We hear the statistics on the epidemic of overweight people in our society and wonder how this could be so bad. Yet is easy to understand when we boil it down to two factors that allow this to happen. Eating the wrong sorts of foods and too much of them and not doing enough muscular activity to burn up the fuel that is going into our bodies.
When we are young we can eat pretty well anything we like and our muscles remain firm, our body agile and slim. But that changes as we get older and as each year passes it becomes increasingly harder to stay in shape. We tend to accept this fact of storing more body fat and retaining less muscle tissue as merely a part of getting older.
But it has little to do with the number of years as there are plenty of people at 50, 60 and older who are in great shape with low body fat levels and firm toned muscle. So, what are they doing that is different from the majority of the rest of us?
Their secret does not lie in low calorie diets or eating low fat foods, it lies in the control of one simple hormone. Most people mistakenly believe this hormone is something that only people with diabetes need to worry about… but it is the key to controlling how much fat our body uses and how much it stores.
If you enlist this hormone in your weight loss game plan, you can have the metabolism (your body’s engine) of a 25-year-old… and the body to match. The secret to losing weight is in your biological hormones and if you balance your cellular reaction to sugars and starches you control your hormones. And if you control your hormones – one in particular – it will help you burn off excess body fat and help you retain lean muscle tissue which is the driver of your metabolism.
So your best defense against continually gaining weight is learning how to control the storage hormone called insulin. It takes nutrients from your blood stream and stores them in your body’s cells. You produce insulin when your blood glucose rises particularly after eating foods that are high in sugar or starch. Blood sugar is then transported to your muscle cells to be used for energy and this is where having strong toned muscles is critical in the weight loss/gain cycle.
If the muscle cells have been allowed to become weak and flabby through not doing enough muscle building and maintaining activity they have low energy requirements so they can only take up small amounts of glucose from the blood. The rest gets stored as excess body fat which is what we are seeing in record numbers in our inactive society.
If you are constantly eating highly processed foods loaded with starches and sugar, your body is always producing insulin. This leads to your body becoming resistant to the hormone as it cannot take up the glucose because it is simply not being used and the cells are already full.
When you become resistant to insulin your body starts making more of it t try and clear excess glucose from the blood stream where if it hangs around too long it does major damage to organs tissue and cells (hello diabetes).
Suddenly you are not burning fat anymore you are just storing it up and the problem just continues to escalate. The only way off this dangerous weight gain merry-go-round is to get rid of as much processed foods as possible and replace them with natural whole foods that you cook from scratch. Smalls meals every 2-3 hours are the way to go with a source of protein at each of those meals.
It is not about eating less food but eating better quality food and more often. Add a proper strength training exercise program 2-3 times each week and get your muscular system toned up as it should be so it can burn some of the excess fat from your body. Fuel is burned in muscle cells so their condition is critical to lose weight.
Yes it is going to take a bit of effort to turn this situation around but the alternative is to continue gaining weight with unbalanced hormones and seriously risk your health somewhere down the track. It will be worth every minute you put into this task. Think of it like a part time job – you will need new skills and new ways of doing things but every step you take is a step back to a strong, lean, healthy, slim body. Think of the prize not the price.
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