Physicians are realizing that not everyone should be urged to reduce. Superficial emotional problems which prompt people to overeat can result from inadequate diets, but obesity is often an unconscious defense mechanism for individuals who have had severe emotional deprivations early in life. Regardless of how much they may hate being overweight, they are healthier because of it. When these persons force themselves to reduce, they often have emotional breakdowns, suffer from such marked depression that they develop suicidal tendencies, are overcome with guilt, disgust, and self-hatred at "being weak and gluttonous," and become addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee. If possible, such people should forget about reducing and merely strive to build health. They are usually cheerful, witty, intelligent individuals who make worth-while contributions to society.
The attitude that a slender person is somehow more acceptable than an overweight one is ridiculously immature. Unless you happen to have a husband who for ego-building purposes wishes to display you as he would a new Cadillac, there is little reason for looking like a mannequin. Overweight persons can dress attractively; and many individuals with "a lean and hungry look" are not pretty in bathing suits either.
Frequently persons use their excess weight as a scapegoat for self-hatred. Yet the very person who feels he would be more loved if slender still likes his overweight friends. His chief problem is not one of weighing too much but of failure to accept and love himself with both his strengths and weaknesses; and until we can love ourselves without egotism, none of us can love others without selfishness.
The present attitude that obesity is chiefly of psychosomatic origin implies that Americans have more emotional problems now than at any other time in history and than people of any other nationality, an assumption that find difficult to accept.
Increasing Energy Production
Though there are many causes of overweight, the one which makes this problem so prevalent now is that-like heart disease- too few nutrients are supplied in our diets to burn fat readily. Fat is lost only when energy is produced; therefore weight cannot be taken off until fat is efficiently burned, a process requiring almost every nutrient. A lack of any of the B vitamins causes a marked lag in energy production.
If pantothenic acid is undersupplied, fats burn at only half their normal rate. Stored fat cannot be hanged to energy without vitamin B6 and rats deficient in this vitamin utilize both protein and fat so ineffectively that they become grossly obese.
Similarly, proteins are needed for a host of energy-producing enzymes. Fat is burned twice as rapidly when protein is adequate rather than insufficient; hence more calories are used. If vitamin E is added to a diet formerly deficient in it or in protein, the utilization of fat doubles. Protein itself cannot be used without cholin, vitamin B6, and other nutrients, and it is quickly changed to fat if even one of them is lacking.
A principal function of lecithin is to help the cells burn fat; therefore any deficiency that limits lecithin production causes fat to be so poorly utilized that coronary disease, high blood pressure, and overweight often occur in the same individual. Overweight persons almost invariably have excessive blood fat and cholesterol, showing that energy is not being produced normally, and unnecessary fatigue as well as obesity is the result.
Liver damage, which is now extremely common among overweight persons, probably a major cause of obesity. In a group of such individuals, liver biopsies showed this organ to be damaged in every case, and not one person had normal liver function. Liver injury prevents energy-producing enzymes from being synthesized in adequate quantities, thus making it almost impossible to reduce until the health of the liver is restored .
If protein, vitamin B2, or pantothenic acid are undersupplied, the liver is unable to produce enzymes necessary to inactivate insulin. Excessive insulin therefore accumulates in the blood, causing fat to be formed quickly and the blood sugar to fall. This condition, known as hypoglycemia, has also become common. A person with continuous low blood sugar usually gains rapidly yet stays so ravenously hungry that it is difficult indeed to lose weight. Fortunately both liver damage and hypoglycemia are easily corrected when the diet is made adequate.
Importance Of Frequent Meals
Every variety of animal becomes obese if forced to eat only two meals daily even though given an ideal diet; when allowed small frequent feedings of the identical food, weight remains normal. Most of the food is converted into energy when small meals are eaten, but large meals overwhelm the body's enzyme systems to the extent that much of the food cannot be utilized; hence a large portion of it is stored as fat. These obese animals, however, reduce without decreasing their food intake if again allowed small, frequent meals. Unfortunately, large meals affect humans in the same disastrous manner; yet Americans eat 80 per cent of their food after 6:00 P.M. A study of the eating habits of individuals who could not reduce showed that they ate little throughout the day, obtained most of their food at dinner and during the evening, and had no appetite for breakfast. Anyone who has tried to reduce knows this pattern only too well. In the morning, while the blood sugar is still high from food eaten the night before, will power is strong and resolutions firm. One vows he is going to stop feeling like the anchor on the Queen Mary and thinking of himself as a baby blimp; hence he forgoes or merely samples breakfast and lunch. As the bright star of success begins to glitter brilliantly before him, his blood sugar drops and he becomes exhausted, irritable, and starved. His undoing was not that he ate too much but that he ate too little.
Advantages Of Unrefined Foods
A research group wanting to study long-term effects of reducing was unable to find persons who had reduced and maintained normal weight; hence was forced to use rats. The animals on a stock diet of natural foods ate all they wished and remained in excellent health without gaining. Although in some human diets 60 per cent of the calories come from saturated fats, rats given a seemingly adequate diet containing 37 per cent of the calories from hydrogenated fat became grossly obese.
As soon as the rats were put back on unrefined foods, however, they quickly reduced and maintained normal weight indefinitely. When some were again given the diet containing hydrogenated fat, they gained far more rapidly than before, but they could still reduce and remain "slender" when given unrefined foods. Such research indicates that it is not entirely the amount of food eaten that causes obesity, but the lack of nutrients required to convert fat into energy. When unrefined foods are eaten, nutrients needed for energy production are supplied with every calorie, whereas trash foods both lack these nutrients and tremendously increase the requirement for them.
Author Resource:
David Crawford is the CEO and owner of a Male Enhancement Reviews company known as Male Enhancement Group which is dedicated to researching and comparing male enhancement products in order to determine which male enhancement product is safer and more effective than other products on the market. Copyright 2010 David Crawford of http://www.maleenhancementgroup.com This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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