Playing God's Apprentice Part 3 - Diet

You are what you eat. It is something I knew all of my life. I was the fat guy, but I got to the state of where I was eating quality food. It was always interesting being amongst other fat people because I very quickly realized that the types of bodies that fat people have are very different and each is a testament to the fine work they did to get themselves there.

The process of your body changing from a skinny person to a fat person usually follows four stages of progression almost like a disease. However there are some very notable exceptions where individuals can achieve a massive girth and only attain the first stage of fatness.

Stage 1 - Fat starts to deposit under the skin. You are consuming 120 calories a day more than your body requires. Mother nature has given us a wonderful tool called body fat that allows us to take the carbohydrate energy which has four calories per gram, and put it away for long term storage in the form of fat which has nine calories per gram. If your body is to lug around 120 calories of stored food, it is easier to move thirteen and a half grams of fat than it is to move 30 grams of carbohydrate.

Stage 2 - Fat starts to deposit around (inter) your muscles. You have been a diligent person and consumed 120 calories a day extra as a savings program. After placing 10 Kilograms of fat under your skin, your body starts to store the fat around your muscles. You start to develop the classic storage humps sort of like the human equivalent of a Dromedary Camel. For women it usually takes the form of booty padding, saddle bags (classic pear shape), and in extreme cases the Gorilla hump. For men it usually manifests itself as fat stores in a spare tire shape around the mid-section (apple shape), and in rare cases the gorilla hump.

Stage 3 - Fat starts to deposit around your organs in your body cavity. This is called visceral fat and this is the stuff that KILLS YOU. The way this fat snuffs your life is either of several ways:
1> It breaks down, oxidizes creating free radicals that alter the chemical balance around a organ, and abnormal cell creation takes place (Cancer)
2> It surrounds the organ impeding its functioning, and you develop diabetes, liver disease, kidney disease, or your heart is so surrounded in fat it just can't beat anymore and you have a heart attack.
3> It impedes the mobility of your torso, and you suffer a fall that had you been fit you would not have suffered. Thereafter your body decays quickly and you die.

Stage 4 - Fat starts to deposit within your muscles. You start to achieve intra-muscular marbling like a AAA cut of beef. At this point you are quite immobile, and you are lucky your body did not kill you at stage 3. If there was a natural disaster and people had to resort to cannibalism to survive. You are the first to be eaten as you would taste the best, and have the most tender meat. A skilled cannibal butcher could cut you into steaks in such a manner that the rest of the cannibals could eat fork tender human . The fat would act as a lubricant between the muscle strands. If you were cut perpendicular to the grain of your muscle fibres, you would have the consistency of tenderloin...

I myself hit spent most of my adulthood at the cusp between Stage 2 (inter muscular)/Stage 3 (visceral) fat. My maximum weight I hit was over 250 pounds which made me approximately 80 pounds overweight. I was ideal weight at age 22, 170 pounds, and by age 31 I weighed 250 pounds then my weight plateaued for eight years.



This is a photo of myself taken during November of 2000 at age 35, weight well over 250 pounds

The journey from 170 pounds to 250 pounds over nine years is as follows:

Amount overweight = 80 pounds

Calories stored being overweight = 80 pounds x 3,500 calories per pound = 280,000 calories

Number of days in nine years = 365 x 9 = 3,285 days

Human whale in nine years = 280,000/3,285 = 85.24 calories per day over average daily metabolism..

Rome was not built in one day. To achieve bodily perfection as the Michelin Man, or Poppin Fresh was a long slow diligent journey. You have every reason to be proud of yourself as it probably took more effort to get 80 pounds overweight that it took to get your education.

Where can you find 85 calories? Here are some fine examples:

1> a four ounce glass of grape juice
2> 18 grams (2/3 of an ounce) of whole grain
3> 3/4ths of one tablespoon of olive oil
4> a small apple

An apple a day can kill you.

to be continued