If I wanted to blow up..

Everyone has a weight-loss solution, I've discovered. I was at several public places throughout the weekend and I'm pretty sure that I heard some know-it-all explaining to a bunch of bewildered folks the Truth about weight-loss. I swear every one of them had some different little thing that was the KEY. One person said not to eat after 6pm. Another said no carbs after 4pm. Another said only mono-unsaturated fats are good, the rest are evil. More exercise, more cardio, less cardio, supplements, smoothies... I was blown away. I didn't realize how much I don't know about the "secrets" and tricks to make weight-loss so easy. The best part is that the people giving and receiving the advice look like weight-loss is the least of their problems. I digress.

I find it interesting that everyone has a weight-loss solution but few have a weight-GAIN method that is guaranteed to work. So I'm going to lay out a short protocol for gaining as much weight as possible, as quickly as possible.

From what I know about physiology, adiposity is controlled via various hormonal and enzyme mechanisms. So I would try to optimize those mechanisms.

• The first thing I would try to do is to shut down leptin sensitivity. Leptin is a hormone that controls fat storage and satiety and the last thing I would want is for that hormone to impede my fattening. So I'd want to keep my body saturated in leptin to promote resistance rather than sensitivity. How? Well, I'd stop eating fats and eat way more refined carbohydrates. Not sure exactly how much more, but I'd make them the staple of my diet by a huge margin. http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/277/5/E855.abstract   http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search?q=leptin

• Also, I can't have any glucagon in my blood. Glucagon mobilizes glycogen to be metabolized, and I don't want that. I want to store, not mobilize or metabolize. Glucagon secretion is triggered by amino acids in the blood. http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/pancreas/glucagon.html  Translation: I won't be eating any protein as that breaks down into amino acids. Sure I'll be depriving myself of essential amino acids, but my goal is not to be healthy, rather to gain as much adipose tissue as quickly as possible.

• Luckily for me, my new carb-rich diet will also help keep insulin levels nice and high. But I want to make sure that the insulin levels spike up and stay erratic. So I'm going to opt for straight fructose. Plenty of research has shown that fructose is the king of adiposity. The sucker goes straight for the liver turns into fat pretty quickly and does a whole bunch of other good damage along the way. Check; mate. http://www.jci.org/articles/view/37385  http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/04/fructose-vs-glucose-showdown.html Anything with high-fructose corn syrup is going to be a staple of my daily intake. So lots of soda. I like cactus cooler and Dr. Pepper, personally. Bam!

• In the off occasion that I start getting sick from all the sugar, I might want something less sweet, but just as blood-sugar spiking as sugar, if not more. What I wouldn't want is any other nutrients distracting from my body from my goals. I'm going with flour based products. I"d try to just eat dry flour but that's hard to do; it's a choking hazard. So I'll go for a nice, moist, chewy product. Let's call it low-fat bread. Why low-fat? Like I said, fat will interfere with my leptin saturation. I have to make sure and optimize. The key here is NOT a balanced diet (whatever that means anyway), the key is to maximise my adiposity potential. I want all the cards in my favor. Low-fat white bread, like a bun or a roll or biscuit would be great. I'd probably add some jelly packets or some fake maple syrup to really give me a boost.

• After a while of this, my pancreas might not be able to produce enough insulin to keep packing away all that sugar in my blood and I can't have any of it going to waste. Also, I might die if my blood sugar levels stay high for too long. So I'll need to start supplementing myself with insulin injections as my pancreas breaks down and I succumb to diabetes.

• I won't want to exercise because that will burn up blood-sugar, but I do want my cortisol levels to stay high. Cortisol is a stress hormone that will contribute to elevated blood-sugar. So in addition to moving as little as possible, I'm going to want to avoid restful activities like sleeping. So I'm just going to plant myself on the couch and watch TV with my sodas and buns nearby.

This is a bit of a generalization, but I think it's a pretty bullet-proof plan. This still doesn't guarantee that I'll put on all that adipose tissue, but it's the best way. Either way I'm looking at diabetes, so there's always that. How many people do you know that inadvertently eat and live like this? Maybe not to the extreme degree, but even partly? I see it quite a bit.

I realize that this may come off as a little insensitive to the current state of the obesity problem in this country and world-wide. Personally, I contend that sugar-coating the problem only exacerbates it. Pun definitely intended. Take what you will from this, but the obesity epidemic is not a freak accident. Like I said before, adiposity is a very precisely controlled process in the body that we have inadvertently and unknowingly learned to optimize rather than maintain naturally.

* Addition: Drinking booze not only wreaks havoc on metabolism in the liver but also makes the liver store any and all sugars in the system as fat until all of the alcohol is metabolized out. So that's a no-brainer. Beer in one hand, soda in the other, I'm primed for success.

Here's some more fun readings:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/01/body-fat-setpoint-part-ii-mechanisms-of.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110627183944.htm   Diet soda won't help!

Why the Campaign to Stop America's Obesity Crisis Keeps Failing

Government tries to shut down paleo diet blogger

http://www.diabetes-warrior.net/


Enjoy!

Goals: Either hold hollow position for 30 seconds 3 times. Or 3 sets of 30 hollow rocks with a minute rest between sets.