Theathens Directory

What does our body do when it is fed excess calories? This means that the body had a safety valve to relieve the pressure to store excess calories as fat. The fact is, our bodies have more than one such safety valve. The one used most often is the blood sugar level. This rises to accommodate moderate, temporary oversupplies. However, when the oversupply of calories is neither moderate nor temporary, this safety valve cannot handle the problem. Another safety valve is often brought in. It is the stepping-up of the metabolic rate. In effect, the furnace burns faster in an effort to consume the excess.

There are other safety valves, perspiration, elimination, etc., but science is not very familiar with how and when they operate, largely due to wide individual differences. Eventually, the safety valves are no longer adequate to the increased pressure and the body yields to that pressure and creates fat.This can happen in a year, a week, or overnight. For some people it happens with the slightest pressure of excess calories. Their safety valves just don’t seem to be able to handle it. For others, a weekend of wining and dining will barely budge the scale and, as long as it gives way to five days of calm, the threat is over. Their safety valves can handle thousands of excess calories for days without an ounce of fat stored.

And then of course there are those envied people who never seem to gain no matter what they eat. They go through life forever slim. Their safety valves seem so efficient that their body has thrown away the key to the fat making machinery. Their excess calories are used or eliminated-never stored.
Whatever your tolerance is for excess calories, you approach that limit less frequently when you eat more frequently.

Remember the greater shaded area under the three-meal-a-day excess calorie graph as compared to the six-meal-a-day graph? How do you think it would look with one meal a day? One meal a day builds up an even greater pressure on the system to create fat storage. The blood sugar will rise, the body temperature may go up, the pulse rate may increase, perspiration may flow, and the bowels and kidneys may work overtime. However, the fat making machinery may still have to begin to hum.

The Hottentos, who lives in South Africa and depend largely on wild game for their survival, may go several days without a meal. Then when they made a kill they eat like it was going out of style. It may be their one meal in three days. What do you think their curve of excess calories looks like? And what do you think the body does about it? His body gives into the pressure to build fat, and builds it. They have humps of fat around their buttocks that act pretty much like the camel’s hump to store in times of plenty for use in the days ahead.

By: Priscilla Yao

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