If It's Friday It Must Be GAINZZZday

Another study confirms the insulin hypothesis of weight gain.

Overeating has traditionally been linked to obesity, but researchers say the real culprit is a diet high in processed sugars and carbohydrates, according to a commentary published Monday by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

These foods cause hormonal changes in the body that alter metabolism, leading to a rise in fat storage and, thus, weight gain, the researchers said.

Consumption of food containing highly processed carbohydrates forces the body to produce more insulin, a substance used to digest sugar.

This, in turn, signals fat cells to store more calories, leaving fewer available to provide energy to muscles.

As a result, the brain thinks that the body is not getting enough energy and generates feelings of hunger, the researchers said.

This is what people pushing the "Calories In, Calories Out" model don't get: Your body makes decisions about what to do with the calories it intakes, and those decisions are mediated by hormones.

Someone with insulin resistance -- which means the has become resistant to "normal," healthy levels of insulin just as an alcoholic grows tolerant of alcohol -- produces huge amounts of insulin, to overcome the resistance of cells to insulin. This super-normal amount of insulin sends blood sugar directly into the fat cells.

These super-normal insulin levels remain elevated in the body far longer than someone with a healthy, properly regulated metabolism.

And worse: Insulin's other major effect as far as fat storage is to completely shut off the body's burning of fat for energy.

A person with a normal, non-dysfunctional insulin system will get an insulin surge after eating carbs, sending blood sugar to the liver to be made into fat.

But then an hour later, that person's insulin will have fallen to low levels, and his fat cells will be unlocked, and he will just start burning fat between meals. It's a two-way street.

Yes, he makes fat a meal, but then he burns fat when he's hungry.

In a person with dysregulated insulin production, his insulin levels almost never fall to low enough levels to allow for the burning of body fat.

In this case, you don't have a two way street, fat being stored, fat being burned. You have a one-way pit in which fat cells are always being stuffed with more stored fat, but never allowed to actually burn it.

By the way: You might reason, "Well, if the body becomes tolerant of insulin and thus needs to produce more insulin to drive glucose out of the blood and into muscle cells, then the fat cells must also become tolerant to insulin. And so they won't become as 'locked-up' by insulin as they would be in people with normal metabolisms."

Wrong, unfortunately. Fat cells don't become tolerant to insulin, or at least not significantly tolerant to it. Once a certain level of insulin is in the body, fat cells are locked up as far as burning fat.

So you have a process in which muscle cells become resistant to insulin, thus driving the body to make more and more insulin to overcome that resistance, while fat cells remain as sensitive to insulin as they ever were.

There's no upside to insulin resistance. It's just downside.

"Reducing consumption of the rapidly digestible carbohydrates that flooded the food supply during the low-fat diet era lessens the underlying drive to store body fat," study co-author Dr. David Ludwig said in a press release.

"As a result, people may lose weight with less hunger and struggle," said Ludwig, an endocrinologist at Boston Children's Hospital.

...

This places them at increased risk for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, according to the agency.

...

[H]e and his colleagues argue for a new approach to weight management called the "carbohydrate-insulin model."

In contrast to what they call the energy balance model, the carbohydrate-insulin model holds that excessive consumption of foods high in sugar, or glycemic content, such as highly processed, rapidly digestible carbohydrates, causes weight gain.

Carbohydrates stimulate a large flood of insulin into the body. Protein causes a moderate spike, and fat -- wrongly demonized since the 70s and 80s -- barely stimulates any production of insulin at all.

There's a thing called a "fat fast" which means just eating mostly fat -- 90% of calories coming from fat.

Atkins used to recommend a fat fast for anyone having trouble going into ketosis. You can eat a lot of fat and still actually burn fat because your insulin levels will be low -- there will be nothing stopping fat cells from burning fat as they need it.

Widespread adoption of the carbohydrate-insulin model over the energy-balance model would have radical implications for weight management and obesity treatment, the researchers said.

Indeed.

My GAINZZZ are okay on the input side. I'm on a regular 16:8 time restricted eating schedule, and actually, most days it's like 20:4. Almost One Meal a Day (OMAD).

I'm also getting in my walking and sprinting in.

Because walking takes a while, I thought, maybe I should try meditating while I walk. Not sure if any of this works, but I'll keep it up a couple of more weeks before deciding whether to keep doing it or drop it.

By the way, that's just one of the guided walking meditations I've been trying. I'm almost embarrassed to say I've also been using this one. It basically tries to turn walking into some kind of Action Movie Set Piece. The music, the Australian accent, the talk about "increasing vibrations" and my "superior brain"... shit amps me UP!

That one makes me feel good. Part of that is that I'm laughing for a lot of it.

My sleep has been horrible. Not sure why. I really need to put together two or three nights of solid sleep.

What about yo' GAINZZZ? Anyone advancing in the 100 push-up challenge?

Anyone got any BOOKZZZ or MOVIEZZZ to recommend?

Or PROJECTZZZ or SKILLZZZ-acquisition to brag about?

posted by Ace at 06:14 PM

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