Calories We Consume: Don't Eat More Than You Can Burn

The simplest reason why we gain weight is that we consume more food, giving us
more calories, than we can use in one day. Anytime you eat anything your body
converts the food into sugars. This is something our bodies have learned to do over
the millions of years the human species has existed. Your body knows that it must
store excess 'energy' so if food is scarce the body can keep functioning. If, for
some reason, food is no longer available the body draws upon the resources of
sugar to provide fuel for our bodies. This meant that if a human had to continue to
hunt and forage for food their body would be able to perform everything they
asked of it.
The advantage our predecessors had over us is that they had to work very hard to
find food so that excess fat was burned off very rapidly. That meant that they didn't
experience the same problems with obesity that we do
Today, for most of us, food is readily available, so we can over eat and indulge
ourselves. This means that now we must find ways to burn off the extra calories to
allow us to maintain our weight. When we understand how the body stores and
burns fat we then have the tools to understand how not to gain weight. Our society
and our standard of living has made it too easy to eat too much, too often.