1. You should "eat to hunger" during your eating window.
I know that there is a lot of debate about whether you should eat if you aren't hungry and the default is always - you should. You should never skip meals. Ever. You need to develop predictable meal times and stick to them. This lowers the stress response by helping to keep blood glucose steadier. Steadier blood glucose will help normalize satiety and hunger. The last thing a person with metabolic syndrome needs is erratic meal times that prolongs the time in hypoglycemia, causes the need for snacking and causes binging when hunger finally kicks in.
There are two primary reasons for why the person may not experience hunger and each one means something different depending on your metabolic state.
- Reason #1 (The Best Case Scenario) - Your body is burning through stored fuel, so it has no reason to be hungry. It is adequately acquiring all of the fuel it needs from storage, you are losing weight and your metabolic markers are normal and stable. You can comfortably wait for your meal times with no discomfort from hunger but this lack of hunger does not make you want to skip your meals when it's time to eat.
- Reason #2 (The Worst Case Scenario) - Your body is not recognizing stored fuel and so it's not using it. Your leptin expression is nil and your body is making excess glucose and living off it. There is no reason to be hungry, as you are living off the stress response, through the break down of your lean muscle mass and your metabolic rate is 0. You lose no weight or gain instead and your metabolic markers are barely hanging on. Not only are you not hungry between meals, but when your meal time comes around, you struggle to eat it because it feels as if you can fast forever.
This is why you should never automatically think that lack of hunger is a good thing. It's usually indicative of active obesity, if you are already overweight/obese. Lack of hunger is only good if you are losing weight or are already slim and when that's the case, the lack of hunger is not chronic. Context changes everything.
If you are going through Reason #1, continue eating your meals at meal times as well so your circadian rhythms are not disrupted.
If you are going through Reason #2, you should eat, even if you aren't hungry because that's the only thing that will kick start leptin. Leptin only responds to long term nutrient availability. Even if the meal is small, that's fine, but don't extend your fasts from lack of hunger. That falls under the "caloric restriction" mentality, which assumes that if you aren't hungry, then it's a good thing because you will eat less calories. Well, the obese are some of the least hungry people on earth, but that doesn't help them shed a single pound.
2. A low carbohydrate diet will always result in the loss of body fat.
Following a low carb diet simply helps better regulate blood glucose by preventing the introduction of exogenous glucose into the body. Exogenous glucose disrupts blood glucose homeostasis because it causes higher than normal postprandial blood glucose, increasing the demand for insulin and then lowering fasting blood glucose abnormally. These erratic, highs and lows in blood glucose, with large disparities between them, causes a pathological metabolic adaptation which results in high blood glucose, insulin and body fat set points over time. This is metabolic syndrome.
By eliminating exogenous glucose through low carb dieting, you can help normalize your blood glucose regulation, or at the very least, not disrupt it further so you can better control your condition and have a higher chance of achieving reversal or remission, depending on how far along the condition is.
The premise is that when your blood glucose homeostasis successfully improves, it allows the body to lose body fat but this is not a magic pill, like so many low carb advocates claim. They like making you believe their diet works without fail, but we all know that is not true, because the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis (CIH) is dead. No one in their right mind believes it anymore, since carbohydrate is not the sole contributor of blood glucose dysregulation. Their elimination will help, but it will only take you so far. Lifestyle changes that include diet (not just carbohydrate restriction), fasting and exercise must be implemented and there is no one size fits all for any of them. Each person has to try and tweak these changes, for their own individual needs, until they begin seeing results.
Lastly, let's make one thing crystal clear, because low carb advocates only talk about insulin, but you can't lose body fat without leptin. If leptin does not tell the brain there is body fat to lose, then no fat will be lost. "Dieting" does not affect leptin. This is precisely why no one can make the claim, with 100% certainty, that low carb diets will cause you to lose body fat. Again, the premise is that better blood glucose control will lower insulin and improve insulin sensitivity which would in turn improve leptin expression but remember, this is completely dependent on how much an individual can improve their blood glucose regulation.3. Meat, for early humans, was a rare luxury.
Cave paintings tell us that early humans spent most of their time hunting. Though we know early humans also gathered, hunting was the primary activity depicted in the stories they painted on stone walls. They didn't even bother to depict cave porn, so even procreation was secondary to hunting. Our digestive system, from our teeth to our colon, tells the story of a primarily meat based diet.
Hunter/gatherers of yesterday and today allow us to see that humans can survive and thrive under many different conditions and can adapt to many different diets. There are hunter/gatherers who eat mostly meat and others who eat mostly plants. Humans are omnivores and this high adaptability, to whatever is available in the food supply, allowed us to migrate and inhabit many different kinds of terrains and climates. Adaptation allowed us to be mobile and we ultimately lived everywhere, except Antarctica.
Since, very early humans ate a mostly meat based diet and evolved from it, there are no hunter/gatherers, anywhere on earth, that eat an all plant diet. None. There are some who eat all meat diets, but there are none that eat all plants. We also know that no hunter/gatherers consume a diet with ice cream, Twinkies, cookies, cakes, waffles, pancakes or any other junk that is considered "food" in the modern world. So, the tribes that eat "plants" are eating them in the form of roots, berries, nuts and seeds, and whatever they find in the intestines of animals, not sandwiches or leaves.
4. Is salt bad for you?
It depends. Notice that most answers, on this blog, are addressed in the same way - "It depends." This is because context changes everything. When you ask a question, that requires nuance and the person just regurgitates a solid "yes" or "no" answer, then you can be assured they are dishing out BS.
If you have an obesogenic metabolic state, such as is the case with metabolic syndrome, you tend to retain fluids. Salt intake can aggravate this state and cause edema and high blood pressure. High blood pressure damages the cardiovascular system and aggravates preexisting cardiovascular disease (CVD). A diet that is high in sugar is usually the culprit for this issue, as sugar is anti diuretic because of its effects on insulin. So, eating a diet that is both high in sugar and high in salt is a really bad idea. This is why doctors always advise for salt intake to be reduced, but many studies have shown that even the reduction of salt does not eliminate the negative outcomes of the anti diuretic effects of insulin. This means that even without any salt intake, blood pressure does not stabilize when there is hyperinsulinemia. This is because hyperinsulinemia is not caused by dietary salt.
If you have certain medical conditions such as congestive heart failure, impaired kidney function or kidney disease, then your body has a very difficult time eliminating excess sodium from the body. The reason that salt intake, for a healthy person, is not detrimental is because the body simply eliminates excess sodium through urination. Therefore, the sodium is harmless. The body has absolutely no issues doing this. But, if you have any of the three conditions listed above, your body cannot release excess sodium efficiently and this will only exacerbate fluid retention and further deteriorate blood pressure control. People with these conditions should be cautious with their sodium intake, since their body is not able to handle it adequately or efficiently.
There is a small segment of the population that is very "salt sensitive". For whatever reason, their body is unable to excrete excess sodium efficiently, even without a diagnosed preexisting condition and sodium starts building up in the body. This could be because the body is already experiencing kidney insufficiency, from chronic metabolic stress, or maybe from some other underlying genetic factor. Who knows. What is known is that salt intake, for these individuals, can cause edema and blood pressure abnormalities.
So, if you are the type of person that experiences negative side effects from sodium consumption, put down the salt shaker. If you experience no adverse reactions, to consuming salt, then consume it to taste. Salt in itself is not bad. It's your body's handling of sodium that ultimately determines if salt is bad for you.
Do not try to manage your electrolytes through the consumption of salt and/or water. That is not the appropriate way of managing electrolytes.
5. I cannot afford "grass fed" or "pastured" animal products, which seem to be what most low carb advocates recommend. For this reason, I am going vegan/vegetarian.
Recommending "pasture raised", "humane" and/or "sustainably sourced" meat products, have all become trendy disclaimers when you are advocating a meat based diet. It's as if everyone feels some type of guilt for recommending meat consumption. But, on this blog, there is no guilt, so grass fed or pastured animal products are not required nor are they the focus. If you can afford and easily find them, good for you, but if you can't, you don't have to.
We only emphasize fresh meat from the butcher's counter. No processed meats like hotdogs, cold cuts, precooked, preprepared and or canned meats. These processed meats are usually the ones that people turn to for "economical reasons", but it's all smoke and mirrors, as they are actually quite expensive, not nutritious and full of added carbohydrates that will disrupt your progress. You can get more bang for your buck at the butcher's counter.
The cut of meat does not matter. If all you can afford is ground beef, then go for it. Ground beef has an excellent protein to fat ratio and can be prepared multiple ways to create different meals.
The message of this blog is to eat meat (protein), not carbohydrates and fat (energy). We do not debate nor care whether the meat available to you is from a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) or not. That is not our priority or focus. We only care that you don't swap meat for mac 'n cheese. Unlike what vegans say, CAFO won't kill you, but macaroni will.
6. You should not lift weights or you will end up looking like a bodybuilder.
First, you don't need to lift weights. Hunter/gatherers do not lift boulders for fun, so make sure you lift weights simply because you enjoy it. If you don't enjoy something, you won't do it consistently.
I know there is a huge movement out there of "lifting heavy", but that's not a natural movement nor a requirement for the body. I understand that if you are eating a bowl of pasta, you want to build as much muscle, as possible, so that the body can "burn that glucose", but anything less than Michael Phelps level of activity, will only store that glucose as glycogen, in the muscle and liver, and it won't be burned at all. In order for something to be burned, it has to be used. So, instead of creating more closets (muscles), to store more crap (sugar), stop buying (eating) crap, since there will come a time when you will have no more land to keep making closets (diabetes). Then you will be s%^t out of gas.
Bodybuilding is basically a 24 hour hobby. It takes a lot of dedication, discipline and time to body build. It also takes a lot of drugs that redirect insulin's focus away from the fat mass and into muscle mass. So, it's not easy to be a bodybuilder. A middle aged diabetic is not going to go into the gym, lift for a few minutes a day and come out looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a month. It doesn't work that way. If only it did, there would be no diabetes.
Unfortunately, the body is as efficient in breaking down its lean body mass, as it is in increasing its fat mass. Body builders have to fight this everyday. Obesity makes the body much more than just efficient, at doing this, it makes it excellent at it. People with metabolic syndrome/obesity/diabetes are the best at breaking down their lean muscle mass, into glucose, and then making that glucose into even more fat. They are so good at doing this, that becoming a bodybuilder is not anywhere in their future, unless they are body building with fat, rather than muscle.
No comments:
Post a Comment