It’s a funny thing. Breakfast this morning, pancakes, maple syrup, bacon and orange juice was delicious. It clocked in at about 800 calories, and generated a sensation of complete satiety by 8:00 AM. Yet the command center (brain) was signaling “hungry, I’m hungry” at about 10:30 AM. What happened? Well, the pancakes were quickly converted to simple sugars and the maple syrup was absorbed as sugar. The orange juice, with no pulp, had no fiber to slow down its absorption, so it wound up in the blood stream as sugar, too. The end result was a massive outpouring of insulin, which drove down the blood sugar level very rapidly. Hence, the sensation of hunger at 10:30 AM.

Good thing the coffee cart came around just about that time at work. One large cup of coffee, two sugars, no milk, and a chocolate-covered donut really hit the spot. This is really a bonanza day for us fat cells, because the cycle started all over again – the sugar from the coffee and the donut was rapidly absorbed. The glycogen stores in the liver and muscle were all full from the morning meal, so the body’s biochemical mechanisms immediately went to work converting all this sugar into fatty acids and triglycerides. These molecules are then moved directly in the fat cells. This is really great for us here in Adipo-City!

Well, it’s 12:30 PM now and we’re starving again. The command center has decided to go out for a quick lunch at a fast-food restaurant. This is going to be good. A double cheeseburger with fries and a 32 oz diet soda should be just the ticket. The command center always chooses diet soda because there’s no point in adding extra calories, right? On the way back to the office, the diet soda is the first to come down the pike. Just like this morning’s maple syrup, the sweet taste in the mouth sends a signal to the command center that a sweet morsel is coming and will need to be dealt with. So the pancreas gears up for digestion of the incoming sweet, and insulin is secreted. But guess what? That diet soda has no sugar in it, and so the insulin acts on the existing sugar in the blood stream, which is already low in the aftermath of the mid-morning coffee and donut snack. By the time we get back to the office and dig in to the burger and fries, the hunger signals are off the chart, and the food vanishes in a New York minute.

Those fries are the greatest. The fast food restaurants spike them with sugar so they taste fabulous and keep us coming back for more. The potatoes themselves are rapidly digested into sugars. And of course, the fats from the fries don’t even have to be converted into fat; they’re already there. Come on down!

Now, the cheeseburger, that’s another story. We’ve got the bun, which is made of enriched white bread, and is digested to sugars just as fast as the fries. The cheeseburger itself is made up of protein and fat. The protein is broken down into amino acids, which can be used to rebuild muscle and other bodily structures. But there is a limit to how many amino acids can be put to use at any given time, so if the body takes in too much protein, guess where it winds up? In the fat cells, of course. Those excess amino acids get converted to either sugars or fats, and if the glycogen stores are full, the sugars eventually wind up as fat. Biochemistry is a wonderful thing for us fat cells.