Sep 1

HOW DO YOU FIGHT EXCESS WEIGHT

Robin O'Bobin

The big-bellied Hen,

Ate more victuals

Than threescore men;

A cow and a calf,

An ox and a half,

A church and a steeple,

And all the good people.

And yet he complain'd

That his belly wasn't full.

English nursery rhyme

To fight or to dawdle?

The nursery rhyme sounds familiar, doesn’t it? How can you rid yourself of those extra pounds, stay slim and spare your body the devastating effects of all that extra weight? How can you forget about high blood pressure, osteochondrosis, arthritis, diabetes and so on? Really, why are we so prone to obesity? Why fighting it is so difficult and the results are so elusive? Well, the answer is simple: we just don’t know what we are doing. Instead of real fighting we are making one step forward and two steps back.

When we lose weight by restricting the intake of calories, carbohydrates, meat or fat, we are making a step forward. Once we get sick and tired of this sensible diet, we return to the habitual fare. We gain whatever weight was lost over half a year of painstaking efforts in a single month – and then gain some more. These are the two steps back.

Where is the truth?

Extra weight is not the real problem, it’s just a matter of insulin dependence.

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilates famously asked Jesus. In our case the answer is straightforward. Extra weight is not the real problem, it’s just a consequence of insulin dependence. Yes, most of us are insulin addicts! When this hormone sends excess sugar from our blood to storage, we feel satisfied and happy with the better food security.

Fat people live less but eat more. Stanisław Jerzy Lec

Well, saving some nutrients for the rainy day is a legitimate mechanism that has been good for human evolution. The problem is that the pleasure we get from it becomes a narcotic. We crave the insulin surge more than the food itself. We love to feel happy like a child from all those candies, cookies, sodas, pies and donuts. If we attempt to fight this addiction, we go through all the withdrawal symptoms of an honest junkie. We feel fear, depression, anxiety, aggressiveness, vertigo, headache or joint and muscle pain, though on a more modest scale.

On the other hand, true drug addicts know that they are sick. They expect these symptoms as a price for recovery from a dangerous condition. A common overeater blissfully continues to believe in his superb health. It doesn’t really matter that our pants size keeps growing and it’s getting harder to fit in a car seat, otherwise we feel fine and can happily eat a pound of steak plus some cheesecake for desert.

Don’t look for heroic feats before you are healed, and you will never be healed before you realize you are sick. Vladimir Solovyov

Fighting insulin addiction

The main law of weight loss (or rather of health improvement) is to come to love this internal emptiness, the feeling of slight hunger, and learn to enjoy it.

Honest to God, our “normal” daily food intake is a sick joke. We were brought up to believe that three full-course meals a day was “good for us”. Just saying “no” to this culture will be the right first step. Then try activating the two rescue hormones, glucagon and hydrocortisone. The former is a gentle antagonist to insulin. If insulin is absent for more than two or three hours, it starts looking for internal glucose supplies.

First it retrieves glucose from storage and then starts extracting it from fat. Once you have a cookie or a sip of soda, however, glucagon promptly retreats. Your pancreas reacts to a higher glucose in your blood by unleashing the crazy insulin, which transfers all the sugar that came with your meal (and then some more) to storage.

You blood sugar drops dramatically; the brain starts crying foul and you rush to the kitchen pantry or the fridge. The main law of weight loss (or rather health improvement) is to come to love this internal emptiness, the feeling of slight hunger. Learn to enjoy this condition and rest assured that glucagon will never let you starve to death. To facilitate the move to endogenic nutrition, drink a lot of water and exercise. Water calms down hunger by filling the stomach and extending its walls a bit. As for exercise, it launches the second hormone, hydrocortisone, a powerful natural agent produced by the adrenal gland to combat stress. Like a magician, hydrocortisone starts manufacturing glucose from whatever comes in handy, provides a surge of energy and suppresses inflammation and allergies. Its release, however, is triggered only by extreme situations such as hunger, fatigue, extreme temperatures, lack of oxygen, or pain.

Under regular conditions, our body produces hardly any cortisone, making us suffer from apathy, depression, inflammations, and allergy. So how do we launch the hydrocortisone factory? That’s simple. The moment you feel like having a snack, promptly head for the gym or just go outside. Do some running, fast walking, physical work (here come fatigue, heat and lack of oxygen!), do some stretching (here comes pain) or expose your body (you may start with just your feet) to cold water.

Does this sound difficult or impossible? No, it doesn’t. These methods are time-tested and highly effective. Sure, not being Baron Munchausen, you won’t be able to pull yourself out of a swamp by your own hair, especially if you don’t realize how deeply stuck you are. We’ll discuss it in more detail in the following chapters, in the meantime let’s draw some preliminary conclusions.

You won’t lose any weight by seeking a magic diet. Taking “metabolism-accelerating” pills is even worse. Some of these drugs may cause psychological disorders, others have a bad effect on your heart and blood pressure. The outcome is hypertension, arrhythmia, depression and neurosis on top of excess weight. It’s better to keep your natural weight, rather than lose your extra pounds at this cost! Serious weight control requires courage and reason, not the blind faith in some miraculous pills or herbs.