Ang asks:

…I’ve started on a whole food diet. …very little processed crap- whole grains, fresh veggies, fresh fruit and low fat meat/soy/legume alternatives.. I feel great, my energy is higher, but I still can’t seem to lose the weight!!! What to you recommend to boost my metabolism?? Is there a secret that I just don’t know about?

Before I get to the “secret” that Ang alluded to, let’s first clear one thing up. Weight loss, and FAT LOSS, are two very different processes. They get interchange by the media and so called “medical professionals” very freely, but we must understand that WEIGHT is somewhat irrelevant when talking about health. I personally am considered clinically obese, even though I maintain 10% body fat, am healthy and energetic, and haven’t been sick -except for the odd minor cold- for years. We know that muscle weighs more than fat, so if you have increased your activity levels and are building muscle, you may actually see an INCREASE in weight before you start to come down. Don’t let the scale discourage you.

Health is a broad term. It encompasses many variables, so using a single measure such as cholesterol levels, or weight, or bone density -though providing good baseline information- doesn’t necessarily translate into telling you how healthy you are, only how you compare to the rest of the people your age.

Now that that’s cleared up… lets get to the secret:

But first, lets talk about 3 simple factors that influence our body composition…

1) Thermodynamics. It is a physical law that an energy system (like your body) can only shed stored energy (bodyfat) if there is a negative energy balance. Basically, Energy In < Energy Out. If you aren't burning more than you're eating, all the dieting in the world will not help you lose fat.

2) Insulin. First, read this article on the Insilin Response. Next, think about this notion: Our bodies have been on this earth, in one form or another, for about 2 million years. We have only discovered how to cook and processes foods that were previously inedible, or scarcely available (SUGAR, grains, starches, soy, flours, rice etc.) in the last 10,000 years. That’s less than 1% of our existence on Earth! It’s no wonder why our bodies have problems with refined carbohydrates (sugar).

To put it simply, our bodies just aren’t ready for the high sugar, high energy foods that are ever-present in our Westernized diet.

Our bodies are still cave-people. We still live in the same genes as our nomadic ancestors. As humans, we would generally walk all day, settle down for the night, and have 2-3 hours before the sun went down to hunt what we could, and gather the plants, nuts, seeds, and if we were lucky, fruit in our immediate surrounding. Notice, no grains, no starches, and no rice. Humans can not digest these foods in their raw form, and in the case of potatoes, can be mildly toxic if not cooked.

To keep our insulin levels low, we need to mimic our paleolithic forefathers and try to eat as close to their diet as possible.

Which is:

Meats
Vegetables
Nuts and Seeds
Some Fruit
Little Starch
NO SUGAR

As you can see, the list doesn’t get restrictive until we get into the sugar end of the spectrum. The reason for this? You guessed it… INSULIN CONTROL.

3) Ratio. To keep our insulin levels low, we must eat foods that don’t stimulate a large pancreatic response, or in other words, avoid the sugars. To put it into perspective, 2 slices of bread (common to most sandwiches) contains about the same amount of sugar as 12 cups of broccoli. That’s a lot of fiber… yikes.

So how do you get energy without eating sugar?

Fun fact: Of the three macronutrients your body needs you to eat protein and and fat to live. If you stopped eating one of these essential compounds, your body would begin to eat itself, and you would eventually die from malnutrition. Carbohydrates however can conveniently be made from the protein and fat that you eat. So, you could, in theory never eat another carb and stay alive… you may not thrive, but will stay alive.

To keep your body full of energy, we need to make sure we are feeding our muscle’s energy stores (with glycogen) only enough to fuel our day to day energy needs, and not more. Excess energy intake gets stored in our body as fat (see step 1).

Fat loss is as simple as figuring out how much energy YOUR body needs to maintain a high level of activity, but not eating a surplus of energy. We do this by figuring out personal food quantity. I recommend getting yourself a copy of The Zone: A Dietary Road Map to Lose Weight Permanently by Dr. Barry Sears.

I don’t usually like to advocate a so-called “fad” diet, but if you do your research, the way Dr. Sears has, you will realize that there is sound science behind the Zone.

The zone is not a diet in the traditional sense. It is more of a rationing system. A way of quantifying how much food, and in what ratio, you need to function optimally, and to stave off disease. I will be writing a post in the future dissecting the zone a bit more, but I would strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book and trying out “zoning” for at least 3 weeks (usually how long it takes your body to adapt to a dietary change). Figure out your block prescription and weigh and measure your meals for at least a week so that your eye can develop a sense for what your personal macronutrient ratios are.

A key step to success with this eating system is getting over your fear of FAT. As I stated before, fat is essential to our survival, and is required for many vital bodily processes. (Fun fact: You brain is made up of 70% fat, and the fatty myelin sheath is what facilitates fast neuro-processing… so eating fat may make you smarter?) Fat is what makes you feel full, and satiated, which is the reason most “diets” fail… you feel hungry all the time (re-read my post on the insulin response for why this happens in high carb, low fat diets).

Are you ready for the secret to fat loss?

The truth is, you already know it, and you learned it in kindergarten: You are what you eat.
So eat REAL food, the way your caveman ancestors did, which coincidentally, keeps your insulin response low, and trains your body to begin using stored body fat for energy… and once that is used up, dietary fat in a process called ketosis (more on this in a future post).
You will get a long way toward your goal of fat loss by just cleaning up what you are eating, eliminating the grains, rice, pastas, breads etc., that require processing for us to digest, and cause an insulin spike. If you want to fast track these results, you will start figuring out your ”zone blocks” so that you’re only feeding your body enough to stay active, and lastly, make sure you keep your activity up, and continually try new things like CrossFit to keep that pesky law of thermo dynamics in check.

Related Topics

• How to eat healthy on the road.
• The Insulin Response
• Diet: Another Four Letter Word

In the video Robb Wolf explains how our body’s resistance to insulin happens very much analogous to they way our olfactory reaction to perfume is very strong when we first smell a new scent. That smell fades however as our noses become desensitized to the perfume’s aroma. To experience the smell with the same intensity as the first inhale, we either have to increase the amount of perfume (similar to having to increase drug dosages to maintain effectiveness), or decrease our exposure to it. The sad reality is that most people choose the former when it comes to insulin levels.

When insulin resistance occurs, the body has trouble releasing the energy that it has already stored in fat cells, and thus asks for more food to burn as instant energy in the form of hunger pangs. If this demand is satiated by carbohydrates, as is common in North American eating habits, the cycle continues to repeat itself, and fat stores grow while energy levels need continuous “topping-up” with more carbs.

To elaborate what I said in the post on the insulin response, eating low Glycemic Index (GI) carbohydrates, in conjunction with fats and protein, will keep your blood glucose levels low, and thus maintain a normal insulin response.

You body is stuck in an evolutionary past where sugar was relatively non-existent. Due to this environmental scarcity, when a sugar source was eaten your digestive system became very good at instantly storing it as fat, not knowing when the next opportunity for such a high energy intake would be.

If you would not like to be in a constant battle with your genetics, limit your intake of high GI carbs, and cut the refined sugar.

Robb Wolf is both a scientist and athlete as a personal trainer at NorCal Strength & Conditioning. Robb is an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. In addition, he is a USAW Olympic Weightlifting coach, and a certified CrossFit Coach, the highest level of CrossFit training certification, possessed only by a handful of strength & conditioning coaches throughout the world.

Additionally, Robb is co-publisher and editor-in-chief of The Performance Menu.

Related Topics

• Milk. Part 1
• Supplementation. Macronutrients vs. Micronutrients.
• The Insulin Response

If this sounds like a familiar situation, fear not, for this is the work of insulin, the bodies Master Hormone. Sounds menacing doesn’t it? Insulin has earned this title, as it is the key player in both the processing of carbohydrates, and the body’s inflammation response due it’s control over what gets into and out of cells. Inflammation is an underpinning element in many diseases and immune deficiencies. Control your insulin response, and you can help control inflammation.

Fun fact: Carpel tunnel syndrome is an inflammatory response to insulin resistance.

Back to carbohydrates. When we eat a meal rich in carbs, blood sugar levels increase as the carbohydrates are broken down into their basic components – sugars. As blood sugar levels increase, insulin is released in response. Insulin is a storage hormone which moves glucose (sugar) from the blood into the muscles and fat cells for use as energy. In order to visualize this relationship better, take a look at the picture below.

The red and green shaded boxes point out the discrepancies between the peak blood glucose and peak blood insulin levels. This creates a lag in the time it takes for both processes to reach normal levels again (red box).

It is this lag time in normalization of insulin levels which gives us those sugar cravings after carbohydrate rich meals. This is because blood sugar levels are normal but we still have insulin present in the blood and that insulin needs something to do – without sugar to store it gets bored! So it has the effect of asking the body for more sugar. That’s why we get hungry even though we just ate a few hours ago.

If you read my post on triglycerides you will remember that carbohydrates get broken down into simple sugars (glucose) for use as instant energy. When your cells have absorbed all the glucose that they need, a process that is facilitated by insulin, the gatekeeper hormone, the excess is converted to glycogen via the liver. Glycogen is insulin’s antagonist in that it releases fatty acids from storage in response to protein and hunger, and acts to normalize energy levels.

Insulin is also very important for muscle gain (many bodybuilders artificially inject insulin to gain mass), but if you are constantly causing an insulin response by consuming lots of carbohydrates, you run the risk of developing insulin resistance.

Like many processes in out bodies, insulin has an effectiveness threshold, a level at which our bodies perform optimally. The mechanism is analogous drug tolerance, and why drug addicts never again reach the pleasure if their first high with out significantly increasing the intake levels. Our bodies are very quick at adapting to over stimulation, and if insulin is constantly in your blood stream, your cells develop a resistance. Your body tries to counter act this by pumping more insulin into your blood stream.

Why is this bad?

When too much insulin is in your blood stream, and resistance occurs, nothing gets into or out of your cells. This means that all the glucose from the carbs you keep consuming is turned directly into glycogen. Since glycogen stores have limited space in your muscles and liver, the extra glycogen is converted to fat, which has unlimited storage space (especially in the abdomen and love-handles). Furthermore, with nothing getting into, and more importantly, out of your cells, your body can not get at the fat it has already stored for use as energy, and thus tells you to eat more carbohydrates. It’s a vicious cycle, but one that you can get out of.

You have to learn how to control the insulin response to some degree. If you can decrease the amount of sugar you dump into our blood, thereby decreasing the size of the peak in blood glucose levels, the insulin response will decrease accordingly. By leveling off the peaks and valleys in insulin during the day you’ll be able to exit that ‘hunger rollercoaster’ that plagues millions, and reduce your risk of developing insulin resistance.

So how do I manage my insulin levels?

• Lower your carbohydrate intake and CUT THE SUGAR! I can not stress this enough. If you want to lose fat, and increase your insulin sensativity, this must be your first step.
• Choose your carbohydrates wisely. Leafy green plants, and other vegetables that are high in fiber do not trigger a large insulin response.
• Eat carbohydrates in conjunction with fats and protein. Both fat and protein do not cause much of an insulin response and will slow it’s release.
• Get some good sleep!

Chronic high blood pressure, prolonged exposure to low level stress, and lack of sleep all impair tissue sensitivity to insulin. Understanding the relationship between insulin and glycogen is important for understanding why fat loss while maintaining a high carbohydrate diet is nearly impossible. Hopefully you now have a better grasp on what happens when you eat that twinkie, and why saying “it goes straight to my hips” is not just a figure of speech.

If you have further questions, head over to the Ask a Question page and leave one.

Fun fact: Have you ever noticed how long distance runners, while usually very trim, never really get “six pack” abs? This is because the layer of fat around the abdomen is typically cause by increased cortisol levels, a stress hormone that is triggered by lack of sleep and over training.

Related Topics

• Robb Wolf of CrossFit HQ on Insulin Resistance
• The Secret(s) to Fat Loss
• Milk. Part 1