Friday, December 23, 2011

Taubes in the CFJ

A condensed version of the full presentation Gary Taubes made at the CrossFit Trainer's summit - 18 minutes to be introduced to the "carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity."  Free.  Enjoy!

Taubes Mac
Taubes Windows Media

BLUF:  The majority of fat people got that way because eating the wrong amounts of the wrong foods (IOW too many carbohydrates) created a hormone imbalance that results in energy sequestration as fat.  Because so many calories are sequestered as fat, the normal feedback loops acting to defend the body against sugar toxicity result in hypoglycemia and hunger signals.  Because hungry people tend to eat more, the cycle of over-carbization leading to hypoglcemia and then to hunger results in increased food intake and decreased fat utilization and therefore obesity. 

Suppose your car had a storage tank for fuel, a back up tank.  Suppose that every time you filled the regular tank, some of the fuel spilled over into the back up tank.  Suppose the mechanism that allowed you to access the fuel in the back up tank was inoperative.  Over time, your vehicle would accumulate fuel in the back up tank.  That's a very rough analogy of what makes us fat.  To take it one step further, if you drive more, you will not solve the problem of accumulating "fuel."

To change the process, one must restrict carbohydrate intake, but do so intelligently.  Eating according to the paleolithic model is one way to address the problem of excess carbohydrate intake.

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