As a formerly obese Washington, DC native I have been fascinated with weight (fat) loss for many, many years. My doctor first told me I was obese when I was 7 or 8 years old, and it wasn’t until I turned 12 that I realized that I actually had the power to change my body. I tired everything I could think of for weight loss – sports, long distance running, vegetarian diets, vegan diets, raw food diets, ultra low-fat diets, one meal a day, etc.
Ultimately, I have found that diets that are very low in REFINED carbs to be superior for fat-loss, energy and health. Here’s why:
- It requires less energy invested to get the energy out
- It would prefer to hang on to your fat stores for the next famine (that it does not know is never coming)
- Into your muscles and/or liver to be stored as glycogen (stored carbs), or
- Into your fat cells (it has to be converted to fat first – this is especially easy for things with High Fructose Corn Syrup in them).
1. The Master Weight (Fat)-Loss Hormone
In weight-loss, the master hormone is insulin. The less of it you have, the more fat you will burn. The higher your insulin levels, the more your fat is shielded from being burned for fuel (bad).
Insulin is sort of like the conductor in your metabolic symphony. Insulin levels control hormones like HSL, and LPL. HSL is the hormone that gets the actual fat out of your fat cells so that it can be burned. When insulin is high HSL does next to nothing. LPL is like the welcome mat at your fat cell – it welcomes in the new fat. LPL is high when insulin is high.
Insulin is most responsive to refined carbs and even fruit. Trading your morning bagel for two eggs scrambled with feta and spinach will really help to ramp-up your weight loss.
2. Forced Fat Utilization
At a basic level your body has two fuel sources – fat and carbohydrates (we’ll ignore protein, as it is not a major contributor). Your body prefers to burn carbs for fuel for several reasons:
Replacing your starchy carbs with healthy fats, real veggies (like broccoli, cucumbers, eggplant, etc.) will force your body to burn much, much more fat for fuel. That combined with the low insulin levels that you get from a low refined carb diet will seriously get the weight (fat) loss machinery going.
The good news is that in large cities like Washington, DC it is VERY easy to eat out and eat good carbs. 90% of restaurants will let you get sub veggies for the starchy side dish for no additional cost.
3. Eat More, Lose Weight
One of the greatest things about low refined carb diets is that you can eat the same number of total calories and still achieve weight loss. In other words if you were to take two people of the same size, gender, activity level, etc. and put them on 2,000 calorie diets. With one on a low carb diet and the other on a low fat diet. At the end of your experiment the low-carb dieter would have dropped 75-100% MORE weight (fat) than his/her low-carb counterpart. (1-5)
4. Improved Sensitivity
If you have too much body-fat, especially on your torso, then your probably have impaired insulin sensitivity. Its probably not bad enough to be diagnosed as any disease, but it is probably enough to make you fatter and help keep the fat on you. (Side rant: In our medical system, we only diagnose and address a problem when it’s gotten really, really, really bad. We don’t kill the monsters when they’re little, we wait for them to start eating the city and then we cut you open or pump you full of drugs.)
Insulin is a nutrient shepherd. When you eat food (or what passes for food nowadays), it gets broken down into carbs, fats and amino acids (protein) and ends up in your blood stream. Your body can’t let that stuff build-up or it will become poisonous, so it sends out insulin (ESPECIALLY in the case of carbs) to come and shuttle the nutrients away to where they belong at any given time.
Here’s the problem with a diet with lots of starch and/or refined carbs: There’s only two places for the carbs to go:
Your muscle and liver have a very, very, very limited capacity to store carbs. Carbs are to fuel intense activity – basketball, intervals, weight lifting, etc. So, in your day of sitting at the breakfast table, sitting on your commute, and sitting at work, you don’t actually deplete your glycogen stores – your muscle and liver remain full to capacity.
So when the insulin says to your muscles and liver “take up the carbs,” the muscle and liver begin to ignore the signal (become less sensitive). The body cranks up the volume of the message (pumps out way more insulin), but the muscle and liver are still ignoring it (they become even less sensitive). At this point the only person who hears and responds to the message is your fat cells – the higher the insulin levels, the more the fat cells are listening.
Removing the flood of blood sugar from bread, pasta, cookies, etc. drops blood sugar levels and thus insulin levels. In time, with lower insulin levels, your muscles and liver will become more sensitive to lower insulin levels, and you will burn more fat, lose more weight and be more likely to keep it off.
Josef Brandenburg is an award-winning fat-loss (as opposed to weight loss) expert based in Washington, DC, specializing in helping normal, busy people create the bodies they want, in the time that they actually have. His average client drops 8-0lbs of body-fat in the first 4 weeks alone with only 3 to 3.5hrs of exercise. Click here to find out more.
References
-
1. Christopher, DG, et al. Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN Diets for Change in Weight and Related Risk Factors Among Overweight Premenopausal Women: The A TO Z Weight Loss Study: A Randomized Trial. JAMA. 2007; 297: 969 – 977
-
2. Yancy, WS, et al. A Low-Carbohydrate, Ketogenic Diet versus a Low-Fat Diet To Treat Obesity and Hyperlipidemia: A Randomized, Controlled Trial. Ann Intern Med. 2004: 769-777
-
3. Volek, JS, et al. Comparison of energy-restricted very low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets on weight loss and body composition in overweight men and women. Nutrition & Metabolism 2004 1:13
-
4. Layman, DK, et al. A reduced ratio of dietary carbohydrate to protein improves body composition and blood lipid profiles during weight loss in adult women. Hum Nutr and Metabolism. 2003 113:411-17
-
5. Meckling KA, et al. A randomized trial of a hypocaloric high-protein diet, with and without exercise, on weight loss, fitness, and markers of the Metabolic Syndrome in overweight and obese women. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2007 32(4):743-752