More than two-thirds of adults in America are considered to be overweight or obese, with 1 in 20 suffering from extreme obesity.<\/p>\n
Obesity is linked to\u00a0a myriad of chronic, life-threatening diseases including diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n
It is also expensive; the estimated annual medical cost<\/a> of obesity in the US is over\u00a0$147 billion.<\/p>\n Our \u2018obesity problem\u2019 is nothing short of an epidemic.<\/strong><\/p>\n But to solve this crisis, we first need to know what has caused it.<\/p>\n Which is precisely why we are here today.<\/p>\n To answer one simple question: what makes us overweight?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n The biggest controversy that swirls around obesity is this\u2026<\/p>\n Are we overweight because we eat too many carbs or too many fats?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The \u2018low carb\u2019 camp says that the best way to eliminate obesity is to cut out carbs and sugar. They maintain two premises:<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at each of these claims carefully.<\/p>\n The first statement suggests that if the low-fat approach has not worked, we must be overweight for another reason.<\/p>\n The low carb contingency points their finger at our excessive intake of carbs.<\/p>\n Are they right?<\/p>\n To evaluate, let\u2019s look at our daily consumption of calories and nutrients to see how our diet changed between 1970 and 2010.<\/p>\n For starters, we now eat almost\u00a0500 extra calories a day!<\/p>\n Our sugar intake has increased by only 40\u00a0calories (12 percent) although our grain consumption has soared by 42 percent. However, the grains we refer to here are mostly\u00a0refined grains, <\/em><\/strong>stripped of their fiber and nutrients versus the nourishing intact whole grains<\/a> that the USDA recommends (Remember that 90% of the carbohydrates in the Standard American Diet are refined!)<\/p>\n Our intake of dairy has slightly decreased (13 calories), but cheese consumption has risen 153 percent. This suggests we have swapped out milk for cheese, which is problematic since cheese is the number one source of\u00a0saturated fats in the American diet and very high in sodium.<\/p>\n Meat intake has barely changed over this time period (Although we started at elevated levels; American consumption of meat continues to be one of the highest in the world.)<\/p>\n The amount of fruit and veggies in our diet remained relatively unchanged, which means we continue to not eat enough of them. Only 4 percent of Americans eat the minimum 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Our consumption of beans<\/a> (which falls in this category) is particularly low.<\/p>\n Which brings us to fats\u2014the part of our diet that has changed the most. Between 1970 and 2010, our fat intake increased 67 percent! <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Another way of looking at this is that almost half of those extra 500 calories we eat each day come from fat (while another 37 percent comes from refined<\/em> (not whole) grains).<\/p>\n That is a lot <\/em><\/strong>of fat.<\/p>\n So while the Dietary Guidelines might have recommended Americans consume less fat, we clearly did not listen.<\/strong><\/p>\n These numbers tell a clear story.<\/p>\n Our obesity problem is caused primarily by an overconsumption of fats and oils<\/em> and, to a lesser extent, refined<\/em>, processed carbohydrates.<\/p>\n Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n The second low-carb argument centers on glucose.<\/p>\n The \u2018eating too many carbs makes you overweight\u2019 logic goes like this\u2026<\/p>\n According to this interpretation, the only way to \u2018fix\u2019 the situation is to eat a low-carb diet; by eating fewer carbs, your glucose and insulin levels will be lower, and you will not gain weight (fat).<\/p>\n This \u2018low carb\u2019 line of reasoning is flawed because it assumes incorrectly that\u00a0only carbohydrates elevate insulin <\/em><\/strong>when, in fact,\u00a0<\/em>high protein and high fat foods or their addition to carbohydrate-rich meals will raise insulin as well <\/em>(without an increase in blood glucose levels).<\/p>\n In other words, insulin response<\/a> is not always proportional to blood glucose levels or to the carbohydrate content of a meal.<\/p>\n If you eat a diet high in fat (and low in carbohydrates), insulin may \u2018instruct\u2019 <\/em>your body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates. However, it will not dip into your fat stores any more (or any less) than if your diet is\u00a0based on carbohydrates.<\/p>\n As long as the calories consumed are close to or in excess of what you need, fat storage will remain the same.<\/p>\n Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n Is exercise the villain behind our obesity woes?<\/em><\/p>\n Many like to contend that our sedentary lifestyles are responsible for our obesity problem.<\/p>\n While being a couch potato definitely does not help, it is still only a tiny piece of the puzzle.<\/strong><\/p>\n What you eat counts much more than the hours you devote to the gym. <\/em><\/p>\n Just to put this into perspective\u2026<\/p>\n The average American eats the equivalent of a Big Mac in extra calories every day.<\/p>\n To work that off with exercise, you would have to walk more than two hours a day, seven days a week!<\/p>\n While exercise is beneficial for your overall health, remember that you lose weight in the kitchen!<\/p>\n Click To Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n Obesity is the result of a disproportionately high energy intake compared to energy expenditure.<\/p>\n But it is not just<\/em> about consuming excess calories.<\/p>\n It is about what<\/em> we eat and how<\/em> it changes our body\u2019s physiological responses over time.<\/p>\n A high-calorie, high saturated fat<\/em><\/strong> diet profoundly alters how the brain regulates energy balance<\/a> and ultimately leads to both metabolic dysfunction and weight gain.<\/p>\n Even\u00a0worse, the body defends these changes fiercely, which makes any subsequent weight loss through energy (calorie) restriction very difficult to maintain.<\/p>\n As we saw in our article about diabetes and fat<\/a>, excess saturated fat causes insulin resistance, which is a hallmark of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes as well as obesity. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n This is because insulin resistance leads to leptin resistance<\/em>.<\/p>\nIs It Carbs or Is It Fats?<\/h3>\n
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What About Glucose?<\/h3>\n
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Why Moving More Is Not the Answer<\/h3>\n
And Another Vicious Cycle<\/h3>\n