Six common beliefs addressed, Part 109

1. Blood glucose should always be around 84 mg/dL.

Yes. You want it as close to that range as possible. Blood glucose should remain in the 84 mg/dL range, whether fasting or postprandial. This is to prevent large disparities between highs and lows in blood glucose, as it's these larges disparities that are the engine which ultimately runs metabolic disease. 

Metabolically healthy people usually run their blood glucose within the 84 mg/dL range. This is how we know that the body naturally appears to favor this range for blood glucose. 

2. Eating several small meals a day will make you obese. 

Obesity is very complex and no one practice causes it. Eating one large meal, once a day, can absolutely make and keep your obese, just as well as having several meals a day. Anything practice that disrupts blood glucose homeostasis, will result in obesity and metabolic dysfunction.

Obesity is driven by the state of your neuroendocrine (metabolic) system and many factors can affect this. It is a “compounding” condition. In other words, several things must be true, at the same time, in order to reach obesity. Obesity is not a line that’s crossed, but a ladder that’s climbed. For instance, the wrong amount and type of activity has to be accompanied by the wrong amount and composition of macronutrients, alongside the wrong amount and timing of meals. All these things together result in chronic blood glucose dysregulation. One thing compounds the other and so forth, until you have the perfect environment to gain and preserve body fat (obesity). 

High body fat only helps acquire even more body fat. So no, it’s not as simple as just eating several meals a day. It doesn’t work that way. 

3. Any thyroid numbers that are indicative of hypothyroidism, during active weight loss, should be addressed. 

Any challenge to fat mass will slow down thyroid function. This is a fact of fat loss. For this reason, many people feel a bit crappy when they are losing weight and some even stop their diet, assuming that it’s the diet's fault. It’s not. It’s the loss of body fat itself. 

The body does not like to lose body fat. It rather do anything to stop this, even if it has to break down its own lean muscle mass to do so. If you have excess body fat, you want to continue losing it because in the long run, this will be metabolically advantageous, regardless of how it makes you feel in the short run. If your symptoms are mild, you do not need to address any thyroid numbers, unless you have a specific, diagnosed, thyroid disease. Allow your body to go through the fat loss process, uninterrupted, because any “treatment” might stop and/or reverse your fat loss. 

4. If you lose weight, you lose body fat.

No. Body weight and body fat are two very different things. 

When you lose weight, you are losing mostly water and lean muscle mass, with a little bit of fat mass. When you lose body fat, you are losing fat, which is what causes metabolic abnormalities. For this reason, you want to take your focus away from the scale, as it does not tell you exactly what’s happening in your body. You want to focus on measurements, particularly around the middle. 

Weight is not what causes obesity, but rather it's excess body fat.

5. Calorie centric diets take "discipline and willpower". This is why people do not stick to them.

I always get a kick out of that, since calorically restricted diets were specifically designed for people without "discipline and/or willpower". That’s why they are based on reduction, rather than elimination. 

So, in reality, caloric restriction and "discipline/will power" are an oxymoron. 

6. Metabolism does not relate to obesity. 

Metabolic dysfunction is a syndrome that occurs when metabolism is adapted to sustain a high blood glucose, insulin and body fat set points. It is an adaptation towards starvation because this is exactly what occurs when you are starving. All metabolic hormones work in tandem to keep this metablolic state going until it is stopped.