The South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for Life by Arthur Agatston, Joseph Signorile Page A
Authors: Arthur Agatston, Joseph Signorile
Tags: Medical, Fitness, Cooking, Health, Health & Fitness, Health & Healing, Weight Control, Nutrition, recipes, Diet, Diets, Weight Loss, Diets - Weight Loss, Diets - General, Reducing diets, Diet Therapy, Reducing exercises, Exercise
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dangerous, what is a more accurate measure? The answer is your waistline. Two measures of waistline are commonly used: One is simply your waist circumference measured where it’s smallest, usually just above your belly button. (The waistline circumference cutoff for the diagnosis of prediabetes in a woman is 35 inches; in a man, 40 inches.) The second measure is the ratio of your waist circumference to your hip circumference—known as your waist-to-hip ratio. To find it, measure your hips at the widest part of your buttocks, then divide your waist circumference by your hip circumference. For example, if your waist is 34 inches and your hips are 32 inches, divide 34 by 32; your waist-to-hip ratio would be 1.06. If your ratio is greater than 0.95 for men or 0.8 for women, you fall into the apple-shaped category, and it’s time to do something about that potentially lethal belly.
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So how does this early survival mechanism translate to how we live today? The presence of excess belly fat in such a high proportion of our population is unprecedented. Because we never before had so many inflammation-producing apples, we didn’t understand the extent of the health implications until recently. Just look at heart disease deaths, which had been decreasing over past decades due to improved treatments and better prevention. This favorable trend appears to be reversing itself in America’s younger age groups. A study published in the November 2007 Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that in Americans between the ages of 34 and 55—the very ones who’ve had the greatest exposure to processed and fast food—deaths from heart disease are on the rise (so are incidences of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, two other diseases directly associated with belly fat). Thus, it appears that our sedentary, fast-food lifestyle is trumping even our impressive gains in the treatment of the number one killer of men and women. If things continue as they are, when the current XL generation gets older, matters will be even worse.
The Diabetes—Belly Fat Connection
I cited this statistic before, but I want to mention it again: Today, 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 40 and 70 are prediabetic. The prevalence of prediabetes has tripled over the past several decades, and today most patients in coronary care units are prediabetic or diabetic.
The cause of these burgeoning problems goes back to our fat-storage survival mechanism, which, rather than being lifesaving, has become harmful in modern times. As it turns out, it’s the accumulation of visceral fat that leads to insulin resistance, the condition in which the body produces enough insulin but the cells can’t use it properly (the cells are in fact resistant to the action of insulin). As I noted earlier, insulin resistance causes the exaggerated swings in blood sugar that in turn cause hunger. Without periods of food scarcity, this hunger leads to further fat accumulation. And the more fat you store around your midsection, the bigger your belly-fat cells become. The problem is that insulin does not communicate effectively with swollen fat cells after a meal. As a result, the pancreas has to keep producing extra insulin to overcome the insulin resistance of these larger cells and move sugar and fat from the bloodstream into the tissues. Eventually the pancreas becomes exhausted and cannot produce adequate insulin. When this happens, blood sugar remains elevated after meals, and type 2 diabetes is diagnosed.
Clearly, what helped man survive in the past is killing us today. Luckily, we now understand why, as a nation, we have gotten so fat and hyperinflamed. And luckily, we now know what to do about it.
Don’t worry—I’m not suggesting that we all starve ourselves or try to imitate those times of food scarcity or famine. But in some ways, we all do need to eat more like our ancestors. This means consuming more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and
----
So how does this early survival mechanism translate to how we live today? The presence of excess belly fat in such a high proportion of our population is unprecedented. Because we never before had so many inflammation-producing apples, we didn’t understand the extent of the health implications until recently. Just look at heart disease deaths, which had been decreasing over past decades due to improved treatments and better prevention. This favorable trend appears to be reversing itself in America’s younger age groups. A study published in the November 2007 Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that in Americans between the ages of 34 and 55—the very ones who’ve had the greatest exposure to processed and fast food—deaths from heart disease are on the rise (so are incidences of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, two other diseases directly associated with belly fat). Thus, it appears that our sedentary, fast-food lifestyle is trumping even our impressive gains in the treatment of the number one killer of men and women. If things continue as they are, when the current XL generation gets older, matters will be even worse.
The Diabetes—Belly Fat Connection
I cited this statistic before, but I want to mention it again: Today, 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 40 and 70 are prediabetic. The prevalence of prediabetes has tripled over the past several decades, and today most patients in coronary care units are prediabetic or diabetic.
The cause of these burgeoning problems goes back to our fat-storage survival mechanism, which, rather than being lifesaving, has become harmful in modern times. As it turns out, it’s the accumulation of visceral fat that leads to insulin resistance, the condition in which the body produces enough insulin but the cells can’t use it properly (the cells are in fact resistant to the action of insulin). As I noted earlier, insulin resistance causes the exaggerated swings in blood sugar that in turn cause hunger. Without periods of food scarcity, this hunger leads to further fat accumulation. And the more fat you store around your midsection, the bigger your belly-fat cells become. The problem is that insulin does not communicate effectively with swollen fat cells after a meal. As a result, the pancreas has to keep producing extra insulin to overcome the insulin resistance of these larger cells and move sugar and fat from the bloodstream into the tissues. Eventually the pancreas becomes exhausted and cannot produce adequate insulin. When this happens, blood sugar remains elevated after meals, and type 2 diabetes is diagnosed.
Clearly, what helped man survive in the past is killing us today. Luckily, we now understand why, as a nation, we have gotten so fat and hyperinflamed. And luckily, we now know what to do about it.
Don’t worry—I’m not suggesting that we all starve ourselves or try to imitate those times of food scarcity or famine. But in some ways, we all do need to eat more like our ancestors. This means consuming more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, and
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