You are NOT what you eat - Willpower Is For Fat People

Cows are not grass.

Bunnies are not carrots.

Monkeys are not bananas.

But if you eat fat you’ll gain fat? Really?

Stop thinking with your gut

Stephen Colbert has made a career of saying exactly what people are thinking but wouldn’t want to admit to. He calls it thinking with his gut.

That’s where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, “I did look it up, and that’s not true.” That’s ’cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.

Your gut tells you all kinds of stuff that isn’t true:

Crime is worse than ever before.
Flying is more dangerous than driving.
Famous people have interesting political insights.

Nobody is going to stand up and defend any of that. No seriously, sit down. They’re not true. But they sure feel true, don’t they? Down in your gut?

And your gut is telling you that if you eat fat, then obviously you’ll get fat. It just has to be true. Doesn’t it? You eat fat, it goes right to your ass, right?

Isn’t it time to grow up?

Food does not go straight from your mouth to your trunk, or wherever it is you keep your junk. There’s this process called “digestion” that happens first.

Yeah, I know you’ve heard of digestion, but do you really believe it? In your gut? Quick test, true or false: Eating more calories will make you gain weight.

Even if you’ve been keeping up and know that calories don’t mean anything, it’s hard not to think that more food has to mean more weight. After all, there’s the second law of thermodynamics that says matter and energy can not be created or destroyed, but only converted from one form to another.

Hey, don’t blame me for getting all science-y. The calories-in-calories-out people keep bringing it up whenever someone says it’s not all about calories. They say it really is just that simple. Consume more calories than you burn off and you gain weight.

Reality check

The bomb that blew up Hiroshima used less than the weight of a dime in uranium. There’s no way in hell you’re doing enough sit-ups to burn off that blueberry muffin you had for breakfast.

Since your body is not a nuclear bomb, maybe thermodynamics is the wrong scientific theory to apply to digestion.

Instead, let’s look at what the body actually does with what you put in it.

Carbs, fat and protein

Most of what’s in food can be classified as carbohydrates, fat or protein. There’s a bunch of other stuff besides, and a lot of variation within those categories, but that’s enough to start with.

Carbs are essentially chains of sugar molecules. They are quickly broken down in the body and available for energy. Notice I didn’t say burned for energy, I said available for energy. Big difference.

Protein is the basic building block of most cells. That’s why bodybuilders need so much. Without protein you can’t build or repair muscle.

Fat is the main component in cell walls, and the brain. Yes, you are a fathead. Fat is also the only way to absorb many fat-soluble vitamins and minerals.

You need all three components in your system, but you don’t necessarily need them all in your diet. (I’m using “diet” here not to mean a program of restricted eating, but the medical definition where it just means “what you eat”.)

We all know that the body stores excess food as fat. We also know — though lots of people don’t think through the implications of this — that in order for the body to burn these fat stores it first converts the fat into carbs.*

That means what, exactly?

Athletes talk about carbo-loading before a big event, like eating a big bowl of pasta the night before running a marathon. This ensures they have a ready supply of carbs in their bloodstream ready to be burned for energy.

If you’re not running a marathon, you don’t need nearly so many carbs. If you eat them anyway, the available carbs will be burned before your body ever starts pulling from your fat stores. It’s more efficient that way.

Which means as long as there are ready carbs in your system, your body will never burn fat no matter how hard you exercise. One meal’s worth of carbs — a muffin, a wrap, a bowl of whole-wheat pasta — can last in your bloodstream for four hours or more.

If you go several days in a row eating less carbs than what your body is burning, you’ll start burning fat. That’s really the only way to burn body fat, is to run out of carbs. Which you can do in a few days.

You can use this by next Wednesday

Don’t bother trying to watch what you eat on the weekend. But starting Monday, don’t eat any carbs for about three days. That means no bread, pasta or potatoes. No fruit juice. No sugar.

Make up the lost volume with extra meat, cheese, vegetables or beans so that you’re not hungry. You can’t spend the rest of your life hungry, so don’t try it now.

Weigh yourself every morning and see if you don’t drop a couple of pounds by Wednesday. Yes, it works that fast. Keep it up until Friday and see what happens. I dropped three pounds the first week without any exercise or hunger.

Then, starting Friday night, eat what you want. Keep eating what you want right through Saturday night. In fact, go out of your way to spend Saturday eating everything you avoided during the week. This weekly “reset” is just as important for your body as for your mind. I’ll explain more about that in the next few articles in the series. For now, just think about it as your normal weekend indulgence.

Have a big breakfast and a normal Sunday family dinner. But take seconds on the bacon and sausage instead of the pancakes. This isn’t about deprivation, it’s about changing your view of what’s a treat.

Try it and check back. What have you got to lose, except that second chin?

* The conversion of fat to carbs is called gluconeogenesis.