Insulin the fat storage hormone – how to lose weight by controlling insulin

Many of you will have heard of the hormone insulin, perhaps some of you know a person with type 1 diabetes who has to inject insulin many times a day to keep their blood sugar stable, or perhaps you may be or know a person with type 2 diabetes who has been told they have high levels of insulin or that you have insulin resistance. But what actually is insulin and what does it do?



Insulin is a peptide hormone released from the pancreas in response to food being eaten. Insulin’s job is to carry the breakdown products of carbohydrate digestion – namely glucose in to the cells to be used for energy. Insulin also carries the breakdown products of protein digestion – namely amino acids in to the cells for a number of functions including protein synthesis. It seems that the breakdown product of fats in the diet – namely free fatty acids do not have an effect on insulin. Insulin can communicate with all manner of cells in the body – muscle cells, brain cells, liver cells and fat cells telling them to take in glucose and amino acids.



This mechanism works perfectly if there is a good balance of protein, fats and carbohydrates in the diet. The problem arises when there is excess carbohydrate in the diet, especially carbohydrates that release their glucose very quickly, which leads to sharp rises in blood glucose levels. Once the liver and muscle cells are full of the sugar they need insulin can no longer have an effect, however the fat cells happily take up the remaining sugar in the blood stream and an interesting thing happens. The glucose in the fats cells is metabolised to a substance called glycerol 3 phosphate, which in turn can be converted to triglycerides, essentially turning sugar in to fat.



In other words eating a high carbohydrate diet causes the release insulin and leads to the accumulation of fat in cells. Not only has this but carbohydrate increases LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.



The research supports this, a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society demonstrated that fat intake was not associated with the condition metabolic syndrome – a condition that includes insulin resistance – but carbohydrate was. Another feature of metabolic syndrome is fatty liver – where fatty deposits accumulate in liver and cause damage. A study from the journal Gut demonstrated there was a significant increase in a liver enzyme called ALT, indicating liver damage that was associated to intake of carbohydrates, but not protein, fat or total calorie intake.



Not all carbs are the same



Now not all carbohydrates are the same. Carbohydrate is an umbrella term that covers foods as diverse as fruit and vegetables, bread, potatoes, pasta, grains, chocolate, sweets and sugar. Obviously some of these carbohydrates are healthy – others are not. To help distinguish between healthy and unhealthy carbohydrates, three classifications of carbohydrates have been established - the Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load and the Insulin index.



The Glycemic index



The Glycemic index (GI) is a measure of how quickly 50g of carbohydrate from a given food raises blood sugar levels compared to 50g of glucose. Glucose raises blood sugar quickly and is assigned the value of 100. Other foods, depending on whether they raise blood sugar slowly or rapidly are given a number on the 0-100 scale. Carbohydrates that release glucose rapidly into the bloodstream have a high GI – 70 and above, carbohydrates that release glucose moderately into the bloodstream have a medium GI – 56-69 and carbohydrates that release glucose more gradually into the bloodstream have a low GI – below 55.



Low GI - 55 or less = Most fruit and vegetables, legumes / pulses, nuts and seeds, milk, yogurt.



Medium GI - 56–69 = Whole wheat products, basmati rice, sweet potato, table sugar.



High GI - 70 and above = Corn flakes, rice krispies, (Most breakfast cereals) baked potatoes, watermelon, croissants, white bread, white rice.



There are some criticism of the GI – that we may eat way more than 50g of carbohydrate from a certain food such as pasta of rice that may be classified as medium GI, and way less than 50g of carbohydrate from another medium or high GI foods such as watermelon (watermelon is mainly water!).



The Glycemic load (GL)



To solve the problems of the GI, researchers came up the Glycemic load (GL) ranking system. This is based on how quickly the carbohydrate in a food releases it carbohydrate into the blood stream (The GI) and the amount of carbohydrate in a portion of that particular food. So the GL takes in to account both the quality and quantity of carbohydrate in a food: GL = (GI x the amount of carbohydrate) divided by 100. Anything that has a number below 10 is classed as low GL, from 11-19 is moderate GL and above 30 is high GL.



Glycemic Load



Plain white baguette 48

Banana 10

Carrots 3

Potato 9

boiled white rice 15

Watermelon 3



So, a high GI food such as watermelon has a low GL, this is because there’s not much carbohydrate in there, it’s mainly water. If consumed in small quantities it would have the same effect on blood sugar – which is a very modest release of blood sugar – as eating larger quantities of a low GI food such as berries. However, a standard portion of rice is usually more than 50g and as it is both medium on the GI and GL scales it would deliver a larger amount of sugar in to the blood stream raising insulin considerably. From the GL ranking system you can start to get a feel for which types of carbohydrates can potentially make you fat and which are essentially healthy and should be consumed freely.



The Insulin Load



The next step in the evolution of these carbohydrate ranking systems is the Insulin Load (IL). The IL is a measure used to quantify the amount of insulin the pancreas releases in response to various foods – remarkably not just carbohydrates. The IL is similar to the GI and GL but instead of measuring how much blood sugar levels rise, the IL measures how quickly blood insulin levels rise. The higher the score on the IL – the more insulin released (the more insulin released the more cells are stimulated to absorb sugar – including fat cells).



What the IL has shown us is that proteins can also cause a release of insulin, despite containing no carbohydrate, and there can be a disproportionate release of insulin from bakery products that are rich in fat and refined carbohydrates way higher than their GI or GL would predict. Some criticism of the IL is that it looked at the IL per 100g of food, much like the GI ranking system looks at 50g of a food. It did not look and any vegetables but due to vegetables being low GL and GI, you would also expect them to low IL.



You can see that refined carbohydrates, grains and confectionary snacks cause higher releases of insulin than whole grain products, fruits and proteins. This is a great argument for eating less refined carbs and a higher protein diet to control insulin and lose weight.



Should I eat grains?



So you can see from the above tables and classifications of carbohydrates it is sensible to eat low GL foods for the majority of the time, the book - The Low GFL Diet, by Patrick Holford explains all you need to know. But I want to finish this piece with a little bit of contention. The USDA food pyramid and many nutritionists, doctors and dieticians will suggest that you eat plenty of whole grains for fibre, vitamins and minerals and for carbohydrate to provide you with energy.



However I think that most grains are one of the worst things you can eat. You can see from the GI, GL and IL that refined grains are absolutely terrible for raising glucose and insulin – therefore for making you fat. I believe this advice of eating 6—11 servings of grains a day is one of the major contributors to our world wide obesity epidemic. Even whole grain are not that great (most dieticians and doctors will argue they are great) as they are still moderate on the GL scale and many contain gluten.



More alarmingly doctors are misdiagnosing coeliac disease (a disease whereby gluten in grains destroys the intestines) say the charity Coeliac UK. Misdiagnoses include IBS, anaemia, anxiety, depression, stomach bugs, gallstones and appendicitis. In Many people it took between 11-20 years to get the correct diagnosis! The culprit is … - grains.



Gluten causes all sorts of problems to your bowels – it basically destroys you intestines and may contribute to autoimmune disease. I can say that when I get my clients to remove gluten from their diet, symptoms such as IBS, IBD, bloating and water retention reduce markedly and people start losing weight straight away.



You basically don’t need to eat grains – all this crap about you needing grains for B vitamins, soluble fibre, or energy is BULL SHIT. Meat, fish, nuts and seeds provide MORE B vitamins than any grains and (plus lots of other vitamins and minerals), fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans and legumes contain fibre both soluble and insoluble and you can get plenty of carbs for energy from the foods I have just mentioned – there is nothing in grains that you can’t get from eating meat, fish, seafood, poultry, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans and legumes!



Now, if you chose to eat grains now and then because you like them – then that’s a different matter. I eat quinoa (actually a seed – but served as a grain is), whole grain rice and oats such as a flapjack now and then because I enjoy these foods from time to time. But I don’t need them in my diet and certainly don’t eat 6-11 servings a day!