Everyone knows that to lose weight, you must be in a caloric deficit. It is the second law of thermodynamics; energy in equals energy out. Therefore, if you consume less than you expend during your daily activities, you’ll lose weight, right?
Correct, to a point.
Obviously you can’t go eat 2000 calories of twinkies every day and expect to look like Dwayne Johnson in a few months; the types and proportional amounts of macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates, fat) matter.
One of the hotly debated topics recently is the role of carbohydrates in the fat “burning” (or not “burning”) process.
Some say carbs are the devil and if you eat them you’ll automatically gain 25 lbs., lose your girlfriend, and your dick will fly off.
Some say if you don’t eat carbs you’re destined to be a scrawny 175 lb. dude your entire life.
As usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle.
To understand the “why” behind this, we have to get a little nerdy first.
When carbohydrates are digested, they are converted into glucose (sugar), most of which is sent into your bloodstream causing a rise in blood glucose levels (high blood sugar). This increase in blood glucose tells the pancreas to produce insulin.
Insulin is like the guiding light for the blood glucose. It tells the cells in the body to absorb the blood glucose where it is used as energy or, in our case of interest, is stored in the muscles as glycogen. Without getting too far in the weeds, glycogen is what is used for energy when you weight train.
So, if the above happens, all is well and the once high blood sugar is absorbed into the cells for energy now or saved as glycogen for use later. Kick ass right?
What happens when you are overweight and/or sedentary? You develop insulin resistance.
This means that when the insulin tells your cells to absorb the blood glucose, they don’t listen.
They say “To hell with that punk ass blood glucose, we don’t need that”.
Spoiler alert – You do.
So what happens next? Your pancreas produces MORE insulin, but the cells still don’t listen. When there is a ton of unused insulin and blood glucose hanging out in the body, it is signaled to put it all in storage.
As fat.
That creates a self-reinforcing circle of having insulin resistance because you’re overweight and then also gaining MORE fat because you’re insulin resistant.
How do we fix this? Simple diet and exercise changes will do the trick.
Diet:
While I do not endorse the Keto, carnivore, etc. diets that allow no carbohydrates at all (not that they won’t work for certain people), I do see the benefit in manipulating carb and fat intake to help fix insulin sensitivity.
First you will need to determine your daily caloric intake (See my E-book if you don’t know how), for this example we’ll say 3000 calories. If you are on the higher range of body fat, >25% you should be eating less carbs to start out and they should almost all be consumed around the time of your workout.
This will allow you to fuel your body before, during, and after the training session so you can perform and recover well without elevating blood glucose the rest of the time.
The less your body sees insulin, the more sensitive it becomes. Think about back in college when you could drink a 30 rack of Busch Light, go to the tailgate, drink a plastic handle of Vodka, and party all night. Your body was used to the alcohol so it became “desensitized”. It became resistant to the effects of the alcohol, just like your body becomes resistant to insulin.
The approximate amount of fat should be around 40% of your total daily calories with carbohydrates filling out the remaining calories after you account for those from 1.1-1.2 g/lb lean body mass of protein.
As you begin to lose weight, you should slowly start dropping the fat percentage and increasing the carbohydrates. This will allow you to build more muscle mass (which increases insulin sensitivity) and you will begin a self-reinforcing circle, but in a good way.
Training:
Training to increase insulin sensitivity is fairly simple.
Lift weights, run fast.
Lifting weights and running sprints, sleds, hills, cones, etc. has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity dramatically more than other forms of exercise.
Not only will these activities help you lose body fat (increasing insulin resistance with this), they will also build muscle mass. Increased muscle mass can store more glycogen which means it will pull more blood glucose out of the system leading to lower blood pressure. When you don’t have high blood pressure your body doesn’t produce excess insulin and neither are stored as fat.
See how this is all connected in one big circle?
You just have to decide which self-reinforcing circle you want to be in.