The 100-Calorie Secret - Never Diet Again!

With 65% of the US population overweight and more than 25% obese, the problem of our increasing weight gain has becomes more and more critical.  It all stared 10,000 years ago when our hunting ancestors needed to store energy during times of lack of food. In our society today there are few lean times. Nevertheless, the systems that evolved to store energy in our belly fat continue to operate especially in the face of very pleasing, energy reach foods that surround us all day. Perhaps most disturbingly, childhood obesity is rapidly increasing in many countries. Strong correlations exist between weight gain and the development of diabetes, heart disease, gall bladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep, and mental disorders.

The genetic tendency to store fat varies from one person to another depending upon our brains sense of energy balance and adaptation to various signals to eat or not eat. In the present of unrestricted, very fattening, pleasing food the signals to eat are not balanced with equal signals not to eat. So blaming our ancestors is not such a bad choice. Or is it?

Dr Barry Levin describes the situation today when he call people today as the "perfect survivors." "...Thus, the perfect survivor has evolved central and peripheral systems that are biased toward ingesting and storing as much food as possible when it is available, conserving those stores when it is not, and efficiently replenishing lost stores when food is available again." He goes on to say, "the same traits that make some individuals perfect survivors are those that predispose them to become obese when highly palatable, energy dense foods are readily available and can be obtained with minimum expenditure of energy."