I was on the internet the other day, and saw a short video of a man who peddles health for people over 40 talking about weight gain. It immediately struck a chord with me because I’m not sure that people who do not struggle with their weight truly understand the nature of overweight and obese. The man, misguided as I believe he was, started with a common saying “Eat less, move more” and went on to explain how that is simply all there is to weight loss.

Brother, if you think that is all there is to weight loss, I have some news for you.

If for no other reason than to say that I did it, I want to establish that I do not think overweight / obesity is healthy. I am a fanatical proponent of heavy lifting, intense cardio, and a generally active lifestyle. Everyone should have a fitness routine, whether its running, yoga, weightlifting, whatever… Find a flavor that you dig and do it, do it obsessively, and do it so that your proficiency scares mere mortals. Our bodies are so incredibly versatile and capable that its a shame to deny yourself the pride and power that comes from training.

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” - Socrates

In addition to establishing that I believe in physical wellness, I’d also like to establish that every overweight person in the entire world is aware that losing weight is fairly simple. Those of us with developed prefrontal cortex understand that the simple and easy are not the same. As well, simple doesn’t NOT mean easy. In the same way, hard and complex are not the same. I have done incredible things in my life that were simple and effective. When I wanted to quit smoking, I stopped smoking. The act of not taking flame to cigarette isn’t the hard part. The mental and physical draw, the marketing, the stress response, and myriad other stimilus are the hard part, but at no point was quitting smoking complicated.

I need to quote a source here, but it is fairly widely known that most dieters fail long term. It seems almost hopeless; the overweight will remain so. We also all know the person who, shall we graciously say, does not “eat for their health”. We know that weight is not the sole indicator of health in the human body, and artherosclerosis does not always manifest in abdominal fat. Obesity, indeed all major conditions, are symptoms of inflamation in the body. The human body is an incredible thing, and its cleansing mechanisms are efficient and beautiful. The problem comes when the inflammation incoming exceeds the bodies ability to process and cleanse and heal. Everything from excessive mucous in the sinuses to joint pain to gout to allergies can be linked to an overwhelmed immune system.

There is something that larger people have the smaller people do not. Recently social media trends have named this “The Food Noise”. You may call is compulsive eating, or lack of self control. That’s ok, that is what the world wants to think, and thats fine. Its good business to sell diet food to people with the food noise.

If you put a bowl of food in front of many dogs, they will devour the bowl. If you place a second bowl, the dog will, too, devour this bowl, as though they have never eaten in their life, let alone minutes ago. The dog will eat and eat until it is so ill that it will vomit. It will continue to eat. It may seem like a strange parallel to draw, but hear me out. This is the physical manifestation of “The Food Noise” in a vessel that lacks any social mores, and we can repeatedly see this pattern. Until the modern era (I will mention the modern era several times here, I mean essentially post-industrial revolution USA.), maybe even after for many parts of the country, let alone the world, food was scarce. Your meal today may have needed to sustain you for many days, potentially even longer. Winters were very lean, many climates unliveable. In these situations, ordering a metaphorical sandwich and taking home half of it for lunch tomorrow was not an option, to the point of being an unfathomable reality. When food was plentiful, you ate. You ate all you could. You stuffed your face. Your life may have depended on it. During a good hunting season, it was the most responsible thing to do to eat everything in sight to gain weight for the lean times. Women may have become pregnant during lean times, and that can likely indicate why they tend to retain more bodyfat as a baseline. We did not evolve in a bubble, in fact, we are purpose-built to survive, to make use of everything around us. Humans are the best parasite in the entire history of this world. Telling someone to “eat less” is directly against our genetic programming, the same code that has allowed us to survive for thousands of years.

Food has been substantially altered in the modern era, from the processing methodology (and subsequent inclusion in everything) of corn, to wheat, to selectively breeding fruit and vegetables to increase their size and sweetness (directly affecting the fiber content of each). Before the modern era, spices were rare and expensive. Remember, Columbus set out in 1492 to find spices. Food wasn’t as palatable, due to availability, and at least a little of aforementioned scarcity. You ate what you could, and what wouldn’t probably kill you. Food today is more palatable than it has ever been, sweeter, more savory, more seasoned, more umami, and more varietous. A settler in the new world would have marveled at an oreo, and probably found it to be the sweetest thing they’d ever tasted. Now, 3 for $10, you can have that sweetness punch you in the mouth repeatedly. Your body wants the sugar, but has no idea that we have refined the sugar to a level that we were never, ever built to handle. Ancient food was also remarkably harder to come by, from an energy-expenditure point of view.

Again, source needed, but its not a stretch to say that we have modernized our lives so much that we are remarkably more sedentary. There are two facets to this, the first is the consistency of foods, and the second is the overall workload and total daily energy expenditure. Everything from bread to meat is softer in the modern era, and getting moreso as a trend. The best steaks are prized as tender, bread is supple and soft. Protein shakes, meal replacements. There is a whole discipline of people talking about this, often pushing “mewing” as a correction. Our children are especially susceptible to this, as a lot of jaw development happens exceptionally early in life (foods were tough, vegetables and fruits fibrous), directly after weening. This can cause overbite, teeth-crowding, and in some cases, difficultly breathing. For the second part, the shift away from manual labor to service-based economy, or computer based work, has had an intense effect on humanity. No mystery that “sitting is the new smoking” has been floated as common sense. When we hear about farmer’s breakfasts, we hear about biscuits, gravy, eggs, bacon, potatoes, the whole kit. The part that often ommitted is that what followed was a grueling day of manual labor, often 2-3x the caloric expenditure of today’s average TDEE. This ignores the entire section of humanity that preceded that, which was “hunt or die, and spend the rest of your time running for your life”. Your body will use the fuel it is given, and store that which it does not need.

There is a lot of hate for certain types of food in the world. Whether a ketogenic diet, a vegan diet, histamine reduction diet, is better, I’m sure I don’t know, and I am not qualified to die on any hill, scientifically. I can say that I believe there are optimal foods and suboptimal foods, and the foods that allowed us to grow into the species that we are today (which is to say, a species that evolved past food scarcity). I think that anything that is processed is probably sub-optimal. I think that plants are, generally, trying to defend themselves, and in the absence of teeth and claws, chemical protection is about the best they can do. Anyone who hasn’t eaten Brussels sprouts or cabbage in a long time, and then eaten a substantial amount at once, can attest that, at very least, plants are aware that they don’t want to be eaten. I personally believe that turning plants into energy for humans is best left to ruminant animals. Nearly everything that is required for health and wellbeing is present in muscle tissue of ruminant animals, and my personal journey has found that higher fat animal tissue has substantially reduced the food noise for me.

I mentioned inflammation earlier, and my opinion about food optimization is pegging directly to inflammation. I think that ruminant animals do not promote additional inflammation, while providing sufficient nutrients and protein to allow healing to take place. Each food that hinders healing, or does not provide value nutritionally, is inferior to ruminant animals. There may be times when you take the deal of suboptimal to be a part of something (birthday cake, street tacos on vacation). These are calculated risks, and when viewing things on a sliding scale of optimal versus suboptimal, you have something to shoot for. I’m not the Liver King, I don’t think you have to go crazy. I undertand that shampoo may not be ideal for my hair, and aluminum antiperspirant may not be optimal… That is why I try to limit the catatrosphe from my diet. It is exhausting to catalog and mitigate all the ways we are encouraged to (arguably) poison ourselves in the modern world. Optimization can be a lifelong pursuit, but its important to start with the diet.

There are a variety of snake oil salesman pushing a lot of products in this world. I am not selling a darn thing, and I only know what worked for me, as a person that practices the absolutely relentless pursuit of personal improvement, I can tell you what has worked for me, and what hasn’t. We exist in a world where we are marketed to incessantly, about foods that are more palatable than anything nature could produce, in quantities that are so excessive that our lizard brains cannot comprehend.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to make two statements:

  • Fitness professionals and people who think overweight is a failure of willpower: You are the anomoly. You have evolved to a post-hunger world without a biological driving urge to survive a long winter. Count your blessings, and be kind to larger people. They have to look at themselves everyday. They are dealing with something you cannot comprehend.
  • Larger people: You are the product of our species getting to where it is today. Thankfully, we can combat our urges. Its tough, God knows its tough. Understand that you can do it. Ten thousand years ago, your great (x100) grandfather was fighting for his life, and had no idea if he’d survive. He did, and through an actual miracle, you are still here. Be physical, get active. Be there for your kids and grandkids. Eat the meat. Love yourself enough to optimize, love yourself enough to carry on even when you fail.