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Human Body Adaptation To Overeating
Our body controls
weight by adapting to any eating habits, no matter if we under eat or
overeat!
The human body seems to easily adapt to
changes in our lives, and the reason for this is simply down to survival.
The fact is our body must adapt in order to stand any chance of surviving
sudden changes to the environment. What many dieters don’t realise is that
our body also adapts to changes in our eating
habits, both overeating and under eating
causes the body to adjust.
The reason why we adapt to changes in eating is again for survival reasons.
For example, if we struggled to find food our
metabolism gradually lowers so
we no longer require as much energy for growth and maintenance. The result
is we can still survive on low food intakes.
For most people living in the western world food is in ample supply, the
problem now is having too much. Some people become
overweight by eating too
much and one positive point to the obesity epidemic of today is that a majority of overweight people would have
been a lot heavier if it wasn’t for our body’s ability to adapt to overeating.
How does the body adapt to overeating?
The human body adaptation to overeating is basically the reverse to under
eating. As we overeat and slowly gain weight, it forces the
body to change. We could say the changes are a by-product of an increasing body weight. This
is because all weight gained will NOT be composed entirely of
fat, some of
the weight will be made up from extra protein deposited in cells, and this
is basically a gain in lean tissue. Extra lean weight will
increase the metabolism and cause us to
burn more calories than we did before the weight gain. Also, a heavier body
requires more energy to move, thus we burn more energy during any movement
that involves shifting bodyweight. Every time we walk around at home, work,
go upstairs or perform many other general, physical duties we burn more
energy than we did before any weight gain.
Another basic change is that the more food eaten, the more energy required
to digest and absorb all the nutrients. It means if we eat more then more
energy will be lost through this thermic effect
of food.
But why don’t the calories add up?
The basic adaptations above mean that after a weight gain if you continued
to consume the same number of calories then gains in weight will slow. For
example, if you require 2000 calories per day to maintain body weight but
you eat 3000 calories for years you will obviously gain weight. However most
of the gain will be within the first few months and eventually it will stop.
It stops because the physiological changes help
balance the energy in with
energy out, thus soon your body will require 3000 calories per day to
maintain that heavier weight.
The reason why people keep gaining further weight year after year is usually
because they either consume even more calories or they become progressively
less active, or both. In other words, as one pound is gained it requires
even more excess calories to gain another pound. Scientists believe this is
a natural adaptation we have to help maintain a steady
body weight.
These facts are the reason why calories don’t seem to add up when trying to
lose a certain amount of weight. For instance there are 3500 calories in one
pound of fat, so if you were to cut daily
calorie intake by 500 then theoretically
you should lose one pound of fat over a week. However if you continue you’ll
find that weight loss slows then eventually stops, you reach a
weight loss plateau. This is
because eventually the low calorie
energy intake balances with our energy
output, thus there is no longer an energy deficit.
How to lose fat weight
As the human body can adapt so well to changes in food intake there needs to
be a regular adjustment to the diet when attempting to lose weight. The
obvious thing to remember is never severely cut food intake in order to lose
weight as this will lead to a huge loss of lean muscle as the body adapts,
instead lower calorie intake a little each week. This will give the body
time to burn some stored fat without the negative effect of losing too much
lean muscle. By saving as much lean muscle as possible you’ll keep the
metabolism sufficiently high enough to maintain continuous FAT loss for
several months.
Fat
Loss Expert Tom Venuto has
shown hundreds of fitness models how they can adapt their food intake and
speed up their metabolic rate so they keep losing fat for many months. He
also shows how to avoid those dreaded plateaus in fat loss!
Check out
Tom's
Site here!
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