Does Over-Eating Make You Fat, Or Do You Eat More Because You Are Fat? (PART 2 of “Obesity—What the Experts are Reluctant to Tell You”)

Today, researchers are digging into what drives weight gain, and some are beginning to suggest that we have been confusing cause and effect. What if it’s not overeating that causes us to get fat, but the process of getting fatter that causes us to overeat?” Recently The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a provocative piece that asked precisely that question. Shortly before publishing in JAMA, the authors, summed up their argument in a New York Times Op-Ed: “Always Hungry? Here’s Why.”   There, David Ludwig, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and director the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, and Mark Friedman, vice president of research at the Nutrition Science Initiative did a superb job of distilling their argument into terms a layman can understand. They suggest that chronic overeating represents a symptom rather than the primary cause of piling on the pounds. Indeed, Ludwig and Friedman argue, dieting itself may induce changes in our metabolism that leads us to regain weight when we begin to lose it. They explain their theory:  When we eat hearty meals, “we lock . . . more calories away in fat tissue.” As a result, “fewer are circulating in the bloodstream to satisfy the body’s requirements.” In other words, there are not enough calories in our bloodstream to give us the energy to do what we want to do. “If we look at it this way,” they continue, “it...
Source: Health Beat - Category: American Health Authors: Tags: regain weight calories carbohydrates controlled trials dieting futile long-term weight loss Losing weight low-fat diets obesity Uncategorized yo-yo dieting BMJ carbs David Ludwig fat cells Gary Taubes Kelly Crowe Mark Fri Source Type: blogs