by John Romaniello
Storing Fat – So Easy a Caveman Could Do It
As you probably know, a lot of the problem with fat loss is just simple genetics; even if your family isn’t an example of fat loss hardship, it’s important to consider the longer view.
And, as you can probably tell by my not-so-clever title, you’re not just competing against your own genes – you’re working against the entire genetic make-up of all of our predecessors.
Essentially, all of our ancestors DNA is stacked against you.
(Don’t worry it gets worse. But then it gets better.)
You see, from an evolutionary standpoint, there is simply NO real benefit to being extremely lean. Quite the opposite-people who stored fat efficiently we able to survive longer and live to pass on their efficient fat storage genes. Which means that only the cave people who were good at storing fat tended to live through famine, and passed the fat-storing genes on.
Generations later, we’re all walking around with super-high fat storage efficiency. Which is going to come in really handy during the next famine, I’d imagine, but for right now it just contributes to chronic fattitude.
“WAAAAAIIIT A MINUTE — BUT WHY WEREN’T CAVE PEOPLE FAT, ROMAN?”
I know, I know. You know all about cavemen and being “Paleo” and the truth of the matter is, yes, most of our ancestors were kept in good shape by both diet and lifestyle. Just because we were adapted to be good at storing fat doesn’t mean that everyone walked around BEING fat.
Put another way, just as we are designed to hold onto a baseline level of what Nature assumes is necessary fat, we are ALSO designed to burn excess fat. You see, if we speak again about our not-so pretty cavemen ancestors, there was obviously a benefit to holding onto some fat, but there was never any real benefit to storing a lot of fat.
In fact, storing excess amounts of fat would have been as detrimental to our ancestors as having NO fat.
Rather than being in danger of starving, they would simply be inefficient as hunter-gatherers. Certainly, those genes wouldn’t have gotten passed on, either.
Indeed, I scoured the Google button on the internet machine, and I only found ONE picture of a fat cavemen-so while cave-dudes and cave-ladies held on to the last few pounds, they probably never looked like the gentleman to the left.
Because we all share those genes, it explains why it’s relatively easy to lose the first several pounds-because, genetically, our bodies were not designed to carry that fat around.
Additionally, now we see that it’s hard to lose those last 10 pounds because your entire genetic make-up is specifically designed to hold on to them. Basically, you can thank your ancestors for screwing it up for you.
They screwed it up for you by bestowing you with an endocrine system that ENSURES that the less fat you have, the HARDER it becomes to lose fat.
You see, some hormones which contribute to fat burning-like leptin-are produced in the fat cells; therefore, if you have less fat, you produce less leptin.
Which means that you’ll lose fat SLOWER because leptin helps you produce OTHER hormones, like the thyroid hormones T3 and T4.
When these slow down, your testosterone levels drop somewhat. Your reaction to insulin changes. And you produce less growth hormone.
Basically, the leaner you get, the less you produce of each fat burning hormones.
Not surprisingly, fat storage hormones begin to “take control” of your body. Hormones like cortisol (a stress hormones which contributes to belly fat storage) and estrogen (the female sex hormone which contributes to lower body fat storage) begin to exhibit more prominence.
And so, if the question is, “why does fat loss stop?” the answer is simple: because your body TELLS it to.
Now, you have to work against these proceses, and there is only ONE way to do it: fight hormones with hormones.
To offset cortisol, you need to produce growth hormone (which in turn will fight belly fat)-and there are certain ways to train for thise.
To fight estrogen, you have to make sure your testosterone levels stay at their normal range and NOT drop. Performing density training will do this-AND help fight lower body fat.
Finally, to manage insulin more effectively, you need to produce IGF-1, which will also help you lose your love handles. And to do this, you perform dynamic training.
These training styles are all represented in Final Phase Fat Loss-as is the entire hormonal response training philosophy.
And so, while we can’t STOP our bodies from “trying” to lose fat by lowering hormones as we get leaner, we can fight back using other hormones; and, with the right training program, we can win.