Anti-Obesity hormonal cocktail.
How to mix yours and my forever-fat-loss experiment you can join.
The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss by Dr. Jason Fung
Sugar Has 56 Names: A Shopper’s Guide by Robert H. Lustig, M. D.
A few recently read books by two different authors, doctors, on a mission to reverse metabolic disease, fixing our screwed up eating habits, providing and explaining the science behind world obesity epidemic, suggesting dietary and lifestyle solutions to fix it all. To fix fatness. To fix our eating habits. To fix food industry.
Maybe, they don’t have perfect answers just yet.
Maybe, they are not sure about everything.
Maybe, the solution is not perfect, and there are still many details we don’t quite understand, like, for example, how artificial sweeteners work exactly, and why, even though “diet” beverages on paper have no digestible sugars and have essentially zero calories, why they seem to contribute to obesity just as much as their sweet doubles.
Despite authors’, Dr. Jason Fung and Robert Lustig M. D., completely independent from each other research — they seem to come to very similar conclusions, similar to the conclusions of one of the best and most popular (among supporters and not so popular among opponents) “obesity” journalists, Gary Taubes, (“Good caloris, Bad calories”, “The case against sugar”, “Why we get fat”) — that we shouldn’t be asking why we get fat eating so much, we should be asking, why our bodies want to get fat and how THAT makes us eat that much — more and more research brings us to the same conclusions — fat mass is an endocrine organ capable of driving our hormones, that drive our behavior to promote fat accumulation and obesity.
Or, basically, we don’t get fat because we eat too much — something wants us to get fat and THAT makes us eat too much of the wrong stuff.
A few other conclusions, that you might be curious about from the books (that seem to confirm my personal experience, my work with clients on a mission to get leaner):
Obesity is not a problem of energy over-consumption but of energy distribution. In other words, we don’t get fat, because we are destined to overeat, or we eat too much — we get fat, because our body decides to put into storage what we eat, instead of using it for metabolism, for muscle building, for other-than-storage metabolic purposes — in obese patients lots of tissues and organs might be starving for energy, while the body still decides to put most of the fuel consumed in storage making them fatter. And fatter. And fatter.
Another interesting idea, you might not often think about. 95% of our energy, or close to it, the body spends on base metabolism — lots of things, besides exercise and non-exercise activities. Long-term low-calorie diets can lower that base metabolism as much as half, and maybe even more! So what does it mean for you? If you are on any kind of low-calorie diet, low carb, low fat or whatever — if you are on a starvation diet without no regular re-feeds, you might have to starve yourself till the rest of your life to maintain that weight, and that is, of course, sub-optimal for your health, since with less calories in a healthy diet comes less nutrition (not even mentioning sh*tty diets here). Plus, you teach your body to get better at fat storage, not fat loss, when you decide to eat less as a lifestyle. That’s why most dieters come to a weight loss/fat loss plateaus, that’s why most dieters, going back to the same calories, gain the fat back with surplus often. Not the best strategy as you can see. If you want to lose fat, continue losing fat, till you get the results you want and then maintain that fat loss — you want to either increase your base metabolism, or at least maintain it, and find another method of losing fat, instead of calorie cutting.
Continuing our conversation about obesity as a problem of energy distribution, not energy over-consumption.
What makes our body store more energy instead of using it for metabolic needs, recovery and repair, muscle building, mental and physical performance?
Simple?
Hormones.
What makes our body store more energy instead of using it for metabolic needs, recovery and repair, muscle building, mental and physical performance?
Simple?
Hormones.
Each of us, because of our lifestyle choices, our nutrition choices, our stress management, or lack of, also because of our genetics and metabolism, each of us has a unique hormonal cocktail, circulating in our blood and tissues. And that cocktail defines to a larger extent, how our body uses the nutrition and fuel we consume, for storage or not, and that hormonal cocktail also defines how much of the fuel we tend to consume naturally — whether we feel like we starve all the time, even though we just ate, or we have barely noticeable most of the time slight sense of “it’s time to replenish some nutrient and energy reserves” kind of hunger.
2 hormones, besides hunger hormones - ghrelin and leptin, besides variety of satiety hormones and peptides, seem to be major players, when it comes to fat loss of fat gain:
Insulin and Cortisol.
Insulin is directly correlated with the amount of fat a person stores — the higher the insulin the higher your fat storage capacity. End of story.
Cortisol? It seems to drive insulin, that drives obesinogenic lifestyle and fat storage.
What drives cortisol?
Badly managed chronic stress, sleep, lack of meaningful social connections and meaningful work and life — those are the biggest ones, that kind of drive all the other stressors. Lack of physical activity, long sitting hours (without any breaks), alcohol — all that, and of course poor nutrition choices, all of that causes and contributes to elevated chronic cortisol levels.
Cortisol drives insulin — although exact mechanism of that interaction is not really clear at the moment. It is just clear that is does.
Without lowering cortisol — low and healthy insulin levels are impossible, it seems.
But a major fat gain hormone is insulin.
It’s not just correlation — insulin levels cause weight gain or weight loss.
With high insulin levels — you will always store more fat and gain weight.
With low insulin levels — it’s impossible to get fat.
Medications, that raise insulin levels, for diabetics or other medications, always cause fat gain.
Medications, that lower insulin levels, cause weight loss.
You might think, why don’t they just prescribe those lowering-insulin medications for fat loss?
Well, lowering insulin too much can be deadly, because insulin also helps to maintain normal blood glucose levels — too high or too low and you can literally die in a matter of minutes — not a great weight loss tool you want people to experiment with.
You want to keep your insulin in the normal healthy range. Not high but not deadly low either.
What can help you to manage your insulin? Diet wise according to the books?
- Diet low in sugars (of any kind with zero added sugars ideally)
- Diet low in refined grains (anything, where you can’t see a single whole grain, is refined)
- Diet moderate in healthy and whole-foods-sourced protein — not too much, not too little
- Diet high in healthy natural fats
- Diet high in fiber
Besides that?
The main and most effective tool seems to be the time when you don’t consume ANY nutrients, or basically fasting.
Intermittent fasting is a natural state we humans practiced for thousands of years before food became available 24/7.
12–14 hours without food, with normally 3 meals during the day. That what humans used to do, before all the snacking from dawn to dusk began, before people started eating non-stop, driving insulin all the time. We used to go through periods of higher and lower insulin levels. Any food and nutrients drive insulin — so when you decide to eat another snack — your insulin will raise again to promote a bit more fat storage, regardless of quantity and quality of calories consumed. Of course, some foods and amounts drive insulin much less or much more — foods higher in refined carbs tend to drive insulin the highest, pure fats seem to drive insulin the least, but even pure fat still drives insulin — that’s why total fasting, with NO nutrients, is so essential for metabolic health and lean body mass.
Here are a few posts from my Instagram to create a better, leaner and healthier metabolic cocktail (@1000yearyoung):
And a few podcast episodes of FOOD SCHOOL I’ve created, while reading the books, thinking about it all:
The Obesity Code: 5 eating principles for forever fat loss. When to eat, when to stop, how.
Obesity. It’s not how much you eat — it’s how much fat YOUR body makes!
The simplest and most effective way to lower your fat mass and insulin without counting calories or macros.
And based on all of this I’ve created a new diet for those of us, who want to get lean fast, healing metabolism, turning our body into very effective fat-burning machine, avoiding fat loss plateaus, building muscles and strength.
In a few words:
Imagine a diet, that lowers your insulin, high in nutrients, promotes ketosis, drives lean body mass, burns the fat fast without slowing down your base metabolism? Lifestyle and training, designed to support this, of course. Intermittent fasting, keto, enough protein of the right kind at the right time, autophagy sometimes, over-eating and under-eating — all of it combined in a perfect “fat loss + lean body mass and performance” hormonal cocktail.
That’s the idea.
Trying it out on myself now — stay tuned!
Want to try it with me?
Schedule a free skype call, where I explain the details!
Let me know what you think!
For caloric theory fans out there — “calories in calories out” theory is old and wrong guys!
People become obese, not because they are hungrier and lazier, — we kind of all the same in that regard. But not all of us get obese and get metabolic disease.
