Our diets in the last half-century have been shaped by pseudoscience and rampant misinformation driven by food politics and corporate bottom lines. The resulting nutritional disaster has not only made us fatter and sicker but also literally made us prisoners of our own bodies. We try to break free every now and then, but end up in the same (body) prison, which only gets bigger every time we come back.

The real cause of weight gain is our bodies’ altered hormonal state brought on by the modern Western diet. This altered hormonal state is causing our bodies to be in constant fat storage mode. Everything we eat, the body wants to store as fat. The result: excessive hunger and lethargy! This has slowly pushed our bodyweight set-point toward increasing adiposity.

In this state, when we try to lose weight by eating less and exercising more, powerful evolutionary forces of...