Some Skinny People Eat More Bad Food Than Obese People
Me, to John: “Did you know that many thin people actually eat as much as, or more, than obese people do? (And unhealthy foods, too!)”
[Right now we’re on Day 9 of the Green Smoothie Girl Detox, which focuses on two goals: (1) eating a highly oxygenating, alkalizing, fiber-rich diet and (2) engaging in practices that help eliminate the chemical and physical toxins in our various organs.]
John: “The skinny people are lucky, if that’s how their bodies react to eating big portions!”
Me: “Well, I’d rather be an obese person, frankly. I mean, the “healthy zone” is the people whose weight is in the middle — the ones who aren’t eating junk food, lots of animal products, and low-fiber diets.”
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“Skinny Fat” Is a Thing
Many skinny people have organs marbled with fat. A major 2015 study called them “skinny fat” and said they have higher rates of disease than overweight people who exercise!
Source: https://time.com/4105095/skinny-fat-obesity/
But the reason I’d rather be overweight is that many thin people who eat anything they want (including a lot of bad food – we’ve all met them) are told by their MDs to just eat more food, and higher quantities of fat, “to gain weight.”
Which is lousy advice. The fact is, they’re not gaining weight eating crap because their 30-foot-long gastrointestinal tract is inflamed.
So, yeah, they aren’t putting on pounds of fat, but they’re also not absorbing the thousands of nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals) from the good foods they may eat.
And they NEED those nutrients, for every single thing their bodies do.
And they tend to have “leaky gut syndrome” (technically, “pathogenic intestinal permeability”). This is a condition where their one-cell-thick gut lining literally “pops a leak,” which allows proteins that aren’t yet fully digested to prematurely enter into their bloodstreams. This is a primary cause of autoimmune disorders.
Source: https://examinedexistence.com/leaky-gut-syndrome-fix/
Normally, weight gain would provide a “warning sign” for these various issues. But because they don’t gain weight, “skinny fat” people are unaware of them, and not motivated to address them.
This is like driving your car with the engine overheating, but you don’t know it, because the warning light isn’t working.
In my full-time job of helping people detoxify, or shift to a whole-foods diet, we have to deal with both types of dysfunction in metabolism (obesity and “skinny fat”), which are both caused by an imbalance (aka “dysbiosis”) in the gut.
After having helped some 18,000 people complete a rigorous detoxification program, we have dealt with plenty of “too-thin” folks who were terrified to go a day without overeating calories, fats, and dense protein-rich animal-based foods, for fear they would LOSE weight.
Protein in Plants
Do you know that protein is found in nuts, seeds, legumes, and grains … and even a very minor amount in your fruits and vegetables?
(Most people are unaware that all of the above food groups contain at least some of all of the amino acids [the building blocks of protein] …. including the “essential” ones. And that our bodies are fully capable of assembling any needed protein sequence from those raw materials, without any special attention being devoted to “combining” foods at any given meal, or even over the course of a day or a week.)
You may be surprised to learn that leafy green vegetables might get as much as 30% of their calories from protein. And while they may not compete with flesh for protein content, plants provide the protein that nourishes the virtually disease-proof peoples of the world.
Case in point: The “Blue Zones” — five areas of the world where upwards of 30 times more people make it to age 100 and beyond, versus here in America. Most of the people living in these regions are among the poorest in the world, isolated from the addictive synthetic “Standard American Diet” foods that we’ve exported globally. The vast majority of the Blue Zones’ diets are derived from whole, unprocessed plants, often skewed heavily toward beans.
Source: https://www.dvo.com/newsletter/weekly/2017/4-14-395/cooknart1.html
Yet the powerful meat-lobbying industry promulgates the myth that “perfect protein” (aka “protein that most resembles human flesh”) is better protein.
In fact, countless people, and even restaurants, call animal flesh “protein,” as if they are one and the same. (Protein is a macronutrient, not a food.)
And in popular culture, the “perfect protein” idea gets big support from the fact that bodybuilders can, in fact, pile on greater muscle mass faster than the vegan bodybuilders.
(Meat-eating bodybuilders gain muscle mass faster; plant-based bodybuilders gain more durable muscle mass.)
Yes, there are plant-based bodybuilders and athletes … actually lots of them. For instance, the Netflix documentary film The Game Changers follows Patrik Baboumian, “Germany’s Strongest Man,” who eats only plants. It also features dozens of other pro and elite athletes — NHL, NBA, even Olympians — who do the same.
Patrik Baboumian, “Germany’s Strongest Man”
I recall Schwarzenegger once saying something along the lines of “[four-time Mr. Universe] Bill Pearl didn’t convince me to eat vegan, but he did convince me that vegans can be healthy, and good athletes!”
Even more interestingly, Schwarzenegger had health challenges that led him to switch to a mostly vegan diet, averaging about 80% plant-based food for the past half decade. (You can hear him talk about this in The Game Changers.) He says he feels healthier and younger as a result.)
“Protein deficiency” is actually extremely rare in developed nations where people aren’t literally starving to death. You'd think it was common, however, based on our national obsession with protein shakes and pretty much any food product that highlights “protein” on its package.
I’m not saying this to convince you to go vegan. I’m not even a vegan. In fact, in 16 years online, I’ve refused to let anyone put that label on me, as I find the highly charged word very divisive. And I consider “incremental improvement” in the diet — going more plant-powered over time — to be improvement indeed!
No one in America is protein deficient, though we do have those who are calorie-deprived; and almost everyone is deficient in fiber and nutrients found exclusively in vegetables, fruits, and all the other plant foods.
Fiber and Food Sensitivities
My goal is more to help people see the all-important role of fiber, which is disregarded or even vilified, in the modern low-fiber fad diets.
Fiber does not exist in any animal food, and Metamucil and similar “fiber supplements” people use in an attempt to shore up their meat-based diets, don’t serve the same purposes.
Metamucil is a gastric irritant, and it’s devoid of the countless synergistic plant compounds found in whole fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts/seeds, and greens.
Science does not comprehend the difference. It wants to zero in on a specific compound to study and mimic it with something synthetic (read: patentable) that they can sell to you in the form of pills, powders and potions.
My recent post about vitamin C and vitamin D supplements discusses this matter in a bit more depth.
In addition to nutritionally bankrupt fiberless diets virtually devoid of the thousands of (discovered and not-yet-discovered) nutrients found in plants, another important issue for “skinny fat” people is the chemical drugs we ingest.
Probably the most important culprit is antibiotics. They wipe out the vitally important healthy gut flora — most of them in just a single one dose.
So, the “straight and narrow path” to healthy body weight entails a diet rich in greens, vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds, and whole grains. Any reaction you may have to one or more of these food classes most likely indicates an unhealthy gut microbiome, not a problem inherent to the food. Remember, these are the foods our digestive physiology was designed to metabolize most easily.
Most if not all food sensitivities (with rare exceptions) can be reversed with some care and gut-healing measures, after which you can reintroduce the offending healthy plant foods without incident.
Meanwhile, most people still have plenty of options in the realm of beans, lentils, tubers (potatoes & sweet potatoes), and many types of grains (there are more than you think, and if you’re of the “anti-gluten” camp, many don’t contain gluten) to get enough CALORIES to feel nourished and satiated without eating a lot of meat.
The Future of Meat
You may already know my thoughts about meat: first, it’s going to get very scarce, and very expensive, starting this fall. Much of America’s livestock, including most of our poultry animals, have been destroyed this year (many in fires and other disasters, but most ordered exterminated by the USDA, due to a “raging avian flu”).
Storage capacity has been temporarily maxed for the last several months, so we’ve not seen shortages yet. But many of us are about to learn what food scarcity really is, for the first time in our lives.
And it’s a double whammy, because importing and exporting is breaking down all over the world, as all the “blocks” of countries that have underpinned our lifestyles for many decades are breaking apart, reorganizing, and looking out for their own best interests, as food crisis looms.
Everyone on an individual or family level should prepare, rather than dismissing the impending famine as a third-world phenomenon. Soon, any meat in the U.S. will be scarce and very expensive, if you can find it at all.
One way to prepare is to begin to experiment with a more sustainable diet that doesn’t involve raising livestock in your backyard and then trying to protect them from neighbors and criminals. Growing squash and cucumbers in my garden is so much easier than raising and protecting cows. Also, it takes around 10 pounds of plants, and 2,500 gallons of water, to create ONE pound of beef.
Beyond the geopolitical issues we cannot control, digesting animal flesh can take days, or longer, causing putrefaction and inflammation in our 30- to 35-foot gastrointestinal tracts, all crammed tightly in a space that is about 12" x 12". (In other words, it needs roughage, to move it through!)
If you’re going to consume flesh of any kind, minimizing your meat portion and eating it with lots of high-fiber whole plants is not only healthier but may also bring down your food budget.
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RESOURCES:
When 'Skinny Fat' Is More Dangerous Than Obesity
https://time.com/4105095/skinny-fat-obesity/
The Game Changers | Official Trailer
Here’s 96 Examples of Food Shortages Being CREATED in Past Year
https://thinkamericana.com/heres-96-examples-that-the-food-shortages-are-being-created-not-predicted/