Friday, May 14, 2010

Fat doesn't make you fat. SUGAR and Hormones make you Fat.

Lets dispel a quick myth here. DIETARY FAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT. Thats all in caps, because I want you to read it again.

There are Essential Amino Acids(Protein), There are Essential Fatty Acids(FAT), There are no Essential Carbs.

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Thor Says: Not all Fat is bad, Sugar is the real problem!

(my private Disclaimer: This is NOT Atkins. Atkins got the no sugar thing right and so many other things wrong. Ill do another writeup on the "fad diets" and what they did or didnt get right scientifically)




Now, our body can use Carbohydrates. Its a quick source of fuel for filling up muscle and liver glycogen for activity. However our body is designed to store Fat and use Fat when needed for energy. Its our own personal Battery Pack. Some of us carry around Backup Batteries, but thats easy to change.

Americans and for the most part modern civilization has taught our bodies to pull energy from a steady constant intake of carbohydrates, being very adaptive, our bodies are more than willing to accede.

However, whenever we take in Carbohydrates, our bodies release Insulin, the Hormone that shuttles those carbs to storage.
if the primal batteries, our muscle and liver glycogen are full.. we gain fat. If we release too much insulin due to being insulin resistance, we store it as ... Fat.

If you dont eat many refined Carbohydrates or Sugar, your Insulin is not released, therefore your body is not primed to shuttle that energy to the fat cells and instead uses it.

Sugar can invoke a number of other responses besides the unnecessary release of Insulin

  • Sugar is Inflammatory, creating stress in your body.
  • Sugar disrupts Protein to Muscle conversion.
  • Chronic High Blood Sugar causes Leptin and Insulin Resistance, leading to Diabetes, Obesity and Worse.
  • Sugar is the preferred food choice for all kinds of bad gut bacteria.(Candida etc)
  • Sugar has been linked directly with Cancer.
  • Sugar can lower your Immune System.
  • Irritable Bowel
  • Accelerated Aging of Cells
Heres a Great PDF on the Adverse Effects of Dietary Fructose:
Mark Sisson, over at Mark's Daily Apple does a great job explaining the Sugar/Diabetes Connection



Ready for this? Let’s go:
1) The levels of blood glucose stay higher longer because the glucose can’t make it into the muscle cells. This toxic glucose is like sludge in the bloodstream clogging arteries, binding with proteins to form harmful AGEs (advanced glycated end-products) and causing systemic inflammation. Some of this excess glucose contributes to a rise in triglycerides, increasing risk for heart disease.
2) More sugar gets stored as fat. Since the muscle cells are getting less glycogen (because they are resistant), and since insulin inhibits the fat-burning enzyme lipase, now you can’t even burn stored fat as easily. You continue to get fatter until eventually those fat cells become resistant themselves.
3) It just gets better. Levels of insulin stay higher longer because the pancreas thinks “if a little is not working, more would be better.” Wrong. Insulin is itself very toxic at high levels, causing, among many other maladies, plaque build-up in the arteries (which is why diabetics have so much heart disease) and increasing cellular proliferation in cancers.
4) Just as insulin resistance prevents sugar from entering muscle cells, it also prevents amino acids from entering. So now you can’t build or maintain your muscles. To make matters worse, other parts of your body think there’s not enough stored sugar in the cells, so they send signals to start to cannibalizing your precious muscle tissue to make more – you guessed it – sugar! You get fatter and you lose muscle. Woo hoo!
5) Your energy level drops, which makes you hungry for more carbohydrates and less willing to exercise. You actually crave more of the poison that is killing you.
6) When your liver becomes insulin resistant, it can’t convert thyroid hormone T4 into the T3, so you get those mysterious and stubborn “thyroid problems”, which further slow your metabolism.
7) You can develop neuropathies (nerve damage) and pain in the extremities, as the damage from the excess sugar destroys nerve tissue, and you can develop retinopathy and begin to lose your eyesight. Fun.
8) Eventually, the pancreas is so darn exhausted, it can’t produce any more insulin and you wind up having to inject insulin to stay alive. Lots of it, since you are resistant. Congratulations, you have graduated from Type 2 to Type 1 diabetes.

So to summarize. Stop Eating or Drinking Sugar.

if you must have sugar, get it from fruit, not because Fruit Sugar is magical, but because we are better able to disperse the sugars when its release is more controlled by the natural fruit fibers, (this means no juice)

Also its significantly better to have your sugar, starches or Carbohydrates AFTER exercise, so that you can restore your muscle and liver glycogen, rather than just storing as fat.

Eating them before exercise just prevents your body from using fat as fuel and uses the carbs, and stores all the excess as Fat. But thats a lesson for another day.


Sugar causes Insulin and Leptin Resistance, and if we return to Lesson 1, thats what makes you fat. As your body becomes less and less effective, you store more as fat and use less as energy. What you mistakenly call (metabolism slowdown) is Hormonal Resistance aka Metabolic Syndrome. Its not a disease, its a lack of understanding how the body works, and it can be fixed. It just takes Time and a little Willpower.

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