Welcome


My name is Gina and I would like to welcome you to my blog!

On this blog, I not only share the dietary and lifestyle approach which reversed my metabolic disease and achieved my weight loss, but I also debunk many misconceptions surrounding obesity and its treatment.

I am 5'5" and was weighing 300 lbs., at my heaviest. I lost a total of 180 lbs. I went through several phases of low carbohydrate dieting, until I found what worked best and that is what I share on this blog. Once on a carbohydrate restricted diet, along with intermittent fasting, I dropped all of the weight in a little over two years time.

My weight loss was achieved without any kind of surgery, bariatric or cosmetic. I also did not take any weight loss medications or supplements. I did not use any weight loss program. This weight loss was solely the result of a very low carbohydrate, whole foods based diet, along with daily intermittent fasting and exercise.

I allow discussions in the comments section of each post, but be advised that any inappropriate or off-topic comment will not be approved.

There are years worth of content on this blog, so I suggest you use Labels to easily find the information you are looking for. If what you are looking for is not under Labels, enter it into the Search Bar.

Sep 21, 2020

Six common beliefs addressed, Part 91

1. Even positive changes, like a healthy diet, are a stress for the body. 

All change is stressful for the body. Even something positive like the loss of body fat, is extremely stressful, because the body sees body fat as a positive. The best way to counteract this is primarily through consistency, rather than speed. Consistency is key, so that the body adapts to new changes, without stress. A constant back and forth is more damaging than the change itself. Making slow changes can help in adherence and so improve consistency. 

2. There will come a time when the low carb healthy diet, you started with, will no longer work to reverse obesity, no matter how consistent you are with it. 

Unfortunately, this is true in some cases. 
 
The long term effectiveness of any diet is whether it can regain and sustain proper blood glucose regulation. We have seen time and time again that it is very difficult to do this, particularly with diet alone since diet is not the only thing that affects blood glucose. Age, body composition, hormonal status (perimenopause, menopause), chronic conditions, injury, stress, etc. all affect blood glucose regulation. The normalization of blood glucose is the only thing that will affect insulin expression/release so you can regain insulin sensitivity. This in turn normalizes leptin expression so you can adequately burn body fat and maintain the balance of fat storage/burning, with what's coming in. That's a lot of multi-system juggling. 
 
Add to that the time dependency needed for this to actually work for the long term. This means you have to be able to consistently sustain this for a long enough duration that it actually makes a difference. For some people, they need a longer time than the life span they have left to live. This is particularly true if the steps to reverse this are started late in life. Remember, it took decades to develop the metabolic abnormalities that eventually lead to diabetes. You did not become obese overnight. It will take decades to correct it.

3. Even if you are still obese, as long as you are able to lower your HbA1C to 5.0, you have reversed your diabetes. 

No. HbA1C is not a good marker for determining disparities in blood glucose as it is only measuring average blood glucose within a three month period. This can easily include periods of very high blood glucose and very low blood glucose, which average out to a lower HbA1C. 
 
As long as you have excess body fat you are at diabetes's door. Excess body fat is the indicator that there is metabolic stress going on in your body. You have not normalized your blood glucose regulation. You have simply lowered the highs in blood glucose, while still having large disparities compared to the lows.

4. There is no difference between diabetes and hyperinsulinemia.

"Hyperinsulinemia" is a condition where basal insulin levels remain chronically high. But, this is not the only pathology that is occurring. It's simply the only one we can measure easily through a serum blood test. The more sinister aspect of hyperinsulinemia is what is not seen, which is abnormal insulin expression and action at the tissue level

Basically, with hyperinsulinemia, the pulsatile release of insulin seizes and the person simply sustains a higher than normal level all of the time. This completely disrupts metabolic function and further deteriorates proper blood glucose regulation. Certain tissues become insulin resistant, while others like the fat mass, remain and become highly sensitive to insulin action. This environment is the hallmark of what will become diabetes in the future. It's the beginning stage. 

Diabetes is the end stage, of this process, which occurs when glucose levels become chronically high in order to match insulin levels and function. The body adapts to being in a hyperglycemic state, so that the abnormal insulin cannot drop blood glucose too low. The set point for blood glucose continues to rise higher and higher with time, driving insulin demand higher as well. It is a vicious circle. Now you have high blood glucose, all of the time, and the body actively fights its lowering. This is what is described as diabetes. 

5. Can you be allergic to all meats?

You can be allergic to anything. The only one who would know for sure is a medical professional. You need to have the appropriate testing done, depending on the symptoms you are experiencing, so that proper treatment can be administered. Don't just assume and guess. Check and test. 

6. The appetite reduction on "keto" should always be of concern.  

An increase or decrease in appetite is only a concern, depending on context. Increases and decreases of anything, on their own, are meaningless. 

If you are losing weight, the reduction of appetite simply means that you are using fat stores for fuel and the body is currently not in need of additional dietary fuel. 

If you are not losing weight or are gaining instead, then the body is in active obesity mode and the reduction of appetite is coming from a thrifty metabolism that is not burning any fuel and so does not require any more of it. 

No comments:

Post a Comment