Insulin: The Key To Real Weight Loss

If you ever took human anatomy or biology in school, you might remember the chapter on the digestive system. When we eat food, the first line of response is our mouth and the saliva. We secrete saliva to start breaking down certain types of food. Then it goes to our stomach, our small and large intestines for further breakdown and absorption. There's a chain of events that happens for us to get the nutrients out of the food we eat. 

Each type of food is broken down differently, right down to our macronutrients. Our protein, carbohydrates and fats all require different systems in our body to break them down for us. One of those reactions is that of insulin. Insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas when we consume carbohydrates to help break it down. Insulin enters the blood stream to absorb the sugar (carbs) into the blood stream for delivery to cells of the body as energy.

But too much insulin, and therefore too many carbs, can be a bad thing causing negative health effects. You might know that eating too many carbs can lead to increased body fat accumulation, but we'll be diving deep into why that happens in this post.

As we eat many carbs sources, we need a certain amount of insulin based on the glycemic load of the carbs. Low glycemic loads (such as vegetables) create a lower insulin response, while high glycemic loads (such as grains) create a higher insulin response. To put it straight forward: Too much insulin will make you fat.

Many studies have been conducted showing than weight gain is an undeniable effect of insulin in the body. We see this primarily in diabetic patients who have been prescribed insulin to treat both types of diabetes. If given to healthy individuals, insulin will still cause weight gain regardless of exercise or food choices.  

In fact, obese people secrete much higher levels of insulin than those of normal weight with insulin levels being up to 20 percent higher in obese subjects. So what does that mean if you're overweight and you're exercising but not seeing changes? It means your hormones are fighting you from the inside out by producing more insulin than necessary. Even if you're reducing your calories, you might still be experiencing weight gain. A 1993 study compared increasing dosages of insulin to decreasing caloric intake over six months. As they decreased the patients calories by up to 300 calories, they simultaneously increased their insulin dosage up to 100 units per day, leading to perfect blood sugar levels, but an average increase in weight of 19 pounds. Calories didn't cause their weight gain, but insulin did.

What does this all means? Obesity and weight gain is not a caloric problem - it's a hormonal problem. Obesity is a normal dysregulation of fat accumulation.  In fact, it gets even more complex. Dr. Robert Lustig suggests that high insulin levels act as an inhibitor of leptin, the hormone that regulates satiety (or tells us when we're full - stop eating!). In obese subjects, leptin levels decrease due to leptin resistance and therefore their brains never get the signal to stop eating. 

This whole thing gets tricky because of something called insulin resistance. Our body is pretty smart when it comes to figuring out what our new norm is going to, adjusting and carrying on. In the case of insulin, when we reach a certain point of insulin released, our body figures out "this is normal" and begins to have that amount ready all the time. For a crude example, if you eat cereal for breakfast every morning your body knows that's the routine and will release insulin to prepare for that. It know you're going to need insulin to break down the carbs of your cereal no matter what every morning. But if one morning you have eggs instead (no carbs) your body will still have that insulin ready to go for you anyways. But as you continue to eat carbs and need more insulin, it requires more and more leading to increased levels of insulin on top of the "norm."

Our internal thermostat for insulin grows higher and higher over time. It works the same way as your thermostat at home - it turns on to reach the "norm" and then settles down once it's there. But as that level creeps higher and higher it has severe health consequences outside the development of fat tissue. When insulin resistance increases too high, Type 2 diabetes develops as the body is unable to produce enough insulin to support the system needs. 

Simple fix, right? Not quite. Even if you were to change your diet, the resistance would still keep your insulin levels high, meaning your body weight stays high and your weight could still be drive upward. This becomes especially true if you have been obese for long periods of time. Your body will always try to bring you back to what it believes to be "normal," which is why many people who lose weight have trouble keeping it off and often end up back to the same weight they worked so hard to lose. Obesity and weight gain can drive themselves. Dietary change alone may not be enough. 

Insulin resistance is compartmentalized into three parts of the body: the brain, the liver, and the muscles. Changing one will not solve the problem, but changing them all can lead to lasting change. When we eat too many carbs, we develop insulin resistance in the liver. As we change our diet, we can alter the insulin resistance of the liver, but it will have no effect on the brain or muscle. Increasing exercise will lead to insulin sensitivity (positive) in the muscle, but won't effect the liver or brain. The brain responses as a result to both of these factors - exercise and nutrition.

This is why both exercise and nutrition in combination with each other work best to create lasting results. You can't out-exercise a bad diet, and changing your diet alone can be frustrating when you don't see the scale go in the right direction. Keeping insulin in mind, as well as how your body naturally responds to the food you're eating can change the internal hormonal structure of your body and give you the weight loss results you want. 

Not sure where to begin? Let's chat about what you're doing now and what your goals are. I can provide you the tools to not only change your body, but the way you feel and create a healthy lifestyle.