What to do if you follow your diet to the letter and the scale does not reflect it. With these tips, you can meet your weight goals.
What if you were suddenly told that a good steak is healthier than apples or that ice cream helps you lose more weight than carrots? It is time to analyze what you know about your diet.
It’s not just about counting the calories you eat. If it were just that, reducing those we eat and exercising would be enough to eliminate kilos. So weight reduction programs would be very simple, like a simple mathematical operation.
But, what happens when you have followed it to the letter but the scale does not reflect your effort. Beyond feeling discouraged, frustrated, and even depressed, a question is spinning in your head: what did I do wrong?
The answer is linked to other factors and not so much to the calories that go in and out. More and more research shows that the global obesity epidemic is closely linked to increased consumption of fast food and reduced physical activity. But there is a third factor involved: Endocrine Inhibition Chemicals (EDCs), natural or synthetic substances that alter metabolism. Specialists call them “obesogens”.
The threat to gain weight
EDCs alter the function of your hormones. Many researchers believe that they lead to weight gain and contribute to the development of multiple metabolic diseases. They enter our bodies through dozens of sources, such as soy products (rich in natural hormones), meat from farm animals, plastics contained in some packaged foods and drinks, ingredients added to processed foods, and pesticides used in agriculture. After entering they act in different ways; for example, they mimic the function of hormones themselves, such as estrogen, and become fat cells. Doctors believe that this process alters the function of genes.
EDCs are also known to be associated with fertility problems, genital malformation, reduced male birth rate, early puberty, brain abnormalities, behavioral problems, miscarriage, immune, heart, and some varieties of cancer. ” We have data linking environmental chemists with the worst diseases that affect humanity, from those of the heart to the attention deficit,” says Jerry Heidel, EDC expert at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in the United States. “If we know how obesogens work, we will have the clue to understand for sure how the current increase in kilos happens and how we must be alert to these chemical threats,” adds Heidel.
Why traditional diets don’t work?
Decades ago, before the rise of disproportionate obesity, overweight people were said to have had a “glandular problem.” In those cases it was not their fault, their bodies simply did not have the ability to fight the kilos. However, this way of cataloging them is no longer used. What has changed? Why is obesity growing alarmingly in the world? In the United States alone, two out of three people are obese. Glandular problems disappeared? No, simply the effect of obesogens develops this disorder in many more people.
Our endocrine system is the one that controls the hormone-producing glands that regulate the functions of your body: growth and development, sexual maturity, reproductive processes, humor, sleep, hunger or metabolism; as well as the work of the pancreas, the hypothalamus, the adrenal glands, the thyroid and the pituitary. Regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, excessive or little hair, for example, is determined by the endocrine system. “In turn, this is extremely delicate and susceptible to the action of obesogens, capable of uncontrolling the areas responsible for weight,” says Frederick von Saal, a specialist in Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri, in the United States. “Any chemical that interferes with the function of the endocrine system is an EDC.” The Endocrine Society of that country,“The increase in the incidence of obesity coincides with the increase in the use and distribution of industrial chemicals, which could play a major role in the origin of the obese generation.”
This is a compelling reason to know why reducing diets don’t always work. Even if you think you eat in the healthiest way possible, you can expose yourself to EDCs. An example: the apples of today are not the same as those of 150 years ago since they are considered the fruits that carry the most pesticides in their cultivation.
The truth is that books like The New American Diet ensure that we should not exclude from our diet the foods that we love to lose weight, such as a good piece of meat, hamburgers or ice cream; on the contrary, it is better to forget the old parameters and adopt the new laws of nutrition.