Insulin and Weight Loss

All Weight Loss is Ultimately About Insulin

Every single diet and exercise program that works, even a little, is because of the effect it has on your insulin.

A QUICK PRIMER

Insulin takes blood sugar (glucose) that you get from eating carbohydrates and distributes it to the cells all over your body.

More carbs and more food need higher levels of insulin.

When your insulin is high throughout the day for long periods of time, your cells start to become insulin resistant. That means they resist the effect of insulin and so your body releases more insulin to make sure your cells have the sugar (energy) they need. This creates a negative feedback loop making the problem worse as time goes on.

As you become more insulin resistant you start to gain weight and become more at risk of cardiovascular diseases, dementia and other complications that are similar to those of a type 2 diabetic.

***Insulin inhibits the breakdown of fat in your cells, so if you constantly have insulin circulating in your bloodstream then there’s no time, or little time in the day, to burn fat tissue and therefore lose weight.

So that’s how insulin works in a nutshell and why you DON’T want to be insulin resistant.

INSULIN SENSITIVE

You instead want your (body) cells to be insulin sensitive. That means that they don’t need too much insulin to get the job done. The blood glucose is shunted EASILY into your muscles, liver and brain with less.

This has the opposite effect on your body that being insulin resistant has. By being insulin sensitive you LOSE weight, shedding body fat while enjoying better overall health.

AT THE BAR

To understand this better, let’s use an analogy that involves alcohol, something most people can relate to (at least at one point in their lives anyway.)

An alcohol virgin, someone who never really drank before would be considered, “alcohol sensitive.” That is, it doesn’t take very much alcohol to get them shamefully “sloshed.” In some cases, it’s half a beer or glass of wine. Their cells are very sensitive to alcohol because they’ve never been exposed to it before, which is a good thing health wise but not so great for your social image.

It’s good for your health to be alcohol sensitive because alcohol has detrimental effects on your body, and so needing only a little spares your body those effects. As a person drinks more and more, they get “used to it,” becoming alcohol resistant, and so their body starts to need more alcohol to get the same high. More alcohol means more health problems in the same way that more insulin means more weight gain.

How does one become more Insulin Sensitive?

Eat less overall food
Eat less sugary foods
Eat less carbohydrates in general
Intermittent Fasting
Fasting of any kind
Aerobic exercise
Weights and high intensity exercise (HIIT) like sprints, stairs etc.

You can now see the mechanism behind why most traditional diets worked; eating less. Eating less means less insulin secreted in your body. They “work” in the short term but they generally don’t work long term since calorie restriction based diets are hard to stick to.

THE ULTIMATE COMBINATION

The ultimate combination of the above ways to increase insulin sensitivity is as follows:

1- Adopt a low carb or Ketogenic Diet
2- Intermittent Fasting
3- High intensity exercise like heavy weights and hill running etc.

Any variation of those 3 methods is what has been found to quickly and EFFICIENTLY take fat off, and keep it that way.

Low Carb Diets work because when adopting that way of eating you are taking away the type of food in your diet that secretes insulin. So you can eat without worrying about insulin resistance or about having the fat burning process stopped or interrupted. Your metabolism will be in fat burning mode 24/7.

Intermittent Fasting works because in doing so you prolong the time, or periods of time your body goes without food. So there is no need for insulin at all during that time which again means lots of fat burning and moving in the direction of insulin sensitivity and away from insulin resistance. Intermittent Fasting works even better when combined with a low carb diet.

High Intensity Exercise works because that type of exercise takes up lots of blood glucose (sugar/carbs), and so with less circulating glucose there is less need for insulin. Insulin levels drop and again you have the beneficial effects we’ve been talking about, more fat burning etc.

Insulin manipulation has always been the KEY to weight loss, no matter the method.

Control your insulin and you control your weight.

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