Richard MacKarness who wrote Eat Fat Grow Slim has the following theory:
"In 1950 at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, Professor Sir Charles Dodds, who is in charge of the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at the Middlesex Hospital, described an experiment he had carried out.
He took people whose weights had been constant for many years and persuaded them to eat double or treble their normal amount of food. They did not put on weight.
He showed that this was not due to a failure to digest or assimilate the extra food and suggested that they responded to over-eating by increasing their metabolic rate (rate of food using) and thus burned up the extra calories.
He then over-fed people whose weights had not remained constant in the past and found that they showed no increase in metabolism but became fat.
So two people of the same size, doing the same work and eating the same food will react quite differently when they overeat. One will stay the same weight and the other will gain.
We all know that this is true even without scientific proof and yet the fact has not been taken into account or explained by any of the experts who write popular books and articles about slimming.
They write as though fat people and thin people deal with food in the same way. Here is the medical correspondent of The Times (11th March, 1957) On the subject:
" It is no use saying as so many women do 'But I eat practically nothing.' The only answer to this is: No matter how little you imagine you eat, if you wish to lose weight you must eat less.' Your reserves of far are then called on to provide the necessary energy-and you lose weight."
The doctor who wrote these rather heartless words may fairly he taken as representative of medical opinion to-day. He is applying the teachings of William Wadd, Surgeon Extraordinary to the Prince Regent, who in 1829 attributed obesity to "an over-indulgence at the table" and gave, as the first principle of treatment, "taking food that has little nutrition in it."
Fat people can certainly lose weight by this method but what do they feel like while they are doing it? Terrible!
Ask any fat person who has tried it. Many of these unfortunate people really do eat less than people of normal proportions and still they put on weight, and when they go on a strict low-calorie diet which does get weight off, they feel tired and irritable because they are subjecting themselves to starvation. Worse still, when they have reduced and feel they can eat a little more, up shoots their weight again in no time, on quite a moderate food intake.
It is all most discouraging. "Surely there must be some better way of going about it," they say. This book explains that there is. To-day a lot more is known about how fat people get fat and why. Many of the facts have been known for years, but because they have not fitted in with current theories on obesity, they have been ignored.
In the last ten years, however, atomic research has given the physiologist enormous help in unravelling the biochemical reactions which go on in the body.
Radio-active isotopes have been used to " tag " chemical substances so that their progress through the body could be followed, in the same way as birds are tagged in order to establish the paths of their migration.
By this means, details of the metabolism of fats and carbohydrates, previously shrouded in mystery, have been clarified and with the new information so gained old experimental findings have been given new interpretations and the jigsaw of seemingly contradictory facts about obesity has clicked into a recognisable picture.
The first thing to realise is that it is carbohydrate (starch and sugar) and carbohydrate only which fattens fat people.
Here is what happens when Mr. Constant-Weight has too much carbohydrate to eat: The extra food causes an increase in metabolism that burns the excess calories consumed. Nothing is left over for laying down as fat.
When Mr Fatten-Easily eats too much bread, cake and potatoes, the picture is entirely different: his metabolic rate does not increase. Why does he fail to burn up the excess? The answer is the real reason for his obesity: BECAUSE HE HAS A DEFECTIVE CAPACITY FOR DEALING WITH CARBOHYDRATES."
Your friend is definitely a constant-weight.
And the current outlook on obesity still has not changed. People are still counting calories and reducing fat even though they are low-carbing.
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