It's not genetic, as we know from the obesity epidemic. If Americans were generally not fat 30 years ago, and three times as many are fat now, it's environmental, some behavioral change of diet, lifestyle, etc. It's genes responding, not demanding. So why is it happening? That's not the question right now. Now, it's why isn't it changing, with diet and exercise.
It's as if somewhere in the brain there is a silhouette of what it thinks we should look like, and the brain works to maintain that shape. That's not how it is, but as if. There is a gradual increase and excess of calories, however, that allows for the slow modification, adaptation of that image, so that slow fat gain can be sustained, whereas sudden change is more easily reversed. It's really a function of insulin -- but insulin is subject to homeostasis, even if an unhealthy one.
Undoubtedly meditation, visualization, affirmations can hack in as it were and edit that image, allowing for successful weight loss where a merely thermodynamic approach will fail. We can say will fail, because that's what the mechanistic studies show -- treating fat loss as a mere equation of positive or negative energy balance results in failure. The homeostatic silhouette gauge makes adjustments -- faster heartrate, more spontaneous movement, nervous energy, body temperature fluctuation, manipulation of appetite and cravings -- anything to waste or conserve energy, calories, fat. We know the mind-body relationship is controlled but not ordained by hormones -- the way a puppet is controlled by stings ... it goes beyond the strings. Point is, thinking matters.
The diet and exercise paradigm, to which every sensible person must be attracted, seems to be wrong. You'll have to look at your own life experience to see if it has worked. It's not a simple equation, energy in, energy out. If the body were a closed system, that idea would work. But it's not a closed system. There's leakage. It's not energy in, which is either stored or burned for purposeful metabolic functions. Such functions can be quantified, as body heat or lifting or locomotion or breathing or heartbeat or shivering. These are purposeful, and because of that they are predictable, quantifiable, and variables of an equation. The silhouette gauge is a randomizer, in that insulin may be set too high -- making you too fat. Why? Who knows. Aside from too many industrial carbs that is.
Think of the body as a steam engine, in an old fashioned train. A heap of coal, a furnace, and a way to get work done. Easy. Straightforward math, whatever the details. But then there's the whistle. The safety valves, that keep the boiler from exploding. It confounds things. Some people are always blowing their whistle. A lot of wasted steam. Keeps them lean. Some people let the pressure build until it's dangerous. Not on purpose -- it's just how the thing is built. Some engine cabs just keep filling up with coal, that doesn't get burned -- or the firebox has a problem, and the coal builds up there. You get the idea. Not an elegant analogy, but you can play with it yourself.
The point is that the calculations can't be valid if the system is not closed. How can people eat less and still be fat? First, metabolism is not even a steam engine, but rather a hybrid motor, that uses different fuels in a pattern we haven't recognized yet. Then, well, the system is not closed. What goes in? Calories? How meaningful is that? Something burned in a crucible is supposed to translate one-to-one into metabolism? Isn't that actually sort of an insane assumption? And once we have digested these "calories", they can be used only according to the mechanistic expectations of thermodynamics? We're all for thermodynamics. For mechanistic systems. The fact that fat people can eat less and exercise more than lean people confounds the issue, though, wouldn't you agree?
There's an engineer at the switch, and he operates according to rules that you don't find in elementary physics textbooks. He decides wheel speed and burn rates and heat and pressure and noise. He doesn't like to be starved, and he works at his own pace. How do you make him happy? Feed him right, and have a conversation.
That's all. That's all for now. Complex, and simple. Diet and exercise. We eat right for health. We exercise for fitness. Both matter, a lot. Food makes our bodies, and we use our bodies to do the things that life is about. Energy and movement. Diet and exercise. That's it.
Be excellent.
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