Losing Weight on the Carnivore Diet: A Calorie isn’t a Calorie
By Yaseen Sadan
4 years ago
Over 40% of Americans are obese. We are facing an obesity epidemic, and the best advice we’re giving people is, “just eat less.” This is terrible advice. It just leads to overeating and more obesity.
If you’re basing your weight-loss goals around this single phrase, you will struggle to lose weight. Not to mention, there are far more effective ways of losing weight.
And in today’s post, I’ll show you how to…
Ready? Let’s get started.
When we restrict calories, our body thinks we’re in an environment where there’s little food, like a desert. It will do whatever’s needed to hold onto stored energy, i.e. fat. It will also burn muscle first, since muscle is an energy-expensive tissue. Yeah, someone might lose 10 pounds in a month, but they’ve lost muscle, not fat.
Through a process called gluconeogenesis, our body will burn all our muscle before it touches our fat.
Since our body thinks we’re in a desert, it will do 2 things.
This method of losing weight is solely built around willpower. We feel hungry, but we force ourselves to eat less. We feel tired, but we force ourselves to exercise. It’s only a matter of time before we run out of willpower and resort to old habits.
In short, by reducing our calories, we’re hungry and tired all the time while burning muscle, not fat.
Surely there must be a better way to lose weight, which includes introducing hormones.
For all calories to be equal, we must assume that all foods have the same impact on our body’s functions and hormones. This, unfortunately, isn’t true. A common example is an alcohol. It would make no sense to say that 100 calories of vodka have the same effect on our body as 100 calories of chicken livers. 10% of the alcohol gets processed in our brain, making us drunk. The rest is processed in our liver, leading to liver disease.
Different foods have different effects on our bodies, regardless of calorie count.
We have hormones that tell us when it’s too hot, too cold, when we’re tired, and when it’s time to sleep. But why doesn’t our body have hormones that stop us from eating ourselves into obesity? Well, we do. But certain foods block these hormones.
Our bodies have hormones that regulate our weight and tell us when to eat when it’s time to stop, and when to start burning fat and not muscle.
Let’s cover these hormones:
Insulin is responsible for transporting glucose from the bloodstream to your cells, where it can be used for energy. Different foods require different amounts of insulin.
Wherever there’s insulin, there’s fat. A real-life example of this is a condition known as lipohypertrophy. This is when diabetics inject insulin, and after some time, unusual lumps of fat develop at the site of injection.
If we want to lose weight quickly and effectively, we must keep our insulin levels low. To do this, avoid carbs altogether. Carbs spike your insulin to unnaturally high levels causing our body to store more fat. Eating fats and proteins don’t spike insulin as much.
Hormone-sensitive lipase is what allows our body to burn fat for energy.
High-insulin levels block hormone-sensitive lipase from doing its job. And this is why we’re facing an obesity crisis. Our insulin levels are so high that hormone-sensitive lipase cannot use excess fat for energy.
We have all this stored energy just sitting there, available for use, but our bodies cannot access it without hormone-sensitive lipase.
Optimally, we want to have high hormone-sensitive lipase levels so our body can use our excess fat for energy.
Leptin is the hormone that tells our brain that it’s time to stop eating.
If our bodies didn’t produce leptin, we’d never stop eating.
Insulin not only blocks hormone-sensitive lipase, but it blocks leptin from telling the brain when it’s time to stop eating. If you’re always hungry, it means leptin is being blocked by high insulin levels.
Eating lots of carbs forces our bodies to produce a high amount of insulin. This insulin blocks important hormones like leptin and hormone-sensitive lipase from doing their job.
To become fat-burning, muscle-maintaining machines, our bodies must have low levels of insulin and high levels of leptin and hormone-sensitive lipase.
Our best solution to the obesity crisis we’re facing is a high-fat, zero-carb carnivore diet.
The carnivore diet will lower our body’s insulin levels, resulting in quicker weight-loss. It also ensures that hormones like leptin and hormone-sensitive lipase do their job of reducing hunger and burning excess fat.
Eating like a carnivore also gives our bodies the proper amounts of nutrients needed to produce these hormones. Nutrients like…
Eating foods like organ meat, eggs, fatty fish, and bone marrow are not only carb-free, but they contain nutrients and essential fatty acids needed to produce and regulate hormones.
Intermittent fasting is simply skipping breakfast, and it has some awesome benefits.
Intermittent fasting isn’t necessary since a carnivore diet will help you reach your weight-loss goals on its own. But intermittent fasting can speed up the weight-loss process and make your journey much easier.
Intermittent fasting’s biggest benefit is that for a few hours, your insulin levels are almost non-existent. This leads to higher levels of leptin and hormone-sensitive lipase, meaning you feel fuller for longer while burning more fat for energy.
Simply eat a low-carb carnivore diet, and your body will take care of the rest. Eating quality meat can bring balance to your hormones as well as your health. Achieve your weight loss goals easily through the carnivore diet.
Yaseen Sadan is a personal trainer turned professional copywriter and founder of Sell Using Words. He helps small businesses increase their leads and sales by writing SEO-friendly blogs, sales emails, landing pages, and lead magnets. Feel free to visit his website, add him on LinkedIn and check him out on Facebook.