The truth about obesity from an evolutionary perspective: From "survival of the fat" to the female fat storage mechanism

The reason you can't gain weight no matter what. It has nothing to do with your willpower, it has nothing to do with your personality, it's determined by your genes. Physiological forces have a significant impact on your weight loss problem, and you must first accept this fact. Once you accept this view, you won't blame yourself, blame your personality, or blame yourself for lacking self-respect. While weight loss has many positive effects on your health and life, your body's billions of fat cells are like swallows with open beaks, constantly waiting to be fed. If you're even slightly careless-for example, binge eating or not exercising regularly-these fat cells, along with other forces, will launch a surprise attack. Physiological forces have a significant impact on your weight loss problem, and you must first accept this fact. Once you accept this view, you won't blame yourself, blame your personality, or blame yourself for lacking self-respect. We don't need to overcome our "weaknesses," we don't need to go from a binge eater to someone who can control their eating. What we need is to maintain this physiological misfortune and move from an extreme state to a relatively normal state. Paying attention to diet and sticking to exercise can help us overcome the physiological characteristics of obesity. Controlling weight is the most important challenge we face right now!

If you understand the underlying physiological forces behind your body's stubborn resistance to your weight loss efforts, you'll understand why long-term weight loss requires genuine commitment and sustained effort. Look at the history of human evolution, compare the lifestyle of our ancestors who didn't know when their next meal would come to them with our modern fast-food culture. Imagine living 500,000 years ago. Without refrigerators or any tools to store food; without any tools other than primitive spears; without any means of clothing other than gathering animal hides through collective effort; without any means of transportation other than your two feet; without any means of communication other than your own throat. You and your family would have to spend all day gathering, storing, preparing, and protecting your children, managing your living environment, and making and mending clothes. Regardless of your physical limitations, you would have to strive to survive. We humans must work hard every day to ensure our safety the next day. Given our ancestors' dietary habits, if they could only find vegetables and fruits, fat was a rare and precious resource. Their bodies developed many protective mechanisms to retain body fat. In other words, our ancestors learned how to resist weight loss so that they could survive any impact.

To transform our bodies, which crave fat, into bodies that crave weight, the environment must undergo significant changes to allow the body to adapt. However, the environment changes too rapidly. As the decisive factor in weight control, you shouldn't expect your body to suddenly become a fat-burning machine. You'll only be grateful for the invention of the remote control, the widespread use of mobile phones, and the increasingly prevalent fast-food culture. Modern people have created more and more convenient goods, making a culture of laziness more comfortable, warm, and unmotivated. Do you remember Darwin's theory of evolution? The phrase "survival of the fittest," applied to human adaptability, means "survival of the fat." The cyclical survival environment of hunger and abundance that plagued our ancestors had two effects on humanity: those with more and larger fat cells survived hunger and passed this physiological trait on to their offspring; those who could store fat more effectively during periods of abundance survived and passed this physiological trait on to their offspring. This survival strategy is stronger for women than for men. Why? A man's body only needs to withstand a few months of famine, while a woman's body must withstand at least nine months of famine. Women are women; they are born with the ability to reproduce. What happens if a woman becomes pregnant during a famine? Even if a woman isn't pregnant during a famine, her fat cells need to consider this possibility and prepare accordingly. Without this possibility, how could she be considered a woman? Therefore, the principle of "survival of the fittest" is amplified in women. Women are naturally born with larger fat cells than men, and their natural ability to store fat is stronger. This is why women have been more prone to weight gain than men throughout human evolution.

Physiologically speaking, women and men generally have more fat cells, around 30 billion. You might be surprised by this number. But this is the only similarity between men's and women's fat cells. Women's and men's fat cells are more different. For example, the cell size, the enzyme systems for synthesizing and breaking down fat, etc., are all different. Simply put, women store fat faster and more efficiently than men, while men release fat faster and more efficiently; women lose fat more slowly, while men store fat more slowly. Why? A woman's estrogen is that "invisible hand"! This is also what makes a woman a woman. This is why women have more fat during puberty, pregnancy, when taking oral contraceptives, or when using estrogen replacement therapy. Women need more fat to be healthy and to nurture offspring. When you feel it's unfair that you eat far less than men but have more fat, don't be upset, because you are a woman!

It's an oversimplification to attribute all weight problems to our ancestors. You might ask, "Let's not even talk about our ancestors, let's just talk about our parents. Why is it that my mother isn't fat, my father isn't fat, my sister isn't fat, but I'm fat?" It's like your parents gave you a pen and paper. You can draw a circle or a square on it. But whether you draw a circle or a square is your choice. Your body inherited the "survival of the fittest" mechanism from your ancestors, but you're constantly using this mechanism. When you're dieting, your body starts crying out, "Famine is coming again, let's start storing fat!" And when you're past the dieting period and return to your old lifestyle, your body isn't idle either. It's afraid! It's afraid that hunger will return. It starts preparing for the next dieting period. Isn't your cycle of dieting and binge eating exactly the same cycle of hunger and abundance that our ancestors experienced? While you're dieting, your body is also working hard to store fat so that it can safely weather the storm and survive until the diet ends. Fat cells are threatened, and they become increasingly adept at storing fat in preparation for potential famine. The next time you diet, your fat cells are more likely to survive because they become larger, stronger, and more stubborn, making it increasingly difficult to lose weight. Your fat cells are always looking out for you, wanting you to survive-aren't they being kind to you? When you strictly control your calorie intake, you do initially lose some fat, but it becomes increasingly difficult to lose more and faster. This is because your fat is your survival reserve, a protective mechanism to ensure your survival. Your body needs to store fat, not lose it.