Can We Thank Our Ancestors For Our Overweight Problems?

     We come from a long line of ancestors that lived in a harsh environment. Every single day was taken up with getting enough food to survive. In order to eat food had to be hunted or gathered in some way. In fact, most of the food had to be chased down before it outran you. This took huge amounts of fuel (calories) and hard physical work.

Things changed during the 1900's when the Agricultural Revolution meant animals were domesticated so people no longer had to hunt and forage for food. Machines were starting to take over the hard manual labor jobs of farming and manufacturing and this led to less and less physical activity by a growing number of people. This was really the start of the modern obesity epidemic where we now eat too much food and do too little exercise.

But one thing has not changed; the human body when we were hunter/gatherers has exactly the same genetic blueprint as the human body today. It has adapted to continuous cycles of feast and famine and it has done this by developing efficient fat storage capabilities. By storing large amounts of fat whenever food was plentiful the body could protect itself against times when food was scarce. Long periods without food in winter conditions meant it would often come down to survival of the fattest.

and supermarkets with shelves so full of food they are groaning.But your body is still protecting itself from the famine it thinks it is coming.

Combine this need for energy storage with reduced physical activity of our modern world and readily available, calorie-dense foods and you have the recipe that has resulted in the growing epidemic overweight problem we have in our society today.

So, how can we work with our ancestry and not against it? How can we get around the way our body is programmed to store lots of energy (fat)? If you wish to lose weight there are some things you must do and must not do.

1) Do not reduce calories too much as you will trigger the starvation response and your body will hang on to every calorie if it thinks a famine is coming. Just reduce slowly like 100-200 hundred calories below your maintenance level. Women should be eating 1800 calories and men 2200 or more. You need this food to support your exercise program.

2) Strength training exercise is a must to keep your metabolism running at the fastest rate. Energy (calories) is burned in the muscle tissue so it is important to get them toned up and burning fuel efficiently. If they become weak and flabby they cannot help you much.

3) Eat small meals often every 2-3 hours throughout the day. Each meal should contain a portion of protein and the balance of the meal should be made up of vegetables. Use natural whole foods cooked from scratch as much as possible.

4) Ditch the processed foods in pretty boxes that contain little to zero nutrition. They only serve to screw up your metabolism and throw your hunger and appetite hormones 'out of whack' which will stimulate uncontrollable food cravings. You cannot lose weight with a high amount of processed foods in your diet.

If you can work at improving these four things you will find the fat will start to come off. It will not be instant, but then there is no instant way. You just have to work at improvements in these areas and the better you get at them the more fat you will lose.

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