Skinny on Fat

Written by: Ida

You’re already working out

You’ve already started to see results.

Why isn’t it happening faster? The pace of our lifestyle leaves little room for eating “right”. The tradition of three square meals a day, or worse, no breakfast followed by lunch and a large dinner is directly related to the quickly growing trend of obesity in the west. You may have heard this before but do you know why?

Sporadic eating, regardless of how healthy it is, trains our body to store fat. By leaving the body without food for longer than three hours we produce a starvation response in our metabolism, similar to how a bear stores fat for use during hibernation phases. It also causes the body to produce insulin: the hormone used to process sugar. Eating “healthy” foods will produce the same results if meals are too large or spaced too far apart throughout the day. Insulin tells your body to hang on to stored fat if your working out regularly but spiking and / or crashing your blood sugar.

How do we deal with this issue of storing fat?

Eating at regular intervals, with the right portion sizes and in the right combination trains your body to process food and use it to create heat energy rather than storing it. If the body knows it will be getting food at regular intervals, there is no reason for it to store your food for later use. It also creates a state called Glucagon Dominance in your blood. Glucagon is a hormone that tells your body to release stored fat. You can maximise fat release by creating this state of Glucagon Dominance.

Here’s how:

• Eat every three hours. This avoids putting your body into very low blood sugar levels: low sugar levels are always followed by spikes.
• Eat foods with less sugar in them: sugar or glucose, when it isn’t used throughout your day, gets stored as fat.
• Eat foods that take more effort for your body to process: think fibre, protein and leafy greens. Make the food you eat work for you.