Gabriel Weston is a surgeon and she looks into why some people are fat and others not, when they all live in the same environment. This is an interesting documentary that was shown on mainstream BBC television in the UK, but I think it misses the mark a bit. It actually highlights how modern medicine looks at our bodies purely as machines. They don’t really consider that the way our mind thinks can have an effect on how our body operates. It’s worth watching as long as you don’t believe everything on face value.
My Notes from The Truth about Fat
- she notices that more obese people are coming into her surgical theatre and they are much harder to deal with – they have more illnesses, are harder to anesthetize, etc.
- she wants to see what new research is out there for fighting the fat epidemic
- nearly a quarter of the adult population is clinically obese
- she says “fat is the bodies way of storing food between meals” – that’s a good quote, but our bodies need to have big gaps between meals to get around to using the fat
- subcutaneous fat is not so bad – it’s the energy store
- visceral fat gathers around the organs – too much is a real problem and can make us sick
- we all have a “set point” of a weight that our bodies want to be (to me, this suggests a subconscious program that thinks it knows how big or small we are)
- they look for a physical reason for the set point and find there’s a hormone that makes us hungry and another hormone that makes us feel full
- Gabriel was given a big breakfast and then asked to fast until the next morning – that is a fast for 24 hours
- she makes a big point about how hard the fast was and how hungry she was – to me, she was having withdrawal symptoms from not having glucose in her system all the time and her body had forgotten how to burn fat – with a bit of practice, a 24 hour fast should be very easy.
- I’m surprised that when she breaks her fast she eats a Pain au Chocolat and says “that’s good!” – a surgeon saying that a very sweet and fatty pastry is “good” – that’s horrifying – obviously she means that “tastes good” – there’s no way know that it’s good for our bodies.
- the research suggests that her hormones are controlling her size
- then they look at identical twins that have different body sizes
- they have the same genes and same environment but different body sizes
- they talk about genes getting switched on of off – I don’t think Bruce Lipton would be very happy about that
- They identify stress as a possible cause (but as Bruce Lipton says, the mind can alter the way the genes express themselves – the stress they’ve identified is really an emotional change in the minds of one of the twins)
- they show that development in the womb is key to its potential to be an obese child
- if the mother is undernourished, the babies genes are expressed in a way that promotes hunger and the desire to eat more
- they introduce a woman over 20 stone – I was shocked when Gabriel said “at the moment , Marilyn is healthy” – again this shows how the medical profession has a distorted view – being overweight is the first symptom of being unhealthy – just because the person hasn’t had a critical failure and been admitted to hospital yet doesn’t mean they are healthy
- they suggest that a gastric bypass can permanently change the levels of the hunger and feeling full hormones
- which suggests a gastric bypass changes the way they think
- Marilyn feels full now for the first time ever and she doesn’t like fatty or sweet tastes
- how can this be possible, asks Gabriel
- they use fMRI scans to observe subconscious reactions to different foods
- fMRI scans before and after gastric bypass surgery show that the brain responses have changed
- to me, this doesn’t show that the operation has caused the change – it could be an emotional change that has been put in place associated with having the operation
Leave a Reply