Weight loss without hunger.

We all know there is an obesity crisis in the UK. We are told that 33% of us have a BMI (body mass index) between 25 and 30 and a further 25% have a BMI over 30. We all know this is bad but what does it mean? If we assume the overweight are 2 stone too heavy and the obese are carrying 5 stone too much and there are 65 million people in the country, it means the population of the UK is 2,000 million pounds overweight. This is a health crisis that gets no attention from the Chief Medical Officer.

Losing weight is easier than most people think, but to do so we need to eat the opposite of what were are told to eat. 

If we need to lose weight, we are told to ‘Eat less and move more’. Both of these ideas come from the mistaken belief that our weight is controlled by calories in minus calories out. We do not have a calorie-counting gland in our stomachs. However, we do have hormones and their response always differs to protein, fat or carbohydrate. It is the type of food we eat that makes us gain weight and damages our metabolic health. 

The obesity epidemic, which afflicts so many people, has been caused by our hormonal response to the high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet enshrined in the National Dietary Guidelines. The ‘experts’ tell us to avoid fat because there are more calories in a gram of fat than a gram of carbohydrate, but calories do not control our weight. The hormone insulin controls our weight and carbohydrates cause a surge in insulin. Dietary fats have no meaningful effects on insulin levels.

The National Dietary Guidelines tell us to base our meals on carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes, pasta and rice. All of these foods contain carbohydrates in the form of starch, which is a long chain of glucose molecules joined together. Our digestive enzymes easily slice these glucose molecules off the chain and absorb glucose into the bloodstream. This makes the blood sugar level shoot up, which in turn triggers the release of insulin to bring it back to normal. If the cells don’t need any more energy and the glycogen store is full, insulin gets the liver to convert the glucose into fat. The blood sugar level now comes down but, if it has spiked high, the pancreas has to produce a lot of insulin and a lot of insulin makes the sugar level fall too low, which triggers a feeling of hunger. You only ate a couple of hours ago but now you feel hungry again. You eat some more carbohydrate and the process repeats itself.

This is known as the blood sugar roller-coaster: blood glucose spikes up; insulin stores the energy as fat; blood sugar comes down too far and you feel hungry. You eat more carbohydrates and blood sugar spikes up again and insulin stores it as fat. This is the reason obese people always keep eating. It is not because they are greedy: it is because they are hungry. They are stuck on an extreme version of the sugar and insulin roller-coaster. The only way to get off is to stop eating food that raises blood sugar. Carbohydrate raises blood sugar and insulin levels further and faster than anything else. Protein raises insulin a little bit but fat hardly moves it all. 

Many people are afraid of eating fat, especially saturated fat because the ‘experts’ have told us it is bad and increases the risk of a heart attack. The reality is different; there has never been conclusive proof that saturated fat increases the risk of heart disease. I will discuss the details of that in a later post.

Biography

Charlie Spedding has enjoyed two careers; as an athlete and a Pharmacist. His running career culminated in victory in the London Marathon and a bronze medal in the Los Angeles Olympic Marathon. He wrote a book about his exploits entitled From Last to First. He spent decades as a Community Pharmacist but became disillusioned with it as more and more people diligently took their medication without ever getting better. The drugs were treating the symptoms of disease but not the root cause. After much research, it became clear the root cause of our modern, metabolic dysfunction is lifestyle, and the biggest culprit is diet. It is the very diet recommended by the health authorities which makes us ill. Charlie explains all of this in his book Stop Feeding Us Lies.