CrossFit - Gary Taubes: Why We Get Fat (Condensed)

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Mar. 09, 2012

Join investigative journalist Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories, as he addresses CrossFit HQ Seminar Staff at the Trainer Summit held in October in San Diego, Calif. In this condensed version of the presentation, Taubes shares his research on fat accumulation and the risk of disease.

According to Taubes, obesity rates have increased dramatically in the past 50 years, which goes along with the increasing diabetes epidemic. He says both are related to a whole host of metabolic diseases.

Taubes' argument is simple: "The same thing that makes people fat is what causes all these diseases."

According to Taubes, conventional medical wisdom explains obesity as a caloric imbalance: consuming more calories than we burn. Taubes critically evaluates this explanation and challenges it with examples of obesity unconnected to a toxic environment of overconsumption. Cutting calories or exercising more should reverse obesity if calories out are greater than calories in, but Taubes shows that research does not support such a conclusion.

His conclusion is that obesity is a disorder of fat accumulation, which is regulated by insulin and dietary carbohydrates.

"Carbohydrates ... drive insulin, and insulin drives fat," he says. "That's the simplest explanation for what's going on."

"The only non-pharmaceutical remedy is to restrict or remove the causative agent—i.e., the carbohydrates," Taubes says.