Recommended Reading: The Secret Life of Fat
The Secret Life of Fat : The Science Behind the Body's Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You
The Secret Life of Fat by Sylvia Tara, Ph. D; W.W. Norton and Company, 2017 (235 pages)
“The science behind the body’s least understood organ and what it means for you.”
Fat. A simple word that we have all been taught to loathe. Enter The Secret Life of Fat, a ground-breaking book that offers new perspective in how we think about fat. Personally, as someone who has experienced a life-long struggle with weight loss, this book has been long-awaited. This book gives a comprehensive scientific understanding to many of the elements currently known that affect fat gain and fat loss. It also includes solid solutions on how to navigate our own personal fat loss goals.
Sylvia Tara, a Ph.D. biochemist, does a brilliant and thorough job of honing in on the current research gathered at this point, and condenses it into a an easily digestible format to consume (pardon the puns, I couldn’t help myself). In a nutshell, The Secret Life of Fat chronicles how fat is designed to work in our body, impacts of genetic disorders, diseases with fat, external and internal factors that impact the behaviour of fat in our bodies (bacteria, genetics, sex, hormones, age, environment), and solutions to work with your body to control/reduce fat in your system. She graciously bookends her research with her own personal weight-loss journey, implementing her professional research into her own personal experience.
For myself, I knew there were elements going on with my own fat loss journey that I was missing, even with all the reading, research, trials, and external professional guidance I was getting over the last few years. This book ‘filled in the corners’ of my biological understanding of the function of fat and ideas on how to personally navigate my own fat blueprint.
The big lessons I learned here are:
(1) Fat is important and has many functions and properties that we are still learning about—I was surprised to read how recent studies in fat are, and how there is still so much scientists still don’t know or understand about fat…
(2) Fat loss/gain has many factors that impact how easily or difficult we gain or lose—we need to better understand how fat works in our own personal genetics, in order to work with our body to reach our health/fat loss goals.
(3) Individualization: Healthy lifestyle and fat loss is not a one-size fits all approach. You really need to experiment/ play with different techniques to find what works best for you, in your current body.
(4) Important Factors that affect fat gain & loss: gut microbiome (bacteria), hormones, stress, environment, endocrine disruptors, processed food, exercise, age, sex, dieting history, ethnicity/heritage, genetics. Hormones are incredible controllers of our fat cells…the book is worth the price itself for understanding how hormones hugely impact our lives, both physically, emotionally, and mentally.
This book is dense with useful applications, science-based explanations, and real-life examples of fat in action. It feels like it unlocked a back-door that is showing another floor plan to the proverbial house of knowledge. An engaging read that allows a new perspective and understanding in your own health journey.
