1) We consume available carbohydrate calories before fat calories
Just a hunger person consumes the most readily available source of food, the human body always consumes the most easily molecules or carbohydrates at the simplest in form and thus are the easiest for the body to quickly convert into energy. This is why people crave carbohydrates when they haven't eaten for a while or immediately after performing strenuous exercise.
In contrast, molecules of FAT are more complex and require additional energy and additional time to be converted into energy (or burned). The body always looks to available carbohydrates first for energy before it begins to break down ingested and then stored molecules of fat.
2) Our bodies tell us to look for more food before using stored reserves.
When a person needs energy, he or she experiences hunger (typically for more carbs) long BEFORE the body turns to its stores of excess fat. This biological programming served us well in prehistoric times, telling prehistoric humans to keep eating (and eating and eating) when food was plentiful before drawing on the stored reserves(fat).
It is typically takes 10 to 15 minutes from the time we ingest food until our hunger becomes sated - this is why you are sometimes no longer hungry at a restaurant when the food arrives late. When you take time between courses or bites to digest your food, your hunger becomes satisfied with only the amount of calories you require. But when you eat quickly, you often think you are hungry and keep eating even though you have already ingested more than enough calories.
3) Readily available food causes our metabolism to stabilize at the higher fat level.
When people put on additional fat, say 6.8 KG of weight during vacation with lavish meals, their daily basal metabolic requirement for calories increases. Where their hunger used to be sated with 2500 calories per day, these people now require approximately 3000 calories in order not to feel hungry. Their body and appetite having reached a new equilibrium at the heavier, 6.8 KG-extra, level.
As long as food is readily available and people listen to their stomach(hunger) regarding how much to eat, their increased amount of weight will REMAIN!
4) The type of food we eat today is different than it was when our biological formula for energy storage was developed.
The main reason that this stored excess fat may not be converted into energy calories is because our food today is very different than food was when our biological program for storing energy was developed. It contains much more fat! When our biological programming for food was developed, our ancestors ate mostly a low-fat vegetarian deit, with some game meats. And even those foods that contained fat had much less fat than they do today.
Back then, fat was so rare and so useful that our taste buds evolved to crave it and the parts of the animals that contained most of it. Today, UNFORTUNATELY, this sensory craving has been exploited by our food suppliers.
In the past century, we have almost doubled the percent of fat in our diets - from 20 % of our calories in 1910 to about 35 % today! Most experts agree that our bodies are biologically programmed for a diet requiring about 20 % or our calories from fat.
source : Chapter 3, What You Need to Know about Food and Diet, The Wellness Revolution, 2007. John and Wiley. Printed in USA. page : 66:69.
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