I needed this book in my life starting in high school. Very insightful and helpful for me to read about something that has been plaguing me basically my whole life that had made me feel guilty about not having enough energy to be productive or have become sedentary, worried about people thinking I’m lazy when I’m truly not, but also pushing to work out so much and making myself fatigued and burnt out to try to maintain a smidgeon of physical health/activity.

The chapter where the author discusses the physiological activities that take place in your body to either use food for fuel or store it as fat for later use was what helped me get a better picture of what my body was doing and where my problem might truly lie. Unfortunately there’s not a sure way to know how much my hormones affect me (although there’s probably tests I don’t know about) and I’m afraid chronic stress/cortisol might keep me from losing the additional fat already stored in my body.

This book reminded me of an ad for children that used to play on TV on Nickelodeon/Disney Channel/Cartoon Network about having us try to avoid foods with sugar in any form, anything that rhymed with ‘gross’ (i.e. dextrose, maltose, fructose, etc.).
They tried to warn us beforehand of what was happening with the increase of obesity in our country but people were just not buying into it or parents had a lot of things on their minds as well as socioeconomic factors were a play in to what food was affordable, accessible, easy, and quick.

The first 10 chapters were a little bit boring (I felt like he could have made his argument in maybe a couple or a few chapters) but I guess the author felt it was necessary to prove his point and argue about how people become obese and using research articles to justify/interpret what really matters when looking at the results of those studies.
I skipped ahead to try to find when he talked about the solution to reduce the effects of storing excessive fat in the body and its probably in the last half of the book

I’m using his advice in the appendix of the book and hope for the best right now to implement his “no sugar, no starch” guidelines. I also hope to reverse some of the effects that total carbohydrates and sugar have done to my body and that I can do my best to maintain the discipline to continue avoiding/reducing those foods in my eating habits and lifestyle.

Why We Get Fat - Likewise Book Reviews

3 Reviews