I agree with the above. Remember the aim of all this is to get rid of visceral fat and excess fat in your liver and pancreas. Waist size is the tell tale measure. Intermittent fasting (16:8 hours, 5:2 days) can help by allowing time to burn fat.
This longish excerpt from '
What should we eat?' may help:
What is weight loss?
To understand how to lose weight, we need to understand what weight loss is. That should be obvious, but astonishingly few people know the mechanism by which we lose weight. This lack of awareness stems from the calories in/calories out (CICO) belief. The CICO brigade (I pronounce it psycho!) think that the mere act of putting fewer calories into the body will magically lead to weight loss. If only it were that simple.
Body fat is made up of fat cells that are full of triglycerides. Tri means three, as in tricycle or tripod, and triglyceride is a structure with three fatty acids joined together with a glycerol backbone. Whenever you see “glyc” in reference to the body, think sugar e.g., glycaemic, glycaemia etc. Body fat is thus three fats joined together with a sugar ‘backbone’. To lose weight, we need to break down this triglyceride structure. So, under what circumstances does this happen?
Fuel for the body
The human body has options when it needs fuel. The simplest and easiest fuel to use is glucose. Rare exercise exceptions aside, the body will look for stored glucose when it needs fuel. There are also some organs in the body, for example the heart and liver, which preferentially use fatty acids. But, in general, the body will fuel on glucose if any is available.
The human body has just four grams of glucose in the entire blood stream at any one time. That’s one teaspoon of sugar. If you consume any food that contains glucose (that’s any carbohydrate in essence), the body needs to deal with it quite rapidly, because a high blood glucose level can be damaging. Insulin is the hormone, produced in the pancreas, which brings down blood glucose levels. There are a number of ways in which insulin controls blood sugar. It allows glucose to be transported into muscles, where it is stored as glycogen. It also switches on the glucose storage system in the liver, turning glucose into glycogen. In addition to this, it can activate biochemical pathways in the liver that turn glucose into fat.
You may have heard athletes talk about ‘carb-loading’ before an event. They do this to fill up their glycogen stores. The body only has the capacity to store approximately 100g of glycogen in the liver and approximately 250-400g in the muscles. Given that glucose/glycogen is a carbohydrate and that carbohydrates have approximately 4 calories per gram, that’s about 1,400-2,000 calories of glucose fuel that can be stored by the body at any one time. If this glycogen (stored glucose) isn’t used within a 24 hour period, the body turns it to fat. Straight away this tells us that the body does not like sugar. It keeps a tiny amount in the blood stream, and it doesn’t want to store much more in the liver and muscles. Sugar is toxic to the human body. I hope that you’re already wondering why we are told to eat so much carbohydrate.
As a rule, when the body needs fuel, it looks for glucose first. If glucose is available, it doesn’t need to look any further. When and only when the glucose has run out, the body will look for other fuel – fat, for example. The body is quite happy fuelling on fat. However, it finds carbs easier, and our current diet has led to most people having a sub optimal ability to fuel on fat. The body can be retrained relatively quickly and easily. Professors Phinney and Volek have led the way in explaining how to become ‘fat-adapted’ (Ref 5).
The body has two options for fuelling on fat: dietary fat and stored (body) fat. If you have recently had a butter coffee, for example, your body can use the fat from the butter for fuel. If you are out of stored glucose and out of dietary fat, your body can start to break down body fat. That’s weight loss. The body can also break down body fat if your blood glucose level gets low. The body knows that triglyceride comes with fat and a sugar backbone and thus it can break down body fat to get that tiny bit of glucose in the triglyceride structure.
The mechanism by which body fat is broken down involves a hormone called glucagon. Think of insulin and glucagon as equal and opposite hormones. Insulin takes glucose
out of the blood stream and stores fuel; glucagon puts glucose back
into the blood stream and accesses fuel. These two hormones are antagonists. They are not in play at the same time. If insulin is doing something, glucagon is dormant. If glucagon is doing something, insulin is dormant.
For most people in the so-called developed world, the only time we come close to breaking down body fat, i.e., losing weight, is in the middle of the night when we’re asleep. Those people eating the government recommended 55-60% of their diet in the form of carbohydrate, however, probably never get to this stage. They likely always have stored glucose available as fuel and never need to break down body fat.
For those who eat less carbohydrate, at approximately 4am the body might run out of glucose and the body might then break down body fat to access the glycerol and to provide some fatty acids for fuel. During the night, you’re not eating and so insulin is asleep. Glucagon is thus able to do its job as and when needed.
There are two vital points to make here:
i) If glucose is available, there is no need to break down body fat;
ii) If insulin is present, it is not possible to break down body fat.
What makes glucose available? Carbohydrates. What makes insulin present? Carbohydrates again, but also protein. The only macronutrient that doesn’t appear to have an impact on glucose or insulin is fat. I hope that you’re wondering even more by now why we are told to eat so much carbohydrate.
There is no guaranteed way to lose weight in that there is no guaranteed way to activate glucagon. However, there are certain things that we can do that make it possible and even probable that glucagon can and will break down body fat:
a) Don’t have glucose available as fuel;
b) Don’t have insulin present;
c) Do things that enable glucagon to be called upon;
d) Don’t do things that inhibit the operation of glucagon.
And that’s it. That’s how to lose weight. Let’s look at each of these in turn:
a) Don’t have glucose available as fuel.
To achieve this condition, you need to consume far less carbohydrate than current dietary guidelines advise. A typical female is currently advised to have 2,000 calories a day and she is advised to consume at least 55% of this in the form of carbohydrate. That would be a minimum of 1,100 calories in carbohydrate per day. The body can only use carbohydrate for fuel. The body can’t use carbohydrates for the body maintenance roles, such as building bone density, fighting infection, repairing muscles and cells etc. Those activities require fat and protein. Hence any carbohydrate that you consume needs to be used up as energy, or it will be stored as fat.
b) Don’t have insulin present.
To achieve this condition, we need to eat far less often than we are advised to do. Current dietary guidelines advise us to eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, have dinner and then snack. When are we ever supposed to burn body fat if we are topping up with fuel the whole time? Dieticians advise people to ‘eat little and often’ and to ‘top up your blood glucose’. Now that you know that you only have four grams of glucose in your blood stream at any one time and that more than this is toxic – do you think that this is good advice?
We are told to ‘graze.’ I give my view on grazing in conference speeches: “
Unless you are a cow, or want to be the size of one, stop grazing!”
Every single time that you put something in your mouth that contains carbohydrate or protein (that’s everything other than oil or lard basically) you stimulate insulin. Every time you stimulate insulin, you have just ensured that glucagon cannot do anything. You have switched off any chance of burning body fat.
c) Do things that enable glucagon to be called upon.
If you meet conditions a and b, annoyingly glucagon still doesn’t
have to swing into action. It is more likely that it will, but it doesn’t have to. As equal and opposite hormones, glucagon is the one that we have less control over. Activating insulin is easy – just eat almost anything. Activating glucagon is more difficult. You need to give glucagon a reason to do something.
Once conditions a and b are met, the best way to activate glucagon is to increase your need for fuel. Make the following phrase your way of life: “
Eat naturally move naturally.” You need to do what human beings are designed to do. I described this in my obesity book as “
walk, talk, dance, sing, cook, clean and tend the land” (Ref 6). This is what we need to do to give glucagon a reason to do its work. And always remember – conditions a and b must be met first or glucagon won’t be breaking down body fat.
Activity doesn’t have to be physical. The brain is one of the most energy intensive parts of the body. Reading, doing your daily work, doing crosswords or Sudoku puzzles – these activities require fuel, and the body will look for some if none is obviously available.
d) Don’t do things that inhibit the operation of glucagon.
The most important thing to mention here is alcohol. Alcohol beautifully undermines the calorie theory. Alcohol – as opposed to any other ingredients included in alcoholic drinks, such as grapes or grains – contains approximately seven calories per gram. The calorie theorists think that alcohol will make you fat from the calories it contains. However, the body cannot store alcohol. There is no mechanism by which alcohol
per se is turned to body fat. So how can the calories in alcohol make us fat if they can’t be turned into fat?
The issue with alcohol is in fact not its calorie content, but the fact that alcohol impairs the operation of glucagon (Ref 7). The body registers alcohol as a poison and the liver thus prioritises getting rid of the substance ahead of doing the many other jobs that the liver must do. This means that maintaining blood glucose levels, by accessing glucose or breaking down body fat, becomes less of a priority.
If you have alcohol in the evening (which is when we tend to consume it), we inhibit glucagon from working for some hours following. Exactly how many hours will depend on how much you’ve had to drink, how quickly your liver gets rid of alcohol and other individual factors. As a rule of thumb, it takes approximately one hour for the liver to process one unit of alcohol. During the time that the liver is getting rid of the alcohol, you won’t be burning fat. Importantly, you won’t be burning glucose either because i) the body will preferentially burn alcohol instead of glucose and ii) the liver is too busy dealing with the alcohol to bother with glucose or body fat.
You may have spotted another issue here. Because the body prioritises getting rid of alcohol above regulating blood glucose levels, alcohol drives the munchies. While the liver is processing the alcohol, it is not topping up blood glucose levels and hence they can fall, which makes you hungry. You know this. You know that the greasy takeaway only ever looks enticing when it’s midnight and you’ve been drinking. In broad daylight, leftovers look distinctly unappetising. This is why some alcoholic drinks are called an aperitif. They are intended to stimulate the appetite before enjoying a good meal.
