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Old Mon, Sep-08-14, 08:25
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JLx JLx is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 3,199
 
Plan: High protein, lower fat
Stats: 000/000/145 Female 66
BF:276, 255 hi wts
Progress: 0%
Location: Michigan U.P., USA
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Something that hasn't been mentioned -- that I've come to the conclusion is important for me -- is how often to eat.

We've been discussing the lectures and blog posts of Dr. Jason Fung on this board, http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...63&page=1&pp=15. While his emphasis is primarily on diabetes, he believes diabetes and obesity have the same cause, insulin toxicity/resistance. And frequent eating of insulinogenic foods, which include protein, can be an important factor. See my post here: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showpost...07&postcount=28 with some exerpts from Dr. Fung's Hormonal Obesity Theory.

See also his blog post here: http://intensivedietarymanagement.c...besity-part-xx/

Quote:
One of the founding principles of the low carbohydrate approach is that insulin is the key driver of obesity. This fact seems solidly grounded in science as we have discussed before. Carbs are the major macronutrient (out of fat, protein and carbs) that cause blood sugars to go up. As blood sugar goes up, insulin is assumed to also follow. Therefore, carbohydrates are assumed to play the major role in stimulating insulin release. This is true. However, we have not considered the possibility that food may increase the insulin levels without raising blood sugars.

The breakthrough was discovered in 1997, with the publication of the insulin index. Measuring the insulin response of 1000kJ portions of food, it was no surprise that the foods that stimulated insulin the most were the carbohydrate rich foods, bakery products, and snacks and confectionary. What was astounding was the fact that protein rich foods also significantly raised insulin levels.

Where most people assumed that there was a tight correlation between glucose levels and insulin levels, it turned out that only 23% of the variability in the insulin response was due to the glucose. In other words, only 23% of the insulin response is determined by how high the blood sugars rise. The vast majority of the insulin response (77%) is not related at all. Since it is insulin, and not glucose that drives weight gain, this changes everything. This is precisely where the glycemic index diets failed. They were targeting the glucose response with the assumption that the insulin response mirrored the glucose. But this is not the case. You could lower the glucose response by diet, but you didn’t necessarily lower the insulin response. In the end, it is only the insulin response that matters.


I don't mean to get up anyone's nose with his discussion of "The Atkins Decline", just provide some food for thought that I found very interesting in terms of my own weight loss/regains through my lifetime.

More on the insulinogenic index from Dr. Fung:
http://intensivedietarymanagement.com/insulin-index/

Quote:
The vast majority of the insulin response is still unknown. Some of the factors that are suspected or shown to affect the insulin secretion include presence of dietary fibre, an elevated amylose/amylopectin ratio of the starch, preserved botanical integrity (whole foods), presence of organic acids (fermentation), addition of vinegar (acetic acid), and addition of chili peppers (capsaicin). We will explore some of these factors in future posts. Nevertheless, the main point here is that there are many factors in the co-ingestion of foods that affect insulin. Things are about to become very complicated. The simplistic “Carbs make you fat!”, or “Calories make you fat!” or “Red meat makes you fat!” or “Sugar makes you fat!” sort of arguments simply are not able to capture the complexity of the human condition of weight gain. (my emphasis)


I'm not suggesting you decrease protein, btw, as you've already mentioned that you're struggling with that. Just throwing out some ideas that remind me of how previous generations of people used to eat, i.e. three meals a day, no snacking, no strange additives, moderate amounts of protein, low sugar, lots of fiber, fermented and vinegar containing foods.
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