By Dave Ryan
Note: As you read through this, consider that it may be time to update your food program and review what really works.
If your body doesn’t get all the nutrients it needs, both macro- and micronutrients, it can easily perceive that as the start of a famine. Once the body perceives the possibility of a famine, it produces chemicals that are not present in a well-fed body. The job of these new chemicals is to convert food into fat to prepare for the famine.
How does any of this apply to you, or anyone else that you know? Since close to 80% of adult Americans are overweight, and since the ‘famine zone response’ is the primary cause of fat, it applies to a whole lot of folks!!
America starving?!?! Almost sounds ludicrous since the consensus is that most Americans are overfed. But overfed with what? Nutritious, health-building foods that are as close to nature as possible? Not on your life, and that’s the saddest part of all this – it is your life, and the quality of your life, that’s at stake!
Why does the body turn food into fat? The prevailing theory is ‘because heavy people eat too much.’ And at the same time they say that, scientists are discovering ‘new’ (weren’t they always there?) chemicals that affect how much food is converted into fat. They tell us that if one chemical is present, more of the food is made into fat. If another chemical is absent, more of the food is made into fat. And if there is another chemical present, there is actually fat loss; all while the same amount of food is being eaten in the different trial groups. Doesn’t that tell us right there that it’s not a matter of how much we eat, but the chemistry of the body that determines whether food is used for energy and to build health, or whether it’s stored as fat. If the ‘calorie-in, calorie-out’ theory is true, why can’t we just eat 1200 calories of anything we want, like Twinkies and Twizzlers?!?!? We all know that won’t work!
Then consider this. Each of the macronutrients, carbs, protein and fats, are assigned a caloric value. Every packaged product has the calories listed no matter what’s in the food. A calorie is a measurement of energy released when a substance is burned, even things like paper and coal. (Now those are calories to avoid!) The key here is that it has to be burned, and protein, even though it can be burned and used as energy, is not supposed to be burned. It’s supposed to be used to rebuild the body. Protein is to our body what wood is to building a home. If you burn the wood for heat, you don’t have anything to build the house with. If we burn protein as energy, we don’t have anything to build the body with! So protein eaten and used to rebuild the body does not release calories, which means it has zero calories! So one 500-calorie meal of chocolate cake and another 500-calorie meal of chicken over salad are not the same! The calorie theory is bogus! It’s the body’s chemistry that determines whether food is turned into fat or not.
So why in the world would the body make fat on purpose? It’s easy to understand. It wasn’t that long ago that getting enough food was hard to do. (And we have to remember, even if we’re only talking about a hundred or two hundred years ago, the vast majority of ‘food’ was natural, organic, and unprocessed.) The primary use of fat in the body is to keep us alive. Every cell of the body has to use fuel to maintain life, just like your car engine idling at a light. It’s not going anywhere, but it’s using fuel. Of course, in a car, the engine can be turned off so it uses no fuel. The only time the body uses no fuel is when it’s dead! And 70% of the fuel used at rest, to keep us alive, is fat!
So, the body has this tremendous ability to convert food into fat so there is always enough to at least survive. This is controlled by one of the most powerful genetic programs we have – the genetic program that made it possible for the human species to survive times when food was scarce – the perception of the possibility of a famine.
But how can this apply to our modern day when food is so plentiful? Easily! If even the quality of the food is poor and doesn’t give the body what it needs, this can be perceived as the ‘famine zone!’ If you skip meals or eat too infrequently, that can trigger the famine zone. And frankly, so much of what is called food today is so over-processed and lacking in value that it can’t give the body what it needs. Proof? Again, near 80% of adult Americans is overweight!
“But I have friends that lost weight restricting calories. Doesn’t that prove it works?”
Sometimes, if they ate natural foods in a quantity that met their body’s needs, but the vast majority of those losing weight from dieting are losing both fat and lean body mass. The loss of lean triggers the famine zone, which leads to the cravings so many have to battle, and even the slightest deviation, let alone going back to ‘the American way of eating,’ will cause fat gain, because they are in a chemical fat making mode – the famine zone.
So what’s the answer? Feed the body everything it needs. Convince it that there is no reason to carry lots of fat because there is no famine. If the body isn’t in a chemical fat making mode, you can eat anything you want on occasion, and it won’t make a large amount of fat.
That’s what Living Lean and Healthy is all about. We make every effort to accurately calculate how much food it takes to pull you out of the famine zone and convince the body to release the fat. That part is easy. Understanding how the body works and how much food you need is the easy part. It may be time to call and make an appointment to update your food program and review all this, and that will help.
Understanding all of what it takes is easy; implementing it consistently enough may not be simple. We tend to do what we have always done, and we tend to do what others are doing. The vast majority of the information we have about food has come from advertising and from the diet industry. We have been brain washed to reach for certain things based on criteria, thoughts, which have nothing to do with health and feeding the body properly. Our response to hunger and other stimulus is controlled by the thoughts and images implanted in our brains by decades of advertising and observing what everyone else is doing.
To make it easy, we need to replace those ‘hard-wired’ patterns with new responses that make it easier to choose wisely and lean. That’s where Directed Mental Dynamics comes in. You can learn how to beat those impulses and change the way you react. An individualized CD can be made using guided imagery and relaxation response training, similar to hypnosis, to gently retrain how you respond to food stimuli.
Living Lean and Healthy, 19355 SW Teton Ave, Tualatin, OR 97062
Dave Ryan (503) 516-5590
