Great article Eric. I really appreciate this framing.
You’re absolutely right that we were never meant to live in chronic artificial famine. The body resisting is not a moral failure. It’s adaptive biology doing what it was designed to do.
I would just gently add one evolutionary layer to the discussion.
We didn’t just evolve in environments of variable food availability. We evolved in environments of extremely high daily energy flux. Constant movement. Manual labor. Walking. Lifting. Carrying. Repeated muscular contraction from dawn to dusk.
Metabolic flexibility did not evolve in low-output conditions.
It evolved in systems where energy turnover was high.
If physical demand drops below the level our physiology was built for, metabolic buffering capacity declines. Insulin sensitivity falls. Storage signals become chronically elevated even at normal intakes. The same food becomes more fattening because the metabolic machinery isn’t being turned over.
In that context, food restriction becomes a compensatory strategy rather than a root solution.
So I completely agree that famine is not the answer.
But unless we restore something closer to ancestral levels of energy flux, we may never fully restore the flexibility we’re aiming for.
I am totally with you; another example of evolutionary mismatch.
There is another layer: I asked the Hadza chief once if they have long-term sadness (they don't understand depression), and he informed me that, yes, sometimes people can be sad for two or three days.
That's brilliant! If only we ALL need to walk a mile to get our food every time we are hungry, so many conditions can reverse! Hey! Maybe there should be a health retreat that does jut this. Walk a mile to get your food...more food, more mile. Eat as much as you want of the food provided (all real whole foods).
Well, not exactly a health retreat, but when I have done extended stays with the Hadza people, it is very much like that. We don’t eat what we don’t go out and find or hunt. On one very hard day we did 27 miles with only minimal results.
This is presented is a very clear, easy to understand format. Kudos on that! I was never overweight. My favorite plate at Thankgiving dinner - the skin. I ate pretty much whatever I want. Interestingly enough, I only want whole, real food. At times, I do eat edible-food-like substances, but find them unappealing. During peri-menopause, I did develop quite the sugar craving...I undesrtood what a lot of people go through their whole life. The "food-noise"...or rather the "sugar-noise" was deafening. If there is a tub of icer cream in my freezer, I would think about it the whole time, until I eat it all. What a ride! Yup..cravings and hunger will win. Every time. I have so much emphathy for people who struggle with food addiction. That is a HARD way to live.
What I find most interesting here is that once we accept adaptive regulation, the analogy to accounting may still be too simple.
Because regulation in biological systems is not just responsive, it is anticipatory and uncertainty-driven.
The organism is not balancing current energy. It is managing risk of future scarcity under incomplete information.
That changes everything.
Fat storage stops being a passive consequence or even just an adaptive response; it becomes a probabilistic survival buffer.
In that sense, body weight is less an energy balance outcome and more a risk-management strategy executed through metabolism, behaviour, and perception of threat.
Which raises a different question entirely: are we trying to control energy balance… or override a system designed to minimise survival risk?
That framing seems to explain the resistance far more cleanly than accounting models ever could.
When I learned this from you through your Wildfit program, it changed my life. Not only did I release 50 pounds without willpower, but more importantly I reversed several chronic diseases.
Great article Eric. I really appreciate this framing.
You’re absolutely right that we were never meant to live in chronic artificial famine. The body resisting is not a moral failure. It’s adaptive biology doing what it was designed to do.
I would just gently add one evolutionary layer to the discussion.
We didn’t just evolve in environments of variable food availability. We evolved in environments of extremely high daily energy flux. Constant movement. Manual labor. Walking. Lifting. Carrying. Repeated muscular contraction from dawn to dusk.
Metabolic flexibility did not evolve in low-output conditions.
It evolved in systems where energy turnover was high.
If physical demand drops below the level our physiology was built for, metabolic buffering capacity declines. Insulin sensitivity falls. Storage signals become chronically elevated even at normal intakes. The same food becomes more fattening because the metabolic machinery isn’t being turned over.
In that context, food restriction becomes a compensatory strategy rather than a root solution.
So I completely agree that famine is not the answer.
But unless we restore something closer to ancestral levels of energy flux, we may never fully restore the flexibility we’re aiming for.
It may not be just about eating differently.
It may be about living differently
I am totally with you; another example of evolutionary mismatch.
There is another layer: I asked the Hadza chief once if they have long-term sadness (they don't understand depression), and he informed me that, yes, sometimes people can be sad for two or three days.
I asked what ends the period of sadness.
Hunger. They have to get up and move. ;-)
That's brilliant! If only we ALL need to walk a mile to get our food every time we are hungry, so many conditions can reverse! Hey! Maybe there should be a health retreat that does jut this. Walk a mile to get your food...more food, more mile. Eat as much as you want of the food provided (all real whole foods).
Well, not exactly a health retreat, but when I have done extended stays with the Hadza people, it is very much like that. We don’t eat what we don’t go out and find or hunt. On one very hard day we did 27 miles with only minimal results.
This is presented is a very clear, easy to understand format. Kudos on that! I was never overweight. My favorite plate at Thankgiving dinner - the skin. I ate pretty much whatever I want. Interestingly enough, I only want whole, real food. At times, I do eat edible-food-like substances, but find them unappealing. During peri-menopause, I did develop quite the sugar craving...I undesrtood what a lot of people go through their whole life. The "food-noise"...or rather the "sugar-noise" was deafening. If there is a tub of icer cream in my freezer, I would think about it the whole time, until I eat it all. What a ride! Yup..cravings and hunger will win. Every time. I have so much emphathy for people who struggle with food addiction. That is a HARD way to live.
What I find most interesting here is that once we accept adaptive regulation, the analogy to accounting may still be too simple.
Because regulation in biological systems is not just responsive, it is anticipatory and uncertainty-driven.
The organism is not balancing current energy. It is managing risk of future scarcity under incomplete information.
That changes everything.
Fat storage stops being a passive consequence or even just an adaptive response; it becomes a probabilistic survival buffer.
In that sense, body weight is less an energy balance outcome and more a risk-management strategy executed through metabolism, behaviour, and perception of threat.
Which raises a different question entirely: are we trying to control energy balance… or override a system designed to minimise survival risk?
That framing seems to explain the resistance far more cleanly than accounting models ever could.
When I learned this from you through your Wildfit program, it changed my life. Not only did I release 50 pounds without willpower, but more importantly I reversed several chronic diseases.
Joyce, you are such an inspiration. Keep up the great work. So glad to have you in our community.