Comments on “Genes take charge, and diets fall by the wayside”
Those among you who have read Gina Kolata’s New York Times article from 8th of May, will remember it. This great article summarizes some really breathtaking facts about the human metabolism and its basic commands, which are often ignored. It’s not the kind of news that people want to hear in a culture characterized by superficial glory and quick fixes.
Certainly it might deal a blow to many of us who believe to be in control of our physical lives. It also indicates that concepts such as fast weight-loss diets may be entirely built on shifting sands, or are even completely pointless.
If indeed body mass is almost entirely governed by so-far poorly understood drivers triggered by specific genes, the question arises how such a feed-back-loop metabolic system might be tricked.
Almost any system in the world, natural and man-made operates with certain types of receptors (measuring a given environment) that are designed to recognize information transmitted by substances, radiation, gravity and magnetic fields etc. Once a certain critical threshold is achieved, a system ‘wakes up’ and reacts in its particular ways.
If our bodies are indeed programmed by genes, in ways such that a maximum amount of fat is extracted from food, and stored as body fat, it means that realistic options for rapid and sustainable weight loss are fairly minute.
I have thought about this, and did a few experiments myself. So-far my record seems to indicate that my approach taken could be correct.
My point is as follows:
- Daily exercise is increased very gradually over time, such that the gradual increase is almost imperceptible for our ‘body sensors’ yet having subtle effects on fat burning;
- Food/calorie intake is very gradually reduced over time – every day a little less, in other words. The easiest way might be to substitute sodas etc by plain water, and to cut down our daily food supply.
The point here is to dodge the ‘radar screen’ of our body system – taking measures, that gradually will produce results over time, whilst avoiding the system to wake up, and to trigger a reaction of ‘panic’ that inevitably will produce the known undesirable destructive results.
© 2007 by Franz L Kessler
