Overweight People may be Undernourished
It may be hard to think of overweight people as being undernourished but think about it. Our bodies require all of the essential elements to go about their business of building, maintaining and restoring themselves. When the food you eat doesn’t contain enough of the elemental building blocks, your body signals your brain to tell you to eat more. It is quite natural for you to willingly oblige and when you do it is quite natural for your body to store those extra calories as fat. If your body was getting everything it needed it wouldn’t be hungry and if it wasn’t hungry you wouldn’t be fat. Sound simple, it is! Weight control is a natural function of your body. Simply give it what it needs and it will respond.
Let’s play Sherlock Holmes for a few minutes, let’s begin at the beginning and follow the deductive reasoning that illustrates these simple facts.
First fact:
Your body is a self replicating machine, it continuously replaces worn or damaged parts.
Second Fact:
Your body must have daily supply of essential elements in order to perform the critical tasks of maintaining, rebuilding and replacing itself.
Third Fact:
The food you eat contains only minimal amounts and sometimes none of most of the essential elements your body needs.
Fourth Fact:
When you don’t get the nutrients you need, your brain signals you to eat.
Fifth Fact:
When you eat more calories than your body can burn, many are stored for later use as fat.
Looking at the facts in a logical sequence demonstrates why you are compelled to eat more calories than you use. To further illustrate this point, it is helpful look at food for what it does:
What food does
Fuel:
Food is the fuel your body needs to keep your motor running. Your body chemically converts a large portion of the food you eat into energy. The energy producing portions of the food you eat are either burned, stored as fat, or disposed of. Bodies are very efficient machines. They will store as much excess energy as they can to guard against running out of fuel. When your car runs out of fuel you can just park it until you get some more, but if your body runs out of fuel you die. Don’t hate your body for the functions that keep you alive!
Building Blocks:
Food provides the building blocks you need in the form of phytogenic chemical compounds. There is little question that it is best to get the nutrients your body needs from food because your body was designed to use essential elements arranged by biological mechanisms. Unlike plants, your body can’t effectively use elements that come directly from the soil.