Why your body stores fat

Studies around the world are clearly showing that obesity rates continue to climb despite the weight–loss industry being worth billions of dollars. With all the aids to weight loss why is it that people continue to get fatter?

It’s pretty obvious there are powerful commercial forces at work to keep people fat. There’s big money to be made if more and more people want to lose weight.

More on that later but physiologically, the answer lies in how the body was designed to survive.

The body is all about survival. In a psychological sense the subconscious creates beliefs that are formed, initially at least, for safety and psychological survival.

Such a mechanism could be in place when an abused child grows up obese as a way of protecting herself from the advances of men, or as a way of proving that she has control, for instance. There could be many possible events and beliefs that provide the reasons behind the obesity. They may not even be significant. It could be started from a careless remark that was interpreted in a way that made the person feel threatened in some way.

In a physiological sense though the body maximizes its chances of survival by ensuring it has maximum energy reserves available to meet its needs. Those needs, of course vary according to the level of activity being engaged in.

Now most people tend to fall into habit patterns of eating on a regular schedule and generally eating until they are feeling full. They do this without thought to what activities they will be engaging in next. So any food intake (calories) in excess of what the body needs at that moment or the next couple of hours will be stored away for later.

And how will it be stored? As fat.

To the body, it’s like hoarding up supplies for a rainy day.

More on this tomorrow.