Biomechanics and Health

Food, Water, Air, Physical Activity and Weight Gain/Weight Loss

(First time published in 2001 – Last time edited in 2010)

[Abstract]

As long as we can trace human understanding about food, it was always known that food is essential for the sustaining of life and in the same time, food intake usually leads to weight gain and that the absence or harsh restriction of food intake leads to weight loss.

On the other side, the human understanding always was that some people gain weight more easily and some not so easily and that many never gain excessive weight, regardless of how much food they eat and how much they are physically active or inactive.

It was always a little bit strange that some people always have the same weight at the time when food is available, but people didn’t get a such conclusion that intake of food is not an important factor in weight regulation of the body because on the other side, there were plenty examples of starvation where the absence or harsh restriction of food intake causes weight loss by everyone (by naturally thin, normal weight or overweight) and when regular food intake leads to weight gain by everyone who had lost weight due to starvation.

The examples of starvation clearly show that extreme reduction of food intake for a considerable amount of time will cause weight loss to the point of skeletal proportion by everyone; it doesn’t mater if he is underweight, normal weight or overweight. Need to bear in mind that not all people affected by starvation are able to reach the point of skeletal proportion, because many of them will die from starvation before they lose significant percentage of their body weight.

The next fact is based on another example from real life and it shows that if the people affected by starvation to the point of skeletal proportion, get enough food to eat on a regular basis, in short time they will regain weight.   That fact strengths the conclusion that still the absence of food intake will cause weight loss and that the food intake will cause weight gain by everyone. Need to bear in mind that not all people will recovery from starvation. Many of them will die despite resuming normal food intake as well as many of them will suffer irreversible or long lasting negative health consequences.

One contradictory fact came from human space travel. Since the beginning of human space travel it was known that the weightlessness alters the regulation of body weight. For the time of being in weightlessness, a human body is affected by atrophy.

In weightlessness the human body is losing muscles mass, bones mass and fat mass.

In weightlessness the air, water and food are essential to sustain life but don’t have any significance for weight regulation of the body.

A regular or an increased food intake in weightlessness doesn’t cause weight gain for anyone.

Even more striking is the fact that a regular or increased food intake in weightlessness won’t prevent or even slow weight loss (atrophy of the muscle and bone tissues and as well atrophy of the fat tissues). One another important fact is that in weightlessness the human body is losing strength.

For the time of being in an weightless environment, the cosmonauts and astronauts are spending a great amount of time doing exercises on specially designed exercises’ machines and devices and the reasons for that is to slow atrophy of the muscle tissues, fat tissues and bone tissues and in the same time to slow the loss of the body’s strength.

The mechanism underlining weight loss in weightlessness (microgravity) and the biological basis of the weight loss of the muscle mass, bone mass and fat mass I have explained in my book “Biomechanics and Weight Loss”