Six common beliefs addressed, Part 13

1. Do low fat diets never work?

I am leery of anyone who makes a claim that such and such diet
"never works". No diet works. They all fail. The only diet that works is the one that can effect your blood glucose regulation, profoundly and consistently enough, to effect insulin and leptin function. That's all. 

What diet can achieve that is left to the individual because there is no
"one size fits all" diet. Whether a diet can achieve, what I described above, depends on how the individual's blood glucose reacts to treatment. So far, it has been shown to be quite a battle that ends too often in failure. 

Remember, I can speak the truth because I am not selling, promoting or sponsoring anything on this blog. This blog is for educational purposes only. I am just here to let you know, that until you can obtain and sustain proper blood glucose regulation, you will not reach your goals. How you go about obtaining and sustaining it, is up to you. I can only point out the most logical direction to take. Try and see. 

All weight loss is mitigated through insulin. Low fat diets work like any other diet, because they help lower insulin through their effect on blood glucose. 

Low fat diets can be beneficial for people who have certain metabolic abnormalities, where the turnover of proteins and/or the mobilization of fatty acids, for fuel, is compromised and/or inefficient. They also may benefit people who have conditions that make the consumption of fat problematic. These can be genetic lipid and inflammation abnormalities or gallbladder disease and other digestive conditions.

If you benefit from the restriction of fat, then you can follow a low fat diet. The premise should be the same as with a low carbohydrate diet - to achieve the proper regulation of blood glucose. Some things that can help with this are:

• Base your diet on whole foods, not novelties. 
• Sugar and grains should still be avoided. Starches should come from whole food sources only.
• Getting enough nutrient dense foods, on this diet, is priority number one, since nutrient density is often found in fatty foods. The reduction of these foods can reduce nutrients as well.
• Consuming adequate amounts of lean proteins, will avoid issues with satiety. Because protein rich foods usually come accompanied by fat, they are often mistakenly avoided, causing protein deficits and loss of lean muscle mass.
• The limited amount of fat, in these diets, should still come from natural sources and not industrial "vegetable" oils.
• Make sure the diet is low fat, not no fat. No fat can cause health issues. 
• A daily fasting regimen should still be followed.

Carbohydrate restriction should always be primary, but if you are having difficulty losing weight, are gaining weight and/or are unable to improve metabolic markers on a carbohydrate restricted/higher fat diet, try a moderate carbohydrate/lower fat approach.

2. Are carbohydrate the only thing that causes insulin resistance?

No. 

Anything that interferes with proper blood glucose regulation will eventually lead to insulin resistance. "Insulin resistance" is simply a blanket term for abnormal insulin release/function/expression on varying tissues and organs at differing rates. Usually it is seen as a resistance to insulin in the liver and muscles and a high sensitivity to insulin at the fat mass. 

Many things can cause abnormal blood glucose homeostasis. Chronic health conditions, medications, age, gender, activity levels, hormonal state (menopause, perimenopause) can all impact your body's ability to regulate its blood glucose correctly. 

Diet can exacerbate the negative effects on blood glucose, that all of the above can cause. Diet is also the easiest of all of these to control. In the modern diet, carbohydrate is the most common culprit to blood glucose abnormalities. 

3. Can only high insulin levels store excess fat?

Human metabolism is much more complex than these myopic views. 

You can still store fat with low insulin levels, because insulin is required for storing fat, but it doesn't end there. The Acyl Carrier Protein has a very important role in the regulation of fatty acids and it has the ability to store fat as well.

You also have to get out of the mindset of only seeing obesity through the lens of a "storage" (in) problem. It is actually mostly a "burning" (out) problem. The body is simply not burning enough of the fat it has. This means that any storage will become problematic at that point. If not enough fat is being burned, then even the smallest amount of storage will automatically cause an increase of it. The burning of fat is solely a leptin problem. 

4. Eating a "high fat diet" means you can eat all the fat you want. Eating a "high carbohydrate diet" means you can eat all the carbohydrates you want.

No. 

"High" is not describing the amount that's eaten, it's only describing the macronutrient profile of your meal. Eating a small plate of pasta is still high carbohydrate. Eating a slice of bacon, is still high fat.

5. Can I chose a high carbohydrate diet instead of a high fat diet to achieve metabolic health?

You could achieve metabolic health with any diet that obtains and sustains proper blood glucose regulation. Vegetarian and vegan diets are high carbohydrate diets that have normalized blood glucose in many their followers. Of course, both of these diets, when followed correctly, at typically low in sugar.  

On this blog, high carbohydrate diets are not recommended simply because of their ability to interfere in proper blood glucose regulation over time. If you are already having abnormal blood glucose, the last thing you want to do is introduce even more glucose to further the problem. So because I am giving out information to people who are already suffering from metabolic problems, I prefer to give them a more targeted approach they can try.

6. Protein always causes my blood glucose to rise.

Protein can cause postprandial blood glucose to rise for people who have metabolic disease, but not for the healthy. Insulin resistance is the cause as to why this is the case. The two common pathologies are described below.

• Certain amino acids, in protein containing foods, stimulate an insulin response, because insulin allows the uptake of these amino acids into the cells that need them. Insulin release can cause blood glucose to drop too low, if it’s unmitigated, so the counter regulatory hormone glucagon, releases stored glucose, from the liver, to counteract this effect. Because of insulin resistance, glucagon is not well controlled by leptin and releases this glucose at an exaggerated rate, causing blood glucose to rise after a protein meal.
• Because of this poor insulin function, there is a general lack of lean muscle mass, which causes for glucose to remain in the bloodstream, for a longer period of time, since there is not enough muscle to uptake it.

As an interesting side note, this effect doesn't just occur with protein. It also occurs with carbohydrates. When you eat a potato, the high blood glucose you measure, postprandial, is mostly coming from your own liver, rather than the actual potato. Once again, glucagon has an exaggerated response to the presence of insulin. The new generation of diabetes medications will be targeting glucagon, rather than insulin, for better blood glucose control.