When I was in grade school just a couple short decades ago, many of us were a little pudgy. I had a pretty sweet gut going as did most of my friends. But obese? There was only one kid in my grade that could be considered obese. He was the fat kid. Like ?Lardass? in the movie Stand By Me, or of course ?Chunk,? being really fat was unique and freakish. Oh have times changed, and in such a short period of time as to ring some serious sirens.Now childhood obesity is referred to as an “epidemic”, but it cannot be cured until people have an accurate understanding regarding the causes of childhood obesity.
Childhood obesity has come out of nowhere, just like type 2 diabetes (which used to be named adult-onset diabetes until kids started getting this supposedly adult condition). Modern medicine is at a loss for an explanation, and childhood obesity facts are limited to a general blame for lack of exercise and overeating on everything, despite the fact that trying to eat less and exercise more has been miserably-unproductive advice. This of course, has not been the answer, is not the answer, and will not become the answer any time soon. Childhood obesity solutions are far more complex.
For example, renowned obesity researcher M.R.C. Greenwood,has studied causes of childhood obesity in rats.When studying obese strains of rats,Greenwood noticed no differences in exercise or food intake amongst rats who put on tremendous amounts of excess fat compared to their lean rat buddies. In other words, because of different physiological functions within one type of rat, even though diet and lifestyle were exactly the same, food was stored as fat instead of being burned as energy. Over time the fat rats started showing signs of starvation ? because ?a disproportionate amount of the caloric intake [was] being ‘siphoned off? into body fat. Greenwood goes on to describe how this diversion of food eaten into fat cells creates ?a state in which the lean body mass and selected vital organs are calorically-deprived.
Unfortunately, the common treatment evangelized in many childhood obesity facts that says to eat less and exercise more creates a state where even less fuel is available to those lean tissues and organs, inducing an even greater state of starvation, and a corresponding reduction of the metabolic rate that is governed by the thyroid gland. The bummer about this is that in the very same book on the topic of obesity it is pointed out that lipolytic (fat-burning) hormones are suppressed more and more the lower the thyroid gland turns down the juice. In other words, inducing a calorie deficit through exercise and calorie-restriction increases fat storage, decreases the body’s ability to burn fatty acids as fuel, and as a bonus, creates ?hyperphagia,? an impressive-sounding word for overeating.
Basically, if you have a fat-storage problem, eating less and exercising more combined makes you store more of your food as fat and eat more once you fall off the wagon. If this advice were sold in a pill and promised to help you ?eat more food and store more of it as body fat than ever before! would you buy those obesity solutions for an overweight child? Well, I’m not buying it.
Children are coming into the world storing the food they eat as excess body fat more than ever before in history ? a metabolic issue, not necessarily a genetic or mental one. The common weight loss mantra has created a national eating disorder, and is setting up today’s kids for a lifelong failure with ?waist management.
Here, at www.180degreehealth.com, lies the real childhood obesity facts and answers. Here I have created a dietary and lifestyle strategy designed to increase the metabolic rate, increase the body’s ability to use fat as a fuel source instead of storing it (enhanced lipolysis), decrease hunger, and help overturn every one of the physiological conditions that lead to excess fat accumulation. The mantra here is ?hunger is your worst enemy. Many of society’s simple answers in solving this seemingly uncontrollable obesity epidemic amongst our children can all be found in my e-book, 180 Degree Metabolism: The Smart Strategy for Fat Loss.