Shouldn’t your body just give you the stop signal and make you not overeat? Then why do people get fat at all?
In: Biology
Humans didn’t really evolve a stop signal because having too much food just isn’t an issue in the wild. Other animals like dogs will have the same issue if you don’t limit their food.
The stop signal doesn’t kick in till way later when the body has surplus. This is an evolutionary advantage coz back then, having access to food wasn’t always available regularly or daily.
Having too much food available is a modern problem. Our bodies did not evolve to have to worry about obesity.
Your body does not want to starve to death.
Your body stores energy so that it does not starve to death as quickly.
Fat is how your body stores energy.
Obesity is not a problem that your body has evolved to care about. Starving to death is.
Historicly, its been quite the advantage to lay on extra fat. The risk of dying of starvation before you procreated far outweighed the risk of dying in your 40-60s of overweight. So from an evolutonary standpoint the human who most easily get fat are the most adapted one for survival pre modern era.
I’m not an expert but speaking from experience, sometimes people have various conditions that can mess with the body’s internal signals. They might not feel full even if they have eaten enough, they might not feel like they have to use the washroom until they’re nearly bursting, stuff like that. There’s also the option to ignore those signals and keep eating for reasons other than sustenance. I, for example, am an emotional eater. If I’m full but still feel bad, I may choose to keep eating to comfort myself. I certainly feel sick afterwards, but my emotions are satisfied for the moment.
There’s also the issue that the more weight you gain and the more you don’t listen to your body’s signals, the more screwed up they become, making it easier to over eat.
Finally, there are other factors that can affect your weight such as medications or other conditions that affect things like insulin resistance and weight retention. I started gaining weight when I was put on antidepressants when I was 7. Those, in combination with my emotional eating, led to weight gain.
We inherit all habits of our evolutional ancestors. And starvation was a way more common reason of death than obesity.
Animals in the natural conditions don’t get a chance to eat much too often so they try to accumulate as much calories as possible. This is why high-calorie food tastes good for us. Fats and sugar are tasty because our senses were trained to consume more. There was literally no reason not to evereat till the very recent times.
I believe there are different versions of feeling full.
The “I just participated in an eating contest and now I have to puke”-full where your stomach is literally filled to the brim. This is not helpful, because it’s always way too much.
And there’s the “I have gotten all the necessary nutrients”-full.
The latter one does not happen for a while, though, because in order to realize that there is enough of everything and to send that message, your body has to analyze what you have already consumed and this takes time.
Especially with energy-dense food (fatty/sugary etc), this will be AFTER you ate more calories than what you actually need, because there are so many calories even in a smaller amount.
Plus: We tend to not take enough time to eat. So we overeat.
We also tend to not focus on our food and body while we eat (watch TV, play on your cell), so we overeat.
Then there’s generations of people who were taught to finish their plates no matter what. Then there’s people who eat to cope with stress/depression/feelings in general and this impulse is bigger than the tiny cue from your stomach.
Plus: As others have pointed out: Our bodies did evolve at a time where it was better to fill up and put on fat reserves because you could never be sure when the next meal might be.
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Our bodies were not intended to eat artificially derived foods. Even things like refined sugar can, and very often do overwhelm our system. We spike our insulin too much and then become insulin resistant, which means we need to produce more insulin, and since insulin is basically the fat storage hormone, therin lies the problem. If we only ate fruits, nuts, vegetables and natural meat without any kind of hormones or antibiotics, added, very few of us would be obese. In summary, our bodies are ill-equipped to handle the “advancements“ in mass food production.
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