We’d like to think that our bodies work like cars—press the accelerator to go faster, tap the brakes to slow down. But our body’s metabolic switches don’t quite work that way: We may not gain or lose weight at the rate in which we expect to. When we have inflammation, our bodies are less efficient, [...]
The omentum, which is located next to your stomach, serves as your primary storage facility of fat, where you park some or (in really bad cases) all the excess foods you eat. Ideally, the garage is empty. But as we gain weight, some of our bellies are housing four stories of Winnebago-worthy fat. Most important, [...]
Food aversions can develop if, say, a person had a bad vomit- inducing shrimp dinner one night. The response would be to associate the shrimp dinner with the painful aftereffects and avoid it.
When your intestines lack enzymes to metabolize specific foods like milk or grains or beans, the food remains undigested, so you start feeding your intestines’ ravenous bacteria. The result: lots of intestinal dilation and more gas than a Hummer fuel tank. The most common of these is lactose intolerance (the lack of GI agreement [...]
Especially before your meal. If you have a little of the right kinds of fat just before you eat, you can trick your hormonal system by sending the signal to your brain that you’re full. If you eat a little fat twenty minutes before your meal (70 calories or so of fat in the form [...]
When you’re sleeping or go long periods without eating, your body needs to have a supply of energy to keep your organs functioning. Once you use up all of your available glucose during the digestive phase of metabolism (your body stores only about 300 calories in the short-term glycogen reservoir), it taps a long-term reservoir: [...]
Your hypothalamus orchestrates this phase of metabolism by receiving signals from throughout your body about whether you’re hungry or not, so that your body can use energy to power itself. Here’s how: Your body has a short-term reservoir for energy in the form of glycogen, a carbohydrate primarily stored in your liver and muscles. After [...]
Though it may seem that we have endless reasons to eat—to celebrate holidays, to beat stress, to pass time between Super Bowl commercials—there’s only one real reason why we need food: for energy. That energy allows our organs to function, our muscles to move, and our bodies to keep warm. And to a large extent, [...]