Why we get fat

Thanks Julia for turning me onto this Sep 18, Kasia rated it did not like it Shelves: non-fiction , eat-me. I call bullshit. Yes, insulin regulates fat metabolism, the rest of what he preaches is crap. In short, Taubes supports the Atkins diet, and we know how Atkins ended up. You eat his way, you will lose weight, just as you would on heroin or chemotherapy. Saturated fat is not the answer to the obesity epidemic, no matter how much this delusional bacon eater would like to believe it.

Oct 17, Krystal Williams rated it it was amazing. Author Gary Taubes takes you through a thorough explanation of metabolic function with regard to fat regulation including fat storage and fat mobilization , citing numerous published studies and clinical trials. Taubes does an excellent job of minimizing the jargon and maximizing your understanding. He explores the origins of our current dietary recommendations eating servings of grains a day, minimizing dietary fat, etc.

He develops a compelling case for why we get fat, and specifically outlines what to do about it. Jul 06, Kyle Nicholas rated it it was amazing Shelves: sociology , science. At the very least, it would help med students before they deal with patients who are overweight and suffering obesity-related health issues, who are also low-income no matter where in the world they live, to understand why people may be fat.

It's not that the obese are eating chocolate bars by the gross and then sitting back defending our "lifestyle choices" when we're told to lose weight, eat less and get up and This book should be required reading for EVERY medical professional from day one.

It's not that the obese are eating chocolate bars by the gross and then sitting back defending our "lifestyle choices" when we're told to lose weight, eat less and get up and exercise. Medical professionals need to stop treating the obese, especially when the overweight are poor and come from food-insecure households, like we're just soft-addicted "druggies" who flat-out refuse to change our diets.

Most of us don't have that option. This goes right to the heart of the issue in American society and the disparity between the rich and the poor.

The rich and by extension, post-grad medical students, doctors, nurses and their ilk are thin and healthy because they can afford NOT to eat. The poor don't have that choice. American doctors don't have to skip meals because they can't afford them, and they've never had to decide which of their children doesn't get to eat supper that evening. When government subsidies go to cheap processed carb-based foods and resources, it translates at the grocery aisle.

You can catch a good sale at Grocery Outlet for three candy bars for a dollar. No, I stand corrected. Feb 10, Leigh rated it did not like it. Gary Taubes is either a fraud or an idiot. He gets almost none of the science right.

If you are looking for someone to tell you that you aren't fat because you eat too many calories, this is the book for you. If you are looking for some real evidence based research, and not cherry picked studies to support a whack-a-doodle 'sell a lot of books to people who think there's a magical answer to weight loss' theory, then pass on this one. View all 13 comments. Jan 27, Elizabeta rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites.

I really enjoyed the book, and I learned a lot about how body uses food for energy. I will definitely try the recommendations to see how it will work for me.

There are also a lot of studies listed here that I've never heard of. It's all about the insulin! Jun 29, Abigail rated it it was amazing. All of us. But this book explains the science behind why counting calories is pointless, and reducing carbohydrates is the only way to lose weight.

Atkins or your favorite high-fat, low-carb diet book; otherwise read this book first. For me, so far sugar is winning, but at least I feel guilty about the right things now. I hope people read this book, so that we can stop arguing about things that are pretty well proven false now e. In fact, this book sticks to its title thesis admirably well. And we know what we need to do about it: eat less and exercise more.

Consume less fat. Rely less on animal products. If we can all just control ourselves and eat a low-fat, plant-based diet and get some exercise, everyone will be fine. Confession: until recently, I considered Atkins and co to be utterly misguided. But does it take into account how our bodies actually work? Not according to Gary Taubes. Sure: to gain weight, I have to eat more than I discard, but what causes this?

Is every overweight person really just gluttonous and lazy? He illuminates matters by describing a group of female rats whose ovaries had been removed. They began eating incessantly and quickly became quite obese. In some cases, though, they were held to their usual diets. These rats also became obese, but in addition, were lethargic, moving only to gather food. Greed and sloth: end of story? Without ovaries, they had no estrogen. Estrogen helps regulate how fat is stored, and prevents it from landing solely in fat, as opposed to, say, muscle cells.

In the absence of estrogen, most of the fat that these animals consumed was being stored in their fat cells. This meant that their bodies had no fuel to run on. So they kept eating. Forcibly prevented from eating, they lacked the energy to move.

Humans are in the same position: incoming fat can be shunted into storage or treated as fuel. Taubes gives a somewhat technical but quite enlightening description of how we process food, with insulin in the starring role. Insulin has a variety of effects, none very helpful to anyone who wants to lose weight. In particular, while insulin is elevated, it is impossible to burn anything other than glucose. In anyone with chronically elevated insulin, this is obviously a problem.

Adding insult to injury, as we get older, we tend to become less sensitive to insulin, and some people become resistant. Obviously, this does not affect everyone equally genetics plays a big role : we all know people who can eat piles of chocolate without gaining weight.

Refined carbohydrates may not cause trouble everywhere, but where there are weight problems, Taubes says, carbs and our hormonal response to them are always to blame. It is impossible to decrease carbohydrate consumption without increasing fat intake.

Taubes is fully aware of the environmental and ethical disadvantages of a heavily meat-based diet, though he does not offer a solution. He does, however, address the widespread claim that the key to both weight loss and good health is a low-fat diet.

Rather shockingly, he makes a convincing case that its purported beneficial effects are not supported by science. There is a revealing discussion of how the government came to claim that they were. On the contrary, studies seem to show that people on low-carb, high fat diets have improved triglycerides and HDLs.

He dispenses with exercise similarly handily—while unquestionably very important, exercise does not seem to contribute much to weight loss. Jul 08, Albert rated it liked it Shelves: health , reviewed.

I confess to enjoying reading and learning about nutrition and the impact it has on our health. I readily admit that I do not always grasp the details as well as I would like, but that does not get in the way of my enjoyment.

As I have learned more, I have been surprised that a science-based field like nutrition can seemingly be as divisive and contentious at times as American politics. While Gary Taubes certainly has a strong perspective or bias about the causes of obesity, he knows he has that I confess to enjoying reading and learning about nutrition and the impact it has on our health.

While Gary Taubes certainly has a strong perspective or bias about the causes of obesity, he knows he has that bias and is honest and transparent about it. That is all I ask. I only react negatively when someone claims they are treating all points of view fairly when they clearly are not.

I have learned that it is very difficult in a work like this for any author to present all perspectives in a balanced manner. Instead, assuming we want that balance instead of just reading what we already believe , it falls on us to choose different books and authors that together will provide us with the broadest possible understanding.

Gary Taubes argues that the resistance that many humans have developed to insulin is the underlying cause of obesity in most cases. His arguments are presented in a clear and organized manner. His attitude and arguments can come across as condescending, however, he has a scientific education from Harvard and Stanford and has focused throughout his career on reporting on instances where he believed the scientific efforts were not being conducted properly or have reached unwarranted conclusions.

While Taubes does not have a medical education, he has applied his knowledge of science and the scientific method to the field of nutrition for many years. In this book he did not address the impact that fasting might or might not have on weight loss efforts. I thought that given the popularity of and arguments for various intermittent fasting methods that fasting should have been included.

A must-read-- Taubes presents a compelling case against eating carbohydrates and any food that has significant effects on the level of your insulin, which, he argues, causes all sorts of problems like obesity, cancer, heart disease, hypertension, Alzheimer's, and other exclusively Western diseases.

The argument rests on the mechanism of fat storage. Insulin is the hormone responsible for storing fat. When there's a lot of insulin, the body tends to store whatever is digested into fat, and when the A must-read-- Taubes presents a compelling case against eating carbohydrates and any food that has significant effects on the level of your insulin, which, he argues, causes all sorts of problems like obesity, cancer, heart disease, hypertension, Alzheimer's, and other exclusively Western diseases.

When there's a lot of insulin, the body tends to store whatever is digested into fat, and when there isn't much insulin around, the body tends to burn fat for fuel. In other words, whatever that triggers massive insulin secretion will make us fat, and what does this? Carbohydrates, such as sugar, flour, rice, and potatoes. When a lot of insulin is secreted, moreover, all sorts of things go wrong: HDL the good cholesterol goes down, dense LDL goes up, and triglyceride in the blood goes up, all risk factors associated with heart disease.

The reversal of this firmly held belief is simply mind-blowing. All this is just the tip of an iceberg. For the detailed argument full of examples and historical and scientific reasons, DO read the book. It's easy to understand and you'll be infinitely grateful you've read it. Mar 05, David J.

Andrews rated it it was amazing. In broadest terms, Taubes supplies the science behind the Atkins Diet. He provides the historical context for how and why the American medical community got so confused about how we get fat.

It explains in painful detail how, results to the contrary, doctors and government officials, each reinforcing their wrongheaded advice have become entrenched in what can only be called diet myth.

This book does provide ample evidence for why American's are suffering and dying from a growing epidemic of di In broadest terms, Taubes supplies the science behind the Atkins Diet. This book does provide ample evidence for why American's are suffering and dying from a growing epidemic of diabetes, cancer and Alzheimers all because we can't seem to understand our metabolic system and how it works.

This book is even more valuable to me because I have lost and maintained my weight over the past year by following a low-carb diet despite my wife's lack of support. After reading Taubes' book, she has completely changed her views and she is now successfully using the diet as well!

Follow the diet in this book and watch the pounds disappear, effortlessly and relatively quickly. My doctor now supports this diet the results speak for themselves and, if leadership ever returns to our government, the CDC and DHHS should revise the food pyramid just in time for our nation's th birthday!!!!

View 1 comment. Oct 12, Karen rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobook , health-and-fitness. Both had good information but this one was written in a much more reader-friendly fashion. If you've ever wondered why following the conventional wisdom of low-fat, low calorie eating, based on whole grains, fruits and vegetables, doesn't give you significant, long-lasting weight loss, this book will set you straight.

Taubes is a science writer and has pulled together all of the nutritional studies done over the last hun This was much better than Taubes' first book Good Calories, Bad Calories. Taubes is a science writer and has pulled together all of the nutritional studies done over the last hundred years or so that completely refute the typical current diet wisdom. Remember how the low-fat trend was supposed to reverse the weight gain that had begun in the 60's and 70's?

And yet, more people than ever are more obese than ever! This book will show you why, and what to do about it. It's definitely not about fad diets. Update - I'm currently re-reading this book by listening to the audio version and it's even more compelling the second time around.

Oct 29, Eva rated it really liked it. One remarkable study of the effect of physical activity on weight loss was published in by a team of Danish researchers. The Danes actually did train sedentary subjects to run marathons After eighteen months of training, and after actually running a marathon, the eighteen men in the study had lost an average of five pounds of body fat.

Steatopygia, the prominent fat deposits of the buttocks on this African woman, is a genetic trait, not the product of overeating or sedentary behavior. Why do the lean twins have identical bodies? And why do the obese twins? Why is their accumulation of fat so nearly identical? Are we to assume that they just overate, more or less, by exactly the same number of calories over the course of their lives because their genes determined precisely the size of the portions they ate at every meal and precisely how sedentary they chose to be—how many hours they sat on the couch rather than getting up and gardening or walking?

Breeders of livestock have always been implicitly aware of the genetic, constitutional component of fatness. Those engaged in the art and science of animal husbandry have spent many decades breeding cattle, pigs, and sheep to be more fatty or less fatty, just as they breed dairy cattle to increase milk production or dogs for hunting or herding ability. Hence, a likely explanation is that the genes that determine the relative adiposity of these two breeds have little or nothing to do with their appetite or physical activity but, rather, with how they partition energy—whether they turn it into protein and fat in the muscles or into milk.

Girls enter puberty with very slightly more body fat than boys 6 percent more, on average , but by the time puberty is over, they have 50 percent more. So what we want to know is why this room is crowded and so overstuffed with energy—that is, people. But why? Their body temperatures drop; they tend to be cold all the time. The cause and effect are reversed. Both gluttony and sloth are effects of the drive to get fatter.

We are, after all, just another species of animal. Animals in the wild may be naturally fat No matter how abundant their food supply, wild animals will maintain a stable weight—not too fat, not too thin—which tells us that their bodies are assuring that the amount of fat in their fat tissue always works to their advantage and never becomes a hindrance to survival. When animals do put on significant fat, that fat is always there for a very good reason.

Similarly, a greyhound will be more physically active than a basset hound, not because of any conscious desire to exercise, but because its body partitions fuel to its lean tissue, not to its fat. The result: cantaloupe-sized masses of fat on each thigh. This is why diabetics often get fatter when they take insulin therapy.

You think about eating a meal containing carbohydrates. You begin secreting insulin. So cortisol can make us fatter still when insulin is elevated, but it can also make us leaner, just like every other hormone, when insulin levels are low. And this may explain why some people get fatter when they get stressed, anxious, or depressed and eat more, and some people do the opposite. The baby will now be born with more fat, and it will have a tendency to oversecrete insulin and become insulin-resistant itself as it gets older.

It will be predisposed to get fat as it ages. In animal studies, this predisposition often manifests itself only when the animal reaches its version of middle age.

Researchers have continued to demonstrate that cholesterol-lowering drugs can prevent heart attacks and apparently allow some people to live longer at least those who are at particularly high risk of a heart attack.

But it has still not been demonstrated that either low-fat or low-saturated-fat diets will do the same. After six years on the diet, these women had cut both their total fat consumption and their saturated-fat consumption by a quarter, lowering their total cholesterol and their LDL cholesterol below albeit only very slightly below that of the other twenty-nine thousand women, who were eating whatever they wanted and yet their low-fat diet, as the final reports stated, had no beneficial effect on heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, colon cancer, or, for that matter, fat accumulation.

Eating les For women, HDL levels are so good at predicting future heart disease that they are, effectively, the only predictors of risk that matter. He did the study, he explains, because he was concerned that a diet like the Atkins diet, rich in meat and saturated fat, could be dangerous. Your diet is to be made up exclusively of foods and beverages from this handout. Readers also enjoyed. Self Help. About Gary Taubes. Gary Taubes.

Gary Taubes is an American science writer. In December Taubes launched a blog at GaryTaubes. His main hypothesis is based on: Carbohydrates generate insulin, which causes the body to store fat.

After receiving a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in , Taubes joined Discover magazine as a staff reporter in Since then he has written numerous articles for Discover, Science and other magazines.

Originally focusing on physics issues, his interests have more recently turned to medicine and nutrition. Taubes's books have all dealt with scientific controversies. Nobel Dreams takes a critical look at the politics and experimental techniques behind the Nobel Prize-winning work of physicist Carlo Rubbia.

Bad Science is a chronicle of the short-lived media frenzy surrounding the Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion experiments of Books by Gary Taubes. Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day. It says nothing about cause and effect. Experts think the first law is relevant because it fits neatly with our existing theories about why we get fact—those who consume more calories than they burn will gain weight.

Thermodynamics tells us that if we get fatter and heavier, more energy enters our body than leaves it. But the important question, at least from an obesity perspective, is why do we consume more calories than we expend? One of the other problems with thermodynamics argument is the assumption that the energy we consume and the energy we exert have little influence on each other—that we can change one without impacting the other. The literature says that animals whose food is suddenly restricted tend to reduce energy expenditure both by being less active and by slowing energy use in cells, thereby limiting weight loss.

They also experience hunger so that once the restriction ends, they will eat more than their prior norm until the earlier weight is obtained. This is the same problem Bistrian and Blackburn encountered earlier. This means, at least at some level, bodily functions and possibly genetics play a role. This implies that we can generally tell, just by looking at the waistline, which people have strong self-control.

In the early s, George Wade studied the relationship between sex hormones, weight, and appetite by removing the ovaries from rats. The impact was dramatic: the previously skinny rats ate voraciously and became obese. But Wade did a revealing second experiment, removing the ovaries from the rats and putting them on a strict postsurgical diet.

And that is the start of our understanding of why we actually get fat. The animal is unable to regulate its fat tissue. A follow-on experiment, where the rats were injected with estrogen after the surgery, resulted in normal behavior.

That is, they did not become slothful or obese. Biologically, one of the things that estrogen does is to influence an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase LPL. If the LPL comes from a fat cell, we get fatter. If the LPL comes from a muscle cell, it gets pulled in and digested as fuel. The fatter the rat got, the more it had to eat to feed the non-fat cells. When the body is unregulated, it creates a cycle of getting fatter and fatter. It tells us that two behaviors—gluttony and sloth—that seem to be the reasons we get fat can in fact be the effects of getting fat.

In men, LPL, activity is higher in the gut and lower below the waist. In women, LPL is highest below the waist. When we stop exercising, however, the situation reverses. The fat cells natural tendency is to get back to their previous state.

The LPL on fat cells is regulated by the presence of insulin. The more insulin our body secretes, the more active the LPL becomes on the fat cells, and the more fat that, rather than being consumed as fuel by the muscle cells, gets stored in fat cells. Taubes Gary. Summary of the Book Drawing on and elaborating his critical work, Good Calories and Bad Calories , Gary Taubes discusses the puzzling question of what is making us fat and how do we manage our weight?

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