the times | Monday January 3 2022 3times2
typified by visceral belly fat, high
blood pressure, high blood sugar, high
triglycerides and high bad cholesterol.
These are associated with chronic
conditions such as arthritis, cancer
and dementia.
It all starts with insulin (known as
the fat storage hormone when we
were at medical school) and what’s
called insulin resistance. If insulin is in
our blood, we can’t burn fat. All food
causes insulin to be released into the
bloodstream — and carbohydrates
prompt the biggest release.
The more refined and/or processed
they are (think toast, cereal, biscuits,
cake), the more insulin is required.
These foods numb our satiety
hormone too, so hours later we’re
hungry again. But if we’re grazing all
day and into the evening, our insulin is
raised almost constantly and excess
energy is stored as fat.
Let’s jump ahead to the good
news. Once we correct our faulty
metabolism, in particular insulin
resistance, the weight drops off. We
will show you how to whisper to those
fat storage hormones and bring them
back into line. People can see a
difference in a month. If you eat
according to The Diet Whisperer
principles you will regain control —
of your hormones, your health and
your waistline. You will boost your
immunity too.Why you’re not burning fat
On a cold January morning you decide
to go out and you put on your coat.
You come back home, you take off
your coat. You can’t do both at once.
Our bodies are similar. They’re eitherburning fat or storing it. They can’t
do both at once. And what they are
doing depends on your hormones.
To reiterate — if you have insulin
circulating in your blood, you can’t
break down fat for fuel. Only when
insulin is absent can the hormone
glucagon start melting away body fat.
After eating, insulin is raised for two
to three hours in healthy individuals.
If you’re overweight and have insulin
resistance, it will be raised for about
six hours. All foods increase insulin.
Fat causes the lowest insulin release,
followed by protein. The highest rise is
caused by carbohydrates. It’s insulin’s
job to open our cell “doors” — to
escort glucose out of our bloodstream
and enter fat and muscle cells for
energy or to be stored as body fat.
Insulin was designed for the sparing
amounts of sugar in slowly digested
carbs such as carrots and greens.
The more refined, quickly digested
(unnatural amounts of sugar-
containing) carbs we eat, the more
insulin is required to open the cell
doors. Our pancreas, which produces
insulin, can barely keep up with
demand. Eventually, as sugar backs up
in the blood, our glucose levels remain
raised, as well as our blood insulin
levels, even overnight or in fasting
periods. That’s type 2 diabetes. It can
take months, or years, of increasing
insulin resistance for this to happen.
So it’s not obesity causing the problem;
insulin resistance leads to obesity.
Happily, it can be reversed.Why we’re carb addicts
Not all carbs are bad for us. Slowly
digested unrefined carbs, or fibre(vegetables, whole fruits, lentils, beans)
lower blood glucose and insulin and
are essential for health. They cause a
lower and slower rise in blood glucose.
The middle band is refined carbs.
Refined carbs include potatoes, rice,
flour, pasta and bread. When
consumed slowly and in moderation,
if your hormones are in balance, they
may not cause a problem. For
example, I don’t get a challenging
insulin rise if I have potatoes a few
times a week. Individuals react
differently — for Monique beer is a
problem, and for me it’s rice.
Sometimes I want a beer, potato or
rice, so I’ll go for a run — that’s my
carb cheat. Insulin opens the gate to
transfer glucose to your muscles, but
for two hours after exercise you don’t
need insulin for this. So once you are
not insulin-resistant, these are foods
you can enjoy in moderation. If you
want certainty, you can buy a
FreeStyle Libre glucose monitor to
see which foods have the biggest effect
on your glucose.
Far worse for our health are super-
refined carbs — sweets, fruit juices,
fizzy drinks, muffins, breakfast cereals.
Energy-dense, nutrient-poor and with
a high glycaemic index (GI), it’s their
high consumption that causes raised
insulin, insulin resistance, metabolic
syndrome and diabetes. Overload on
them and our bodies lose their shape.
Arms lose their definition, as do our
legs, neck, belly, face and bottom.
Super-refined carbs often contain
vast amounts of added sucrose (table
sugar, which contains 50 per cent
glucose and 50 per cent fructose).
Fructose is only metabolised in the
liver and in big doses puts the liver
under stress, eventually creating fatty
liver disease. If you do one thing to
help your hormones, avoid fructose
(unless you’re eating a whole fruit
because the fibre radically reduces
its absorption).
.
Why you’re always hungry
Ever eat a burger and chips at your
desk — or, indeed, granola and honey
— and then wonder why two hours
later you feel tired and starving again?
The sugar spike caused by fast-
digested carbs is brief (the insulin
moves it rapidly into the cells; if you’re
exercising it may go into muscle, but if
you’re sedentary it will be converted
into fat). But the insulin hangs around
for longer. And because now there’s
no excess glucose, our blood sugar
falls to below normal. (That tired,
shaky, I-must-eat-now sensation.) Low
blood sugar is dangerous, so our body
releases our hunger hormone ghrelin,
prompting us to feel ravenous again.
That sugar spike doesn’t just lead to
insulin resistance. It also leads to
leptin resistance. Leptin is our satiety
hormone — and if it’s not telling us
when we’ve had enough, we just keep
eating. High fructose corn syrup (in
fast food and fizzy drinks) directly
inhibits leptin and stimulates ghrelin.
Read the label. (But know too that if it
has a label, it’s not really food.)Get off low-calorie diets (yes,
that includes low-fat yoghurt)
We descend from men and women
whose hormones knew how to keep
them alive in times of food scarcity.And this is why your low-calorie diet
is doomed to fail. By eating sparingly,
you have started a war with your
survival system. When you are in
calorie deficit, your hormones slow
down your metabolism to preserve
energy — they’ll put you in power-
saving mode — and make you cold,
tired and miserable. This is called
hormonal homeostasis, which means
“keeping you the same”.
In this battle you are doomed to lose
— your body pulls out the big guns.
Ghrelin increases to boost your
appetite. You will be constantly hungry
and agitated. This is why you soon
stop losing weight on a calorie-
restricted diet. After the age of 35
we naturally lose muscle (between
3 and 5 per cent of our lean tissue
per decade, unless we do resistance
exercise) and yo-yo dieting increases
that loss as we lose fat and muscle,
then put it back on as fat.The gym won’t make you slim
You don’t need us to tell you that
exercise is fantastic for health and
fitness. We do a mix of resistance
training, running, cycling and
swimming. However, exercise isn’t the
way to lose weight. If your resting
metabolic rate is 2,000 calories a day,
and you do a one-hour run, burning
500 calories, it doesn’t buy you a free
chicken vindaloo and naan. This is
because your ever-vigilant hormones
will slow your metabolism for the rest
of the day by about 90 per cent of the
exercise value.
.
Know your food’s GI and GL
The glycaemic index (GI) of a food is
how quickly it raises glucose — that
is, how quickly it is digested and
absorbed into the blood. A GI of
below 55 is low, a GI from 56 to 69 is
medium, and anything above 70 is
high. Raw sugar has a GI of 100. Some
low GI surprises include plain full-fat
yoghurt (14, what a hero), lentils (32)
and full-fat milk (40). Boiled rice,
however, is high (73) — as is brown
bread (also 73). But GI isn’t everything.
Glycaemic load (GL) is how much
actual carbohydrate a portion of that
food contains. Watermelon and a
doughnut both have a high GI of 76.
Clearly, there’s a lot more glucose in
a doughnut (its GL is 17) than in a slice
of watermelon (its GL is 3).doctors’ rules and lose weight
COVER: GETTY IMAGES. BELOW: JOHN ANGERSON FOR THE TIMESAre you
a carb
addict?
1 Food doesn’t fill
you up.
2 After meals you
often feel tired.
3 You often feel
sluggish, especially
after lunch, and long
for a nap.
4 Your snack of
choice is a carb —
pastry, biscuit,
chocolate or cake.
5 You lose weight...
then put it back on.
6 You have mood
swings and feel
irritable and anxious.
7 You’re often hungry
and snacking
brings relief.
8 When hungry, you
get shaky, sweaty,
even headachy.
9 You find it hard
to sleep on an
empty stomach.
10 You wake in the
night feeling hungry.
11 A snack makes you
feel normal again.
12 You get brain fog if
you don’t snack.Dr Paul Chell and Dr
Monique Hope-RossFull-fat yoghurt
is the best snack
How to burn fat
If you must snack, plain full-fat
yoghurt (maybe with raspberries
and Brazil nuts) gives only a small
rise in insulin, allowing a quick
return to burning fat. In low-fat
yoghurt the fat is replaced by carbs
and the insulin release is greater,
preventing us from switching on our
fat burning. And we are soon hungry
again. The calorie value of fats is
9 calories per gram and sugar and
protein are both 4 calories per gram.
So, if you eat more fat, you get more
calories: true, but we want to reduce
our fat stores by using fat as fuel.