I know I've written about some of these topics before, but I'm fascinated with the science behind obesity, so I've decided to write something more extensive about it. Welcome to:
Why you'll keep getting fatter
Disclaimer: this is simplified. Biology is incredibly complex, some of these topics haven't been fully researched yet. I'm no doctor.
What regulates your weight?
You might believe that you're in control of your weight, but you're. Your weight is mainly controlled by hormones. Think about how many times you decided not to overeat and lose weight and how many times you eventually gave in to the cravings. Those cravings are caused by hormones and how your body/brain interprets them. Two of those hormones are grehlin and leptin. To oversimplify this, grehlin tells your body that you're hungry, leptin tells your body that you're satiated. Grehlin is mainly produced by your gut, leptin by your adipocytes. Adipocytes form adipose tissue, or as I like to call it, that blubbery layer of lard that just keeps growing.
Your body is designed to stay around a normal, healthy weight, which lies between a BMI of 18 and 25 for most people. (I'm aware BMI isn't really a good measure, but we'll ignore that for now since it really doesn't matter for this post). Your body is designed in a way where when you gain some weight, your adipose tissue will signal your body to eat less, through release of leptin. So your body both regulates fat storage and appetite. You have an internal system that should technically prevent you from overeating and becoming obese.
So why do you keep eating?
When you're reading this, you're probably overweight. Your fat cells should be telling you to eat less. So why do you still keep eating so much? That's largely due to what you're eating. Our brains and digestive systems have evolved to deal with natural, whole foods. From meat over vegetables to dairy products. But how often to you prepare a meal from whole ingredients? Have you ever? You'll probably opt for store-bought foods, perhaps ready-to-eat. You might skip grocery shopping all together and just order takeout. But no matter whether you're buying a bag of bread or are ordering McDonald's again, the food you consume is likely to be ultra-processed. While the definition of ultra-processed food is extensive and partially vague, some key characteristics are to replace whole foods, be hyper palatable, highly profitable to the companies who make them, and designed to be over-consumed. It's an capitalistic abomination of what used to be food.
Ultra-processed food contains many ingredients that were never a part of the human diet. Those ingredients simply didn't exist. Modified starches, gums, or processed vegetable oils are just a few of the industry favorites. They allow for the creation of pretty much any texture, from fluffy over creamy to crunchy. Add some artificial flavors, sugar and salt, and you can have anything you want. What's best is that these added ingredients mess with your hormonal regulations. They bypass your body's feedback system of when you've had enough. You don't keep eating until you're satiated. You keep eating until you're full. The food industry makes more money, you gain more weight.
What happens if you keep eating?
As you eat more, your body will store excess energy as lipids (fat) in adipocytes (fat cells). At first, adipocytes just expand. When you're in your mid 20s or older, your adipocytes aren't meant to multiply anymore. After all, you're not designed to get obese anyways. But since you'll ignore satiation when eating ultra-processed food, you'll keep gaining more weight. Your body might try telling you to stop eating, but ultra-processed food silences those calls.
What makes this interesting is that the amount of adipocytes is meant to be stable. They'll only multiply when they can't grow any bigger, and they're really difficult to break down again. After all, why would your body have evolved in a way where it'll directly get rid of important energy storages the second you burn through some of the fuel?
If you keep eating while already having enough fat reserves, your adipocytes will release increasingly more leptin, trying to tell you that you've eaten enough. But you keep lifting that fork and shoveling more down your throat, thanks to those ultra-processed ingredients. You leave your adipocytes no option but to multiply. You're becoming obese.
What happens if you get obese?
A lot of things start to change on a hormonal level when you become obese. So much, that I won't even attempt to cover all of it in this post. One change I find quite interesting is that as your adipocytes release increasingly more leptin, your receptors start getting used to the concentration of them and become desensitized. You're generally losing the ability to sense satiation, no matter what you eat. From here on out, you won't stop eating when you've had enough. If that were the case, you'd barely be eating anything, given how fat you already are. Instead, you'll keep eating until you're physically full.
As you begin to eat until you're physically full, your stomach will expand and you'll have higher releases of grehlin, making you more hungry. You feel strong hunger and low satiation. You're always snacky. How could you not continue eating? The best part of this is that grehlin promotes fat storage. You'll be more hungry, have lost the ability to properly sense when you're full, are destined to overeat, and become more likely to gain even more weight. This is when things begin to spiral.
The inescapable cycle forms.
At this point, I want to introduce our favorite hormone, dopamine. Dopamine isn't just released for pleasure and reward, but for motivation as well. Without dopamine, you wouldn't be doing anything. Dopamine is what gets you moving and keeps you going. It plays a large role in your behavioral feedback system, which tells you which behaviors/actions are good for you, and which are not. When you're obese, you'll probably have associated ultra-processed food with dopamine already. Eating feels rewarding.
What makes this really interesting is that grehlin and dopamine are connected. Grehlin increases dopamine release, which means that you won't just feel hungry, but also a strong motivation or craving to eat. Sound familiar? As you overeat more and grow fatter, this effect only strengthens. If you think back to when you were a few (dozen/hundred) pounds lighter, you probably didn't feel as hungry and snacky as you do now. Although now, you really don't need any food at all anymore. Every pound of fat provides enough energy for about 1.5-2 days. You could probably go without food for months, yet you crave it more than ever before. The reason is simple: you've destroyed the system that regulated your appetite and weight.
The slippery slope of gluttony
Many people refer to what I've talked about so far as the "slippery slope of gluttony", including myself. It starts with just a few pounds, when you grow a bit of a belly and start dipping into the obese range. But it's not just addiction or dopamine that keep you going. It's your appetite and weight regulation that are being fucked by you over-consuming over-processed food. It's like breaking the thermostat on a radiator. You don't know when to stop anymore.
You don't even need to eat junk food for this, as almost anything you'll find in a store is ultra-processed. Even many of the "healthy" options. You can try going for low sugar, low fat, low sodium, and any other diet product as much as you want. You'll still over-consume it and gain more weight. Those foods are designed that way. The more you eat, the more you consume, the more money food corporations make by making you obese. They're pouring billions into researching new ingredients to make their foods more hyper palatable and more addictive. You don't stand a chance.
Either you got here because this is your fetish, or because gaining weight turned into your fetish. What I wrote so far should alarm you. Billion-dollar corporations making over-processed foods, designed to replace whole foods, be over-consumed, while fucking up your hormonal regulations. The more you consume, the fatter you get, the more they profit. All across the world, especially in western countries, obesity rates are going through the roof. Every year, people get fatter. Why buy a whole-grain handmade (not ultra-processed) loaf of bread from a bakery when you can buy ultra-processed industrial bread for ¼ of the price? Capitalism turned fattening you up into a very profitable business.
But does this alarm you? Or are you edging while reading this, loving how fucked up and dystopian this sounds? Now that you know how helpless you are in the first place, do you want to deliberately dive in deeper? Do you want to see just how bad it can get? It's not your fault anyways, it's the system.
One of the most successful ways of losing weight has been ozempic, which increases your leptin sensitivity, allowing you to properly sense satiation again. Yes, you'd have to take drugs for your hormonal regulations to work properly again. That's how fucked up you are. The second people stop using it, they blow back up.
Where do we go from here?
The ghrelin-dopamine + over-processed foods combination will always make you overeat again, just like you've done so many times already. It doesn't matter whether you try to lose weight or go on a strict diet. You might be able to lose some weight, but you'll blow up again eventually. Your hormonal regulations are fucked. You're destined to keep getting fatter and except from taking drugs, there is little you can do.
So why not accept this? Why not accept that you're fucked? You're not to blame, and it's certainly not your fault that everything is over-processed and designed to be over-consumed. And if you're being honest, doesn't the thought of a system that's designed to fatten people up for profit turn you on? Isn't that a pretty hot feederism fantasy come to life?
Think of this the next time you gorge yourself on some junk food. Try eating a little extra, just to dive in even deeper. You know you want to ~
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jacobvanloon
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