Weight Management. Is There a Far Simpler and More Effective and Fun Way to Success than "Diets"?
#16 2023 The Rowen Premium Report
Dear Subscriber,
I have a real treat for you today – a discussion on a much easier way to control or lose weight than the traditional “diet” approaches. If you are weight conscious, I am sure you are familiar with the Atkins diet and dozens of others that promised you the moon. Some actually worked, at least temporarily, but even Atkins approach led to some major health problems. Most all fail eventually for not addressing some basic human biochemistry issues.
I’ve never had a significant battle with weight. For a long time, I thought it was genetics. I ate just so much, but remained at a perfect BMI for my height. However, I came to look more at what I was eating more than the amount I was eating and began to see patterns referable to others who had more difficulties than I. Now, with new information, I can see that what I am eating is contributing to keeping excess weight off me. I’ll explain.
Decades ago, it was observed in munitions plants that workers exposed to DNP or dinitrophenol stayed very slim. Researchers decided to study this compound and found that small doses of it taken orally indeed caused people to literally shed pounds, and quickly. DNP increased metabolism, basal temperature, and calorie burning. If it were safe, it would have been a wonder drug. But the young FDA, in 1938, banned it in one of its first acts, as the man-made compound was found to be very injurious to health. But how did DNP work so well for weight? And what is the relevance of these observations to what we can do far more safely today?
My analogy is to consider your car’s drive train. When your car’s transmission in in “drive”, all the energy of the engine goes for propulsion. Now if you put it in low gear, the efficiency drops considerably. You will burn far more gasoline (calories) and travel far less distance. And, if you put it in neutral, you won’t go anywhere at all, even with the engine running and burning calories. This process is called “uncoupling”. You have made the combustion in the engine very inefficient. When it comes to a mechanical machine, inefficiency might not be good. But when it comes to biological systems, cycling efficiency with “inefficiency” is a highly adaptive biological evolution to maximize performance of the organism.