Weight Loss Nutrition

Let's examine the basics of smart weight loss nutrition. Before we get into specifics, remember that the science of weight loss nutrition remains the source of fierce debate within the medical research community. Consult with you doctor before radically altering your diet, and do your homework extensively. Every person's body reacts somewhat differently to food, and you yourself may process different foods very differently depending on when you eat, whether you've recently exercised, what other foods you've recently eaten, and dozen of other factors.

That aside, let's get into the nitty gritty of weight loss nutrition. Studies show that weight gain is most likely the result of a dysfunction of the body's ability to regulate fat storage. If the conclusions of these studies hold, they deal a powerful blow to one of the most often repeated and generally accepted sayings about health and diet: namely, that the key to losing weight is "eating less and exercising." In other words, if fat accumulation is truly a disorder of fat regulation, then eating more won't cause weight gain any more than it will cause you to grow taller.

This hypothesis, if true, would also put to rest another often echoed chestnut about weight loss nutrition: that weight gain is primarily a psychological problem. Again, in the context of this hypothesis, this notion that weight gain is the result of a lack of willpower (or other mental deficit) makes as much sense as the claim that tall people get tall by thinking big thoughts, a claim most people understand to be quite ridiculous.

What then is the key to weight loss nutrition? The answer is: no one knows definitively. That said, advocates of this alternative hypothesis about weight loss nutrition posit that weight gain may result from the accumulation of fat deposits which result from an improper diet: i.e. a diet that is rich in refined sugars and carbohydrates. The thinking is that these simple sugars break down quickly in the stomach and small intestine, thus flooding the blood with sugar, thus in turn causing the body's insulin levels to surge. Through a complex system of (well understood but hard to summarize) biochemical mechanisms, this digestive process leads the body to store excess sugars as fat. The body then adapts to this new ratio of fat to other tissues as normative, and thus it then becomes difficult to lose weight, since your body now "sees itself" as requiring this new weight and counteracts attempts to move away from this equilibrium by, for instance, generating food cravings.

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Understanding Weight Loss Nutrition Recommended Resource:

Dartmouth College Health Resources

Health Sciences & Human Services Library - University of Maryland