Understanding weight loss is essentially about understanding your diet. Your food makes you. If you have gained weight, it’s because of your diet. Therefore to lose weight you are to make the necessary changes in your diet. So far so easy. However, if you are keen on analyzing the mechanism by which you have gained weight, you will find that there are biochemical agents called hormones within your body at work. One such key hormone is the pancreatic insulin which plays a vital role in carbohydrate metabolism in the body. These hormones play a key role in the way your body absorbs the nutrition. Overaction of hormones may cause abnormal absorption of food in your body, causing you to gain weight.
All you have to do is to make conscious changes in your diet so that you can control your inner body mechanism through it. Since insulin is a key hormone related to weight gain/weight loss, this blog-post attempts to present you an idea about how to control insulin so that your weight loss objective is achieved.
The back-story
Before you proceed with insulin control, there’s a brief back story that you should know. It is actually a myth-buster story. The prevalent notion is that a high fat diet causes weight gain, so you have to cut down on fat to prevent weight gain. This is actually a myth! The fact of the matter is that it is actually a high carb diet which causes you to gain weight, as excess glucose in blood (derived from the breakdown of carbohydrates) is stored in the body cells as fat. This is the actual big secret of your weight gain story. The culprit that you thought was fat is actually no culprit at all. The unbalanced carbohydrate is the actual culprit of weight gain. Fatty foods, taken in balanced amount, actually satiate your hunger and do not spike the blood glucose level as carbohydrates do. Fatty food is not a foe; it’s an essential element of a balanced diet which is crucial for losing weight. To understand the metabolism of carbohydrates in the body, you will have to understand the activity of insulin.
General insulin action
Insulin is secreted in the pancreas when there is a hike in blood glucose level. The hike is caused by carbohydrates in food which are almost instantly broken down into blood glucose as they enter your body. Insulin activity is to lower the excess glucose in blood by guiding the glucose into body cells. The mechanism involves special enzyme receptors composed of tyrosine, which are embedded in every cell membrane. The action of insulin on these receptors causes sugar from your blood to enter into your cells where they can be converted to energy (or when in excess, stored as fat). The more carbohydrate you take, the more is the amount of insulin in your blood and more are the chances of excess storage of glucose as fat in the body cells.
Besides, high insulin levels also suppress the activity of a fat burning hormone called glucagon. By general estimate, in a normal person, about 40 percent of the carbohydrate is converted to fat. (Of course, if you put the extra effort of physical exercises to burn fat then this fat storage percentage is lower in you). In conclusion, we can say that a combination of high carb diet with a lack of physical exercises is what causes us to gain wait.
Insulin resistance
There is also a typical issue with insulin, which is called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is the reduced ability of the body cells to respond to insulin. What exactly causes insulin resistance is not known exactly, but it is a key reason again to gain weight, especially in the abdominal region. Age and genetic factors are known to play a major role in developing insulin resistance. It actually increases the blood insulin level and this in turn causes storage of fat in the fat cells of the body, and not in the muscle cells where the glucose could have been used for energy. Thus the body gains weight, especially abdominal fat as that is the region where the fat cells are concentrated.
Insulin control
Insulin control can be essentially achieved by a balanced diet. A low carb diet is especially recommended. Make sure you contact your dietitian to design an effective diet plan for you. If your body cells have developed insulin resistance, then the doctor can provide you with medicines to deal with it.
About Author: Mark Sanchez is an experienced writer and has been writing on various topics like, weight loss, nutrition, fitness, beauty, skin and more. He is also a regular contributor in counselling services.
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