Carbs are like a certain ethnic food. An hour later and you're hungry. It's great to always believe stereotypes, because they are always absolutely true. Obviously, too many easily digested carbs instigates a massive insulin response, which steals too much bloodsugar and stores it away, eventually as fat. The result, low bloodsugar, is a hunger cue. Whether the cue originates from some monitoring mechanism in the brain, or emanates from energy-deprived cells, is speculation, and fundamentally irrelevant. But we'd like to know.
Because it's so odd that a calorie-restricted diet that is low-carb but includes lots of fat is not accompanied by hunger. This is the overwhelmingly reported experience of dieters, even under clinical supervision. Whether it's the absence of carbs that eliminates hunger, or the surfeit of fat, is, again, speculative. The phenomenon itself is what's important in practical terms. But it's both, of course.
Refined carbs make you hungry. Ample dietary fat satiates you. Given two calorie-restricted diets with the same number of calories, the high-carb diet will make you lethargic and fatigued and irritable, while the fat-rich diet will leave you with less blubber and more energy. The cellular starvation created by too much insulin, which overfeeds fat cells, is avoided in the absence of insulin and the presence of FFAs in the bloodstream.
Indeed, starvation and fasting are both notable for the absence of hunger. Whereas, feed a few hundred calories of carbs to someone who's fasting, and they become ravenous. So, hunger is decoupled from calorie intake. Hunger is dependent on insulin and the type of macronutrients ingested. Hunger is not about a taste, not about a fullness in the belly, not about calories per se in the bloodstream. It's about insulin acting on bloodsugar. So the data suggest.
If thermodynamics is what it's claimed to be, then leanness and obesity is a straightforward proposition. If calorie intake goes up and energy output also goes up -- as either heat or activity -- then there is no significant weight change. Likewise, if energy-in is decreased and so is output -- reduced bodyheat or activity -- same result, of no weight change. If it's more energy in and less energy out -- due to either reduced heat or increased storage -- well, obesity. And then there's less in, more out. Thinness.
That's the theory. Thermodynamics.
It's not everyone's problem, that this theory does not work for fat people. Some people are just not inclined to fat, and their example is not helpful to those who are. But the reality is that for healthy people, by which is meant people with a not-hysterical insulin response, they can eat junk food and look good. But those who tend to obesity, not so much. They store it. Likewise if their calorie intake goes down, and their activity level goes up, or down. They store it. They will always store it, regardless of thermodynamics.
Indeed, starvation and fasting are both notable for the absence of hunger. Whereas, feed a few hundred calories of carbs to someone who's fasting, and they become ravenous. So, hunger is decoupled from calorie intake. Hunger is dependent on insulin and the type of macronutrients ingested. Hunger is not about a taste, not about a fullness in the belly, not about calories per se in the bloodstream. It's about insulin acting on bloodsugar. So the data suggest.
If thermodynamics is what it's claimed to be, then leanness and obesity is a straightforward proposition. If calorie intake goes up and energy output also goes up -- as either heat or activity -- then there is no significant weight change. Likewise, if energy-in is decreased and so is output -- reduced bodyheat or activity -- same result, of no weight change. If it's more energy in and less energy out -- due to either reduced heat or increased storage -- well, obesity. And then there's less in, more out. Thinness.
That's the theory. Thermodynamics.
It's not everyone's problem, that this theory does not work for fat people. Some people are just not inclined to fat, and their example is not helpful to those who are. But the reality is that for healthy people, by which is meant people with a not-hysterical insulin response, they can eat junk food and look good. But those who tend to obesity, not so much. They store it. Likewise if their calorie intake goes down, and their activity level goes up, or down. They store it. They will always store it, regardless of thermodynamics.
Because insulin trumps physics. Biology then is a sort of metaphysics. Not really. Only sort of.
Mixed in with all this mystery, this alchemy, is hunger. Just as glycerol transforms free fatty acids into triglycerides, insulin transforms carbs into hunger. Dietary fat plays at most only a minor role in any of this. How odd.
Obese people then have two problems relevant to this discussion. Insulin hysteria is one. The other is that they release free fatty acids from adipose cells more slowly than lean people do. They hoard it. So there's less energy available between meals. Cells are starved. Hunger. Because the last meal's glucose was hoarded away by insulin. Double hoarding.
So many complex ideas, and no matter how clearly or simply expressed, hard to remember. Not because they're complex, though. Rather because, just as insulin undermines fat loss, emotion sabotages change. That's just another reason why other people are so important in making lasting change. Willpower is great. So is encouragement and objectivity.
Mixed in with all this mystery, this alchemy, is hunger. Just as glycerol transforms free fatty acids into triglycerides, insulin transforms carbs into hunger. Dietary fat plays at most only a minor role in any of this. How odd.
Obese people then have two problems relevant to this discussion. Insulin hysteria is one. The other is that they release free fatty acids from adipose cells more slowly than lean people do. They hoard it. So there's less energy available between meals. Cells are starved. Hunger. Because the last meal's glucose was hoarded away by insulin. Double hoarding.
So many complex ideas, and no matter how clearly or simply expressed, hard to remember. Not because they're complex, though. Rather because, just as insulin undermines fat loss, emotion sabotages change. That's just another reason why other people are so important in making lasting change. Willpower is great. So is encouragement and objectivity.
FitWorks does fitness. Yes, exercise, because strength and speed and endurance are important. But diet too. Because we are made out of what we eat. Sort of a quality control thing. So FitWorks does nutrition too. We think of ourselves as what happens between starting, and getting there.
FW
CrossFit Burbank
CrossFit Burbank
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