Why We Get Fat

Have you ever thought about why people get fat? I mean really think about it. We all know the theory that becoming overweight is a result of overeating and most of us know the “calories in vs calories out” theory that states if you burn more calories than you consume you will not gain weight. While this may be true to some extent I think that it is missing a large piece of the puzzle. How about the type of calories that you are putting in your body? Don’t you think that that is just as much of a factor as how much? I do. I think the types of calories you consume are just as important as how many calories you consume. I’ll explain why.

I want to start by talking about blood sugar and insulin. The relationship here is pretty simple. When you eat carbohydrates your blood glucose, or blood sugar, levels rise. This causes your body to secrete insulin which removes the sugar from your blood stream and gives it to your cells for energy. However, this process causes some things to happen that are not in our favor in terms of staying lean. The first thing is that the insulin can only pull out so much sugar from your blood stream to be used for immediate energy. Any excess sugar is moved to inactive cells, being your fat cells, for later use. The other thing that happens is if your blood sugar levels are high and your insulin is removing a lot of sugar your body is not able to use the fat and protein in your blood stream for energy. That, too, then gets transported to your fat cells for later use. This is why sugar is so frowned upon and blamed for rapid weight gain. Sugary drinks like soda pop or sugary foods like candy cause instant spikes in blood sugar and insulin which in turn causes weight gain because of the processes explained above.

Now, it’s obvious that nutritional choices play a huge role in whether or not we stay lean. Unfortunately the “recommended” guidelines for food consumption favor a very carb-heavy diet. If you refer back to the previous paragraph you’ll understand why this is a bad thing. Also, with the popularity of fast food people will have an even harder time keeping the weight off because they are eating french fries which are spiking your blood sugar, a hamburger with a bun that is spiking your blood sugar even more as well as feeding your body high amounts of saturated fat, and washing it all down with a Dr. Pepper which is shooting your blood sugar levels through the roof. This is the main reason why I think the calories in vs calories out theory is flawed. You may only eat 2 meals per day and work out pretty regularly, but if those 2 meals are anything like the one I just described you are going to get fat even though you are burning more calories than you are consuming. I’ll give you the perfect example. I use to train a very large man. He was 6-5, 330lbs and a tow truck driver. I had him wear an arm band that estimated his caloric burn from the time he woke up to the time he went to bed. On average he was burning an incredible 6500-7000 calories per day! I worked his butt off 3 times per week burning around 700 calories every workout and it killed me because he did not lose 1 single pound. When talking to him about his nutrition he admitted that he was eating at McDonalds twice per day because they were playing the Monopoly game! Are you freaking kidding me!? I couldn’t believe it. I really didn’t know what to say to that. Still, we figured out how many calories he was taking in on a daily basis, including the McDonalds, and it was less than he was burning by about 500 calories per day. He should have been losing about a pound a week. It was very clear that his choices in food were the problem. Since his body was having to deal with so much blood sugar and saturated fat it had no time to process any body fat, therefore he could not lose any weight.

As a trainer these situations are extremely frustrating because I really pride myself on my service. When people listen they get outstanding results. When they don’t they get mediocre results at best. What a lot of people fail to understand about fitness in general is that nutrition plays a much larger role in your results that anything else does. Some people refer to the “80/20 rule” that basically says 80% nutrition, 20% exercise. It’s pretty much true. You can work your butt off every night, just like my tow truck driver did, and not achieve anything if you aren’t making the right food choices. The bottom line here is watch what you eat because no matter how hard you train you can’t out train a bad diet.