UltraMetabolism

7 Weight Gain Myths

There are seven myths many of us believe that confuse, confound and thwart our efforts to lose weight. These beliefs are impediments to success.

Myth #1: Eat Less + Exercise More = Weight Loss.

Restricting calories turns on ancient mechanisms that prevent starvation. These slow your metabolism to conserve energy and trigger a cascade of molecules in the blood so you receive hunger signals that are too strong to ignore-all leading to weight gain.

Myth #2: You can control weight by counting calories.

All calories are not created equal. Food that enters your blood stream quickly promotes weight gain; food that enters slowly promotes weight loss. For example, sugar from soda enters your blood very rapidly; the calories you aren't using is stored as fat. The same amount of sugar from kidney beans enters your blood slowly. Because your body has a greater chance to make use of the calories over time, more is burned and less stored.

Myth #3: Eating Fat Makes You Fat.

We have been brainwashed to believe that if we eat fat, we will get fat. There's one problem-science does not support this myth. In the last 40 years, our national fat consumption has decreased from 43% to 34% of our total calories. Eating less fat than ever, we are growing fatter. The reason? Low fat diets are often rich in starchy or sugary carbohydrates, which raise insulin levels and promote weight gain.

Myth #4: Eating No-Carb or Low-Carb Will Make You Thin.

Carbohydrates are actually the single most important food in your diet for long-term health. As with calories and fats, there are different types of carbs that interact with your genes leading to remarkably different effects. Human beings have not evolved to metabolize the highly processed and refined carbohydrates we eat that contribute to the major diseases diabetes, heart disease, dementia and cancer. Happily, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans are also carbs, good carbs.

Myth #5: Skipping Meals Helps You Lose Weight.

One of the reasons that Americans are getting to be as big as Sumo wrestlers is because we actually eat like them. The Sumo diet causes ordinary people to gain extraordinary amounts of weight. They skip breakfast, train for five hours (working up an appetite), eat a huge meal, nap for several hours, eat dinner and go to sleep. Does skipping breakfast and eating a large meal just before sleep sound familiar? It should. It's the American Way.

Myth #6: The French Paradox Meets the American Paradox.

The French have a reputation as a culture that knows about food, what to do with it, and how to eat healthy. The French eat more fat, drink more wine, and yet suffer less heart disease and are less obese than Americans, right? That's only part of the story. The truth is that the French eat real (fresh, full of nutrients, and minimally processed) food, they eat less food, they eat food more slowly than Americans do, and they walk more than we do.

Myth #7: FOOD POLITICS: Government and Industry are the Guardians of Our Health.

An obese America is big business for the food and pharmaceutical industries. The food industry spends more than $33 billion annually on marketing; 70% of those dollars go to pushing fast food, convenience foods, candy, snacks, soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and dessert. Only 2.2% is spent on advertising for fruit, vegetables, grains or beans. The main classes of drugs available for treating high cholesterol are among the biggest selling in history. Our government can't find money to fund public health campaigns to promote the scientific principles of good nutrition, but can increase agricultural subsidies from $18 billion in 1996 to $28 billion in 2000, to supply a glut of soybeans and corn that is transformed in the laboratory into toxic food additives, super sugars and super fats known as high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil.