As in today’s world, everyone is obsessed with reducing weight and looking thin; the challenge of obesity is on the rise, especially in developed countries. One of the biggest hurdles in combating obesity is understanding the cause. Some blame it on the lifestyle, the choices people make, what they eat, how much they exercise, and how much active their lifestyle is. On the other hand, others believe that weight gain has more to do with a person’s metabolism and genetic makeup. Is there any scientific data behind any of these arguments?

Credible scientific studies require large sample sizes and a long observation period of that sample. Small aberrations and minute omissions in the collection of data can lead to misleading conclusions.

Another option among people fighting obesity is to curb the calorie intake without fully understanding the relationship between calorie input and weight gain. Calorie reduction can result in short term achievements, but the subject usually ends up going into an infinite cycle of yo-yo diet affect. Calories are used for not only generating fats but also producing heat, bone, and muscle tissues. Drastically reducing the intake of calories usually results in lowering metabolism and the net sum of unused calories not only remains the same but in many cases, increases. Studies at Carnegie institute conclusively indicated that once calorie intake was reduced by a certain percentage, calorie consumption also reduced proportionally. Once the person returns to the regular calorie intake after the diet period, the extra calories are no longer consumed and result in rapid weight gain.

In recent years, however, more and more researches are coming to the same conclusion that the primary cause of weight gain is the high level of insulin.

Some research has shown as much as 75% of weight loss efforts directly attributed to reduced insulin levels. In the end, it comes to the hormonal level, which is controlled by insulin. The hormone Ghrelin makes you hungry while Leptin tells when you have had enough. Once the level of insulin goes high, the hormonal balance is disturbed. How insulin affects the hormone imbalance remains a mystery. However, there are suggestions from scientists and weight experts that insulin somehow inhibits the functioning of Leptin.

Under normal circumstances, the Leptin level increase in a person during the meal giving him some feeling of satiety. Leptin is supposed to play the same role when a person gains weight. But it has been observed that the behavior of Leptin in persons suffering from obesity is the opposite. Leptin levels decrease as a person eats, thus urging him to eat more.

Insulin regulates sugar in the bloodstream by removing sugar from the blood and depositing it in cells. When we take excess sugar, it means insulin level has to go higher to regulate the sugar levels. However, too much sugar starch and carbohydrates disturb this delicate mechanism. The eventual result is cells becoming insulin resistant. In simple terms, cells stop taking sugar molecules from the blood. Once cells are not getting enough sugar to fulfill their requirement of energy, they keep on demanding more. The constant demand from cells results in non-stop cycles of binge eating without achieving satiety.

Once a person becomes insulin resistant, even a successful diet becomes unsustainable, and the demand for food eventually forces a person to succumb and ultimately give in to the cravings. Snacking between meals is the chief cause of insulin resistance. In an ideal situation, our body should have regular periods of low insulin levels. The body needs four to five hours between meals to mitigate the spikes in insulin production. Snacking disturbs this cycle and results in high insulin levels all the time. That’s why intermittent fasting is being suggested these days widely to help weight loss. The purpose of intermittent fasting is to regulate insulin production and combat insulin resistance.

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In the second half of the twentieth century, a misconception became widespread that a higher intake of fats results in obesity. The result was the widespread fad of going for low-fat dairy products margarine etc. Most people didn’t realize that low-fat diets are high in sugar to replenish the loss of taste due to the removal of fats. Also, for the last 40 years, it was widely believed that higher cholesterol levels which are connected to heart disease are due to the dietary fats. Recent studies have rejected this notion. Does that mean one can eat as much fat as one likes? Does it apply to all kinds of fats? Well, not really. Here comes another villain, the saturated fats. Most vegetable oils are polyunsaturated fats, but their products are saturated artificially with hydrogen so that they don’t get rancid quickly. Our best bet is avoiding these fats as much as possible. Some studies have shown that an increase of 2% in saturated fats increases the risk of heart disease by 23%.

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Another thing to avoid is sugar. Cut the sugar, and you are on your way to reducing weight. Sugar disturbs in multiple ways. At first, it increases insulin levels, which eventually results in insulin resistance, as mentioned before. Second, the sugar that we use is sucrose, which contains fructose which can only be absorbed by the liver. Too much sugar makes it impossible for the liver to absorb all the fructose and thus convert into fat.

Furthermore, it disturbs the delicate balance that makes a person insulin resistant. The problem for cutting sugar is that it appears in the unlikeliest of the places. Sugar isn’t dangerous only in raw form. One has to keep an eye on the labels because numerous innocuous products contain a high level of sugar harmful for health in the long run. There are many alternates available for sugar, but many of them have their side effects, and some of them are even worse than sugar. So when you are looking for sugar substitute study it well and be cautious.