HOW TO LOSE BELLY FAT & REDUCE BODY WEIGHT FAST - A DIET GUIDE.

                                                  

HOW  TO  LOSE  BELLY  FAT  &  REDUCE  BODY  WEIGHT  FAST -  A  DIET GUIDE.

This blog is on how to get rid of belly fat and reduce body weight fast, both for women & men. If you struggle to lose belly fat or weight or want to keep it off to get the results you want, you have to understand the information  in this complete guide to lose belly fat and weight loss.

Why are there so many new diets all the time ? Nothing has changed , the human body that you have is the same genetic makeup as it was hundred thousand years ago. So, all you have to do is understand how the body really works and then know why it is doing the thing that's it doing. Only when you understand the mechanism, you will be able to create that weight loss and that fat loss for ever and it will be easy .

Why do we gain fat ?

Is it because we are eating too many calories ? of course it is, but that doesn't answer anything, the question is why would we eat too many calories, what is that determines that behaviour, two things that will help you to understand : 

1) Eat too often, & 

2) We eat wrong things.

Do you think this Bear is over weight ?  He may weigh 1000 pounds or about 453 kilograms, have huge % of body fat, but it is perfectly normal, he is healthy, mobile & functional, it can run faster than most of us ever could, he has the exact right amount of fat for that time in his life in his environment, he is following natural behaviour & his behaviour is dictated by Hormones .

But Humans may not weigh a 1000 pounds like a bear , but  as per a study 75% of  Americans are over weight and more than 40% are obese. Is that because of some genetic switch ? No, because we created most of these problems in 2 generations and after that the genetic makeup has remained the same and been successful in keeping our weight normal for 1000's of generations. Is it "will power" that kept us like that for so many years and then all of a sudden it was just gone...No, I don't think so, sure we had some food addictions, cravings, but the question is why is that ? 

Just like the Bear we are following the Hormones, they determine our behaviour, but unlike the bear we have developed unnatural Hormones, unnatural balance of Hormones, because the food that we are eating is not natural anymore. Every other animal on the planet eat its food from the nature that is appropriate for their species. Humans do not do that anymore.

We have been told of so many different things like this diet, that diet, calories and low fat, you have been told the wrong thing, this is not your fault but this do not relieve you from responsibility, from now on when you have access to correct information, you have to learn how your body works so that you can make those changes and be successful once and for all. 

1)  Eat too Often - 

there is a pattern or cycle of  FEAST & FAMINE everywhere in nature. Where we eat something and when plenty of food then we store the excess, so that there is plenty left over, when there is less we can FAST and burn through our reserves until we can eat again. For the Bear that cycle is of about 6 months, they bulk up for 6 months so that they can afford 6 months hibernation without eating at all.  

Of course humans don't do that, we can know for sure that our prehistoric humans did, but if we look at other species on the planet, we can safely say that our ancestors did not have 3 square meals and snacks every 2 hours through out the day. More likely they ate once or twice a day when lucky & when not so lucky they might go for 3 days without food. So there is a FASTING pattern built in to our metabolism. 

Modern humans , if lucky get 8 hours & 5 min, and that if we sleep a full 8 hrs. and it takes us 5 min. to find food when we get up. So, what we have done as modern humans - we eat & we store , then bypass the FAST and skip the BURNING , because you can't burn unless you fast , so our cycle is EAT and STORE & again EAT & STORE. It is not that you eat too much, you are supposed to eat until you are somewhat full or satisfied, don't have to stuff yourself . 

When you eat until you are somewhat full, that sends a signal to your body that you are safe and maintain the metabolism. When we try to eat less, then we are sending the body the message of deprivation and the body starts slowing down on metabolism. You are supposed to eat until somewhat full , but not supposed to eat 6 times a day, if we do eat 6 times then we get stuck in the cycle of EAT - STORE - EAT, we never get a chance to balance the cycle by EAT - STORE - FAST - BURN - EAT pattern. 

Types of food that we eat and that too 6 times a day invites to  rising of  blood sugar. We heard of BLOOD GLUCOSE , this is how it works and relates to fat and weight gain. Average person has 100 mg of glucose per decilitre = 3 grams for an average size person, or about  half a tea spoon of glucose at any given time, the body likes to keep it in a tight range, so that when you are fasting you might be at 80-85 mg, when after a meal it might be about 120 mg., if you eat whole food with protein like meat, good fats and non starch vegetables etc.. then they fluctuate very very slowly.  

A diabetic, or someone with insulin resistance has about 300 mg of glucose per decilitre = 9 grams, ie. one more tea spoon of  circulating glucose. This may not sound much, but you get enormous blood sugar spikes and when that happens your body goes into an emergency mode. This amount of blood glucose is very toxic to the brain, it ruins blood vessels causing micro vessel diseases, which is a cause for kidney failure and blindness. Further causes Neuropathy which is the leading cause for amputation. 

Now lets say that, you follow the recommendations, not following the snacks here, you eat 100 mg of carbohydrate 3 times a day, 4 hrs apart. You can't use 100 mg of carbohydrate until you eat again, so you might be able to use 50 mg., so at least 50 mg has to be stored. Lot of times people say carbohydrate is the preferred fuel, because the body has to use in case of emergency to keep the glucose out of the blood stream. When you ate 100 mg, all of that glucose has to get into the blood stream before it gets into the cells, this has to happen in a relatively short time period, because even a tea spoon can shoot your glucose to 300 mg. The extra carbohydrate that you can not use before the next meal has to be stored.

How does the body store ENERGY & why does it do that ?  

There are 2 types of energy that it can store - CARBOHYDRATE & FAT (protein). In your muscles you have protein storage , this can't be used in a extreme emergency, we have a very poor ability to store carbohydrate, your muscles can hold up to 1,600 calories  & your liver can store up to 400 calories. We store calories for survival, we need energy for movement, to generate heat & to think, move, we need those signals from the brain to control movement and metabolism. If you are using about 2000 calories for survival and relied totally on carbohydrate, then you can live just for one day, that means any time a human did not have food for a day then we would be wiped out, that is why we store fat, as fat is much more efficient form of storage. We can store 90 times as much, which is 1,80,000 calories which can keep us alive for 3 months, drinking nothing but water, your body figures out the difference. 

This is not the event for a over weight person , a 180 lbs. or about 82 Kg. person with 28% fat is not a super slim athlete person but also not an over weight person, this fat came primarily from glucose. The body can store any excess energy as fat, but it is the excess glucose that readily stored and converted to fat. If you start building up too much fat, and then have the desire to lose some of that fat then you cannot burn fat if you go on adding carbs, if you put more carbs in before you burnt the previous ones, you can never get to lose that fat. The other thing is, if your insulin is high which is again a result of those carbohydrates, in the presence of high insulin you can not burn fat because your body is busy in making fat, your body can not make and burn fat at the same time.

While we do want to reduce overall carbs, not all carbs are equally bad. A plant is made of glucose, and if this glucose get into our blood stream then it will trigger insulin at much higher degree than protein or fat would, but if we take bread as an example- 75% of it is net carb or pure starch, this starch is going to get converted into glucose, here have 3% of calorie from fat, 12% from protein & 85% from starch or glucose .  Two slices of bread if we eat which is 28 gm., couple that with some jam, some orange juice, some sugar in the coffee, then it is easy we get about 100 gm. of carbs in one meal.

Now, lets look in an example of non-starch vegetable like cabbage - it has 3% net carbs of its weight, 12% of calories are from fat, 36% of calories from protein & 52% from carbohydrate. The ratios between that of bread and cabbage are very different , the carbs are not as dominant , they are much lesser than in the bread and also here it is absorbed much slower. Also, you cannot eat a cabbage that much as bread, you can easily have 2 slice of bread (28 gm.), but will find it hard to eat 28 gm. of cabbage. So, here we see the 2 factors - QUANTITY & SPEED - how much you are eating & how quickly you are putting them in. We can now be sure that, cabbage is safe & bread is not. 

INSULIN - basically it unlocks cells, you eat something it turns to glucose, that goes to blood stream, but it is no good to you until it goes in the cell, cell is a metabolic machinery that will use this glucose as energy. The cell turns some of the glucose to energy and turns the rest of it as fat. If we have a normal blood sugar (80-120 mg/dl), here insulin required will be very moderate, so have a low insulin response and remain insulin sensitive, that is a healthy place to be.

In case of diabetic, with 300 mg/dl of blood glucose, we will have huge spikes of glucose, when glucose is high then we need a huge amount of insulin to push the glucose from the blood stream to the cells, with that amount of insulin going and if we eat every 4 hrs., then the insulin doesn't have time to come to base line, before we load up more carbs. So, carbs are the things that drive insulin - high insulin , but the frequency amplifies it. As the insulin gets higher and higher, it works less and less , as a result the body has to make more insulin as the cells don't respond any longer & thus we have insulin resistance. 

INSULIN RESISTANCE - 

purpose of  fat cells is to store fat. This cell can grow more than any cell in the body, in it's shrunken stage it is about 10 microns, but it can grow in diameter 20 times, because it is a spherical structure, so it can grow 8000 times with fat, that's its capacity. When we start pushing the limit of that capacity then it is not a healthy fat cell anymore, it becomes inflamed - we have stuffed it so full that it starts leaking, now is where we get all of these metabolic problems (Syndrome X) of insuline resistance - diabetes, cardio vascular disease , stroke, dementia, and the list goes on... .

2) Eat the wrong things - 

Let us look to the historical prospective of what we have been eating. If we go back to 100,000 years, then 100% what we ate were from nature, unprocessed and unmodified, just like every other species on the planet, we ate meat, vegetables, nuts , tubers - we used to hunt, dig up or pick , just like any other species. Then about 8000 years or so we started agriculture, we ate mostly whole food, the grain was probably processed to some degree, but certainly not bleached or hybridized. We might be also using some oils, like naturally easy squeezed oil, may be olive oil . 

Now, when we get into the last 50 years or so, we have turned everything upside down, now hardly anything that we eat is unprocessed or no whole food any more. We eat now - white flour, sugar, plant oils, all processed with harsh chemical and high heat, artificial flavours, artificial sugar, artificial colours etc., So, these are non-food, no food any more. We come from a genetic makeup where we used to get fed, but not fed any more. 

An experiment was done on mice and rats to find out what to be fed to get them too fat and as fast as possible. Now, what would be the diet be- 15% calories from protein, 45% calories from fat and 40% from carbohydrates was the diet formula that was used, but if you convert this combination to human scale then it will be about 200 gm. of carbohydrate in a day, 100 gm. of  fat and about 75 gm. of protein per day.... A standard modern human diet is same as this. Surprisingly, they tell you to eat lots & lots of carbs, ultimately you end up having junk food and have an obese population. You just stand on the side of a road in any city of your choice and just watch and count how many people pass by with a bulging tummy.

On the contrast, in a Ketogenic diet or low carb, high fat diet - where you get 15% protein, 80% fat and 5% carb (20 gm. a day). This profile is distinctly different from the previous pattern. 

DRAWBACKS OF LOW CARB HIGH FAT DIET - 

the only drawback is UNFOUNDED FEARS = MYTH, because very few people understand this. We have been conditioned and programmed for so long that we think we are supposed to eat more and more carbohydrate because the fat in the body comes from the fat we eat, its just not how it works. Always you should remember that you can not burn fat when your insulin is high because of high carb intake. 

If you are insulin resistance then fats are very healthy as long as they are healthy fats. Often we hear that saturated fat raises cholesterol and cause clogged Arteries. This notion also restricts many from having high fat diet. When we study the research, there was some research from early 1950's & 1960's very old research that suggested -  may be some relationship between cholesterol and heart disease, it wasn't a causative relationship, but it was an observational. But in every study since then there was no co-relation whatsoever, but if we look at the insulin resistance then there is a very strong co-relation to heart disease, diabetes, stroke & Alzheimer's, even to cancer.

If you eat good quality fat while reducing carbs, then your insulin is going down, even if your cholesterol goes up, it is irrelevant, it has no bearing on heart disease. One exception is, you might have heard about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, actually all are good unless they are damaged and oxidised, now this is a risk of heart disease, but that does not come from cholesterol, it is the insulin resistance and the oxidative stress that damaged the cholesterol that it became harmful. 

KEEP IT SIMPLE - 

It is not at all that complicated  to LOSE BELLY FAT & REDUCE BODY WEIGHT FAST, the hardest thing we have to do is to un-learn all of the stupid things that you have learnt in last 50 years  about - Cholesterol, Calories, & Saturated fats . 

- Eliminate sugar.

- Eat till you are somewhat full.

- Reduce carbohydrate.

- Eat meat, veggies & good fat.

- Stop processed food.

- Eat healthy Fat.

- Eat less often. 

- Keep insulin low and eat whole food. 

Thus learn what actual real food is and make it your life style......for you to STAY HEALTHY & JOYFUL for long.

Would highly appreciate your valued views & suggestions on this blog, in the comment section below.