The Benefits of going Flour-Free

White and wheat flours are refined products that offer very little in terms of vitamins, nutrients, and/or minerals. They are complex carbohydrates and therefore are made up of simple glucose units and thereby can increase in your blood glucose level. An elevated blood glucose level stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin. An elevated insulin level is the underlying factor in many health problems, including obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, and cancer. The key to preventing these health conditions is keeping blood glucose levels stable and insulin levels low.

Metabolic Burnout

Your adrenals or pancreas or both can’t keep overproducing hormones, so they eventually hit a zero balance (or are in the red). Your adrenals may run out of funds first, then your pancreas. When the adrenals don’t secrete enough cortisol, you feel tired. When the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin, you have official diabetes, although you’ve been developing it for years. Other parts of the body start to break down during this stage. Yeast will more easily colonize the digestive tract and the thyroid begins to break down.

Metabolic Resistance

High cortisol levels cause fat to be deposited in your abdomen, and insulin and cortisol rise and stay elevated. In the case of insulin, your muscle cells now don’t recognize its signal. Once your cells stop responding to insulin (called insulin resistance), your pancreas must produce 10 times as much of the hormone to shuttle sugar into cells, Your brain doesn’t recognize increases in insulin either, so it never responds by turning off your appetite. As a result, blood glucose is even more erratic than during metabolic overdrive, alternating from very high highs to very low lows, and you’re constantly hungry. High insulin levels tend to lower levels of other important hormones too, which can erode health in many additional ways.
Your sleep is probably starting to become erratic. You may feel okay when you are at work and under stress, but you crash when you get home or go on vacation. Elevated levels of cortisol during the overspending stage have now taken a toll on various bodily tissues, slowing metabolism through a loss of muscle mass, impairing digestion, and weakening immunity.

Metabolic Overdrive

When you’re stressed, you’re in overdrive. When you toss back a triple-shot espresso, you’re in overdrive. When you exercise beyond your body’s capabilities, you’re in overdrive. Overdrive is how you speed up the metabolism. This confuses a lot of people, because if they are struggling with excess weight, they assume that they want to speed up their metabolism. This isn’t always the case. 

Staying in overdrive too often can outstrip your metabolic resources. Stress and lack of sleep, for example, cause the adrenal glands to overproduce the stress hormone cortisol and keep levels elevated. When cortisol increases, so does your blood glucose, to provide your muscles with fuel should you need to run fast. The problem is that your muscle cells don’t need the glucose when you are responding to emotional stress or lack of sleep, so the hormone insulin increases to shuttle the excess glucose into your fat cells - usually the ones in your abdomen. In an overspent state, insulin does this too efficiently. Too much insulin causes blood glucose to drop too quickly. You crave the one thing that can quickly raise blood glucose: sugar. If you turn to sugar and fat - as most people under stress do - glucose rises, insulin rises, glucose falls. You’re hungry again. 

Overdrive can also result from eating a lot of sugar, HFCS and refined foods. In this case, blood sugar rapidly rises and falls, and so does insulin. To compensate for the volatility of rapid rises and falls in sugar and hormones, the metabolism runs fast. In fact many of my patients who have hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) are fairly slender. It’s not until the progress to “metabolic resistance stage” that they start to gain weight. 

As overdrive progresses, the problem magnifies. When insulin levels remain high too long and too often, your brain and muscle cells eventually stop responding. Rather than soaking up blood sugar, muscle cells ignore rises in insulin. Your body starts conserving calories, and you see the results in your gut. Your abdomen grows. Even when you cut calories or portions, you can’t seem to get rid of the spare tire or love handles. Meet metabolic resistance, also known as Syndrome X and metabolic syndrome; it puts you at risk for and can also lead to diabetes or polycystic ovarian syndrome, a condition in which women develop high levels of male hormones, cysts in their ovaries, and, frequently, infertility.

Unstable Blood Sugar/Diabetes Mellitus/Hypoglycemia Symptoms

If you answer "yes" to any of the questions below, you will benefit from making an appointment with us.
1. Are you hungry 1-2 hours after meals?
2. Do you wake up at night to urinate?
3. Are you excessively hungry or thirsty?
4. Do you crave "sweets" or carbohydrates?
5. Does anyone in your family have diabetes?
6. Do you gain most of the weight in the stomach?
7. Do you feel faint or lightheaded if you miss a meal?
8. Do you have frequent mood swings?
These are some of the symptoms consistent with unstable blood sugar, pre-diabetes, diabetes or hypoglycemia. The problem is that one hundred percent of carbohydrates are converted into glucose resulting in high blood sugar and high insulin levels. Controlling carbohydrate intake is the key to normalizing blood sugars and insulin levels. Type 2 diabetics who reduce carbohydrate intake can often decrease or eliminate the use of oral medications or insulin. Type 1 diabetics who lower carbohydrate intake can often help avoid large fluctuations in blood sugar. Because doses of insulin will need to be reduced, physician supervision is necessary.

When in doubt, eat real food

If you want to indulge in something sweet, do so, but make it a small serving of real food. Ice cream means sugar and cream, and almost nothing else. Don’t go for the low-fat or artificially sweetened varieties. These are not only less satisfying and satiating, but they also tend to cause people to lose self-control. It’s psychological. When we eat reduced-calorie foods, we assume we can have more. When we eat high-calorie foods, we assume we can have less and stick to it.

The Principle of Adding Indulgences #TheStubbornFatFix

Ok, so you know The Stubborn Fat Fix diet plan will help you drop pounds fast and stay healthy. But the problem is, it will only work if you can stick with it. What if you really love ice cream or chocolate or bread? Are you destined to a lifetime of shopping in the plus-size area of the department store? In a word, no. There are times when you’ll crave chocolate. Decades of mental and emotional programming cannot be easily undone with good intentions. Also labeling something “forbidden fruit” makes it more desirable. Our ultimate goal is to get you to follow the plan for life, not just a couple of weeks. That’s why our plan allows indulgence foods.