​Food is fuel and materials. It provides the building blocks for organic structure and the energy input for the dynamics of life itself. Interestingly, the sun is the ultimate source of the energy we derive from food. Through photosynthesis the sun's energy makes the bonds between atoms in food plant molecules. In turn, food animals consume plant molecules. When we digest and metabolize plant or animal tissue we break the carbon-to-carbon bonds in the molecules, releasing the sun's energy for our own use in building tissue, fighting disease, keeping warm, and moving about.
 
That's all kind of peripheral to the point of this chapter but it is quite fascinating that the source of the energy keeping us at 98.6 degrees and for every move we make is the sun. We, and all life, are solar powered. It is yet another fact demonstrating our inextricable link to the natural world.
 
Eating is a very practical thing, transforming the energy of the sun into the energy we need for life. It is not just recreation. We enjoy food because our bodies know it is necessary for life. Otherwise we would take it or leave it. Since great effort is required to obtain food in the wild, without the satisfaction of eating, our ancestors would have long ago starved and we would not now exist. So the urge to search out food and enjoy its pleasures is a good and necessary design.
 
The problem is that this design for survival can get perverted when all the food we want is available by simply opening a cupboard or refrigerator door. In the wild, food was usually scarce and only found with great difficulty and effort. When we made a find we would gorge ourselves, enjoy doing it, and our body would release hormones such as growth hormones and insulin to build tissue and store any excess into the densest form of reserve (sun) energy, fat. The body reasons: "Who knows when another meal might come, so better pack as much fat away as possible."

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​What happens when food is not scarce? What if we don't have to be hard bodied and swift footed like our food gathering Paleolithic ancestors? Since we are still physiologically, genetically, and instinctually back in the wild, our body tells us to eat aplenty, enjoy it, and store as much fat as possible for those future bouts of starvation. And boy, do we listen.

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​Another mechanism designed for the wild—not discarded just because we have become civilized—is the 'on' eating switch. Notice sometime when you are not even hungry that if you start to eat, all of a sudden you do feel hungry and wade in with gusto. In the wild the eating 'on' switch assures that if food is found we don't just take a few nibbles and walk away. Remember, food was difficult and scarce in the wild. When it was found it needed to be taken full advantage of. But today, when food is available 24 hours a day, the switch is flipped on entirely too often. The result is storage of emergency fat with no emergencies to spend it on. Aside from abundance, the most aggravating factor in modern obesity is the shift to a carbohydrate-based diet. In the wild, cheese puffs, Jolly Ranchers, and Big Gulps would not exist. We would be primarily metabolizing protein and fat because that is the makeup of natural foods in the wild.
 
When we fill the intestinal tract with carbohydrates (all of which convert to quick energy sugars) and keep it full, there is no need for the body to ever call upon reserve fat in tissue to supply energy. Additionally, the fat that is eaten is shuttled off to fat stores since it is the prized storage fuel. There is no need to waste this prized fuel for energy since all the moment-to-moment energy needs are being taken care of by an intestinal tract that is constantly laden with carbohydrates. Carbohydrates in excess of moment-to-moment energy needs are then also converted to fat for storage.

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​As the body gets used to this skewed form of metabolism, it becomes dependent on it and will feel discomfort if it is not continued. The craving for sugar and starches (another form of sugar) is a universal symptom of the obese. Their inability to imagine a day without soda, some candy, bread, cereal, pastries, potatoes, and rolls is not a matter of mere food preference, but of addiction and should raise the red flag that those are the foods they should abandon. This craving for processed carbohydrates, when the body obviously does not need more food, is an addiction every bit as powerful as nicotine, caffeine and street drugs. The carbohydrate junkie is enslaved and self-destructive like any other addict.
 
That brief explanation is the long and short of the cause of the modern epidemic of obesity, as well as the many other modern chronic degenerative diseases.
 
Since it is intelligence, not our biology, that has created the convenient modern abundance, it is intelligence, not biology, that must dictate how we eat. Reason tells us that we should be selecting foods as close to nature as possible and expending sufficient energy by work or exercise to balance what we take in. That is a matter of thinking and judgment, not feeling—feeling like we want to eat and feeling like we don't want to exercise.
 
Actually, little thought is required if whole natural raw foods are the focus. Such foods will automatically regulate weight. High levels of body fat do not exist in the wild other than to serve a functional role in insulation or as a reserve for hibernation. Natural food—any food that can be found in the wild and digested raw exactly like it is without any form of processing—also contains all the vitamins, minerals, enzymes, accessory nutrients and undiscovered essentials to process the food and permit the full expression of health. Unnatural food—that which can only be eaten if processed or synthesized—is cosmetically enhanced to fool us into thinking it is good. It is usually laden with toxins and easy calories stripped of vital nutrients. Modern processed foods are too much of too little. The obese are in fact starving, famished for the critical nutrients found only in raw natural foods.
 
Excess weight is such a pervasive problem and an inciting or aggravating factor in so many diseases that its prevention should be on everyone's mind, and it pretty much is these days since the majority of people are overweight and at least a third are obese. Excess weight is neither innocent nor harmless for the individual or society. Since excess weight boils down to eating more than one's activity justifies, it is a form of theft in that we are taking what we do not deserve. In a world of limited resources, including those necessary to farm, process, transport, and store food, why should we consume more than we need? Moreover, while children here and abroad starve, we are killing ourselves by overeating. Instead of the counsel echoed in households across the land: "Clean up your plate, don't you know there are starving children?" it should be: "Don't put so much on your plate; don't you know there are starving children?"
 
We owe it to our body to properly care for it. It is a moral and ethical responsibility as much as caring for children, parents, pets, and the environment. Some justify being overweight as a life choice. But no choice is made in a vacuum. Society ends up paying for handicap facilities, healthcare, and social aid for those who, under the burden of their own weight and the attendant health decline, cannot stand on their feet for any length of time or sustain a job. It is also not fair to family and friends to impose upon them the emotional anguish of watching a loved one self-destruct.
 
Excess weight predisposes those who carry it to myriad diseases and mobility problems. Decreased agility increases the risk of physical injury from falling and decreases a person's ability to escape quickly from threatening situations. The load stress on the joints erodes them and inflicts arthritic changes requiring pain medications (a sure downward drug dependent and side effect spiral) and joint replacement surgery.
 
If a person simply calculates how much they are overweight, say it is 50 or 100 pounds, and goes to a gym and picks up dumbbells of that weight and carries them around for a short time, it will be clear why the joints are failing. Such a person is not a 'victim' of arthritis, and it is not 'in the genes,' even though many physicians and surgeons will tell their patients such an outrageous story.

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​If an obese person requires surgery, risk is increased because of the difficulty of reaching target tissues, the danger of ligatures slipping, and the sheer frustration of attempting precise work in a corporeal vat of grease. Furthermore, if the goal is to reach the maximum lifespan of about 120, or at least live healthily for the years lived, few things can be done that will increase the chances more than eating less and being reasonably lean.¹⁻²
 
Excess weight is a problem that lies within any person's power to solve.3 Even when people feel up against the wall and resort to highly dangerous bariatric surgery (stomach stapling and the like), success does not come from the surgery; it results because less food is eaten. Eating less food can be a choice; choice does not require surgery.
 
Life is best lived as a challenge to be won. By following the simple principles outlined above we can meet and win the challenge of excess weight with a wind at our back. All that stands in the way is thinking and the will to become a better person.
 
So don't see excess weight as an impossible burden or a reason to concede defeat, nor to resign oneself to a lifestyle of masochistic self-loathing. Don't be discouraged by the feeling of emptiness and frustration from failed diet programs that center on some expert or product. They provide no true foothold because they center on an outside agency, not personal enlightenment. See the problem and your new understanding of it as a fount of action. It is a wonderful opportunity to take control, watch your body transform, and experience the health it is designed to have.