The heading should probably read “Turning Food into muscle, instead of Fat”. – To look at this, we need to discuss one of the great regulators within the body, – Insulin.
Insulin is responsible for glucogenesis, lipogenesis, and protein synthesis.
In normal English, this means that insulin takes care of turning food into protein, glycogen (energy), or fat.
Many of us have a sweet tooth. We are prone to overloading our systems with sugar. When too much sugar arrives in our bodies all at once, we create a “food processing” bottleneck for insulin.
I have struggled to come to grips with Insulin at times, and have the following analogy to offer.
Imagine your body is an Amazon warehouse. The sugar truck arrives (a morning breakfast with waffles and syrup) and packs all the parcels onto the conveyor belt at once. The workers (Insulin) cannot keep up with the processing of all these boxes arriving at the same time, but they have a trick. They grab the boxes which were destined for the muscles and other parts and pack them into a storeroom in the form of fat. The storeroom is the fat around your belly and the muffin-top of your hips.
Over time, these workers become “resistant” to all the sugar parcels and they begin to work less effectively. (INSULIN RESISTANCE)
The manager sees their plight, cancels the sugar delivery and the employees are no longer as resistant. In fact, they are so appreciative of the bulk sugar drop-offs, you could call them sensitive. (INULIN SENSITIVITY)
Consider yourself the manager of the delivered food parcels. Your own employees may be on a fattening go-slow too.
THIS IS HOW YOU CAN RESTORE YOUR INSULIN SENSITIVITY
For a period of 2 weeks, cut out all carbs and sugary foods.
30grams from a POST WORKOUT SHAKE is what’s allowed.
The free carbs found in vegetables are allowed, but for now, leave the bread, pasta, rice on the shelf.
After 2 weeks, you’ll have turned your insulin sensitivity back on and the food you ingest will be a superfood because it will be packed where it belongs and not around the belly.
During this process, chances are that you will feel tired and out of energy. This is because you’re mentally and physically in the habit of accessing starch, sugar, carbs as your main source of energy. When you remove the insulin spikes and start accessing fat as a source of energy, your energies will return, but this can take a few days. During this time, you can add a Bulletproof coffee to your morning routine, as this will ensure that your energy curve remains gradual.
Carbs are essential, and you can re-introduce them by means of Carb cycling and consuming them later in the day, but for 2 weeks, try to avoid the sugar, which causes insulin to spike and then cause insulin resistance.
Resetting your insulin resistance by cutting down on sugar, is probably the one single adjustment that most benefits your health and longevity.