@Dominique wrote:
As to "manipulating hormones" via nutrient timing, it’s probably a lot more complicated than that. In the end, what works is eating less than you expend.
So I think there is some confusion going on about the benefits of IF vs weight loss/fat loss. First of all, you can have fat loss without weight loss and you can have weight loss in conjunction with fat loss. Based on research I've found, IF does absolutely reduce insulin in the blood during the time fasting. Insulin is a hormone. There are over 40 hormones involved in the digestion, energy conversion, fat conversion and fat oxidation within the body, so yes, its very complicated. I've just read another study that indicates that different foods cause a different insulin response. This is different than what we are used to hearing - glycemic index.
The glycemic index is a measure of how much blood glucose is created in the blood by a give food. The conventional wisdom has always thought that blood glucose levels equate equally to insulin response; however, the new studies are saying there is only a 23% correlation between these numbers. The Insuline Response Index is a new way to measure how much insulin the body produces in response to a given food. As predicted, carbs, the more simpler the greater the response, create a lot of insulin, but to my surprise, beef in almost equvilent where chicken and even bacon are much lower. Fats seem to have the lowest which is the bases for the LCHF (Low Carb, High Fat) diet and it's success. What these studies seem to indicate is that a high insulin response can result in more glucose being coverted to fat.
Now, with that last statement, lets involve timing in this. Insulin is secreated in response to Blood glucose levels. Blood gluecose is a product of digestion of food. So if we eat a meal, within an hour a rise in blood glucose begins and the body will begin to produce insulin in response to that rise (and yes I'm sure there is a trigger level at which that occurs, but I haven't found that point yet). Say our meal is very high simple carb (to use an extreme), the insulin response may be disproportinate to actual blood glucose level. Insulin's job is to grab the glucose and shove it into cells as fat, so high insulin can cause actual fat storage, even if the total number of calories only equates to say 1/3'd (assuming we eat 3 meals a day) of our total daily need.
Now, 4 hours later we eat another meal, again high in simple carbs. The same thing happens again. 4 hours later another meal. Now in total, our calories for the day are within our maintenance or even slight below what we expend. It takes anywhere from 6-10 hours to complete digestion of a meal, so during that time our bodies have insulin in the blood and what glucose the organs and muscles aren't consuming is getting created as fat. Let's be generous and say you have your last meal at 6 pm, finished at 7 pm. You wake up at 7 the next day and at 8 am you eat again. OK you've gone 13 hours without food and have gone into the fasting state - good for you. But you've also been asleep, so calorie use during that time is less. Will you be burning fat? YES, but not at a very high rate. So its now a question off, during the entire day yesterday in which you had insulin coursing through your veins and stuffing fat cells, did you burn enough fat during the night to make up for that? Can't answer that, but given the obesity rate, draw your own conclusions.
However, I am going to draw some correlations here that you may well dispute. The relationship between poverty and obesity. I make this correlations to reflect that, at least in the US, our food systems has been a powerhouse in the production and distribution of cheap, affordable food, but is the quality of that food of value.
Incidentally, I do have a degree in Agricultural Econonmics and Rual Sociology so I have a basis of education to make these assesments. I also spent 14 years working in food manufacturing.
So, to refocus, I'm talking about the insulin response to food and not nessesarily the caloric count of the food we do consume. So according to Maslov's hierarchy of needs, Food, Clothing and Shelter are our most basic. Regardless of if you're rich or poor, you need to provide food for yourself and your family. The impoverished, here in the US, have our agricultural machine to be thankful for as it produces food at a phenomenal rate and quickly preserves and packages for distribution (the government pays farmers NOT to produce in order to control food prices at a level that will sustain farmers. Otherwise we would have such a gluttony of food, it would rot in the streets until farmers quite farming and, well you can see where this is going). We also have social programs to provide support such as food stamps to help this economic strata. So they go off to walmart or target and purchase all sorts of inexpensive food that, on the surface seems good. But if you study food labels, there is so many chemicals that have been added and so much processing has been done that we've stripped away nutrients and increased the insulin response to the food. The best example of this are the grains and rice that probably have twice the insulin response to those wild varieties our ancestors gathered.
So now you have a segment of the population that is at or below the poverty level (a level at which you might intuitively surmize should be populated with emaciated bodies) that are using the few dollars they have to purchase inexpensive food in which all the nutrients and natural regulators have been processed out, yet they represent the highest obestiy rate in the country. Part of that is due to our prosperity. Because we are a prosperous nation, we have money to spend both on research and on social programs. Our research results in faster, cheeper foods and our social programs allow us to provide subsistance to the impoverished.
Here are a couple of articles to support my claim:
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/60/11/2667.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198075/
Why, oh why would the poor be getting fatter than the more affluent portions of the population? Shouldn't they be emaciated? Why are they more obese than the affluent? We don't need to talk about the strain this obesity rate has on the cost of our collective health care. So what is going on?
Let's get back to insulin response and over processed foods. There are at least two factors involved here. The first is the availablity of cheap, overprocessed, high glycemic foods and second the over consumpion of these foods. White rice, cereals, white bread, pre-packaged foods that are full of fillers (think meatloaf on steroids) and we won't even get into the additives and sugars and salts to increase taste perception. These foods have a very high, simple carb content that drive a very high insulin response that in turns triggers not only fat storage, but insulin insensitivity and that results in Diabeties.
OK, so this has gotten very long. My bottom line point here is that its not only about timing, but about the quality of foods in our bodies. If you couple my points above together, an impoverished person would be better off if they ate one GOOD meal a day rather than 3 crappy ones. IF used to be a way of life out of necessity rather than choice. If food wasn't available, you had to go out and find it. That involved timing and exercise. Our genome was develoed in this time and the advances in food production has increased faster than we can genetically respond.
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Isaac Asimov
“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin
Fitbit Product Experts Alumni are retired members of the Fitbit Product Expert Program. Learn more
Best Answer
