1. I have lost a lot of weight and eat two meals a day. Lately, I have found it works even better for my schedule to eat my two meals, very early in the day as I have a long work commute. I am basically done eating by 10:30 AM. I then won’t eat anything else until the following day. I am finding that I am slowly gaining weight. I don't understand. I have not veered off of my initial diet which helped me lose all of the weight and kept me in maintenance.
Your fasting times have increased and it seems like your body is not very happy with that. Remember, any treatment for obesity is in itself obesogenic. I know that's a terrible nightmare reality, but it’s true. Any challenge to fat mass only makes the body double down and try to hoard and store more of it.
You lost a significant amount of weight so you challenged your body’s fat mass as much as it will allow you to, especially if you reached leanness. It’s had enough and won’t accept more fasting. It has now shifted into active obesity mode and you are simply storing more fat than you should be from your two meals.
I suggest you either space out your two meals further apart or add a third one a bit later in the day. You have to make sure you keep your leptin expression going and not have it stall on you. The best way to do that is to increase your nutrient availability.
2. It is a “keto” myth that I can eat as much fat as I want and lose weight instead of gain.
Yes. At least, it becomes a myth at some point in your journey. It doesn't happen right away.
Going "keto" helps regulate blood glucose better. This normalizes insulin function allowing the body to increase its leptin expression and burn body fat. Usually the fatter you are, the better this works. Unfortunately, the fatter you are the quicker it stops working because it's not enough to break the starvation adaptation. That can only occur from sustaining long term proper blood glucose regulation.
"Keto", as it is followed online, never sustains proper blood glucose regulation in the long term. The diet is too low in protein, too high in fat and restricts the intake of carbs through "carb counting" individual food items, which is not the proper way to restrict carbs. It also usually incorporates "fasting" which is unnecessary as ketogenic protocols already mimic starvation. The massive amounts of fat eaten on this bastardized version of the diet, simply levels out with your weight set point and you remain less obese but obese none the less. This weight stall is when you can see your leptin is under expressed and does not react to the amount of fat you are consuming at all. Instead, it purposely under expresses further from the initial loss of body fat which occurred in the beginning. Worse. This stall also confirms that your blood glucose is not properly regulated.
I am going to elaborate on this just a little because it is easy to believe two common fallacies when this weight stalling effect takes place:
- Fallacy 1 - The person is consuming too many calories and now they are stalling or regaining weight.
- Fallacy 2 - This shouldn't be happening at all because the thinner the person is becoming, the more fat they should be able to eat as their leptin is improving and their metabolic rate should be increasing.
Well, neither are correct. Fallacy 1 is not what’s occurring for the obvious reasons I have discussed throughout this blog. Fallacy 2 is much more interesting but it is unfortunately not the case for the overweight/obese. In fact, the opposite occurs to them. Weight loss is not making their metabolism work as a healthy person’s would. It is actually doubling down on their tendency to be obese.
Obesity is a starvation adaptation and any challenge to the fat mass reinforces this. This means that their leptin expression continues to be reduced or reduces further as they become lean. Their metabolism will not react positively to dietary fat like you would expect since that's what occurs to a healthy, lean person. Remember how difficult it is for the lean to become fat, especially from dietary fat intake. Well, your weight loss does not make you suddenly obesity resistant like the lean. This is why obesity is a life long problem, even after you become less obese.
This is why concentrating on proper blood glucose regulation, not eating fat, should supersede any other goal because abnormal blood glucose regulation is what set the adaptation in motion.
3. You should "overeat" protein for extra energy.
The energy in protein is only used for the building of muscle mass. This is why people train for muscle building in a caloric surplus. The overweight/obese, who are not doing any significant training, should stick to their macros.
This is particularly true because most, who aren't athletes, do not know how to consume protein correctly and believe they can get “extra protein energy” by eating rib eyes. That’s not how it works. Protein comes with fat. This is why body builders use protein supplements not rib eyes, so they can avoid the fat.
4. They told me I shouldn't use coconut oil in coffee because it adds extra calories that I might not burn off.
"They" always get it wrong.
You shouldn't consume coconut oil in coffee because we never evolved to do so. It has nothing to do with calories. The proper way to think about this is as follows - You don't want too much added fat because you most likely do not have suffice leptin expression to burn body fat in response to it. If you don't burn enough body fat, then the added dietary fat will just add to your fat stores.
5. Calories matter especially to an overweight person.
I want everyone to start thinking about obesity in a different way because the traditional way of thinking about it will not help you.
Where calories are coming from matters most, especially to an overweight/obese person because the "where" is what affects blood glucose regulation. You are better able to tackle obesity when you target methods that aren't generalized like calories are but instead target methods that improve blood glucose homeostasis. What, how and when you eat are better strategies for building a proper diet. Remember obesity is not a simple "in/out problem". It’s a very complicated "out" problem. Many factors effect this, not simply the availability of what’s going in and out. You must burn fat, not calories, in order to reverse obesity.
6. I was told that "insulin resistance" will reverse when I become lean. Overweight people have "insulin resistance" due to weight gain.
This is half true. I have explained before how the overweight/obese have a high insulin demand and so they tend to have high insulin levels in order to keep their fat mass locked down. This is only half their problem though as many people who are overweight/obese do not have high insulin levels at all. So it's not insulin levels but insulin function.
Sometimes insulin levels correlate with this dysfunction but not always. The insulin function of the overweight/obese deteriorated first, due to the blood glucose dysregulation most commonly caused by an inappropriate diet. It is this deterioration that now keeps the weight set point high because their body becomes adapted at hoarding fat and preventing the lowering of blood glucose. Now it's like a vicious circle. Diet started the problem and now body fat helps maintain it.
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