Luxury Spa Finder - May/June 2008 - (Page 56)

[Pound Wise] cally gifted we can eat anything we want. ª People who never have to deal with weight issues are a minority, and probably they' ve already adopted behaviors that support a healthy weight.º In other words, there' s no free lunch; if you' re thin, you probably don' t overeat. Where Kolata' s theory diverges from the mainstream is in its contention that it' s virtually impossible to battle your set point, much less change it to a lower weight. ª The research shows that individuals have a range of weights, often spanning as much as 20 or 30 pounds, that they can achieve and sustain,º she writes in Rethinking Thin. ª Being at the bottom of your range usually means constant vigilance.º If people manage to lose weight, ª they become obsessed with food, they are always hungry, they ﬁnd themselves bingeing and gorging despite their best intentions, and the pounds come back.º Her theory is based on Rockefeller duced in our stomachs, inﬂuence appetite. Leptin decreases it; grehlin increases it. The balance between these hormones is governedÐ you guessed itÐ by our genes. For Kolata, this helps explain why pounds we take off pile right back on. Analysis of the human genome lends some support to Kolata' s thesis. According to a 2007 New York Times article (not by Kolata), there' s a genetic sequence that enables people to eat fatty foods without gaining weightÐ I' ll take a double strand of thatÐ and another one (a GG sequence at the gene location rs3751812) that makes its owner weigh six pounds less on average than someone whose sequence reads AA. The science is still emerging, but it' s a tantalizing tilt toward biology and away from willpower. And it ﬁnds an echo in the experience of thousands of women who battle down to their dream weight (over and over again), only to have the pounds creep back. But there' s a big, fat hole in Kolata' s reasoning: the obesity epidemic. In the late ' 70s, less than half (47 percent) of the U.S. population was overweight or obese; today two-thirds of us are. The explanation has to be environmentalÐ we' re inundated by fattening foodÐ because it takes millennia for DNA to reformat itself. But what? Gary Taubes thinks he knows the answer. Wrong Foods, Not Wrong Genes There' s a big fat hole in Kolata' s the obesity reasoning: epidemic. University research that found that when overweight people diet down to a normal weight, their bodies react as if they' re starving, sending physiological signalsÐ hunger hormones and brain chemicalsÐ that urge the body to conserve calories and the person to eat more. Some recent discoveries regarding the biology of hunger suggest that there are indeed potent chemicals at work. On a molecular level, we now know that leptin, a satiety hormone produced in our fat cells, and grehlin, a hunger hormone pro- Looking at the same obesity research Kolata analyzed, Taubes draws a similar conclusionÐ we' re prisoners of our metabolismÐ but offers a different culprit: carbohydrates. He claims that consuming carbs stimulates the production of insulin, which in turn leads the body to accumulate fat. ª The more carbohydrates you eat, the more fat you' ll store,º Taubes contends. The insulin-carbs theory succeeds where Kolata' s analysis fails, in offering an explanation for the obesity epidemic: ª When the government announced in the late 1970s that a low-fat diet was healthyÐ and a low-fat diet is by deﬁnition high in carbsÐ suddenly we were told to eat carbs,º says Taubes, who lost 20 pounds on the Atkins diet, a high protein± high fat regimen. James J. Kenney, Ph.D., a nutrition research specialist at the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa, thinks Taubes' s theory is out to lunch, starting with his contention about insulin. ª Most people 56 may· june 2008 visit spafinder.com ILLUSTRATIONS BY KATIE RUTHERFORD, PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREW BRUCKER (LEFT) , KRISTEN LAURA GETCHELL (RIGHT) http://spafinder.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Luxury Spa Finder - May/June 2008

Luxury Spa Finder - May/June 2008 Contents Editor's Note Ask Susie Pulse Points Spa Road Trip Beauty & Brains Pound Wise Private Label Real Estate New Tuscan Trio The Real Bora Bora The Spa Collection The Insider's Guide: Ireland Spa Rx From the Sparchives

Luxury Spa Finder - May/June 2008

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