Читать книгу The Colors Of A Optimistic World - Logan J. Davisson - Страница 120

Genetic causes

You probably also know them: There are people who can apparently eat what they want, don't have to exercise, and still don't gain an ounce. Some of these people also complain about it, and that is really the last thing you want to hear when you fight the kilos yourself.

Have you ever wondered what these people's secret is? Maybe they never eat when they're alone, or secretly do a lot of sports. The sobering answer to this question is: There is no secret. Because the good news is also the bad news about the belly fat: Most people can't help it at all. There are genetic predispositions for one's own physique that one inherits from parents or even grandparents. And the naturally slim people you have in your environment are actually simple - naturally slim.

What figure does your mother have? Or your father? And your brothers and sisters? Take a look around your family to see what part genetics or predisposition has as a cause for your abdominal fat.

But this knowledge should not discourage you at all. There are genetic rules for everything in life. But if man were not able to overcome them, our society would not be where it is today. There are many children who grow taller than both parents, or who have a better school leaving certificate. This is genetically not so, but still within the bounds of possibilities. And often not as hard as you might think.

Despite your genetic predisposition, all doors are open for you to become as slim as people with "slimmer" genes. So you are not fighting against your bodies and against genes that have been in your family for centuries. But you will find clever ways to trick and overcome your talents. If there is a predisposition in your family to belly fat, you simply know that you have to be a little more careful than others who do not have that predisposition. It doesn't mean you're at the mercy of genetics.

Metabolism

Our metabolism is a great thing. It ensures that the food we eat is broken down into its components and optimally utilised. Our body has the ability to perform chemical processes to produce other things from food - and thus provide us with energy for all our activities. Without metabolism no life is possible. If it doesn't work, we can no longer use our food properly and die. All living beings have metabolic processes and without them no living being would exist.

It is also a function of metabolism to ensure our long-term survival, to think about the future and to ensure that there is a buffer for us even in bad times. Our metabolism is therefore also active in planning, i.e. it builds up stocks for emergencies. Of course this makes perfect sense - and we all do it ourselves in one way or another - but unfortunately he has chosen our belly as the most important "warehouse" for it. The fact that you get fat on your stomach is therefore a well-intentioned action of your body to protect you.

Evolution has therefore provided that fat reserves are good because they ensure our survival when there is not enough to eat. This was often the case in earlier times, and in many places it actually ensured not only the survival of individual people, but the survival of the whole of humanity. Today, however, we are no longer threatened by famine in the Western world. Unfortunately, human evolution is not yet as advanced as the development of our society, in which our greater problem (and above all that of our belly fat) is an oversupply of food rather than a famine. Our metabolism, however, stupidly still functions as it did in the Stone Age. If you eat too much food, the whole thing is directly converted into fat reserves, which you probably won't need later.

In addition, we all "educate" our metabolism. If our body believes often enough that there might be periods of hunger, it tends to build up reserves all the more quickly, especially in the form of abdominal fat. The body can eat from this when there is no food for longer.

Periods of hunger? Exactly - diets. Every diet makes sure that fat reserves are built up all the more easily afterwards. That's why it's so important that you don't just limit the amount of calories you eat, but that you permanently change your eating habits so that you don't fall into the yo- yo trap and gain even more weight afterwards.

A sensible change in your habits leads to a better and faster metabolism, you burn the food you eat directly, and your body doesn't even have the idea of building up fat reserves.

Psychological stress

Our eating habits depend heavily on how we feel right now. Are you a stress eater? Or someone who likes to eat in company? Many of us have been accustomed since childhood to the fact that food is not simply to satisfy our hunger and provide us with energy, but at the same time to comfort and make us happy - which of course it does not. Nevertheless, there are many people who misuse food to give them short moments of happiness or distraction when things are not going as they wish.

Stress and sorrow also mean that we don't take so much time to choose the right food. If you barely get to take a lunch break at work, you're more likely to eat something unhealthy - simply because it's quick and much easier to get around. And anyone who has a quarrel with his friend doesn't have the nerve to stand in the kitchen for half an hour to eat a healthy diet. And then there's a bar of chocolate.

Psychological stress also leads to a restriction of the metabolism. Because the body knows above all two states: Stress and relaxation. Under stress, he's ready to fight and escape. An extensive digestion only disturbs there. Instead, your body thinks it makes sense to build up reserves now so that it can fight better later or flee without having to worry about food.

So mental stress has a big influence on your eating habits and your metabolism - and thus directly and indirectly on the fat that accumulates on your stomach. It is therefore absolutely sensible to get your stress well under control. With it you do something lasting for your health and so naturally also for your figure. Those who are more relaxed do not eat stress food so often and have a better metabolism. A lot of other things almost happen by themselves. A good opportunity to become active here is relaxation techniques such as autogenic training. They help you not to lose your head even in stressful times - and not to claim to live a healthy life.

Sports

Your body is equipped by nature to move quickly from one place to another, to carry and move things, and to defend your territory. Much of it we don't do today any more or only very rarely. Work often takes place on the computer, when we want to get somewhere, we take the car or public transport. And we fight at most still with words or on Facebook.

So your body is no longer as challenged as it was originally thought. The consequence is that you put on belly fat. Because you still have the same appetite that our ancestors had, but you burn much less. Not only because you are less active, but also because your muscles are less pronounced due to the lack of activity. And muscles burn the most calories.

Sport is the best way to balance this out. So one reason why you're putting on abdominal fat is that you don't move enough and you don't have enough muscles. Of course, the more you weigh, the harder sport becomes, and if you haven't done sport in a while, the prospect of it probably won't make you cheer.

Sport doesn't have to be as bad and exhausting as we all think. Because the great thing is that through exercise and sport also happiness hormones are released and he is also a great catalyst in stress. Sport also helps to burn fat, although the effect of sport itself is relatively small. You've had to walk a long time to burn a piece of pie. But it makes your body fitter overall and burns more energy with more muscles even when you're lying on the sofa doing nothing else.

If you have done too little sport so far, here is a way to get a better grip on your abdominal fat. In the third chapter, you'll learn how to use this opportunity without training for a marathon or registering for a gym.

Unhealthy eating habits

The most important factor that causes you to get abdominal fat is your eating habits. That's why this book also includes a whole chapter dedicated to healthy eating habits, because this is where you can make the most difference with changes.

It is especially important that you realize that these are habits, not that you eat something unhealthy every now and then. Abdominal fat only occurs when many factors (such as predisposition, too little sport, stress, poor metabolism and of course the wrong food) interact over a long period of time. A bar of chocolate doesn't get any belly fat. However, if you make it a habit over a long period of time to regularly eat the wrong and rarely the right foods, you are giving your body signals that it almost directly translates into abdominal fat.

Changing your eating habits is a special challenge, because in most cases it was not you who shaped them, but you who took them with you from childhood. You got a "consolation" in the form of a candy when you fell? Your family did not eat regularly, but everyone looked at what they were hungry for? Or dinner was the main meal? Then these things are deeply anchored in you and you live them - or variations of them - unconsciously on. Meanwhile you may give yourself the consolation if you are sad, you eat irregularly and in the evening you especially like to eat.

The fact that you have been given eating habits that may not necessarily help you today is because you have never known so much about healthy eating as you do today. That's your big advantage your parents haven't had yet. So it is now up to you to break this knot and make sure that you yourself adopt healthy eating habits and perhaps even pass them on. Because if you know which eating habits harm you, you can actively change them and consciously live and eat healthier. Remember, you're not the prisoner of your eating habits. Everything you recognize and understand, you can change as you wish.

Age

There is another point that leads you to put on belly fat and that you cannot influence yourself: Your old man. With increasing age, the fat on the stomach becomes more and more difficult (but not impossible!) to get rid of. There are two reasons for this.

The metabolism, about which you already know a lot, changes not only through your behaviour, but also quite naturally in the course of your life. In youth there are still many things that need to be developed on the body, you automatically move more and therefore consume significantly more energy. The metabolism is running at full speed. The older you get, the less energy you need as a basic need. Your body does not go through any major developments and your daily rhythm also becomes more routine and less active.

While young people are still "forced" to exercise by school, go dancing more often and wander through the city with friends, every year the evenings become calmer and take place more often at home. The fact that one has more money available with increasing age also leads to the fact that one rather goes out to eat instead of cooking something for oneself. And you like to treat yourself to something to eat. So the basic need decreases, the eating habits remain or even get worse. This naturally leads to abdominal fat.

Another reason for looking more rounded with age is the loss of connective tissue. Even if you do not weigh more than before, your body may look thicker, simply because the fat is no longer so well supported and is now more visible. As with all reasons for belly fat, you are not helplessly at the mercy of your age. You can't change the fact that you are getting older, but you can do something to tighten your connective tissue. And if you know that you burn less energy as you get older, you can do something about it - add less energy or burn more energy through exercise. You will learn how to do this in the following chapters.