Why Do We Gain Weight?
Why do we gain weight? We gain it first because we grow. At a certain point we stop growing and at that point we should stop gaining weight too. Why don’t we?
Why Gain Weight?
The answer to the question of why weight gain continues when growth ceases is found in an understanding of just who and what exactly we are. Human beings have existed for millions and millions of years upon this earth and they are considered to be excellent examples of the Theory of Selective Evolution. One of the survival mechanisms that we developed was the capacity to store excess fuel in the form of fat.
One way to look at why we gain weight is to imagine the human body to be like an automobile with a gasoline engine. You can think of the gas tank as the stomach and the brain as the engine. Every time gasoline is pumped into the gas tank, the automobile is eating and taking in fuel. When the engine is running, the fuel is being consumed. The cycle works fine. Only two things can go wrong with this process. First, the tank can run out of fuel and second, too much gasoline can be pumped into the gas tank.
When humans eat they are putting fuel into their gas tanks and when they do work they burn it up. When there is a long time between refuels, the body has the ability to take excess fuel and convert it into something it can store safely and outside of the gas tank for emergencies. This fat storage system was intended to avoid starvation at times when it was a very likely possibility. The search for food or the energy expended it producing it kept people working very hard. They stored just the amount right of fat to tide them through winters.
Today, we do not work hard to get our food. It is for sale everywhere in Western Cultures. It is almost too available. This unbalance between intake and consumption creates excess fat storage. People gain weight and obesity becomes a health concern. Diets make the ancient control systems in the body think that winter has come or the hunt has been a failure. It starts converting whatever it can into fat and prevents the burning of fat until starvation time is actually here. The diet fools the body into thinking food is scarce.
When we understand some of these quirks and mechanisms of our own body, we can plan a diet, an exercise regime, or any other form of control over the weight gain process. There is no simple way. It took us millions of years to adapt our bodies to this planet and now in a few short generations so much has changed. In this pampered technological era, we still have the bodies of cavemen constantly searching for food. It may take us a bit of time to adjust to dealing with plenty to eat.