The Obesity Code PDF By Jason Fung Book

HERE’S THE QUESTION that has always bothered me: Why are there doctors who

are fat? Accepted as authorities in human physiology, doctors should be true

experts on the causes and treatments of obesity. Most doctors are also very

hardworking and self-disciplined. Since nobody wants to be fat, doctors in

particular should have both the knowledge and the dedication to stay thin and

healthy.

So why are there fat doctors?

The standard prescription for weight loss is “Eat Less, Move More.” It sounds

perfectly reasonable. But why doesn’t it work? Perhaps people wanting to lose

weight are not following this advice. The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Yet consider the self-discipline and dedication needed to complete an

undergraduate degree, medical school, internship, residency and fellowship. It is

hardly conceivable that overweight doctors simply lack the willpower to follow

their own advice.

This leaves the possibility that the conventional advice is simply wrong. And

if it is, then our entire understanding of obesity is fundamentally flawed. Given

the current epidemic of obesity, I suspect that such is the most likely scenario. So

we need to start at the very beginning, with a thorough understanding of the

disease that is human obesity.

We must start with the single most important question regarding obesity or

any disease: “What causes it?” We spend no time considering this crucial

question because we think we already know the answer. It seems so obvious: it’s

a matter of Calories In versus Calories Out.

A calorie is a unit of food energy used by the body for various functions such

as breathing, building new muscle and bone, pumping blood and other metabolic

tasks. Some food energy is stored as fat. Calories In is the food energy that we

eat. Calories Out is the energy expended for all of these various metabolic

functions.

When the number of calories we take in exceeds the number of calories we

burn, weight gain results, we say. Eating too much and exercising too little

causes weight gain, we say. Eating too many calories causes weight gain, we

say. These “truths” seem so self-evident that we do not question whether they are

actually true. But are they?

PROXIMATE VERSUS ULTIMATE CAUSE

EXCESS CALORIES MAY certainly be the proximate cause of weight gain, but not its

ultimate cause.

What’s the difference between proximate and ultimate? The proximate cause

is immediately responsible, whereas the ultimate cause is what started the chain

of events.

Consider alcoholism. What causes alcoholism? The proximate cause is

“drinking too much alcohol”—which is undeniably true, but not particularly

useful. The question and the cause here are one and the same, since alcoholism

means “drinking too much alcohol.” Treatment advice directed against the

proximate cause—“Stop drinking so much alcohol”—is not useful.

The crucial question, the one that we are really interested in, is: What is the

ultimate cause of why alcoholism occurs.