Evolutionary Biology and the Thrifty Gene

Don use your clothes to measure if you gaining weight And then also keep in mind that like I said anabolic processes are slow by design Okay. So let's think about this from an evolutionary perspective, because genetically, we're not that different than we were 15,000 years ago. So let's say we're hunter gatherers. Depending on where you live in the world, well, in most places, you're going to go through, despite what people think, early generations, they might not understand this, these young generations that there didn't used to be a 7-Eleven, a Starbucks, an Uber Eats, a DoorDash. We used to have to actually go out and hunt for our food and we had to go out and find berries and we had to dig up tubers and we had to do all this shit, right? So our bodies are designed to be a bit thrifty because when we are going through a feasting period where we have a lot of available food, it is normal for your body to put body fat on because you are going to eventually get to a fasting stage where or a famine stage where you can't find food. So having body excess body fat is an evolutionary benefit if you can't find food. So that being said, in the first world now, we don't have to worry about that. It can be it can be feasting all the time and we don't go through these periods of famine. So that is part of the problem is that we're genetically designed to eat at a steady level or go through periods of having food abundance and food restrictions. right? And then now we have to think about that. It creates a big problem because if your body is like, ooh, really loves to put on body fat when there's a lot of food available and you never go through a fasting or famine type of situation, you're just going to continuously put body fat on. Now, if we think, let's just say you were in Europe, okay? Part of the year in Europe, there's snow everywhere, it's cold, it's going to be difficult to find food. In the summertime, you have food, food is everywhere. So during the winter, it would be normal to be catabolic and chew away at that fat that you've put on over the summer and also to lose some muscle during that time. Because how do we, how do we lower metabolism, eat some of that expensive muscle tissue away, right? So then during the summer, when you have food abundance, your body puts that muscle back on and starts putting that fat back on. This is the normal ebb and flow of how humans are designed that we're now in a different environment.