Author: Dr. Clyde

How to discover your personal best diet from moment to moment It makes sense that typical dieting ultimately causes weight gain. The body is an engine. Fall short on anything maintaining the engine and it sputters, meaning metabolism drops. When our car’s fuel tank empties or an engine part fails, we supply what is needed to keep it going. Pushing harder on the pedal to keep going won’t help, and yet that is what the calorie-balance concept tells us to do with our bodies: if cutting calories and exercise doesn’t work, diet and exercise harder. This disregards how our body responds to starvation, shutting down its own metabolism to work against us. Unlike our car, our body still has some function when metabolism drops (a car just stops), but weight loss becomes difficult to impossible. The 500-Calorie metabolic suppression per day 6 years after being on the “Biggest Loser” television show mirrors the pattern in modern hunter-gatherers where food is periodically scarce. It is the relative nutrient supply compared to the body’s needs that determines metabolism. Overfilling your car’s gas tank spills gas onto the pavement, and overfilling your body spills calories into fat. But the opposite extreme of insufficient fuel keeps both a car and your body from operating well. The body has sophisticated ways of shutting down to maintain most every-day functions, so you don’t even realize how...