You’ve probably heard the saying that muscles are made in the gym and abs are made in the kitchen. Nothing could be truer. When I was in my third year at JMU I hit my heaviest weight ever at around 250lbs. Since that time roughly 15 years ago I’ve, for the most part, managed to keep the weight off. As is with obsessive nature, when I want to learn something, I go all in. Fitness and nutrition have always been subjects passionate to me and I have read and studied countless books, journals, podcasts, etc on the subjects.
To simplify things as much as possible, I’ve distilled all that information in 5 bullet points to educate the average person on the mechanisms behind fat loss. Each one of these bullet points could and probably does have entire books written on the subject. Here we go:
5 Quick Tips
1. Insulin, secreted by the pancreas, is what determines if fat is to be burned or stored. Control your insulin levels and you control your weight. Regardless of going to the gym or not.
2. Insulin responds to blood sugar. Foods that raise blood sugar prompt your pancreas to secrete insulin. The more insulin your body secretes, the more often and longer your body will store fat.
3. The worst offenders of insulin production are:
a. sugary beverages (mostly because of the absence of fiber and fructose, which is the worst type of sugar)
b. sugary foods (dessert and pastries)
c. then carbohydrates of any kind (the less fiber it has the worse it is). Wheat, whether whole wheat or not, is a huge insulin offender.
Bread, soda (including diet soda), honey, sugar, pasta, pastries, cereals, rice, bagels, french fries, potatoes, etc are all carb rich food that prompt insulin.
4. Carbohydrates affect insulin production levels the most. Protein does also, but far behind carbs. Fat is the only macronutrient that has zero effect on blood sugar. The fattier the food, the healthier it is (eggs, bacon, cheeses, healthy oils, salad dressings, fatty meats, etc)
5. If you want to burn the fat you have then you need to lower your insulin levels. You can do this by eating a low carb high fat diet.
You may be surprised to hear that eating fat is healthy. It sounds weird because we have been conditioned to understand nutrition this way. When dietary fat became public enemy number 1 in the 1970s, our food supply has been pushing low fat and nonfat foods and replacing the fat with sweeteners. It’s everywhere you go and hidden with creative marketing names. Take a look around and see if the health of Americans seems to be improving since the 1970’s. Americans are bigger, unhealthier and more diabetic than we have ever been.
Other tips:
- For a lot of people, carbs need to be treated like alcohol is to an alcoholic. Carbs are addicting and as such, moderation is a dangerous line to walk. Recovering alcoholics abstain from alcohol completely and it’s possible that total carb, or at least sugar, abstinence is the key.
- Don’t eat after dinner. If you can abstain from eating after dinner until mid-morning or lunch time the next day your carb energy sources will be depleted, and you’ll use fat for fuel. Continue this fat burning state by eating a fatty lunch and/or working out.
- The main reason diets fail is because they typically limit your daily intake of calories. Limiting your calories is not necessary, only limiting or abstaining from insulin prompting foods.
