Traditional Calorie Restriction
We all know that traditional calorie restrictive and fad diets fail. Most can loss weight during intense and challenging dietary focus. However, the weight soon comes back on. There are many reasons for this, but one thing stands true, the traditional approaches to weight loss are not grounded in science. As Dr @PaulChell5 states in his recent book (Diet Whisperer), calorie counting is flawed. We experts in the field of human metabolism have long since known that reducing energy intake dramatically actually slows down your metabolism and speeds up hunger. In addition to being aesthetic pleasing, reducing the amount of energy and fat the body stores also have dramatic improvements in both physical and mental health. We can reduce the chances of developing obesity associated cancers, pre-diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Although maintaining a healthy weight is very complex, there is growing evidence that reducing the number of simple sugars, engaging in intermittent fasting and / or food timing can have surprising effects on reducing weight and reducing body fat. Most social media influencers attribute this to the carbohydrate – insulin hypothesis. A notion supported by some in the science community. Most notably Prof. Nokes. This hypothesis suggests that eating carbohydrates increases the amount of insulin in the blood (which it does for 2-3 hours, depending on factors such as the meal size and the degree of insulin resistance), which in turn, tells the body not to use fat as an energy source. While reducing the amount of insulin circulating between meals, and more importantly reducing insulin resistance, can be very important in telling the body to store less fat while at the same time provoking the use of more fat as an energy source (i.e. increase fat burning). That, combined with reduced calorie intake, can lead to sustained weight loss and the maintenance of a healthy weight. Mostly by improving the management of key hormones that regulate healthy metabolism.
The True Reason Behind Weight Gain
Indeed, the true reason behind weight gain, isn’t laziness and / or greed. Its related to hormones including insulin, ghrelin, leptin, and even cortisol as well as other stress related hormones. This list of hormones offered here is merely the icing on the cake (pun intended). Advancing is new mass spectrometry technologies are producing new proteins and metabolites at a staggering rate. In brief, this means we are still learning about what actually governs human metabolism, weight gain and weight loss.
However, while we wait for this data to be unpicked and understood, we do know that the hormones mentioned above, as well as insulin resistance, play a fundamental role in how are body’s store and release
