Why Do We Eat? A Neurobiological Perspective. Part IV

In this post, I'll follow up on the last post with a discussion two more important factors that can affect energy homeostasis and theref...

What Puts Fat Into Fat Cells, and What Takes it Out?

Body fatness at its most basic level is determined by the rate of fat going into vs. out of fat cells. This in/out cycle occurs regardless o...

A Roadmap to Obesity

In this post, I'll explain my current understanding of the factors that promote obesity in humans.   Heritability To a large degree, obe...

Paleolithic Diet Clinical Trials, Part V

Dr. Staffan Lindeberg's group has published a new paleolithic diet paper in the journal Nutrition and Metabolism, titled "A Paleoli...

The Twinkie Diet for Fat Loss

The Experiment I've received several e-mails from readers about a recent experiment by nutrition professor Mark Haub at Kansas State uni...

Intervew with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic

Last week, I did an audio interview with Chris Kresser of The Healthy Skeptic , on the topic of obesity. We put some preparation into it, a...

Interview with John Barban

I recently did a podcast interview with John Barban from the Adonis Lifestyle blog. We talked mostly about fat mass and the body fat ...

The Body Fat Setpoint, Part IV: Changing the Setpoint

Prevention is Easier than Cure Experiments in animals have confirmed what common sense suggests: it's easier to prevent health problems ...

The Body Fat Setpoint, Part III: Dietary Causes of Obesity

What Caused the Setpoint to Change? We have two criteria to narrow our search for the cause of modern fat gain: It has to be new to the huma...

The Body Fat Setpoint

One pound of human fat contains about 3,500 calories. That represents roughly 40 slices of toast. So if you were to eat one extra slice of...

Eicosanoids, Fatty Liver and Insulin Resistance

I have to take a brief intermission from the heart disease series to write about a very important paper I just read in the journal Obesity, ...

Leptin Resistance and Sugar

Leptin is a major hormone regulator of fat mass in vertebrates. It's a frequent topic on this blog because I believe it's central t...

How to Give a Rat Metabolic Syndrome

I was doing my usual journal rounds today when I came across an article in the American Journal of Hypertension that caught my eye. It...

Cardiovascular Risk Factors on Kitava, Part IV: Leptin

Leptin is a hormone that is a central player in the process of weight gain and chronic disease. Its existence had been predicted for decad...

Hyperphagia

One of the things I didn't mention in the last post is that Americans are eating more calories than ever before. According to Centers f...

Two Things that Get on My Nerves, Part I

The "Thrifty Gene" Hypothesis The thrifty gene hypothesis is the darling of many obesity researchers. It was proposed in 1962 by ...

Leptin

I've been puzzled by an interesting question lately. Why is it that certain cultures are able to eat large amounts of carbohydrate and ...