Jeff's Thoughts

• The Big 5 for Weight Loss – No 4

  25 April, 2011

  Insulin

  Firstly, lets define a carbohydrate (CHO). These are foods that when broken down by the body produce sugar in the blood (blood glucose). There are some CHO that get broken down quickly into blood glucose and then there are some that take a while to get broken down into blood glucose (simple or complex carbs). The point people have to understand is that they all get broken down into blood glucose. Foods that we are talking about here are

  Breakfast Cereals
  Bread and Rolls
  Biscuits and Crackers
  Macaroni products, noodles, spagetti and other pastas
  Rice
  Jellies, Jams and Preserves
  Ice Cream, Cakes, Pies and Candy
  Sauces and Gravies thickened with flour and corn starch
  Beer
  Sweet Wines and Liquers
  Sodas (and all “sweetened fizzy drinks”)
  Sugar

  List from – Richard MacKarness, Eat Fat and Grow Slim 1958

  So it is not so much the factor of a carbohydrate that is the problem, it is the sugar (blood glucose) that all carbohydrates are converted too in the body – whether it be pasta or straight chocolate. that is what is doing the damage.

  “the greatest single change in the American diet was in fact the spectacular increase in sugar consumption from the mid-ninetenth century onward, from less than 15 pounds a person yearly in the 1830s to 100 pounds by the 1920s and 150npounds (including high fructose corn syrup) by the end of the century”

  Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories. 2007

  There are two hormones that you need to be aware of. Insulin and glucagon. Insulin is the hormone that helps you store glucose (sugar). Every time you eat refined carbohydrates the pancreas releases insulin, and it is the insulin that helps the glucose to be stored in muscles to be used as energy, also to be stored in the liver and brain and any excess to be stored as fat. Therefore because insulin acts as a storage hormone, as long as we eat foods that create an insulin response, the body will and quite simply keep on storing fat.

  “For many people, higher than desirable levels of the hormone insulin means that fat cannot be “burned” or “released” to any significant degree in the presence of insulin”

  Jonny Bowden, Living the Low Carb Life. 2004.

  As long as there is glucose in the blood, the body does not have to release fat as energy as there is always enough sugar in the blood. It is glucagon that is the opposite of insulin, if insulin is a storage hormone – then glucagon releases fat in the presence of low blood glucose (a mobiliser hormone). This is why we want low blood glucose (hence low carbohydrates in the diet) so glucagon can go to work and release that fat that has been stored.

  Insulin actually prevents fat burning. That’s why a low carb diet usually produces more weight loss than a high carb/low fat diet with the same calorie count.

  Jonny Bowden, Living the Low Carb Life. 2004.

  Understanding the concept of insulin abuse is important for not only understanding long term weight loss but also long term health. But whether your goal is weight loss or health (or both), refined carbohydrates are the cause of many negative aspects of modern health. The role of being a personal trainer is one of helping someone achieve great things, however if they are not willing to take responsibility for that journey and change their eating habits, nothing will change. Studio 41 based in the heart of the Wellington CBD, the first thing our clients get is a full nutrition overhaul to get them kick started.

   

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