Diet foods are making you fat and preventing you from losing weight

The weight loss industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. For decades the diet industry has conned consumers into thinking good diet products are low in fat. 

This led to a boon in creation of low-fat, high-carbohydrate, and often high-sugar “diet” products that promote fat storage, prevent fat burning, increase cravings, and raise inflammation. Not only can diet foods make you fatter, they can also make you sicker. These products often have nothing or very little natural products in them, causing many other health issues. 

Yet another new study shows low-fat diet foods lead to obesity.  
This study was published by Science Daily and was performed by
The university of Georgia

Rats given high-sugar, low-fat foods that mimic many diet products not only got fatter than the control rats, they also experienced liver damage and brain inflammation. Which if you have read or watched any of my proviso posts, you know that this can lead to brain degeneration issues/diseases such as Alzheimers, dementia, parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases. 

The sad thing about this study is that the low-fat rats didn’t eat more calories. 
They consumed the same amount of calories as their counterparts that were fed a balanced diet 
yet they still ended the study fatter and sicker. 

Liver and brain damage from low-fat, high-sugar

The excess fat accumulated around the rats’ livers was similar to the liver damage caused by heavy alcohol use. This study and others similar to it show that brain-inflammation from the high-sugar, low-fat diet also impaired function of the vagus nerve. This is a nerve that runs between the brain and the gut and is vital to both healthy brain and gut function. Another interesting study to be discussed in one of my future blogs is yet another recent study that links gut health and the development of Parkinson’s. 

Diet foods skew hunger and satiety hormones
The impacts on the vagus nerve and the brain also alter hormone signaling around hunger and satiety. This explains why people on high-carbohydrate, high-sugar diets often feel hungry all the time despite how much they eat. They often do this by affecting the hormones leptin, which influences how “full” or satisfied we feel after a meal. 

For a little help with taming weight and the leptin hormone you can give this supplement a try:
Irvingia. 

Some other supplements that can aid in weightless include:

L- Carnitine. 
Conjugated Linoleum acid
CoQ10
Thermogenic aids - be careful with these ones. 


Dieting signals the body to store fat

The hormones that control hunger and satiety also play a role in fat burning and fat storage. When this system is dysregulated due to a high-sugar diet, this prompts the body to favor fat storing over fat burning.

The best way to reverse this process is to fuel the body with a lower carbohydrate diet that is adequate in proteins and fat, and abundant in vegetables. How many carbohydrates a person needs to consume depends on many factors and varies from person to person. Ask my office for advice.

Dieting makes the body efficient at fat storage

Add a low-calorie diet to the poor performance of mainstream diet products and you have a recipe for lifelong super-powered fat storing abilities (maybe this should be a new superhero, or maybe villain). This means a person has to consume fewer and fewer calories simply to avoid gaining weight. 

It becomes a vicious cycle. You eat or drink diet products, this actually makes you more hungry and you develop super fat storing villain capabilities, you gain weight, eat less calories, eat and drink more diet products trying to lose weight, and the wonderfull cylcle. 
Until you decide to get off the hampster wheel. 

This was best evidenced among former contestants of the popular TV show The Biggest Loser. Although contestants lost weight through a stringent regime of low-calorie dieting and intensive exercise, most contestants piled the weight back on after the show ended. 

They also had to consume 500–800 fewer calories below maintenance calories simply to avoid gaining weight. This is because the extreme dieting and exercise, though effective, had lowered their resting metabolic rate so that they were burning fewer calories each day compared to before participating in the show. 

How to lose weight and stay healthy?

Often people lose weight simply by following a diet that lowers inflammation and removes foods to which they are intolerant, and by stabilizing blood sugar, repairing leaky gut, and addressing chronic inflammation. By focusing on a vegetable-dominant diet you also increase the proportion of gut bacteria that promote fat burning over fat storage.

The key is to gradually switch yourself over to a life-long way of eating you enjoy because it makes you feel better.
For more information on healthy weight loss, contact my office.

I’m Dr. Craig Mortensen

Be health, be happy! and stop using “diet” products.