blurose411's Journal, 17 February 2015

You overweight because you hormones are out of wack. Insulin and leptin, specifically. Leptin tells your body that it has enough energy on reserve to survive and helps you fell full. Fat cells release leptin. Logically, it would follow that if you have extra fat cells, they would simply tell your body not to eat. Unfortunately, it's the opposite. Lots of fat cells produce lots of leptin. High leptin levels create leptin resistance and interferes with your body's ability to "hear" the signal that you are full and that you have enough energy reserves to survive. Enter the "starvation mode" theory. It has truth to it, in that, because your body cannot "hear" leptin, it thinks that you do not have enough energy to survive. Appetite increases and you eat more. it' a viscous process because the fatter you get, the more you eat. Your body can't hear leptin because it has too much leptin. It's a complicated process known as neurotransmitter receptor down regulation, but we need not go there. It's the same with insulin. Every time you eat, you trigger some sort of insulin response. The more glucose you consume, the larger the insulin response. Your body will continue to release insulin in waves, after the initial response to a meal, if the glucose levels are still high. When insulin is present (beyond baseline levels), you CANNOT BURN FAT. Period, no questions asked. Now, your body is fighting to get you glucose levels down, it is pouring insulin into the body, and transporting glucose into cells. Whatever it cannot put into cells, it converts into glycogen. When your glycogen stores get full, it gets converted into triglycerides. Triglycerides end up as fat. The more insulin your produce, the less fat you can burn, because you literally have the fat burning signal switched off. Your body is working it's ass off to process all this glucose, and BAMM what do you do? You eat another high glucose meal 3 hours later because your body just dumped a whole bunch of insulin out, in order to get rid of the excess glucose! now you are feeling "hungry" Your leptin levels are jacked up, so your body hear your fats cells telling you "hey, we're good, we have all this extra energy can be used, so no worries"!!! You can't burn fat because you insulin levels are too high, so you eat again! 9 times of out 10, it's high carb/high sugar meal... rinse, later, repeat. the solution? Low carb, high fat, moderate protein. You eat in a manner that doesn't trigger a large insulin response (fat is neutral, protein is medium, and carb/sugar is high), you lower insulin levels, your body is able to burn fat, you burn fat for fuel, you are less hungry because your body now taps into excess reserves, your fat cells can get the leptin signal through, you fell full, and you live happily ever after (unless you start with the high glucose diet again, like i did, and watch your 54lbs weight disappear))!!! If you want to jump start the process of become insulin and leptin sensitive, add in high intensity interval workouts and you are golden... I hope this helps! 

Excuse my typos, I don't proof read after dark! :P 

2011sexyback is ABSOLUTELY correct! Low carb, moderate protein and high fat will help force your body to a fat burning mode. The fats are meant to be healthy fats such as nuts, olive oil, avocado, whole eggs, whole fat dairy, etc. 

2011sexyback Your comment was very insightful and will be taken into account. I guess what you described would contribute to the low blood sugar I was diagnosed with years ago. I'll see if I can learn more about this. Thanks for the heads up!