On Obesity

Before I get into the topic of today’s post, I’m going to go through my day really quickly! I began the morning by training the other half of the Quidditch team. The movements were a little more unnatural for this group, but their form improved so much by the end! I can’t wait to see how they do the next time we do this workout! 

I got paid in green juice.

 

I believe it was pineapple-apple-kale? In terms of green juice, I love anything with kale and pineapple! And this was made fresh this morning!

I also requested the pulp.

All the fiber and other good stuff is there! I had visions of stirring it into my oatmeal, but it was a lot blander than I was expecting. And my oatmeal was already really thick so I couldn’t bring myself to do it. 

Immediately after training, I did another run through of my Spin audition playlist. I feel really confident about it-I love the playlist, which is exactly how I need to feel about it! I’m in the process of arranging a live run through-as in I gather a whole bunch of people and practice with them as students. I left my workout feeling energized and happy. 

My hunger was kind of strange today-it’s weird for me waking up early to train people and not going straight into a workout, so my eating routine for the whole day was kind of thrown off. 

I still got some good stuff in there though!

Chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, and roasted carrots. 

For snack a little later, I had a Quest bar, which may not have been the best decision for me. From all of yesterday’s Olympic lifting, my legs were aching a bit and protein seemed like a solid idea though.

The problem was that I really didn’t like the aftertaste of the bar and had to eat a date afterwards to cleanse my palate, plus my stomach starting hurting a little later. Not sure why I eat a food that I know doesn’t always work for me!

I thought about going to yoga, but then got wrapped up in other things instead. I had a dining hall dinner of a burrito bowl with mahi mahi.

I think one of the things I don’t prefer about this bowl is that the only seasoning really seems to be citrus. I would love some more spices up in there!

Today I also had a fair amount of sugar, in the form of chocolate and cookies and hall meeting. But such is life. It’s interesting to feel the changes in my body when I eat it though!

Onto today’s topic. 

Has anyone thought about the fact that so few bloggers write about obesity? Most talk about reasonably healthy (comparatively) people getting healthier. Which is great-don’t get me wrong! And maybe those people are more the audience of healthy living blogs anyways, but it seems a bit like an elephant in the room to not discuss the obesity epidemic. I’m not even going to get into the percentages in this post, because they can be looked up and are constantly changing. 

Today, I cracked open this cookbook, written by one of my favorite people ever, Robert Lustig, a scientist and doctor who looks at obesity, especially in children.

I’ve talked about Robert Lustig before in the context of sugar metabolism, but this book goes a little deeper into more recent possible causes of obesity. 

One of the first pages in the book directed me to this video-if you have a few minutes, it’s really interesting, and kind of mind blowing, in my opinion:

This is a TED talk addressing insulin resistance and obesity, as well as the stigma we as a society put on obese people. What was really interesting to me was when Peter Attia discusses how maybe obesity does not cause insulin resistance, but rather, obesity is a side effect of insulin resistance. It is a sign of metabolic disfunction. The hormone insulin removes sugar from the blood and stores it as fat. High levels of insulin will as a result cause more fat storage. No one could ever really figure out why obesity would lead to insulin resistance, but the other way around? It makes so much sense!

Now back to the book-where has insulin resistance come from? It’s not calories in, calories out. It is so much more than that. It’s not just about weight-some obese people do not have insulin resistance, and some normal weight people do, and are at risk for the related diseases. Listen to this: “the majority of the people today, regardless of weight, produce twice as much insulin for the same dose of glucose as people produced 30 years ago.” 

Think about that for a second.

That means, MOST people are storing more fat for the calories they are eating than did people 30 years ago. 

Think back to 30 years ago-think of movies. Everyone was much slimmer back then. And there wasn’t a significant shortage of food then-food isn’t really more available now.

Things like this make me angry. So angry. Our food system is toxic. In a day and age where we strive for advances that make our lives easier, we pollute our food system in a way that makes eating truly healthfully nearly impossible. (I understand that my readers may disagree with me on this point, but keep in mind, I’m speaking of the general population, which tends to lack knowledge about eating healthfully-clearly healthy living bloggers will have this a bit more figured out!)

THIS is what I want to do with my life-I want to cure the obesity epidemic. I want to uncover ever underlying cause, and help work out a solution. 

But it’s not just the obese. Take me for example. I’m a pretty healthy person. I’m extremely active, I eat my veggies, I try to balance my meals. But I still crave sugar and overeat it and feel awful. I still have plenty of days where I’m dragging. I still sometimes struggle to eat healthily. I’m sure my liver isn’t happy with me for the sugar in all the cookies I ate. 

How messed up is my metabolism? I’m willing to bet it’s not running as nicely as it could and or should be. And I’m a relatively healthy person. 

I’m not through the book yet, and I’m still working on figuring out the toxins that are contributing to metabolic dysfunction, but what I do have to tell you guys is that I’ve been inspired, and am planning a big blog project for the near future. As a blogger, I have a voice in the community, albeit a small one. I have an opportunity to make a difference in a few people’s lives, if I take it. 

I’m going to wait until everything is better planned out to give you guys all the details, but I’ll just say that I’m going to spend some time really analyzing what happens to food in our bodies as we eat. I am not going to promote any type of ‘diet’-but I will ask you to consider this: how many of you are constantly trying to lose those last few pounds? Or know someone that is? I’m willing to bet most people. 

Consider this-if we store more fat per glucose now than we did in the past, of course we’re going to carry extra pounds. We’re going to work on fixing the problem of the American metabolism. 

(But I promise there will be plenty of ‘normal’ blogging as well!)