The Hidden Reason You Get Flabby (Not Calories or Lack of Exercise) [2 of 3 parts]

Story at-a-glance

• One dogma that has contributed to the ever-worsening health of the Western world is the belief that “a calorie is a calorie.” This simply isn’t true. The idea that obesity is the end result of eating too much and exercising too little; i.e. consuming more calories than you’re expending, is also false.
• Fructose is 'isocaloric but not isometabolic." This means you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or glucose, fructose and protein, or fructose and fat, but the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count.
• Eight primary diseases related to metabolic dysfunction include type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, heart disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, polysystic ovarian syndrome, cancer, and dementia. Obesity is a marker for all of them, and these eight diseases account for a staggering 75 percent of the healthcare costs in the US.
• 20 percent of obese people have perfectly normal metabolic functioning, and the excess weight will not affect their overall lifespan. However, the MAJORITY of obese people—about 80 percent of them—do not have normal metabolic function, and 40 percent of normal-weight people also suffer from metabolic dysfunction, and are therefore prone to these obesity-related diseases. All in all, metabolic dysfunction affects a clear majority of Americans, and the faulty dogmatic belief that all calories are the same has contributed to the rise in metabolic dysfunction.

• Between 1985 and 2010, average daily caloric intake rose by eight percent, while diabetes rates rose by 727 percent. Clearly, total calorie consumption cannot explain the meteoric rise in obesity-related diseases.
• Researchers discovered that it’s the increase in total fats and carbohydrates specifically that’s causing the massive weight gain in people around the world. It’s the combination of fat and carb that causes metabolic disruption.
• The only food on Earth that is both a fat and a carbohydrate, is sugar, which includes both sucrose (regular table sugar) and high fructose corn syrup—both of which contain both glucose and fructose.
• Your body metabolizes glucose and fructose in two distinctly different ways. Fructose is metabolized much like alcohol, and damages your liver and causes mitochondrial and metabolic dysfunction in the same way as ethanol and other toxins.