Fat metabolism and hormones - why we get fat

Without food we die. But we also die if we eat too much of the wrong food. Not easy being a human. Particularly when our bodies have not evolved at the same speed as our technical and creative skills. Today we can buy all sorts of processed food that are really (and I mean *really*) bad for us.

This also means that a lot of different people (most of them trying to make money of you) will tell you, what you should and shouldn't eat and how you can lose the body fat you accumulate eating the wrong kind of food. Typically they will tell you to eat less and exercise more. But this is treating the symptoms, not the cause. And does it really work?

Like me you have probably been taught that the amount of body fat is determined by how many calories you eat and how much you exercise. Because the law of thermodynamics says so! But this is actually wrong. It is our hormones that determine whether we store or burn body fat. And we can improve our hormones by eating the right kind of food and plenty of it. 

I'll repeat that because it is really important: Your body does not count calories but reacts to hormonal signals. If the hormone levels are off and/or your body is unable to respond appropriately to the hormonal signals then you will gain body fat.

The human body is not a machine (or a temple!) but a complicated and delicate organism with a multitude of interconnected systems designed to keep equilibrium. One of those amazing systems is our internal calorie controller: the fat metabolism system which automatically balances out what we take in and what we burn off to keep us at our set-point weight (metabolic homeostasis).

The hormone insulin is responsible for getting energy into our cells. Without insulin the body cannot utilise the energy from the food you ingest. This is the problem for type 1 diabetics. Their body is unable to produce insulin and without insulin injections they would starve to death no matter how much they eat because their body is not able to access the energy.

In a normal functioning body insulin is activated as part of the digestion process to communicate to our body that energy is on its way and that we therefore do not need to use any stored energy in form of body fat. When we have finished eating the insulin disappears from the blood stream again telling the body that if it needs more energy, it will have to use the stored energy, i.e. burn body fat.

Quit the sugar

Basically you should avoid sugar, sweeteners and starch (anything turning into something that ends on -ose). Our bodies do not need it and a surplus of these removes our ability to burn fat. Think about it: For about 99.8% of our evolutionary history we did not eat any starch or sweeteners. We have evolved to eat non-starchy vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, legumes, seafood and meat.

If we reduce the intake of insulin-triggering food and drinks we remove the hormonal clog and lower our set-point weight because there is no insulin to communicate to the body that it should store body fat. Let me repeat that, because it is so beautifully simple: If you avoid food and drinks that trigger insulin your body will be able to respond properly to hormonal signals, your set-point weight will be lowered and you will *automatically* burn more body fat.

When we eat sugar our blood sugar level shoots up and extremely high amounts of insulin are triggered. If we eat starches and sweets regularly these abnormal high levels of hormones makes the fat metabolism system think that abnormal high levels of body fat are normal. This leads to a raised set-point weight, the body's homeostasis is set too high. It also makes our fat metabolism system unable to respond properly to the hormonal signals because the gauge is off. And if the insulin stays in the blood the body never gets told that it needs to burn body fat, again because the fat metabolism only looks at hormones - not calories. We then say there is a metabolic dysregulation or a hormonal clog. It is this clog that we want to remove so that we can burn body fat.


Read more: "The Smarter Science of Slim: What the Actual Experts Have Proven About Weight Loss, Health, and Fitness", "Escape the diet trap" and "Why we get fat and what to do about it"