The core hormone for weight loss—insulin

The core hormone for weight loss—insulin

Shut up and move your legs. Eat less and move more and you will lose weight! The six-word motto for losing weight is simple to say, but not easy to implement. For many people, there is a period of time every year when they stick to these six words. As a result, they do not lose weight, or they rebound quickly and start to doubt their willpower.

But maybe, let me tell you, this has nothing to do with your willpower?

1. The role of insulin

First of all, we need to understand a core hormone for weight loss-insulin. Why is it so amazing? Let’s give a chestnut.

Everyone with type 2 diabetes has heard of it. It is caused by a relative or absolute deficiency of insulin caused by damage to pancreatic beta cells. Typical symptoms include "three more and one less", that is, eating too much and drinking too much. , urinate more, but lose weight. Many diabetic patients will lose weight if they do not take medicine or inject insulin, but they will not eat much at all and will be hungry from time to time. This does not conform to conventional logic. The reason is that the body lacks insulin, and the calories entered through food are not absorbed and are excreted in the urine. So even if you eat a lot, you will still not gain weight without insulin.

Let’s understand the role of insulin (Pharmacology, 8th edition, published by the People’s Health Bureau):

1. Promote fat synthesis, inhibit lipolysis, and reduce ketone body synthesis.

2. Promote the synthesis and storage of glycogen and inhibit the decomposition of glycogen and gluconeogenesis.

3. Promote the transport of amino acids, promote protein synthesis, and inhibit protein decomposition.

4. Accelerate heart rate, increase myocardial contractility, and reduce renal blood flow.

5. Promote potassium ions to enter cells and reduce blood potassium.

In short, insulin helps the body synthesize glycogen, fat, and protein and inhibits their breakdown!

This goes beyond our usual understanding of insulin, which is just a hormone that lowers blood sugar. In fact, it is much more than that. Insulin is in charge of our body’s energy account. It is a big housekeeper! Your weight or weight is completely under the control of the butler. So don't use willpower to lose weight. This is fighting against your body.

2. Why does losing weight harm metabolism?

Our energy expenditure has three major components: thermic effect of food (10%), physical activity, and basal metabolism, of which basal metabolism accounts for the majority (more than 60%). So why does dieting + excessive exercise damage a person’s basal metabolism? This is somewhat related to insulin. When a person is obese, the body may be insulin resistant, that is, the insulin in the body is high. At this time, if you adopt a diet + excessive exercise, and high levels of insulin are preventing the decomposition of fat, glycogen, and protein, don't you have to lower your basal metabolism to repay the cost of exercise? It's like if you need money to buy a car, but the housekeeper won't give it to you, you can only tighten your belt, save money, and give up buying clothes and bags.

3. How to control insulin?

So how can you control insulin? Let fat be decomposed smoothly to provide energy? (Let the housekeeper give you the money quickly)

We usually have a misunderstanding that only eating high-carbohydrate foods will increase blood sugar and then increase insulin. But many high-protein foods, although they do not increase blood sugar, can directly increase insulin. So many times, even if you eat low carb, you don't lose much weight.

Judging from the insulin index of foods published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, carbohydrates have the highest insulin index, followed by protein, while fat hardly increases insulin. We also found that skimmed milk greatly stimulates the secretion of insulin, so if you want to lose weight, drinking skimmed milk is a complete scam.

But the food we eat is complex, and it’s impossible to eat just one type of food at a meal. This means that as long as you eat, your body will automatically increase insulin. However, the magnitude is different, and the researchers conducted correlation analyzes between the protein, fat, and carbohydrate content of different foods and insulin responses. It was found that carbohydrates have a strong positive correlation with insulin, while fat, protein and insulin response have a negative correlation, and dietary fiber has a weak correlation.

But this does not mean that eating carbohydrates and then eating fat can offset the fluctuations in insulin. On the contrary, some studies have shown that after consuming 75 grams of carbohydrates and then consuming 37.5 grams of fat, the insulin response is 60% higher than that of eating carbohydrates alone. . Therefore, it is necessary to limit the intake of carbohydrates and increase the intake of protein and fat on the basis of controlling the fluctuation of insulin.

So, our conclusion is:

1. Both ketogenic diet and high-protein diet can control insulin levels, but ketogenic diet is obviously better. If the ketogenic diet has entered a plateau, it is recommended to check whether the protein you eat will cause high insulin fluctuations, and you can partially replace it with roasted chicken, whole milk, bacon, etc.

2. Low-fat milk will not help you lose weight, but may also increase your weight.

3. It is very difficult to reduce fat by simply reducing calories while still maintaining a high proportion of carbohydrate foods (such as eating fruits to lose weight) and in a high insulin state.

4. This once again verifies the limitations of simply calculating calories for weight loss. Although the calories released by burning 1kcal of carbohydrates and 1kcal of fat outside the body are the same, when they enter the body, they have absolutely different effects under the influence of insulin.

In a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2015, researchers controlled the total calories in the diet of the subjects. One group took foods with a high insulin index, and the other group took foods with a low insulin index.

There was little difference in blood sugar changes between the two groups after eating.

However, the difference in insulin changes is very significant, and there may be a 1.5-fold increase after eating. Obviously, even if you control the total caloric intake, the body does not simply ignite the food, but a complex system, under the guidance of hormones, will produce completely different effects.

Therefore, losing weight really depends on wisdom. If you want to lose weight more smoothly, you must not only free up calorie space, but also control your body's hormone levels!

Welcome to inquire about fat loss!

I wish everyone will become thin as soon as possible!