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
Modern human body designed for walking/running lots and lots.
Modern human body designed to go long time without food, has good system for storing excess food when it arrive (body fat).
Human body reward brain when lot of food arrive (to store excess good).
Suddenly: Human too smart for own good and develop agriculture, industry, overabundance of food.
No longer need for walking/running… happen way, way too fast, too much food happen way too fast. Thing called capitalism pressures food on human also, but has no had time to adapt!! Too fast!!
Human body struggle to regulate properly because not designed for constant overabundance, but evolved to reward it.
Perfect storm of disease happen because body not evolved to take in all this extra energy it not using!!!! Too fast!!! Evolution too slow for clever human civilisation!!!!
Some people have a better stop signal than others.
Just like most people can have an alcoholic drink or two and stop right there while an alcoholic will drink until they’ve passed out or run out of alcohol, some people can take only the amount of food they need to fill satisfied while others will keep eating until they’re stuffed or there’s no food left.
A big reason why GLP1 inhibitor drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic are successful for weight loss is that they trigger that ‘full’ sensation much faster for people taking them, so they allow obese people to have a more healthy relationship with food where they eat more normal portions and thus lose weight.
Overconsumption can over time stretch out the stomach, marking it harder to feel full. Eating calorie dense foods, eating too fast and drinking calories are also easy ways for your body to miss the “I’m full” signal.
I could eat a giant bowl of vegetables and feel very full without having concerns that Ive wrecked my diet or risk putting on weight. Alternatively if go and get a medium caramel mocha latte and croissant at Starbucks I won’t feel very full but I’ll definitely have eaten nearly half my calories for the day and all of the sugar and fat. If I do that very often, I can easily get overweight without feeling like I’ve over eaten.
I’m pretty convinced people don’t just eat for satiation of hunger. There’s a mental stimulation part to it, I think. Similar to ADHD symptoms. Eating out of boredom, or for stimulation, which will often be treats like sweets, of fatty snacks. Even after a big dinner.
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Because we changed the food we eat drastically.
It’s much more nutrient-rich than it used to be, and our biology just hasn’t caught up for everyone.
It’s genes.
Because we evolved at a time when resources were hard to come by and it was an evolutionary advantage to put on a little weight at a time of abundance. But now we live in a time of abundant access to hyper-palatable and hyper-marketed food virtually all the time and that evolutionary advantage now works against us.
Our body hasn’t caught up to the industrial output of food we have now. We’re still programmed to eat when we see food cuz in our early stages we didn’t know when we’d eat next.
Also, the satiated feeling you get is usually a function of food volume. You can eat very little volume of food that is very calorie dense and so you can end up eating a lot of calories before feeling full.
Once upon a time starvation was a very real threat and the ability to store food for later was pro-survival. In the modern age we are eating ourselves to death and no, we don’t have any automatic mechanisms to stop us.
Ultra processed food + lack of movement + poor gut health.
Fix those three things and voila, weight-loss
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