1. Increasing muscle is the "cure for diabetes".
The healthy who have plenty of muscle mass, can ward off diabetes for a long time. The greater the muscle mass, the more time they allot themselves from succumbing to the condition. This is because muscle is very metabolically active and so it’s a buffer against blood glucose dysregulation. So muscle can be a great antidote for diabetes. It only has one caveat - it must be taken before the poison begins to take effect. In other words, it works like a vaccine, not a medicine.
Many people, who do not understand what diabetes is, usually resort to "the opposite must be good" solutions. For instance, diabetics always have low muscle mass, so they assume that high muscle mass would “cure diabetes”. Or, diabetics have high body fat, so they assume that low body fat would “cure diabetes”. Not so fast.
Diabetes was not directly caused by the low muscle mass or the high body fat. The pathological metabolic adaptation that caused the body to break down muscle and spare body fat is what eventually leads to diabetes. Once that ball is set in motion, both the low muscle mass and high body fat work in unison to progress the condition.
Diabetics will not magically increase their muscle mass. They do not have proper insulin function for glycogen and amino acid synthesis. All of their insulin is actively working on their fat mass instead and not anywhere else. In order to increase muscle mass, you need to be in a metabolic state that is cooperative for this effect to take place.
This is why I get a kick out of watching diabetics "lifting heavy" for absolutely no reason. All they do is get winded and give up in about a day. A healthy person can "lift heavy" and see gains rather quickly. A diabetic can "lift heavy" and see high blood glucose rather quickly. This is because the heavy lifting is stimulating their adrenal stress response more than activating their muscle building. Worse, whatever little muscle they do gain, is quickly broken down, by that very same stress response, for even more glucose creation. The diabetic is simply melting into a puddle of glucose except for their fat. That will always remain intact.
This is why the hormonal environment that is perpetuating the diabetes must be stopped first. Until it is, the diabetic will not gain muscle nor lose body fat as only healthy people build muscle and burn fat.
2. A lot of low carb advocates say that meal timings do not matter and you should just "listen to your body". They say to eat when you're hungry and don't eat when you're not.
When the body is delusional, it cannot be listened to because you would only be listening to the ramblings of madness. You only listen to your body if you are experiencing some sort of health problem. We all know when something "just isn't right" and that's when you have to seek the care of a healthcare professional. As far as hunger/no hunger is concerned, the obese should never listen to any of it. It's all a lie.
The reason low carb advocates are giving out this silly advice is because they are just like calories in/calories out (CICO) advocates. Their diets are only focused on one thing. For low carbers the only focus is carbs and for the CICOs, the only focus is calories. This is why neither one has been able to successfully tackle obesity because treatments fail when they are incomplete.
There was never a time in our history when we were allowed things out of sheer will or want. Food is one of those things. We didn't get to eat just because we were hungry. We ate when food was available to us and that was dependent on a lot of things. For this reason, you need to have specific meal timings because that's when food will be available to you. You cannot guide yourself by hunger because hunger is subjective. Take solace that in modernity, you can at least designate meal timings because hunter/gatherers usually can't even do that.
Hunger either means there is something wrong with your diet or your experiencing it when you shouldn't be. If there is something wrong with your diet, then you are either not eating enough during meal times or eating the wrong macronutrient composition. If you are experiencing hunger when you shouldn't be, then this is a psychological/behavioral issue that needs to be dealt with other than by eating. This is a "pseudo hunger" which is more akin to cravings than real hunger and usually has to do with dopamine dysregulation in the obese.
This is why meal timings are so important. They should be adhered to diligently. If it's up to the obese, they would either eat all of the time or none of the time. Both disrupt proper blood glucose regulation. Do you know what doesn't disrupt blood glucose regulation? Consistent, predictable meal times. This is one of the main recommendations given to diabetics and there is a reason for it. It is much easier to control blood glucose regulation when food availability is consistent and predictable. Of course, this should be done with proper meals, not snacks.
Adhering to meal timings helps:
- Ward off hunger. When you eat at specific meal times, the body's circadian rhythms follow suit and you will become hungry at those predictable times and not hungry when you're fasting. Hunger during fasting only ends up interrupting the fast.
- Avoid spontaneous food items. When you know what your meals will be and what times you will have them, it will prevent you from grabbing something "to go" or "along the way". You will be able to prepare meals ahead of time and schedule activities around those times so there are no interruptions.
- Better hormonal control. When you eat at predictable times, your hormones work as they should - in a pulsatile manner. This allows for better blood glucose control.
Always eat at your specific meal times, even if you aren't hungry because you will be hungry later. That's why back in grandma's time, kids had to eat dinner even if they wanted to play instead because no one was allowed to eat at midnight. Grandma knew that the kids will get hungry at some point and if they got hungry at midnight, then cookies would be the only option for them since no one is cooking a real meal at midnight. This is why the midnight sandwich, which is so bad for health, became so popular. So kids ate dinner at dinner time or not at all.
Skipping meals for the obese is not a good habit to have so the "not at all" option is off the table. There would be no reason to not be hungry at your meal times considering that you would be fasting for 16 -18 hours a day. But, if that is the case, it only reinforces that you have active obesity as many obese have such slow metabolisms, that they are never hungry.
If you have never had a consistent meal timing pattern, you will experience this non-hunger in the beginning but it will wane as the body becomes used to food availability at a specific time. Your meal time will eventually become the bell of Pavlov's dogs.
3. Since "eat less, move more" doesn't work, you can eat as much as you want as long as the foods are “healthy”.
The way to avoid metabolic syndrome/obesity/diabetes is to avoid what causes them - blood glucose dysregulation. Period. Eating less and moving more causes blood glucose dysregulation because if you aren't burning body fat, while exercising and starving, then your blood glucose will suffer from a stress response. Eating as much as you want of anything, healthy or not, causes blood glucose dysregulation as well because excess eating affects insulin to glucagon ratios.
When we say that "eating less and moving more" doesn't work, we are referring to calorie deficit diets. Counting total calories and keeping them at a deficit does not cause significant nor sustained weight loss because of its negative effects on leptin. Obesity is chronic leptin under expression. Starvation further reinforces this. This does not mean you can eat as much as you want as long as it's healthy. This just means that calorie deficits do not work for obesity.
You have to follow the right macronutrient composition alongside their right amounts. Remember, over eating of anything, interrupts insulin to glucagon ratios which affect blood glucose. This is much more prevalent in people who already have metabolic syndrome as they usually have hyperglucagonemia when they don’t require glucose (postprandial) and hypoglucagonemia when they do (fasting).
So you have to not starve but not over eat. Both starvation and overeating interfere with proper blood glucose regulation just like a high carbohydrate diet would. In order for you to live an antiobesogenic lifestyle you have to target all things that interfere with proper blood glucose regulation.
4. I consistently eat a clean, low carb diet but I am still having issues with feeling sleepy after meals. My doctor told me this was normal as the body is trying to conserve energy for digestion. Many people who follow low carb, claim they have been "cured" of their after meal sleepiness, but I haven't been. I don't think this is normal.
It is but it isn't. Feeling sleepy after meals is not uncommon and it's not necessarily abnormal but there is a general similarity in the people who experience this. They are usually elderly or obese/diabetic. This makes sense because people who are elderly or obese/diabetic are in an energy crisis. They simply cannot use energy properly or efficiently and so they become tired quickly. Digestion takes a lot of energy and so you might experience feeling more sleepy after meals if you have metabolic conditions than if you didn't.
5. Low carb people have resorted to eating insects.
This is a gimmick.
Aside from that, insects are completely fine to eat if you like them and can sustain that type of diet. Insects are eaten liberally in many countries around the world. After all, they are the easiest prey you can ever hunt.
When it comes to metabolic syndrome/obesity/diabetes, no one food item or diet can prevent it. Only one thing matters - blood glucose regulation. As long as your chosen diet can sustain proper blood glucose regulation, you will not develop these metabolic abnormalities whether you eat dragon flies or buffalo.
So, all of these low carb people will tell you to eat this or eat that but, if you listen to them, the only thing you're eating is BS. Insects are fine but fecal matter is not.
6. Low carb advocates claim that "keto" is not a fad diet because it has been around for a long time.
First, let’s define what a fad is. According to the dictionary, a fad is "an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze". That is pretty much what "keto" is. You can break it down for yourself. Is there an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for it? Yes. Is it short lived and without basis in quality? Yes. Is it a craze? Yes.
Classic ketogenic diets have been around for a very long time and they are used for the treatment of intractable epilepsy and other neurodegenerative conditions. These diets have been successful because of the way the brain utilizes energy. Ketogenic diets change the way the body uses its energy, including the brain.
They have never been fads. In fact, most people have never even heard of them. They have never been marketed as a "weight loss hack" because they are actually extremely difficult to follow. The only people who follow such extreme diets are the ones who have no choice. It’s either try to take control of epilepsy ketogenically or have brain surgery. These diets have also been much more successful in epileptic children than adults. This is probably due to adherence factors. Children do not have a choice on what diet to follow. Adults have the choice of whether they can sustain the diet or not.
Ketogenic diets for "weight loss" and metabolic health have also been around for a long time. They have just gone by a different name, other than "keto". They have simply always been known as low to moderate carb diets.
"Keto", on the other hand, is a bastardized version of a low carb diet. It is completely without basis because it is not addressing metabolism at all. It is just producing ketones from the burning of dietary fat. The diet is short lived because sooner or later the people who follow it realize they are still obese and whatever benefits they experienced initially begin to wane and reverse. Those people leave or alter the diet and new suckers are drawn in. This is why the diet is still around.
There is always a new sucker that can be enticed with empty promises. The advent of social media creates an endless crowd of suckers so unlike diets of the past, which have all come and gone, "keto" will be around until the end of time because it is not dependent on magazines, books or the news to stay alive. It can live happily, just sitting online, waiting for the right fool to come across it.
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