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.

Tags: how to lose fat, insulin, insulin levels

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