In the last post it was established that your body would not burn fat for energy when insulin is present. Since insulin is released every time we eat the trick is to get insulin levels back down as fast as possible after a meal so we can get back into fat burning land. How do we do that though? Well there are a few ways and if you are reading this blog,  you are probably already doing some of them. One of the obvious ways is to eat a low carb diet, but that has many drawbacks and needs to be implemented properly to maintain workout intensity. That is a subject all its own so I will address that in a future blog. What I want to focus on today is minimizing insulin resistance, and maximizing insulin sensitivity.

We already know that insulin delivers glucose to the muscle cells, fat cells and liver. That”s a good thing. When these cells become “resistant” to insulin’s effect, bad thing definitely start happening.  Muscle cells will not “uptake” the glucose to be stored as glycogen, the fat cells release more free fatty acids into the blood steam,  and the liver ignores the signal to stop producing more glucose. Elevated blood fatty acid levels, reduced muscle glucose uptake, and increased liver glucose production all contribute to elevated blood glucose levels. This causes the pancreas  to release more insulin and the vicious circle continues. Next stop, type 2 diabetes.  Hopefully, and quite likely, if you are reading this you are a long way from this condition and are just trying to get leaner. So lets look at how to maximize your insulin sensitivity so you can get those insulin levels down and burn off  some body fat.

Here are the main factors that will help increase insulin sensitivity:

• eating less saturated fat and fewer total calories.
• keep blood sugars stable throughout the day.
• drink little or no alcohol.
• exercise regularly
• not smoking
• reducing  stress.

Obviously doing the opposite of these thing will increase insulin resistance.  If you are doing all of the above CONSISTENTLY, good for you! You are well on your way to that six pack. If you have room for improvement, and most of us do, it could be the reason you fat loss goals have stalled.

Next week I want to talk about the glycemic index, how it relates to controlling insulin levels, and why it can be misleading when planning a diet. Have a good week.

Nearly everybody  wants to know how to lose fat. In this post I want to talk about how insulin and insulin levels affect how your body does or does not burn fat.  Insulin has gotten most of its “bad rap” because it is indeed heavily involved in fat storage. Hey it is a storage hormone, that’s what it does.  For a very long time it was believed that it was the only, or at least the most important, hormone involved in fat storage. This turn out not to be true, even if some people still cling to the belief.  A compound called acylation stimulation protein or ASP has been know to be the most potent stimulator of fat storage in the fat cell for over 30 years. That point aside, insulin is still very involved in the process of fat storage and the inhibition of  fat mobilization from fat cells.  Even small increases in insulin levels essentially stops fat from being mobilized or released from the fat cells.  No fat being released from the cells, no fat available to be burned for energy.  The simple solution to this seems to be keep insulin levels low at all times. Then fat mobilization would not be inhibited and we could burn fat for energy all the time. Sounds grand doesn’t it?  And since eating carbohydrate is responsible for insulin levels rising  all we have to do is eat no carbs and the problem is solved. Ahh, if it were only that simple. As usual there is more to the story.  It is a misconception that eating carbohydrates is the only thing that raises insulin. Eating protein raises insulin too. In fact eating protein and carbs together raise insulin more than either one of the two when eaten alone.  Well now we are really screwed. How are we suppose to burn fat for energy if  the body keeps shutting down fat burning by releasing insulin every time we eat?   The answer lies in not trying to stop the release of insulin (you definitely do not want that) but rather controlling  how long insulin levels are  elevated. The sooner insulin levels drop, the sooner we can get back to tapping into the bodies energy stores. Next time i will talk about how make this happen. Have a good week.

A calorie of protein provides the same amount of energy to the body as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate.  This may in fact be true but lost in this broad statement is the fact that these different nutrients have different effects on metabolism and hormone secretion that are far  more important than just their caloric value. One of the major hormones influenced by nutrient intake is insulin.

So what is Insulin? In simple terms insulin is defined as a polypeptide hormone  that regulates carbohydrate metabolism.In simpler terms this means that after a meal, insulin deals with the rise in blood sugar by delivering it to the cells where it can be used for energy.  While this function is very important, insulin does much more. A study in 1999 showed that insulin is involved in many critical metabolic functions including, the breakdown and utilization (burning) of both dietary and body fat. Insulin was shown to inhibits fat breakdown, so when insulin levels are elevated your body cannot break down stored fat to be used for energy.  If you cannot burn bodyfat for energy it does not seem likely you will reduce your fat stores. Insulin must be the worst thing in the world! Anything that stops us from burning bodyfat and achieving that highly coveted six pack must be completely done away with! Not so fast.  That type of thinking gets babies thrown out with the bath water.  Over the next several posts I will discuss, 

1)Why and when insulin is bad.

2)Why and when insulin is good.

3)How to eat to minimize the bad and maximize the good.

Not sure how many posts this will be broken into as it is a massive subject but I hope you stay tuned.