Weight Loss, Science and the Mythos Surrounding It

If you think you have an eating disorder, or need mental medical care, don’t be ashamed. There is help out there. The National Eating Disorder Organization is a good place to start.

Health (April 23, 2019) If you have ever visited any forum involved with weight loss, you will be immediately struck by the amount of both personal pain, and myths, surrounding this. From science, we know a few things about weight loss.

First off, if you want to lose weight, you need to create a caloric deficit. There are safe ways to do it, and this calculator, among many, will help you. However, you need to be careful not to starve your body or you will lull it into thinking that you are starving. In that case, your body will do the only logical thing it has evolved to do. It will hold on to anything you eat stubbornly so. It will become more efficient. And no, this is not a bad thing. Why? If you lived in this world even fifty years ago, crop failure was all it took for humans to face starvation.

We also now know that genetics plays a factor in obesity, and there are genes associated with it. These genes are not necessarily maladaptive, even if in our modern world they seem to be. Why obesity is becoming a public health crisis. Over the last 200,000 years, humans have faced both times of plenty and lean times. Being able to store more fat to prepare for those lean times is…