How would you like to finally lose weight and keep it off? Skeptical? Understandable! You’ve probably dieted (no matter the diet) and exercised (no matter the exercise) and wound up hitting a plateau that you couldn’t get through; or you’ve lost the weight and hit your goal only to turn around and gain it all back, or worse—heavier than when you started.

The Biggest Loser finally proved that you cannot lose weight and keep it off by dieting, exercising, even both. Once you get to maintenance, it’s over. Why? Because, when you finish your diet, your resting metabolic rate is lower than when you started. This is now undisputed. So, the key to successfully keeping weight off once you’ve lost it is to keep your metabolic rate higher. This is not only necessary but, thankfully, possible.

What about losing the weight to begin with? For those of you who have thought you couldn’t lose weight because of a hormone imbalance, you were absolutely right! The hormones (signaling molecules) in your body are more important to your health than previously realized.

So, what is the imbalanced hormone that keeps you from losing weight? Insulin. Insulin is an anabolic (growth and building) hormone. When insulin is high, it pushes nutrients into your cells—sugar into your liver and muscles for short term energy storage (24 hours’ worth) and into all your cells for immediate energy; excess sugar not immediately used or stored into your liver to be converted to fat; fat into your fat cells to be stored for longer-term energy (more than 24 hours) which can only be later accessed when insulin is low and the 24 hours of stored sugar are used; and amino acids (the building blocks of all proteins—the machinery of all cells) into all cells, especially your muscles.

What stimulates insulin higher? Sugars, processed foods/carbs, refined grains and sweet fruits and vegetables stimulate it most. Proteins (both animal and vegetable) stimulate it by about half of what sugars, etc. do. What about fat? Fat does not stimulate insulin at all! So, if you want to release fat from your fat cells to be burned and thus lose weight, avoid sugars, processed foods/carbs, refined grains and sweet fruits and vegetables.

A Ketogenic Diet (high fat, moderate protein, low sugar) provides the best foods to eat to lower insulin AND to help increase your resting metabolic rate. Ketones are produced when insulin is low, causing you to release and burn fat. Their production indicates your insulin is low enough to release fat to be burned and is produced only when your fat is being burned. Ketones are also critical for increasing your resting metabolic rate; they increase “uncoupling protein” that causes more fat to be burned to produce the same amount of energy: higher resting metabolic rate equates to more fat-burning due to ketones!

So far, though, we haven’t suggested anything that people aren’t already doing. So here’s the secret sauce: Fasting*. Fasting causes your 24 hours of stored sugar to be used up. With your sugar storage gone and no new sugar coming in, your insulin drops very quickly, which allows fat to be released from your fat cells to be burned and your ketones and thus metabolic rate to be increased. Additionally, there are multiple ways of fasting: intermittent, prolonged and a five-day Fasting Mimicking Diet. Fasting supercharges any diet by using up your stored sugar, quickly and profoundly reducing your insulin, thereby releasing more of your fat for burning and increasing your ketones for raising your resting metabolic rate even higher.

Providing optimal health, naturally, Dr. Les Cole is available for consultation at St. Petersburg Health & Wellness, located at 2100 Dr. MLK Jr. St. N, St. Pete. To learn more about fasting, losing weight with their guaranteed weight loss program or to purchase the Fasting Mimicking Diet, call 727-202-6807 and/or visit StPeteHW.com. 

*Do not do a prolonged fast without a doctor’s supervision as there can be risks, especially if you have a low BMI already or other health issues.