Retrospective #328: “…the most sustainable diet ever!”

I am so sick and tired of hearing the public health and medical establishments declare that eating Low Carb (LC), or heaven forbid, Very Low Carb, is “not sustainable;” that most people don’t have the will power to restrict their diet over the long haul to foods that are primarily protein and fat. Many MDs, I’ve noticed, are themselves fat, so I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t at least try it, as my doctor did. Especially now that the weak science behind the diet/heart hypothesis has been debunked, and, since 2015, dietary cholesterol is no longer verboten.

Let’s face it: The reason people who eat a balanced diet eat is because they are hungry. More accurately, they eat because their bodies are hungry. The stomach and the gut send messages from the blood and digestive system to the brain that tells them to eat to maintain energy balance. You think about, look for and eat food. It’s a primordial thing.

The body send these hunger signals because it needs to maintain a constant flow of energy to keep everything running and in balance, not in deficit. This balance is called “homeostasis.” The body also works relentlessly to maintain your set point weight. These are very powerful forces. And they are autonomous, which means they work automatically without your conscious input. In fact, as you know, they fight your conscious efforts to lose weight. And they have a built-in evolutionary bias to add weight, for unforeseen events (an unproductive hunt, a poor harvest, or winter).

So, if you think it’s about your “will power,” you’re mistaken; you are deluding yourself. And you have been misled and lied to. It’s not about your conscious will. Hunger is driven by forces beyond your control. It’s driven by biology, which is more powerful than your conscious you. But, once you understand how your biology works, you can work with it. You can “defeat” what drives you to eat when you still have plenty of fat stores hanging on your body.

Of course, you can stay with the restricted calorie, balanced diet and see how that works for you. But you know in your heart of hearts that that regimen doesn’t work. And if you want to learn how to get your body to naturally burn its own fat, stay with me. I am not selling snake oil; just a dietary idea that works, and will work for you, I promise.

How would you feel about a diet that works without hunger? That’s right! THE HUNGER IS GONE. There will no longer be physiological signals and messages telling you to put something in your mouth. Why, because, on this regimen, your body is satisfied with another available food source: your body fat. How can you get that idea to work for you?

“Just one word…Insulin.” Insulin is both the glucose-transporter, cellular-gateway hormone and the fat storage hormone. When you eat CARBOHYDRATES, they break down to simple sugars – glucose mostly – and are “escorted” in your blood by insulin secreted by your pancreas. If you’re pre-diabetic or a Type 2, you also have a degree of Insulin Resistance (from eating too many processed carbs and simple sugars for too many years), so your blood glucose and your blood insulin levels both stay elevated. If you eat carbs at every meal, and in snacks in between, they (glucose and insulin) stay at a continuously “high” level. Result: You don’t lose weight, and you’re still hungry!!! And why is that?

Insulin is also the fat storage hormone. That means, it regulates when to make fat (when you eat too many carbs or too much fat), and when to burn fat…to maintain homeostasis. And your brain reasons that if you have a high level of insulin circulating in your blood, you must have glucose availability (from carbs, mostly) for energy balance to maintain homeostasis. It doesn’t recognize, unfortunately, that your glucose metabolism is disregulated by insulin resistance (your Pre-Diabetes or Type 2 Diabetes). Burning fat or making fat is regulated simply by your blood INSULIN level.

Your body (not you) then “reasons” that it doesn’t need your body fat for energy, so it blocks access to your body fat. Your elevated blood insulin level is blocking the signal. You simply can’t lose weight if your blood glucose and blood INSULIN remain high. You have to lower your blood glucose and blood insulin. How? By not eating carbohydrates.

When you abstain from eating carbs for a few days, your body’s blood glucose and blood insulin levels both drop. That unblocks the path to burning body fat for energy. Your body is happy, and you have been launched on “…the most sustainable diet ever.” HUNGER IS GONE! Why? Your body is being fed! And you are in homeostasis (energy balance).