Not as likely nor as quickly as carbohydrates. Fat and carbohydrates are very different. Cattle are fed corn to make them fat. Carbohydrates produce a heightened bold sugar level and insulin is produced to bring it down and stores the excess energy in the body as fat. Insulin is the fat producing hormone. Carbohydrate are addictive because of the pendulum of raised and lowered blood sugar levels.
Interesting that lately I keep hearing more and more about corn and not just corn surup making people fat and not being good for you, especially your cholesterol levels. Reagarding meat and fat, people on the Atkins diet sure seem to drop some weight, although I would not recommend that type of
dieting.
I've undergone an experiment in the past year, went from a very sedentary job (driving) to a very physical job (warehouse) and eating wise didn't radically change but lost 40 lbs in 3 months.
Convinced me that it does have more to do with activity--people would ask how I lost all the weight, I suggested the Warehouse Diet:laugh:, the physical work (8-14 hours a day) will grind your bones to dust but you'll lose the weight.
Amen and amen. My wife has type 2 diabetes and can attest to this. If she can go a few days to get the refined carbs out of her system she is OK, but if she doesn't she craves them... sometimes painfully.
I did Atkins a while back. Yes, it does work. If you do it properly it is not too hard on your body (get enough fiber, drink plenty of water). The strange thing is that, although your cholesterol will go up at first, it will come back down and actually drop lower than when you started the Atkins diet. Just getting off of the refined carbs/sugar is enough to make you lose weight, though. The South Beach diet is much better on your body, as well as being very easy to follow.
We (my wife, mother-in-law, and myself) are currently trying to get back on the Weight Watchers plan. We did good, but money troubles messed up us buying the good stuff we need. Money is no better, but we are going to try anyway.
I was going through a box of old photographs yesterday and ran across a photo of my mother's high school graduation class, the 1926 class of North Central High in Spokane, WA. Two things jumped out to me:
1. They look, oh so young.
2. There was not one fat person in the class. In fact, there was no one that would even be declared plump. They all were slender. What a change from these current days.
I agree, crabtownboy. Back in the day, people were far more active---had to be. And they enjoyed biscuits and pies and such (except maybe during the depression, but that's another story) and still were slim.
Though my kids have my genes but none are overweight because they are active. Like wear-me-out-just-watching-them active. I hope they keep that. Had I not sat in front of a tv as a youngster, maybe I'd be the same.
There's actually a lot of truth to it. Take a look at a can of Coca Cola. How much fat is in a can? None. The caloric content of a Coke is mostly carbohydrates. The body stores those carbs as fat.
Without getting into the boring detail, the fat from protien isn't stored on the body in the same manner that fat from carbs is.
That's why it's important to engage in BOTH diet and excercise. If you diet alone, you'll lose weight, but still have excess fat. If you excercise alone, you'll have 6 pack abs, but they'll be covered by a beer gut.
People think they can do one or the other, and it just ain't so.