Refractory |
Eat 3 times a day onlyThe advice to eat five or 6 small meals a day or to snack between meals to maintain a steady blood sugar level and keep metabolism "stoked with food" is among the worst advice possible. It boggles the mind that a majority of doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, and fitness instructors promote this absurd approach to energy management. It is as if someone started a bad rumour and everyone accepted it as a truth. If a person does lose weight eating this way, it is usually because he or she is eating fewer calories in total than before. This may "work" for a few weeks, until leptin levels readjust to the new level of calorie intake and slow down metabolism. However, this eating strategy inhibits normal fat burning by interfering with the proper function of leptin and insulin. These are the simple facts that will never change: Eating food, raises insulin. Insulin promotes storage of calories and prevents the burning of stored fat for fuel. How to Burn FatThree to four hours after a meal, blood sugar levels naturally begin to drop because insulin has done its job of transporting calories about the body. Now it is time to use stored calories. The drop in insulin signals the pancreas to produce another hormone, called glucagon. Glucagon's job is to maintain the blood sugar level in the absence of food coming in from the diet. This is normal. Glucagon goes over to the liver and knocks on the liver's door. It says, "You stored sixty percent of the calories following the last meal. I need some of those to maintain blood sugar levels." Glucagon is the manager, the liver obeys orders. The liver now converts stored sugar (glycogen) back into blood glucose to maintain blood sugar levels. Yes, the body is getting a "snack." But Instead of the snack coming from food, it comes from sugar stored in the liver. This is liver fitness and normal function. Between meals, about sixty percent of fuel will now be sugar coming from the liver. In the flame of burning sugar, and under the influence of glucagon, the liver will now burn forty percent fatty acids. Triglycerides are now broken down to be used as fuel. This starts happening three to four hours after a meal and continues until the next meal is eaten. This is a fat-burning time. The longer a person is in this fat-burning mode, the greater the amount of fat he or she will burn -- as long as energy level is maintained. A healthy person who has not eaten for four to five hours prior to bed will burn sixty percent fatty acids and forty percent sugar the last three to four hours of sleep, a prime fat burning time. If a person eats before bed it shuts off this prime fat-burning time during sleep. If a person eats a snack it raises insulin and shuts off fat burning. Even worse, the liver never uses any of its stored sugar. Because this sugar was never used, calories eaten at the snack now can't go into the liver as part of the normal storage function of insulin. Instead, the calories are headed in the direction of fat formation, even if the snack contained no fat grams. Snacking flips on the insulin switch at the wrong time, which causes the consumed calories to head for fat storage. This is true even if a snack contains only fifty to a hundred calories. Anything that was a fatty acid headed for energy production is now repackaged as a triglyceride and stored: fat burning stops. This is why snacking and eating five to six meals a day is such a bad idea. Those perpetuating this way of eating as a means to stabilise blood sugar are actually fuelling insulin resistance and leptin resistance. In reality, this significantly contributes to the societal epidemics of obesity and diabetes, inducing metabolism to function in a crippled manner. Snacking or eating too often confuses leptin, and sooner or later this catches up with an individual. - Byron J Richards, Board certified Clinical Nutritionist.
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