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The energy balance equation, based on the Law of Energy Conservation, is utter nonsense when applied to a dynamic, open system like the human body.
How is it that whole population can follow such advice as counting calories without further inquiry into whether this is even a natural practice? Did grandma do it? Did our ancestors do it? Did all hominids in the past several thousand years do it? Do lean, healthy, disease-free cultures do it? And how is it that we count calories yet still struggle immensely with weight loss?
We are told to eat less and exercise more to create a negative energy balance, and to lower our cholesterol. And if that doesn’t work, then staple our stomach, or get on drugs for the rest of our lives, to control our weight and to lower our cholesterol. How is it that a critical mass occur in our nation to feed the profits of Big Pharma and their lobbyists, without an equal proportion of challenge?
And how long can we run on a treadmill and pump iron to cause a “negative energy balance,” when even a healthy meal that night can turn the whole mathematical effort upside-down? And much to everyone’s dismay, the human body is smart enough that, when billions of its tiny cells become starved with this negative energy balance, it will trigger the evolutionary-based hormonal signaling to the brain that it is time to eat and nothing will stop the act — not tricks, not will-power, not medical intervention.
Then we’re screwed. “Fell off the wagon again,” we say with self-defeat.
Perhaps it’s time to abandon a mathematical equation that studies (extending back to last century) have repeatedly demonstrated to be “a diet method of long-term failure,” and to likely do more harm than good.
But then what?
Well, to start, remove the stuff that our bodies weren’t designed to metabolize — grain-based carbohydrates and refined sugar. As I’ve written elsewhere, and as many far more intelligent authors and scientists have written about, grain-based carbohydrates and sugar cause insulin resistance that leads to the divergence of calories into fat cells, and immobilization once there. Even on a reduced-calorie diet, if processed carbohydrates and sugar are still present, the body still suffers from the same scenario… except now it’s starving even more.
The fact is that grain-based carbohydrates affect different people differently, and some people have a greater propensity than others to become sick and/or overweight when consuming them. But, no matter how our body responds to grain-based carbohydrates, it just makes sense to eliminate the stuff entirely, or at least minimize it; grains contain higher amounts of anti-nutrients, even after cooking and heating, and we’re all healthier with their removal or reduction from the diet. (There is absolutely no nutrient that grains can provide that you can’t get far more of from vegetables, fruits, nuts, and meats.)
Let’s stop the non-sense calorie counting, and start enjoying real, natural food, and live free of numbers!