Eat more, move less, regulate insulin, lose weight
If you don’t feel like being a slave to the gym for the rest of your life, you’re in luck: According to science journalist Gary Taubes, lots of exercise isn’t what will help you lose weight or keep it off.
I’m a fan of Taubes since reading his fantastic, ridiculously heavy new book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease. Actually, I’m not quite done with it, and it’s due back to the library in a couple of days. But I’ve already lost seven pounds (half a stone, Brits) and gone down one clothing size since I started following his advice - with some pointers from my friend Amy Alkon, who introduced me to Taubes’ work - a couple of weeks ago. (I walk everywhere and go for the occasional run, and will get a bike soon, and should probably be doing some resistance training, but do not enjoy exercising for the sake of it.)
Filed under: Life
hi, Jackie, how’s your life?
I’m leaving you a comment to say - this fits in totally with my experience: I lost 45lbs a few years ago over a period of a month or 2 by ‘just’ cutting out all added sugar/sweeteners.
From my limited understanding of biology & my equally shoddy ability to piece together the information: spikes in insulin change the way you metabolise food. An insulin spike vastly aids the transport of carbs to glycogen stores, amino acids to muscles, etc. this is why bodybuilders take protein/dextrose mixes after working out. crucially though, spikes in insulin also hugely aid the transport of fat to ‘adipose’ cells (fat stores).
ie. spike your insulin & you’re creating the perfect conditions to store fat & sugar. avoid spiking your insulin & your body finds it far more difficult to store fat.
I wasn’t doing any exercise when I cut out sugar/sweeteners, but, since I lost all the weight, I’ve gone through periods of running every day, going to the gym every day, along with periods of total inactivity, and my weight hasn’t changed at all throughout all of this.
i don’t have any sweetener: no sugar, maltodextrin, sucrose, sucralose, corn syrup, etc. supposedly ‘xylitol’ doesn’t spike your insulin levels, but i don’t bother with that either.
I occasionally try to explain this to bigger people when I get the “you’re so lucky…” comments, but so far my sales pitch (’no more chocolate! a life of reading food packaging!’) has never been persuasive enough to get someone else to try it…
I hope you’re enjoying things. Hopefully we’ll see each other at some point.
love
dan
Dan! I hope we see one another again someday, too. If I don’t screw up, I’ll look much different from the last time (you were thin and fit then).
Most people don’t do well with a “no [X] forever” mentality, so I’m not surprised. Still sounds better than waddling around, unhappy and hopeless about one’s health, though, doesn’t it?
Many years ago I dropped about half a person by totally eliminating sugar from my intake. That included not eating any processed foods with hidden sugar–canned tomato soup and catsup for example as well as white sugar in my coffee and tea. I was aided in my resolve by a book called “Sugar Blues” that blamed the substance for everything from obesity and depression to the Black Death in the Middle Ages. I am totally convinced that the introduction of Corn Sweeteners as a substitute for sucrose in the American diet is the leading cause of the overweight epidemic. Your body can metabolize the Big Mac and Fries when it isn’t being confuse by unnecessary complex sugars.
Alas, my resolve and discipline disappeared and the lost weight found its way back to me