THE SKINNY ABOUT DIET AND EXERCISE – WHY PEOPLE ARE FAT AND UNHEALTHY

Here is the conclusion in the very first sentence: cholesterol does not cause heart attacks; prolonged cardiovascular exercise is actually bad for your heart; low-fat diets make people fat, sick, and diabetic. Therefore, if you want to be healthy, if you want to avoid suffering and/or dying from heart disease or stroke, if you reduce your risk of developing diabetes at some point in your life, then you want to avoid prolonged aerobic exercise, don’t worry about how much cholesterol you are eating, and avoid with all diligence anything remotely close to a low-fat diet.

Heart disease, obesity, and diabetes have reached near epidemic proportions. Heart disease kills 950,000 Americans each year. It is the most diagnosed illness and the leading cause of death in America.  Obesity is about to overtake tobacco use as America’s number one lifestyle related health risk, affecting two out of every three Americans. Obesity leads to a host of health risks including Adult onset diabetes while increasing the likeliness of heart attack and stroke. 

Compare these statistics with recent history. One only has to roll the calendar back some sixty or seventy years to discover that incidents or heart disease were less than they are now. Obesity was relegated to a minority of the population, remaining stable at around ten percent of the population. Adult onset diabetes occurred at nearly the same rate as childhood diabetes that was genetically related. 

Something must have occurred between World War II and the present to explain the dramatic increases in heart disease, obesity and obesity related illnesses, and the escalation of diabetes cases in America�"that something was the year 1957. That was the year that the American Heart Association decided that heart disease was linked to fat intake. The conclusion of the American Heart Association was that Americans should avoid consuming their high protein diets which contained fair amounts of fat, and replace that diet with a low fat diet.

Low-fat diets, while having the appearance of being healthy, are the number one killer of Americans. The recommended low-fat diet, coupled with much recommended, prolonged cardiovascular exercises, are the leading causes of heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Simply put, the American Heart Association was wrong. For the most part, Americans followed the advice of the American Heart Association and America became significantly fatter, sicker, and diabetic. More Americans engage in cardiovascular exercise today than any other generation, yet Americans continue to get fatter, sicker, and more diabetic. More and more Americans are on medication that lowers their cholesterol levels; and yet, heart disease is still the number one killer of Americans.

Modern human beings first appeared around 150,000 years ago. These early humans survived by hunting and gathering. This means that human being went out looking for food. They hunted for meat and they supplemented their meat based diets with nuts, berries, local and seasonal fruits and vegetables. Grains were not a part of the human diet because grains are indigestible until they are ground by heavy millstones into something the body can process. Hunter/gatherer societies are wandering societies and there would be no inkling of, or use for, large millstones to make grain edible. This began to change around 10,000 B.C.E. when some clever individual discovered agriculture. It was an amazing development and it overturned 140,000 years of human survival in a few short thousand years. By 7,000 B.C.E. human beings were farmers, supplementing their farming with some sporadic hunting and gathering.

Archeologist and Anthropologist who have studied human remains from humanity’s pre-agrarian days have discovered that our hunting and gathering ancestors were basically healthy. Their remains show little sign of arthritis; their teeth were healthy; their bones were thick and strong; they show little sign of chronic disease; and, generally speaking, they were taller. This is not the case for the remains of agrarian humans. Human beings who lived by farming found an ingenious way to increase the population, but the population that developed around farming was noticeably weaker, sicker, and smaller.

We are the same design as the human beings that appeared 150,000 years ago. We have the same bodies and the same brains. Therefore, if a diet based on consuming 65% protein and fat for energy, supplemented with 35% of their energy coming from plant sources made healthy hunter/gatherer humans, and grain based diets, supplemented with occasional protein and fat produced chronically sick and weaker human beings, then a high protein, low-carbohydrate diet will produce healthy human beings now.

The reason why low-fat diets don’t work is that they are high carbohydrate diets. When one embarks on a low-fat diet, one cuts out the essential ingredient for human health�"protein. The word “protein” comes from the Greek, meaning “primary food.” The Greeks knew what humans knew for most of their history: proteins are good for you. The best proteins are lean meats like those our hunting ancestors would have consumed. 

Carbohydrates, however, create a physical craving for more carbohydrates. Carbohydrate consumption triggers the production of insulin. Insulin is the hormone that regulates fat production. The more carbohydrates that are eaten, the more insulin the body produces. When your body is producing insulin, the energy that the body would use from food is diverted to fat production. It also stops the body from burning fat that is already stored. So that means the more carbohydrates you eat, the more fat your body produces and the more lethargic you feel.

Fat, it turns out, is basically neutral in terms of health and it does not contribute to obesity. Fat does not affect insulin levels. In addition, fat makes a person feel full and keeps that person feeling full for a long period of time, while carbohydrates increases insulin production and makes a person hungry again for more carbohydrates. Therefore, the result is that the more carbohydrates you eat, the more fat you store, the sooner you will be hungry, and you will be hungry for even more carbohydrates, which produces even more fat.

So is all this to say that someone can live off of a diet of bacon and cheese dogs and be healthy? No. That person will most likely not be obese, but high fat animal products are unhealthy. The reason why they are unhealthy is not because they are high in fat and cholesterol, but because the animals that produced these high fat, protein products are bred to be unhealthy, fed grains instead of grass, and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones. They are unhealthy because they have been systematically poisoned and fattened and that poison is concentrated and passed along to humans who consume them.

So it turns out that Atkins was on the right track, but he missed the point. His diet does not distinguish between good, high protein products and bad ones; neither does his diet distinguish between carbohydrates. A modified Atkins program is actually the healthy choice. 

So the first step to avoiding heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other illnesses is to model your diet on the diet of your ancestors. Your healthy diet is going to be based on lean meats which are high in protein. Natural carbohydrates are going to balance out that diet. These natural carbohydrates will come from nuts, vegetables, and seasonal fruit. Fish, lean meats, eggs cheese, organic milk, beans, and nuts are what you want to consume. In fact, you can have as much of these as you like as long as they are natural or as close to natural as possible. Have protein with every meal and find sources of protein to snack on when hungry.