How to (not!) get fat in five easy steps

Copyright 2006 Truth Publishing You may think it's strange to find a "How-To" article focusing on five easy steps for adding fat to your body. You might say that we already know how to do that: two thirds of the people in the United States are overweight, and one third are considered clinically obese. Obviously we've mastered this topic. But I challenge that. I think even though we do tend to be overweight and obese as a nation, very few people are aware of how they actually got there. There's not a great deal of awareness of the steps it takes to actually add excess body fat. In other words, we're living with the effects of the obesity plan every single day in our own lives and in our society, and yet we're not really cognizant of the causes. This article is designed to help make you aware of the causes by presenting the topic of weight loss to you in a unique way. Suppose a billionaire appeared at your doorstep and offered you $10 million if you could add 100 pounds of body fat in less than one year. How could you actually do it in 12 months or less? Step one to adding body fat: Slow your metabolism. The very first thing you've got to do is slow your metabolism; by slowing your metabolism, you'll burn fewer calories when you're at rest and thus, even if you don't increase the amount of food you intake, you'll automatically add weight and store body fat. The easiest way to slow your metabolism is to stop all forms of exercise. Avoid walking. Spend a lot of time in front of the television. Take elevators instead of the stairs. And certainly don't sign up for any physical activities or spend much time outdoors. Some of the best strategies for lowering your metabolism include getting a desk job, finding parking spaces as close as possible to the stores where you shop, so you don't spend much time walking across the parking lot, and of course purchasing one of those electric chairs or scooters so that you can get around town without having to walk at all. Avoiding physical exercise has a second effect: it also causes your body to break down the existing muscle mass that you have today. And by breaking down muscle mass, your metabolism will be slowed even further. This will accelerate your weight gain efforts and allow you to pack on the pounds almost automatically. Remember that when you don't use your muscles, your body gets rid of them. That's because your body adapts to the level and intensity of physical exercise you choose to pursue. The quickest way to get rid of the muscles that you don't want is to simply stop using them, and your body will take care of the rest. Step two: Drink lots of carbonated soft drinks. Avoiding physical exercise is only the first step to gaining weight and achieving your goal of packing on extra pounds in 12 months or less. But it won't get you there all by itself -- you've got to assist that effort by altering your diet. One of the very first things you should do is get yourself addicted to caffeinated soft drinks. You can start by purchasing a 12-pack of any soft drink beverage in grocery stores and consuming it at every possible opportunity, including breakfast. This is an absolutely wonderful way to pack on the pounds, because soft drinks are made with high-fructose corn syrup. When this ingredient is consumed, it spikes the blood sugar in your body. This sends an emergency signal to your pancreas, which produces increased levels of insulin in order to keep the blood sugar levels from going too high. This insulin signal is picked up by the cells in your body, which then remove blood sugar from your bloodstream and, through a somewhat complex biological process involving the liver, manage to store that blood sugar as body fat. If you drink enough soft drinks with enough frequency, you will be well on your way to achieving your goal of gaining 100 lbs. in 12 months or less. Step three: Choose high caloric density foods. While you're at it, be sure to purchase foods with very high caloric density. You see, raw, uncooked fruits and vegetables will fill you up before you get very many calories in your meal. For example, it's very difficult to eat 1,000 calories worth of apples at one sitting. Your stomach will simply fill up before you reach 1,000 calories and you won't feel like eating any more. But if you choose processed foods with ingredients such as white flour, hydrogenated oils or saturated fats, you can pack in a couple of thousand calories in one sitting without topping off your stomach. This is hugely important for achieving your weight gain goals. Fortunately there are a great number of foods available at every grocery store in America that can help you accomplish this. It's very easy to buy them, as most are quite affordable. All you have to do is look for brand-name foods packaged in beautiful boxes with delicious-looking pictures of foods on the front. If you read the ingredients label, you'll find these foods are made with ingredients like hydrogenated oils, white flour, sugar and other ingredients that have a very high caloric density. It is important that you eat these foods at every meal. You want to make sure your diet consists of things like cheese, fried foods and lots of white bread. As you probably guessed, pizza is an outstanding choice because it not only has a high caloric density from the cheese and whatever meats are on the pizza, but it also has the high glycemic index that accompanies the white flour crust. In a similar way, it's also a good idea to eat lots of sugary breakfast cereals with high-fat cow's milk. This will give you saturated fat from the cows' milk and the high sugar content of the breakfast cereals, thereby adding fat to your body through two different biological mechanisms: fat and refined carbohydrates. Step four: Load up on junk foods. Junk foods are, of course, another outstanding choice for achieving your goals. A bag of potato chips provides an impressive quantity of dietary fats as well as refined carbohydrates -- and various nacho chips and other snack foods operate in much the same way. You can also accelerate your weight gain goals by turning to fried foods. Fried foods have very high caloric density and the batter in which these foods are fried is normally made with white flour, so you also get the high glycemic index effects from the carbohydrates in the batter as well as the absurdly high caloric density of the fried fats. Step five: Visit fast food restaurants frequently. If you had to name an ideal source for the combination of food ingredients that would rapidly accelerate your quest for obesity, you'd have to put fast food restaurants at the top of that list. The more popular the fast food chain, the faster their food packs on the body fat, it seems. If you were to eat in fast food restaurants at least once a day, you would easily be able to meet your weight gain goal within one year and cash that $10 million check. Be sure to order the largest quantities of soft drinks, fries and hamburgers, because it's quantity that counts here. Aided by menu items from fast food chains, you can pack in as much as 2,000 calories in a single meal! This is going to rapidly accelerate your weight gain efforts, because the average adult human being needs only 2,000 calories per day. If you can consume 2,000 calories at each meal while eating three meals a day, you can pack on an extra 4,000 calories a day! It takes about 3,000 calories to make one pound of excess body fat, so by eating 6,000 calories a day, you can achieve slightly more than one pound of body fat each day. This means in one week alone you can pack on 7 or 8 pounds of body fat, which would put you well on your way to achieving your weight gain goal. In fact, using this approach, you would probably be able to achieve your goal in 90 days or less. The high price of weight gain success. Of course, by the time you actually win this $10 million, you will have suffered the devastating health effects of consuming these processed foods, junk foods, fast foods and disease-promoting food ingredients. Yes, you will be $10,000,000 richer, but if you don't reverse everything you've done over the last 90 days, you will soon learn that you can't take it with you. In other words, your life will be shortened if you don't put an end to this weight gain effort and get back to a normal body weight. Fortunately, reversing your achievement is fairly straightforward. Simply do the opposite of everything that you've followed so far. In other words, start exercising, and increase your lean body mass by engaging in strength training. Spend time walking, swimming or cycling. Find ways to move your body at work, even if you have a desk job. Avoid all processed foods and foods made with high-fructose corn syrup, white flour, refined white sugar and other refined carbohydrates. Remove soft drinks from your diet, avoid all fried foods, snack foods, junk foods and any foods made by food-manufacturing corporations whose packaged foods line the shelves of America's grocery stores. Once you do all that, your liver function will begin to improve quite rapidly; the hardening of your arteries that was taking place as your pursued your weight gain diet will begin to reverse; your cardiovascular health will improve dramatically; your brain function will even improve. Your pulse will slow, and your body fat will slowly begin to melt off. Your level of energy and vitality will gradually rise. You will find it easier to sleep at night and get up in the morning. You won't get sick as often, and you'll find that your immune system begins to function the way it's supposed to in a healthy human being. In fact, every function of your body will steadily improve as you shift to a healthy, nutritious diet that avoids processed foods and all of those lifestyle choices you pursued to gain weight in the first place.