Indeed, the Minnesota experiment published in 1950 showed that individuals often overeat after a period of energy restriction until fat mass has returned to or exceeded initial levels. And although we may consider fat an easy energy reserve, during periods of food shortage fuel partitioning isn't straightforward – muscle protein is equally as readily transformed into energy which protects fat stores.
Blame the hunter-gatherers
It may be surprising to hear that excess fat is rigorously defended by our own bodies. However, a moment's thought explains why this would be. Our physiology has been shaped over millennia by evolutionary processes which make us suitable for a hunter-gatherer lifestyle – which necessitates high levels of physical exercise and likely periods of famine and feast.
Those with thrifty metabolic adaptations, which favoured storage of excess energy as fat could have been more prone to survive and pass on their genes. During periods of famine, the capacity to hold on to stored fat would also have now been advantageous. These adaptations that have been once useful, are now actually causing unprecedented levels of obesity across all populations that lead a lifestyle characterised by low levels of physical exercise and an abundance of food. In a nutshell, we are made to store fat, and to keep it once we have it.
Designed for fat
To understand our physiology, we must understand homeostasis whereby biological systems are regulated mostly via negative feedback systems. Changes to a monitored condition (such as body fat) produce responses that oppose the change before monitored condition returns to a "set point ".This is apparently the case for weight loss. A reduced total of fat tissue results in changes in levels of hormones that typically result in a go back to the initial degree of fat.
Crucially however, this doesn't be seemingly the case when working with weight gain.Our biological systems seem insufficiently powerful to return us to your set-point. Possibly the environment is too overwhelmingly obesogenic? Or simply our physiology has always relied on an external event, such as famine or high levels of physical exercise, to regulate bodyweight?
As long as the environmental surroundings remains obesogenic, the issue of obesity will remain. We can't count on our instinct to regulate excess fat – we must now count on our intellect.
Matthew Haines, Senior Lecturer in Health and Wellbeing, University of Huddersfield
This article was originally published on The Conversation.Read the original article.
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