The Most Critical Component Of Losing Fat And Keeping It Off

And it is not how much you eat or how much you exercise. Sure both play a role but there are things that are far more important. It’s not even what you eat (technically but we’ll get to that in a moment). The human body is a complex organism that we don’t fully understand and aren’t going to any time soon if ever. However with that being said there are things that we have learned about it and that help us with achieving our fitness goals whether they are losing fat, gaining muscle, or most important of them all optimizing hormones. When it comes to fat loss most people are going to get tons of advice that sounds good but is not based on science or experience. For example the whole eat less and exercise more sounds great but doesn’t work.

First off when you exercise more you’re increasing your energy expenditure which is going to translate to being hungrier and therefore eating more, think of how you feel after you’ve just finished an intense full body workout. You want to eat everything in the fridge and then more. Likewise when you decrease the energy you consume your body is going to want to conserve that energy for vital body functions, so it’s going to lower the overall energy that you expend. So you have a foolish and short sighted catch 22 when someone suggests that you eat less and exercise more. Might as well tell someone to grow shorter but at the same time grow taller. It just isn’t going to work even though it sounds good and “logical” to the ears.

Hormones & Fat Loss

For some reason hormones don’t get nearly the love that other things such as calories and macronutrients get and that’s a shame because hormones are so essential for health and a variety of different goals. For example attempting to build muscle without addressing testosterone optimization is like trying to swim upriver instead of getting the river to flow in the direction that you want to go. Likewise getting estrogen in check through eating cruciferous vegetables and getting enough zinc in your diet is critical to attaining your fat loss goals. Hormones are great and have huge effects on the body I’d argue that for about every health goal that there is hormones play a bigger role than calories and even macronutrients. Now of course all are important it’s just that hormones generally get the short end of the stick.

For fat loss (and any other health goal) you want to make sure your hormones are optimized. Like I said having more testosterone and less estrogen for men is critical to losing fat, gaining muscle, and living a full healthy happy life. When it comes to fat loss there are many more things to consider than calories in calories out and macronutrients. As a matter of fact the most critical part of fat loss has nothing to do with either (technically as in health and everything else, everything is connected at least some what). But rather has to do with a hormone called insulin and in particular insulin resistance.

Hormonal Resistance

When someone constantly spikes their insulin levels (I’ll explain how that happens momentarily) they are going to eventually get insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is obviously when you’re body because of it’s high and constant exposure to insulin starts to resist the effects of insulin. Insulin does a myriad of things in the body most importantly for our purposes here play a major role in regulating fat cells and the amount of fat one accumulates. One who has developed insulin resistance needs to get that taken care of before they’re going to have any hope of getting their fat levels down and into a healthy range. Not to mention that insulin resistance is also tied to other hormonal imbalances such as lower testosterone levels, something that most fail to understand unfortunately.

Put simply what causes too much insulin and insulin resistance is too many carbohydrates in particular processed and simply carnohydrates (though the vast majority of “complex” carbohydrates are no better). Most people eat a diet that is laden with carbohydrates and because of this their insulin is constantly spiked which leads to insulin resistance which leads to accumulation of fat. When insulin is resisted it becomes a lot harder for it to regulate the fat that you are accumulating. That’s putting it very simply (there are entire chapters of textbooks written about how insulin works). All I want you to take away from this is that insulin resistance from eating too many carbohydrates makes you fat.

How To Stop This

So the next logical question then is “How do I reverse this?” and the best way to do this is through diet. First off understand that fat doesn’t make you fat but rather carbohydrates make you fat, in particular the insulin response to carbohydrates that leads to insulin resistance is what makes you fat. So what you need to do is eliminate this troublesome foods that are constantly spiking your insulin and focus on eating foods that aren’t going to spike your insulin. Now we know that carbohydrates are the source of much of your insulin spiking so that’s where we’ll start. All carbohydrates are not made the same.

Obviously you know to avoid things like cakes, sugars, candies, and all of that so I’m not going to belabor that point any more, that’s obvious. What’s less obvious is that things like potatoes, all breads, and even fruits can spike insulin just as bad as many of the sugary foods we known not to eat above. You want to avoid anything with lots of sugar (including high sugar fruits such as apples), starchy carbs, and grains. Put simply really the only carbs that you want to eat are green vegetables. Vegetables are the best and healthiest source of carbohydrates and have little impact on your insulin. Even a sweet potato can spike your insulin levels more than what you’d want. You don’t have to eat this way forever just until you have taken care of your insulin resistance.

Summary

The biggest culprit in gaining unwanted fat is from insulin, or to be more specific insulin resistance. Most people are at a varying degree of insulin resistance simply because of the nature of the Western diet. If you have love handles or abdominal fat that doesn’t correlate with the amount of fat around the rest of your body that is a sign of insulin resistance. Get rid of the carbs and stick with lots of good healthy fats, moderate protein, and green carbs to take care of insulin resistance and get you fat regulation working properly again. This is the most critical component of fat loss that most ignore or try to go around. Neither of which works. Take care of your insulin resistance and your fat loss goals will be achievable.

If you have any questions you would like to see answered in a future post send them to me at charlessledge001 (at) gmail (dot) com. If you found value in this post then I would encourage you to share this site with someone who may need it as well as check out my books here. I appreciate it.

-Charles Sledge