Why you got fat

For decades we've been told gaining and losing weight is all about the calories. Just one little problem: the research says otherwise. Diabetics undergo dramatic weight changes when they adjust their insulin levels -- and so do you. Your diet determines how much insulin your body will produce over time. From the documentary "Fat Head."

After watching this video, you will understand why you got fat and how you can prevent fat from stocking up in your belly.

From the video:

Most of us think we only put fat in our fat cells when we eat too much but as Gary Taubes explains in "Good calories, bad calories", your fat cells are like rechargeable fuel cells. Everytime you eat, you store some fat. In between meals fat comes out of your fat cells to provide the fuel for your muscles and organs.

If you are naturally thin, it's because you have efficient fat cells: fat goes in quickly and it comes out easily.

Your body doesn't need much fat because the little bit of fat you do have is a reliable source of fuel.

If you're predisposed to be fat it's because you have greedy fat cells. When you eat, you tends to store calories as fat instead of burning them, and when your other tissues need those calories, the fat comes out slowly, if it comes out at all.

The end user of food that we eat are our individual cells and it doesn't matter if it goes in our mouths, if it doesn't get to those cells, we start to starve at the cellular level. And so you do what your body is telling you to do: you eat more. In other words, you're not getting fat because you're eating more. You're eating more because you're getting fat.

Most of us weren't born with greedy fat cells but we can certainly make them that way. When you eat too many carbohydrates you raise your blood sugar. Since high blood sugar is toxic, your body releases insulin to bring it down. But your body can only burn a little bit of sugar at a time, so what happens to the rest of it?

For your storage size for carbohydrates are limited and we've got unlimited storage places for fat, so the body ends up just converting the carbohydrate to fat. And after bringing down your blood sugar, insulin does its other job: it tells your body to store fat.

When you have a healthy metabolism, it only takes a little bit of insulin to bring your blood sugar down and then everything goes back to normal. But overtime, that can change. The cells can become resistant to the effects of insulin. When that happens, insulin is talking but the cells wouldn't start listening. And when they don't get the message from insulin, they don't do what they're supposed to do. And so your body does what it has to do: it starts producing more insulin. You finally reach a point where your insulin is high just to keep your sugar normal even if you're not eating any sugar. And then when that happens, then it starts to drive stuffs into the fat cells and all of a sudden BAM!, you're fat!