Overview
Many believe that the cause of obesity is a lack of individual willpower to control eating and activity. However, willpower only applies to the body’s voluntary functions, not its involuntary functions. It all boils down to whether overeating and inactivity are voluntary or involuntary human processes. The new science now provides a much better understanding of voluntary and involuntary human.
The importance of time in the voluntary vs. involuntary discussion becomes more apparent when you consider examples of other human body processes, such as breathing. When you hold your breath, chemical changes occur that the body perceives as harmful. To protect itself, the body increases the urge to breathe as these harmful chemicals increase. Eventually, the urge to breathe becomes overwhelming, and you take a breath. In other words, breathing IS voluntary… for a short time period, whereafter it becomes quite involuntary.
When you stop eating or are overworked, similar chemical changes also occur that the body perceives as harmful. The body increases the urge to eat and sit as these harmful chemicals increase to protect itself. Eventually, the urge to eat and sit overwhelms you, and you eat and sit. One primary difference between breathing and eating or sitting is that the time period is much longer for eating and sitting. This extended time period makes it harder to see that eating and activity are just as much an involuntary human process as breathing.
Dysfunction of the bioreactor (damage to the small intestine) and dysbiosis (unhealthy microbes in the gut) change the body chemistry in a manner that mimics the chemistry of pending harm that causes the body to make you eat and sit, essentially reducing the time period to trigger an involuntary response to nearly always. This is know power, and it will do much more to avoid and reverse obesity and metabolic disease than believing in the biological fantasy of willpower.