If you take 20 people at random and ask them what is the cause of weight gain, I can already tell you that you will get 20 different answers. They will tell you that:
- It’s because of the sugar
- It’s because of your caloric intake
- It’s because of the bread
- It’s because of your physical activity
- It’s because of your genetics
- It’s because of the lack of sleep
And so on…
But in the end, who will be right?
Do you want to know?
Well, they’ll all be right… but halfway.
Despite what many people may think, there is not only one way to gain weight. A
I will explain in my next article on calories, weight gain is not due to a caloric imbalance, but rather to a hormonal disorder of fat accumulation.
On the other hand, all sources of weight gain have a common denominator: insulin!
Some people tell you that fat intake is not a mechanism regulated by your body, but it is totally wrong! All the systems in your body are regulated by what is called: a hormone.a hormone?
a) What’s a Hormone?
It is a molecule that is responsible for delivering a message to a target cell in order to regulate several mechanisms in your body (appetite, fat storage, blood sugar level, muscle and bone renewal, etc.)
For example:
Your size is regulated by growth hormone.
Your sexuality is regulated by testosterone and estrogen.
Your body temperature is controlled by the thyroid gland.
Your blood sugar level is controlled by insulin. Your fat intake is controlled by several hormones, the most famous of which is leptin!
The list is long as you can imagine 😊.
But then Roger, does that mean that the leptin is responsible? »
This is what we will now see at 😉.
b) What is the hormone responsible for your weight gain?
Since you have been told since time immemorial that you are gaining weight because you eat too much, you may be tempted to think that the hormones responsible are leptin, ghrelin (the hormone that regulates hunger) or even satiety hormones (YY peptide and cholecystokininin).
To know precisely, a causality test should have been carried out.
That is to say:
Find volunteers, inject them with each suspicious hormone one by one, do this study over several months, and see if they gain weight.
Oh, but wait a minute!
It has already been done 🙂 .
Result :
Fat intake, hunger or satiety hormones have not passed the causality test.
But
Two hormones passed the test successfully: insulin and cortisol.
We will focus on insulin in the first instance, because you will see in the rest of this article that the two are closely linked…
How can you be sure?
To be sure that this hormone is responsible, several studies have been carried out on the subject that confirm this theory.
A study was carried out over a period of 8 years by researchers from the San Antonio Heart Study, which confirmed that there was indeed a very strong correlation between high insulin levels and weight gain.
But this is not the only study that has been done in this regard.
In 1993, researchers from the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial conducted 6 years of studies to compare the effect of a standard dose of insulin with a high dose on healthy people.
If insulin is indeed a cause of weight gain, there should logically be a weight gain proportional to the dose of insulin injected.
Are you following me this far? 🙂
Result :
Participants who received the highest dose of insulin gained on average 4.5 kilograms more than participants who received the lowest dose.
I would like to specify one thing:
All participants were morphologically similar.
The only difference between the two groups was the dose administered.
To conclude:
The higher the insulin level, the more weight increases!
The end of the myth about calories
I know that there are still many people who swear by the calculation of calories to lose weight.
If this is still your case, it means that:
- or you have not yet read my article on calories which I will post soon, I invite you to come back soon to read this article 😊.
- or that you are suicidal, but wait before jumping out of the window, the rest should interest you 😊
I definitely want to bury this false belief of caloric imbalance to lose weight.
To do this, I would like to ask you a simple question:
In your opinion, what would happen if insulin were injected into a person who is in caloric restriction? W
it still gain weight or not?
To answer this question, researchers administered a high dose of insulin to a group of participants.
The doses were increased daily for 6 months, and as the doses increased, so did their caloric intake. Result : Patients gained an average of 8.7 kg, even with less food. Surprising, isn’t it? 😃 So forget everything you’re told about the causes of your weight gain! This is absolutely not due to a caloric intake that is too high, nor to a lifestyle that is too sedentary, but to an insulin level that is too high! If you were to retain a single sentence from this article, it would be this one. So you grafted it into your brain, or you framed it in your living room once and for all:). To summarize this part, keep in mind that:
REMEMBER
1. Weight gain is a hormonal problem.
2. The hormone responsible is insulin.
3. The higher your insulin level, the more your weight increases.
4. You control your insulin, you control your weight.
What is the purpose of insulin?
Insulin is a hormone, secreted by the pancreas, to reduce your blood sugar level.
We hear so many bad things about it that we forget that this hormone is there to protect you, and that without it, you couldn’t survive 😃
Insulin is a key regulator of energy metabolism. It is very important to understand what happens in your body when you eat so that you can identify the source of the problem.
As I told you earlier, a hormone is responsible for delivering a message to a target cell.
To convey this message, hormones will connect to receptors on the surface of cells (like a key and a door lock).
How does this translate into your body?
When you eat, your blood sugar level will increase. Automatically, your pancreas will be alerted and will secrete insulin, which will be responsible for reducing it. The secreted insulin, therefore, will send the message to the cells to take the excess sugar and store it in the liver, in the form of energy (glycogen) for later use.
But the litheer doesn’t have unlimited storage! Once filled, the glycogen will be transformed into fat and stored in the reserves (lipogenesis => fat intake)
But don’t worry about it!
Your body is very well regulated.
Several hours after the meal, your sugar and insulin levels will drop.
This means that you will have less glucose available for your muscles, your brain and the functioning of all your organs. The liver will therefore convert the glycogen back into glucose, to diffuse it throughout the body and provide energy.
Once there is no more glycogen available, your body will use the fat reserves to make glucose. The fat will therefore be burned to release energy!
Insulin is therefore a storage hormone!
In a normal situation, your body manages the influx of sugars into the blood quite well.
You eat, peak insulin, you store glycogen and fat. You don’t eat, lower insulin levels, and use your reserves to provide energy.
It’s that simple!
To summarize, keep in mind that:
- Weight gain is a hormonal disorder of fat accumulation due to too high a level of insulin.
- Your body will first use what is more easily accessible to it (i.e. glycogen).
- Once the stocks are empty, he will fall back on what is the most difficult to access (i.e. fat).
This explains why it is difficult to lose fat if you fill your glycogen stock all the time.
In other words: if you spend your days eating, as many “experts” recommend.
Now that you know that you need to control your insulin secretion to control your weight, the right question to ask yourself is what causes you to have these insulin peaks.
That is what we will see now.
The 3 main causes of insulin peak
There are three main causes of high insulin levels, if we put aside the use of medications that can have an impact on your insulin, and your weight gain.
But well, if you follow me through this blog, you know that I’m not a big fan of taking medication, so I assume you don’t take it, right? 😉 .
The three factors of high insulin secretion are:
Your diet. Your stress level. Your insulin resistance.
We will see in detail these 3 factors through this guide, starting with the most obvious one: your diet.
Click here to read the article on your diet: Nutrition
No time read everything?
So I made you a summary of this complete guide with my final word to definitely lose weight.
It’s right here: Summary + my final word
Iron Health 