To think too few people understand the role of insulin with regards to weight loss?

[Redterror]

So I am an advocate of low carb but I know plenty of people who have used slimming world, or weight watchers or any other diet to lose weight. I have seen though people being really negative regards low carb diets and I don't get it.

When you understand how your body deals with different nutrients it because clear that all diets need to lower insulin. How you do this is up to you but ultimately all weight loss diets do it.

When insulin is elevated then you can't burn much fat and instead rely on mostly burning sugar from your diet. If you want to burn mostly fat from your fat cells your insulin needs to be lowered.

People say eat less move more without understanding that for someone who is insulin resistant this is really hard. The body cells stop responding to insulin so stop taking up sugar from the blood. This effectively means the cells feel like they are 'starving' as they can't get enough sugar and this drives hunger signals. It also makes the person feel lethargic and lacking in energy, so exercise is harder.

You can reduce insulin levels by fasting, reducing carbs in the diet, reducing consumption of refined carbohydrates, cutting calories etc but the key is your insulin.

I wish I had a simple solution..

I am:

insulin resistant
insulin dependent T2
gallstones (inoperable due to my heart condition and weight combination)
suffer gastropareisis regularly
ARFID

I tried low carb - great but miserable for me due to the stuff allowed on that plan thats not allowed by the gallstones or my brain, and to keep my BG down to within the 'normal for diabetic' levels I was really struggling, a diet of 600 cal just about achieved it, with tiny meals spaced out during the day to avoid the glucose dumping..

I tried fasting - that causes my liver to dump even more and my BG to shoot up

A lot of the high protein and also the low carb high fibre 'health' stuff triggers a bout of gastropareisis - this fucks up BG and insulin calculations because what i eat now may not affect my BG now but in 8 hours time.. or 6 hours.. or 12 hours or... who knows?!
It means I might eat and dose for that meal correctly, but have a hypo because my BG didn't rise because I am not digesting the food i actually ate.

The net result of all this is I am just getting fatter and fatter until almost certainly, I'll burst. MY gp just shakes her head, my diabetic nurse thinks i am mainlining cake all day long and tells me to follow the NHS guidelines which involves so much carb I'd be using even MORE insulin than I am now!

She was never vegan then. It's not a diet... best you could call her is plant based.

It’s an astonishingly stubborn concept. The actual specialist medics are most definitely developing theories about obesity being a hormonal and metabolic disorder. (Common or garden medics don’t have any real diet or obesity training all, by the way).

Bodies are unbelievably, staggeringly, amazingly complex and sensitive. The idea that a calorie is just an undifferentiated unit of energy to them and that you just keep packing on fat with no system for regulating weight seems insane if you think about (I have a biology degree and a physio degree, so I’m not exactly approaching this as a layman). Literally NO OTHER biological system works like that. None. It’s a hormonally controlled negative feed back system. Just like all the others. And processed food and refined carbs (which don’t occur in nature, so we haven’t evolved a way of dealing with them) disrupt it.

Also, the idea that we know everything about how this system works? Staggeringly arrogant! We have so much to learn. And that it’s as simple as ‘eat less move more’? Just naive. No body system is that simple. Ever.

Being vegan is a diet.

You are confusing burning fat as fuel with losing fat. Energy can’t just disappear. You can use fat as fuel but if you’re not in a calorie deficit you won’t lose fat.

Whilst it is move more eat less and the thermodynamics of weight loss is simple, for lots of ppl it is not easy.

It’s the behaviour around weight loss that’s difficult. It’s a behaviour issue. Over restriction leads to over indulgence blah blah. There are lots of easily available highly palatable (calorie dense) foods. All these varying ways of eating are really behaviour mechanisms that may result in weight/fat loss.

I love how @Redterror started the discussion with So I am an advocate of low carb followed by a big post which can be summarise as you lot are ignorant and I am going to educate you on insulin, but struggles to regurgitate whatever she read on a blog or Insta.
Reminds me of the religious zealots that come in pair at the front door to tell me they want to talk to me about Jesus. 😆

No it isn't. It's an ethical worldview that also effects what you want to eat. Plant based is the diet without the ethics attached with being vegan.

Lol.

No.

Well it’s not working is it?!

Also, the idea that we know everything about how this system works? Staggeringly arrogant! We have so much to learn. And that it’s as simple as ‘eat less move more’? Just naive. No body system is that simple. Ever

yep. It’s also not as simple as “lower carbs lower insulin”.

however generally speaking, a calorie deficit does work. Whether that’s via Atkins, low fat, low carb. When people successfully lose weight, it’s usually because they have dropped the high fat high sugar refined foods because the calorie load isn’t worth it so they make better choices. Fruit and yoghurt instead of ice cream.

interesting that you should say about common or garden medics as well. Many of these writing books on diet and claiming to have the answer to weight loss aren’t obesity or even endocrinology/nutrition trained.

atkins was a cardiologist. Fung is a nephrologist.

I am arguing against "it's not calories, it's carvs" because for healthy average person that's simply not helpful.
It is calories. Some people will need different diet to it because of medical issues. Even the famous diet people peddle everywhere is about calories at the end of the day.

Claiming calories are not it, is simply wrong.

It is in countries where carb is actually heavily in a diet.
Look at list of countries with lowest obesity levels.

It's us, not carbs (unless medical issues)

Most sensible post all day.

You're wrong. Admit it and move on.

🤨 weird.

What is obesity if not a medical issue?

I think there is still a huge amount that isn't understood about obesity. A lot I have read on the subject recently is quite clear that simple calorie counting statistically is unlikely to be effective long term if someone is obese, as opposed to someone who is just a little overweight.

Obesity has such a huge detrimental effect on pretty much every organ and function of the body, it makes no sense that how the metabolism functions would remain unnafected.

I'm not saying that reducing carbs is a panacea, but it can have a huge positive impact on a lot of people who have failed at simply restricting calories.

I'm not saying that reducing carbs is a panacea, but it can have a huge positive impact on a lot of people who have failed at simply restricting calories

reducing carbs is restricting calories.

I don’t doubt low carb works for some people. But it is just a way of changing your eating so you lower calories in.

True @InCheesusWeTrust , it just takes one look at the world map of thin- fat countries to get that carbs are not the problem.

Japanese women are soooooooo tiny and eat a high carb diet.You have never been to Japan, just watch the Marie Kondo show on Netflix . She is tiny and so is her translator and you will find online articles about her life where she describes what she eat. Soup and rice for breakfast, rice and fish for lunch, and again rice with chicken wings soup for dinner.

Rice three times a day...

Similar here was 21st now 11st. Didn't stop eating carbs, if anything I eat more carbs now.because I'm veggie. I literally just ate less and moved more.

Prof Rachel Batterham isn’t. And she has a lot to say about weight being a hormonally controlled system, and obesity being the result of a disruption of that control.

Prof Rachel Batterham isn’t. And she has a lot to say about weight being a hormonally controlled system, and obesity being the result of a disruption of that control

does she advocate for a low carb diet?
does she support the o/p’s insulin hypothesis?

No one is arguing that hormones and other mechanisms contribute to weight management.

but there is much work still being done by people Like Prof Batterham, who doesn’t appear to claim to have the quick fix answer like Fung et al do.

Atkins was a cardiologist who died obese of a heart attack aged 72. Ancel Keys on the other hand, died two months short of his 100 birthday.
Food for thoughts

I don’t think you can describe Fung‘s theories as ‘a quick fix answer’. As I recall, it got flipping complicated.

I don’t think lo carb is the answer to everything. But I do think processed foods in general, and refined carbs in particular are a big factor in the disruption of the delicate and complex weight control system. And that means the ‘calories in calories out’ model is really unhelpful. People are biology, not physics.

Hormones (not oestrogen et al. A specific and distinct set of them. Peptide YY, Grelhin, leptin, colicystokinin, odd the top
of my head. Don’t quote me on the spelling!) don’t ‘contribute’ to weight management. They control hunger, satiety, digestion, fat storage and usage. They ARE weight management. Just as a specific and distinct set of them control salt balance, and water balance and a bazillion other balances. That’s what Prof Batterham says. That willpower isn’t even in it.

I don’t think most people understand that hormones control many of our systems, not just periods. Why would weight be different? It isn’t. We just have only the most basic understanding of it so far, because we’ve only only just started even looking. Because we’ve only just started to look beyond ‘eat less move more’. And that’s why it’s so damaging. It’s preventing people educating themselves further on every level.

Well yes.

Ancel Keys's research, funded by food manufacturers, who were satisfied that he would trash John Yudkin's reputation.

The same Ancel Keys whose data set simply excluded data from countries (including France & Germany) where the results did not support his theory.

Yudkin got there first with his 'pure, white and deadly' and was rubbished by dubious research funded by food manufacturers

Well, yes.

He died after falling on ice and getting a brain injury from that fall??