Eating foods containing MSG is like playing a cruel game of “keep away” with your starving body. It like, “Here’s some meat. No, not really.”

 

Monosodium glutamate (MSG) also causes weight gain by stimulating your pancreas to produce three times as much insulin as it’s supposed to. This causes a quick conversion of sugar to fat while simultaneously causing erratic sugar highs and crashes that make you feel hungry all the time.

 

To make matters worse, the side effects of MSG don’t stop at weight gain. This artificial flavor additive has some serious side effects associated with it including migraines, neurological dysfunction, and seizures.

 

• Aspartame

 

Although aspartame is more often associated with neurological dysfunction, hyperactivity, and behavioral problems, some studies have suggested that this synthetic sweetener may also make it difficult to lose weight. Research studies have shown that rats fed aspartame instead of sucrose experienced a marked weight gain due to its negative effects on blood glucose.

 

• Antibiotics

 

If the meat, poultry, and fish you consume is factory farmed, it may be what’s contributing to your weight gain. Not only does this type of meat have far less nutritional value, it’s also loaded with antibiotics.

 

According to a study done by Dr. Martin J. Blaser, director of the Human Microbiome Program and a professor of medicine and microbiology at New York University, the antibiotics in beef may be partially responsible for the obesity epidemic.

 

He and his colleagues spent years studying the effects of antibiotics on the growth of mice, raising two groups on high-calorie feed; one with antibiotics, one without. His findings were surprising, especially on the female mice. They gained about twice as much body fat as the control group who ate the same exact food.

 

Antibiotic exposure not only indiscriminately wipes out the good bacteria in your gut, it also appears to stimulate the conversion of extra dietary calories into fat. (The male mice, on the other hand, seemed to grow more in terms of both muscle and fat).

 

Low-Fat Food is Nothing More Than a Scam

 

If you’ve been eating low-fat diet food to lose weight, it’s one of the top reasons you’ve never been able to.

 

No only are these food-like products loaded with chemicals that wreak havoc with your leptin and insulin levels, they have virtually no nutritional value. This means no matter how much you eat, you’ll always feel hungry. Your cells will be starved for nutrition and all you’ll seem to think about is food.

 

When you eat these types of “foods,” you are virtually guaranteed to stay overweight and unhealthy for the rest of your life. And that’s no way to live! Not when it is so easy to regain control of your health by changing the way you eat.

 

How to Lose Weight Naturally without Starving Yourself

 

You don’t have to deprive yourself to shed those unwanted pounds. As a matter of fact, doing so can be just as bad for your health as eating diet “food.” When you eat too few calories each day, your body goes into starvation mode and stores as much of the nutrients you take in as fat. Your metabolism will also slow down, making it difficult to have the body you want.

 

For my patients, I recommend a whole-food diet. This means slowly weaning off the Standard American Diet and replacing it with the type of food your great-grandparents used to eat.

 

Organic, grass-fed beef, poultry, wild-caught fish, vegetables, fruit, beans, legumes, hummus, seeds, nuts, nut butters, and healthy fats like organic butter, avocado, and coconut oil can all help you lose weight.

 

You’ll be pleased to know that dark, organic chocolate can help you lose weight too.

 

Don’t starve yourself to lose weight. Not by depriving yourself of any food or by eating foods with no nutritional value. Once you get back to a more natural way of eating, you won’t have to count calories anymore and you’ll find those stubborn pounds finally melting away!

Congratulations! You’ve Learned the Basics.

Now Read:

Get a Flat Stomach Naturally 

Resources:

 

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/79/4/537.full

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666312004138

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/the-fat-drug.html