Regarding the blog before yesterday Romaine made a comment about carbs that reminded me of a study I read about that hypothesizes that over- consumption of carbohydrates negatively effects how our bodies metabolize calories.
It's kind of a pithy article, but if you'd like to check it out here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/opinion/sunday/always-hungry-heres-why.html?_r=0
But if you don't feel like plowing through it yourself, the gist of the study as I understand it is that fat cells are like bullies that, when there are a lot of them, band together into a mob and grab a lion's share of the calories that you eat for themselves, not leaving enough to fuel your metabolism relative to the amount of calories you've eaten.
Subsequently not only does your metabolism slow down because it thinks it's not getting enough fuel and wants to conserve what it's getting, but you feel hungry again too soon so you eat more calories which once again gets grabbed by fat cells, which get bigger and more numerous and grabbier.
So what the researchers who did the study have concluded is that when your body has been taken over by the fat cell mob it's no longer that eating is making you fat; it's that being fat is making you eat.
But merely cutting back on the amount of what you eat won't do the trick; that will just tick off the fat cell mob who, being denied the caloric payoff that they've been extorting, will take their revenge by hoarding themselves and refusing to burn, so that you'll get so hungry and weak that you'll have to cave and give up on your diet.
So what's the answer? How does one fight back against these despicable metabolic extortionists?
Well, according to the researchers the key is in the carbohydrates. The carbs are the enablers of the fat cell mob.
But not all carbs. Some carbs are good. Some are very bad.
The bad carbs, those shady associates that empower the fat cell mob in their nefarious ways, are the ones found in the processed, highly refined, high-fructose and starch-infused foods that are the foundation of what too many of us in this society eat. Potatoes are bad, too.
Anyway, the carbs found in the above foods are big-time producers of insulin, the hormone that keeps fat cells in storage so that they're not burning themselves up for energy like they're supposed to. So the more insulin the fat cells can get their greedy little nuceli on the more greedy and proliferous they become and the less burning up they do.
So then, the key strategy for fighting back against and defeating the fat cell mob is to deny them access to their enablers: cut out the bad carbs. This will put the kibosh on the fat cells' extortionism and turn them into upstanding citizen cells who burn as they're supposed to and don't grab more than their fair share of the calories. Without the bully power of the insulin they'll learn how to share. Thus a person eating more calories but minus the bad carbs will burn more calories than someone who's eating fewer calories but whose calories come from the bad carbs.
Make sense?
It does to me, but alas, I'm finding this information troubling. It's coming to me at a bad time.
Because, heaven, help me... I'm afraid I've fallen in love. With a bad carb. A very bad carb. Tune in tomorrow.
PS - tomorrow's blog might arrive pretty late because I'll be on the road, but I'll try to get it out before the day
References:
1. Ludwig, David S. and Friedman, Mark I., "Always Hungry? Here's Why", The New York Times, Sunday May 18, 2014.
2. Wikipedia: Insulin.
RSS Feed