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Your metabolism plays a vital role in energy balance and body weight. The secret to achieving good health and your ideal body weight is to gain a better understanding of how your metabolism works and how you can make it work for you, instead of against you.
The foods we eat have different effects on our hormones, which determine whether we store or burn body fat.
Consider the examples below:
Little Johnny eats an apple, and as a result, glucose enters his bloodstream and his blood sugar levels rise slightly. Insulin is then released by his pancreas to transport the blood sugar to his muscles, providing him with a burst of energy. He then burns off the energy and his blood sugar levels return to normal, and he starts to get hungry again.
This is how your metabolism is supposed to work. However, for a person with a poor diet, living a sedentary lifestyle full of stress and exhaustion, their metabolism can be affected dramatically, causing their body to go into fat storage mode. Typically, this person relies on caffeine, sugar and processed carbohydrates for an instant energy hit, just to get them through the day.
Big Johnny starts off his day with a double chocolate chip muffin and a caramel latte from Starbucks. The surge of sugar causes his blood sugar levels to sky-rocket, resulting in a ‘sugar high’ and a rush of insulin is released to transport the sugar to the muscles, or in this case, to his fat cells.
For an overweight, sedentary person, their muscle cells don’t need the energy, they are not exercising so their energy stores in their muscles (glycogen) are already full. Instead, the insulin transports the sugar to the fat cells, who welcome the excess sugar with open arms, resulting in weight gain.
This becomes particularly dangerous when eventually the fat cells become full. Insulin cannot deliver the excess blood sugar to the muscles OR the fat cells and so dumps it back into the bloodstream. This causes a person to become hyperglycemic (high blood sugar) and becomes problematic as it effectively closes the doors to the fat cells, and they won’t burn body fat until their insulin levels drop back down. They will continue to gain weight and increase their risk of type II diabetes and other chronic diseases.
HOW TO BECOME A FAT BURNER
As I mentioned earlier, carbohydrates, proteins and fats affect our bodies differently, therefore different foods we eat, have different effects on our hormones, particularly insulin and glucagon.
Insulin and glucagon work synergistically, meaning when one goes up, the other goes down and vice versa, determining whether the body burns or stores body fat. Insulin is our FAT STORAGE hormone and glucagon is our FAT BURNING hormone.
When our blood sugar levels are low and we need more energy, if food is unavailable, glucagon is released from the pancreas. It’s job is the complete opposite to that of insulin. Glucagon goes into the cells and causes fat to be released and converted into energy. Below is an explanation of how differently the body metabolises carbohydrates, proteins and fats:
Carbohydrates: Carbohydrates are converted immediately into sugar by the body. They have a direct effect on insulin and no effect on glucagon. When they are eaten, blood glucose levels spike and insulin is released to bring it back down. This is why we may get hungry at 11am after we have eaten a bowl of cereal and sugar for breakfast, we get a surge of energy, but within a couple of hours, we crash and feel hungry again. Fat burning will not take place when insulin levels are high. When we eat a high carbohydrate meal, our blood sugar levels are high, therefore insulin levels are high, and the fat burning switch is turned off because glucagon levels are suppressed.
Protein: Protein has a mild effect on insulin in the body. When we eat protein, our blood sugar levels rise gradually, a small amount of insulin is released, we feel full and don’t get the ‘sugar crash’. Protein is great for providing sustained energy for the body. It takes the body a long period of time to digest and helps the body build lean muscle mass, heal itself and is an essential macro nutrient as part of a healthy diet.
Fat: Fat has NO effect on insulin. It only causes a rise of glucagon, meaning we burn body fat when we eat fat. When we eat good fats like coconut oil, olive oil, nuts and good quality organic butter, our blood sugar levels aren’t affected, we have sustained energy and the release of glucagon causes our body to burn its own energy stores. If you are on a low-fat diet trying to lose weight, chances are you are constantly hungry, fighting the willpower to resist the 3pm chocolate fix, and still wondering why you aren’t losing weight. This is all to do with unbalanced hormones wrecking havoc on your body because of the foods you are eating.
I can’t emphasise the importance of getting enough healthy fats in your diet, particularly if you are trying to lose weight. Not only will the sugar cravings go away, you will also have more energy for your workouts and the nourishment your body needs to restore itself to it’s optimum body weight.
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