Health, nutrition, and longevity kind of being my thing for decades now, I used to be extremely critical of the overweight as lazy or incapable of putting down the fork. Like most fitness nuts, dead sure it was purely a matter of calories in, calories out.

And of course, there have been all kinds of fad diets, which despite the "fad" part, aren't necessarily bad. Big fan of keto / paleo diets for a long time. In retrospect, I think they served me well not for being low carb, which I no longer am at all, but for eliminating the processed food.

Don't have the time to search it up again right now, but what REALLY struck me hard was a study and one simple graph in it. Americans do eat much more sugar now than they used to - but looking at it epidemiologically, the rise in sugar consumption does not match the sudden rise in obesity. It is absolutely not "genetics." There was no sudden massive mutation to half the American population. And it is again, NOT calories in, calories out. Give two people the same surplus of calories and watch as one puts on a bit of muscle, while another puts on a ton of fat. Hormones and exercise affect this of course, but saying body composition is not determined by calories, except at the extremes.

The study and graph? A direct, practically one for one correlation between Omega 6 intake and US obesity levels. Vegetable oil. Corn, canola, soybean, primarily. The bad part? It's in everything. Directs the body to apply calories to building fat, not muscle, (conversely, omega 3's do the opposite in every way) increase inflammatory cytokines, worsen autoimmune conditions, etc.

If you're able, replace all high omega 6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils with monounsaturated. Cooking, go for olive or avocado oil, if you're not heating it and making a salad dressing for instance, flax seed is a great option for omega 3's instead. (But not a great option for cooking.) This may help protect you from the shame of the Dalai Lama lol. And - you can still eat your cake.