3 Hormones that Affect your Body Shape & Weight Loss

Most people fall into 1 of 4 body types.

1. The hips and thighs

The Science of Fat Loss Part 1

Doug McGuff, MD is co-author with John Little of the book “Body By Science”.  Here is Part 1, next week will be Part 2 of the 2 part presentation.

BODY BY SCIENCE 5 (The Science Of Fat Loss — Part 1) 

In Part 1, Doug McGuff, MD describes the actual science underlying how the human body loses body fat, providing a summary of the key points of Chapter 9 of “Body By Science.”

Here is the transcript so you can follow along.

A good component of the book (BODY BY SCIENCE) is devoted to an area where some of the worst confusion exists and that’s how exercise relates to fat loss, because our whole notions of fat loss are actually turning out to be very flawed.

What we used to think of is a very simple: calories in minus calories out.

It is not that way at all as any female that’s ever crossed the threshold around 35 to 40 can attest to that because the exact same diet and exercise activity that kept them in good shape. Once they cross that threshold suddenly seems not to work.

So, well and what we’re coming to understand is that fat loss is very much a hormonal event, hormonal metabolic episode. Not only is our current thinking about it flawed, we have to think about our exercise and dietary regimen in a way that creates the hormonal environment that’s permissive for fat loss.

The biggest fatal flaw in the way people think about fat loss is the notion that calories in minus calories out, that this calories out component can be significantly affected by exercise, by the notion that I get on this treadmill. I look at it and these calories tick off and after 40 minutes 300 calories are gone and there went that piece of key lime pie. It absolutely does not work that way.

Think about it.  If we were really that metabolically efficient we would starve to death in the process of shopping at Buy Low much less in the process of hunting and gathering. What the treadmill is not showing you is when you plug in your weight it’s asking for your weight because it’s calculating your basal metabolic rate, which tells you how much you would have burned just sitting there and then it’s adding the activity rate to that and giving you this total but it’s not telling you burn 300 calories because of this activity. You may have burned 25 to 50. So it doesn’t really amount to much. And once you understand the hormonal environment that makes fat gain and fact loss happen you can see how it’s not even the right question.

Now, if I took each of you and we dumped you out in the woods and we said hunt and gather and bring back to me over the course of the week everything that you’ve hunted and gathered and we took accounting of everything you brought back to me we would assign percentages to all the different macronutrient groups: protein, fat, carbohydrate. And we would add it all up and what we would find is of what you brought back to me the smallest contribution would come from carbohydrate. Okay, I hear y’all going, oh no he’s going to start on the Atkins thing. No, it is not what we’re talking about.

But you do have to keep this in mind that is the smallest contribution that you would bring back to me from hunting and gathering in any environment.  So we take that fact and we have to realize that the body is going to predicate the signal to store body fat on the macronutrient that is least abundant because if you have the least abundant thing in more than adequate supply then it is safe to store body fat. So what we’ll find is that body fat storage is predicated on the hormone insulin. What insulin does is it takes blood sugar that is circulating in your blood and moves it into the cells of your body. In particular the largest storage reservoir for that glucose is your muscle cells.

So if there’s an abundance of carbohydrate that will get moved into your muscles cells until they’re completely full. Once they’re completely full, the muscle cells will decrease the sensitivity of the insulin receptors on their surface so that no more sugar can be brought into their because it mucks up the metabolic machinery. It is sort of like pouring pancake syrup on the keyboard of your computer.

What happens then is the glucose starts to stack up in your bloodstream, which sends a more powerful signal for insulin to rise up. And insulin’s major signal is nutrient storage and you will start to store body fat. Well, when the time comes for you to mobilize body fat your insulin levels have to drop because the enzyme that moves body fat out of fat cells called hormone sensitive lipase and what hormone sensitive lipase is sensitive to is insulin If your insulin level is too high in your bloodstream even at a calorie deficit you will be physiologically unable to mobilize body fat it will shut it off.

So right now the problem with obesity in our society is really a problem in how we handle sugar and it’s a problem of insulin sensitivity, which needs to be restored back to normal.

Come back next week for

BODY BY SCIENCE 5 (The Science Of Fat Loss — Part 2)

In Part 2, Doug McGuff, MD, discusses the facts underlying an effective fat loss program and the role of high-intensity strength training in making the process more effective. This is the conclusion of a two-part video based on the content of Chapter 9 of “Body By Science”.

Doug McGuff’s Biography

Doug McGuff, MD became interested in exercise at the age of 15 when he first read Arthur Jones’ Nautilus Training Bulletin No. 2. His interest in exercise and biology led him into a career in medicine. In 1989, he graduated from the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio and went on to train in Emergency Medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at Little Rock where he served as Chief Resident. From there, Dr. McGuff served as Faculty in the Wright State University Emergency Medicine Residency and was a staff Emergency Physician at Wright- Patterson AFB Hospital.

Throughout his career Dr. McGuff maintained his interest in high intensity exercise. Doug realized a lifelong dream when he opened Ultimate Exercise in November, 1997. Over the past 19 years Dr. McGuff and his instructors have continued to explore the limits of exercise through their personal training clients at Ultimate Exercise.

In addition to his work at Ultimate Exercise, Dr. McGuff is an Emergency Physician for the Greenville Health System and is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Greenville. Dr. McGuff lives in Seneca, South Carolina with his wife of 32 years, and their two children, Eric and Madeline.  https://www.ihmc.us/lectures/20160929/

My promotion of this book does not result in my making any monies.  If you wish to buy the book, here is the link https://www.amazon.ca/Body-Science-Research-Program-Results/dp/0071597174/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527881075&sr=1-1&keywords=body+by+science&dpID=51XCAQEx6UL&preST=_SX198_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

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 May you Live Long Healthy.

Lydia Polstra 

416-428-5285 lpolstra@sympatico.ca

Ketogenic Diet – Dr. Jong Rho, MD – How Ketones Affect Whole Body Metabolism and Inflammation.

The connection between the Ketogenic Diet and the Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) has fascinated me.  Dr. Rho supports that connection in this very informative interview. Sit back and relax while Dr. Rho tells you how you can improve your health by diet.

Dr. Rho’s Elevator Pitch: The primary lesson from the ketogenic diet is that a simple alteration in the type of foods we eat is the basis for preventing disease, treating disease and is something that can be done pragmatically without billions of dollars and the decades needed for drug development. Fats are not bad. Through the unfounded philosophy that fats are bad, we have created a health problem throughout the world.