Pre-Training Day 2 | Today’s FIRE Map Copy

Falsehoods – 6 Myths That Hold You Back

Myths that keep you from reversing diabetes

Myth 1: Eating less helps you lose weight

At face value, this sounds like good advice. Behind every myth is a kernel of truth. The truth hidden underneath this myth is that it’s not eating less FOOD that makes you lose weight. It’s eating fewer CARBS (carbohydrates). In other words: STOP COUNTING CALORIES! (Yay!) You’ll see just how this works during our 40 Day Journey.  During this time, we will count the calories for you (as a courtesy), but as time goes by, you should free yourself from this useless practice.

I think we can all recite the basic obesity formula in our sleep:

[Energy in] Minus [Energy out] = [Energy stored]

In other words, obesity is entirely an energy imbalance.  Eat too much, exercise too little and you end up flabby.  Simple as that.  The little sting in the tail is that both eating and exercising are functions of the higher will.  So, if you’re fat, it’s because you can’t control yourself – you deserve what you get.  This adds insult to injury for those who are trying so hard to get their weight under control.

The Myth of Eating Less is one of the biggest stumbling blocks on your journey to reversing diabetes.  Yes, measured over a couple of days, you will eat a lot less than you do now.  But the advice to simply “eat less” as though all foods are the same is plain wrong, and actually works against your success.

There are only really two sources of energy the body can use to sustain itself: carbs and fats.  The third macronutrient, protein, does not really count as a source of energy, but more about that later in this course. 

OK, so carbs and fats are the only two possible sources of energy for the body.  If I compare carbs to fats, then 1 g of carbs contains as much energy as ½ g of fat.  This is one reason why dieticians have been prescribing carbs to diabetics as the preferred source of energy. Since carbs contain fewer calories than fats, and [Energy in] Minus [Energy out] = [Energy stored], therefore carbs will contribute fewer calories to the [Energy in] part of the equation.

Let me illustrate: Compare a very tall man to a short man.  The tall man ate a lot more throughout his life, compared to the short one.  Is his size the result of eating, or is eating lots the result of his size?  Could it be that both his appetite and his size are due to hormonal influences? 

But this introduces a whole new concept. If hormones determine size (whether vertical or horizontal), then the energy equation cannot work.

And when it comes to eating and appetite, there are probably more hormones at play than in any other activity of the human body.

The Energy Balance Formula is broken and cannot be fixed.

The Energy Balance Formula does not adequately explain weight gain or weight loss.

The Energy Balance Formula seemed right to people obsessed with machines, but it turns out we were over-eager in simplifying human biology to the level of mechanics.  A mechanical analogy may be useful from time to time, but as a general explanation, it fails miserably.

This is one more example how thinking of the body as a machine can lead to misguided health advice. In this case, the misguided health advice has caused death in millions and disease in hundreds of millions. It is likely the worst case of medical malpractice in the history of humanity.

It has been proven time and again that a calorie restricted diet and exercise do NOT lead to long term weight loss.  On average, the loss after six months is little more than the size of a standard bowel movement. What is more, the loss is not sustainable – once restrictions are lifted, it all bounces right back.  And those restrictions have to be lifted, since the severe calorie restriction is not compatible with life or health.

This is the first myth you need to bust today before you can understand anything more that will be said later on:

Let me close with another illustration.

Imagine you are invited to a really, really delicious dinner.  You can eat and drink as much as you like, all for free.  What will you do?  Chances are, you will skip lunch.  Possibly you’ll even skip breakfast.  And you may even decide to walk to the dinner venue (assuming it was in a safe suburb…) to work up an extra appetite.

So, what have you just done?  You starved yourself and you exercised.  To what purpose?  To increase your appetite. 

(The above is a scenario painted by Gary Taubes, controversial American science writer and author of a number of books, including “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (2007). His book “Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It” was released in December 2010.)

If starving and exercise are known to increase appetite, why on earth is it that these are the two main pieces of advice we give to any obese person? Please tell me if you know the answer.

“Eat less and move more” is a recipe for diet failure, unless we add to it the correct scientific filters. As a blanket statement, it bears no scientific scrutiny.

Myth 2: Exercise helps you burn fat

We touched on this under Myth 1. Just like the first myth, this common advice seems to make sense in light of the Energy Balance Formula.  After all, fat is a fuel and if you keep burning fuel, you will burn away the excess fat.  Right? Wrong! The problem is, the body has a choice whether to burn carbs or fats.  If it is in carb-burning mode, not only are you not going to lose weight, but you are probably going to gain more fat weight when you exercise, since strenuous exercise puts the body into energy conservation mode.  This leads to The Fat Jogger Syndrome.  You probably know someone like this.  They run marathons, yet keep gaining weight. For exercise to work as a fat-burner, you first need to switch your body into fat-burning mode.

Myth 3: Eating fat makes you fat

Fat is not the enemy!  On the surface, it seems to make sense. You eat fat, and the fat is transported directly into the fat cells. How simple can this machine be?

But here’s the bit that nobody told you: Eating fat kindles a fire in the body’s fat cells.  Fats are full of calories, yes. But those calories are generally not stored as fat – except in the presence of insulin, which is triggered by (insert drum roll…) CARBS in your diet.  Should you eat fat without carbs in the diet, insulin secretion is not triggered and the fat in the diet is not stored as fat in the body.

Eating a dietary mix of fats and carbs (“reis, vleis en aartappel” in Afrikaans…) is what makes you fat.

The body has a nifty mechanism to limit the amount of energy you take on board from fats in the diet.  It is called bile.  Bile salts are essential in the absorption of fats.  If there is more fat in the diet than bile salts available, the excess fat is simply excreted. It never enters the blood stream.

No such mechanism exists to limit carbs from entering the body. The theory is that such a limiting mechanism was not needed thousands of years ago, when carb intake in most human populations was relatively low.

How can fat make you thin and healthy?

• Fat makes you feel full longer, so you eat less, crave less and snack less.
• Fat also makes healthy foods like vegetables taste better … so you may even find you eat more of them.
• Fat helps with the absorption of certain vitamins and micronutrients found in plants.

Please note: Not all “fats” are good for you. Although all fats and oils, taken correctly, will help you lose weight and reduce insulin resistance, some fats and oils are bad for your health and should be avoided. More about this later. 

Myth 4: Cholesterol is bad for your heart health

One of the most pervasive and persistent lies of the past 40 years has been the belief that cholesterol causes heart disease.  As we will show you in the coming days, blaming cholesterol for heart disease is like blaming firemen for fires.  Simply because you find lots of firemen on the scene of a fire does not mean they started the fire.  Simply because you find cholesterol on the scene of a heart attack does not mean the cholesterol started it.

Cholesterol is the body’s fireman.  When there is inflammation, the body deploys cholesterol to fight it.  Think of cholesterol as a Band Aid plaster.  If there is a wound inside an artery, cholesterol is stuck on top of the wound to allow the wound to heal.  If the wound persists, more Band Aids are needed. If the artery is small enough, as in the coronaries, this may eventually lead to occlusion of the artery and a heart attack results.  But it was not cholesterol that started the fire.  We need to find out what started the fire and solve that problem first, then cholesterol will not be dangerous to heart health.

What about all those studies linking high cholesterol levels to high heart attack rates? Firstly, many of these studies were flawed in their design.  The scientists cherry-picked that data that suited their theory.  Other studies were done with greater rigour, but they forgot to compensate for an important variable: sugar consumption.  Fructose in sugar is one of the main causes of arterial inflammation. When average sugar consumption in a population is graphed against heart attack rate, you get an almost straight line.  The higher the consumption of sugar, the higher the heart attack rate. 

Cholesterol’s role in this is simply that of a bystander.  If blood cholesterol levels are higher, more cholesterol will be deposited on burning fires.  And thus, the heart attack rate will increase, relative to populations with a lower average cholesterol reading. But where high cholesterol populations that consume no sugar have been studied, it was found that a high cholesterol level actually predicts longevity.  This would make sense, since those people with higher cholesterol levels have a greater ability to heal themselves.

In other words: Lowering cholesterol is not the true answer to lowering heart attack rates. We need to get to the source of the fire and douse it.

Myth 5: Fructose is safer than glucose

Fructose and glucose are both simple sugars. We call them mono-saccharides.  Both of these sugars occur in nature.  Fructose is present in most fruits, but also in many other natural sources. The body cannot burn fructose for energy, so it is first modified into glucose in the liver. 

Fructose does not trigger the same insulin response as glucose.  In fact, it is only about half as glycaemic as glucose (an indication of how much insulin is secreted after fructose is ingested).  This has led to the belief that fructose is a better sweetener to use for diabetics, instead of glucose.

When fructose is ingested in the form of a fruit, it is bound to the fibre content of that fruit. This means the fructose is released slowly over the course of several hours. The liver has ample time to turn the fructose into glucose.

However, what happens if the fructose is not bound to fibre, as happens when you add a teaspoon of sugar to your tea or coffee?  Sugar, also known as sucrose, is a chemical combination of one part glucose and one part fructose.  So, if you eat a teaspoon of sugar, you ingest half a teaspoon of pure fructose and half a teaspoon of glucose. In the absence of fibre, the fructose is absorbed almost instantly and overruns the liver’s ability to turn it into glucose.

Three things follow:

• Firstly, the excess fructose is turned into fat and stored in the liver cells. Fructose is likely the most important cause of fatty liver disease in Type 2 diabetics. And fatty liver is likely the number one cause of hypertension in Type 2 diabetics.
• Secondly, excess fructose escapes the liver and ends up in the bloodstream. This is an unusual situation. Until the advent of sugar as a stand-alone sweetener, fructose never got into the blood in significant amounts (except if you ate honey, which was a rarity).  Now, we have fructose floating in our bloodstream almost all the time.
• Thirdly, the fatty liver cells become resistant to insulin. As a result, blood glucose rises and, in response, the pancreas produces more insulin. So, even while fructose half the insulin response of glucose after a single dose, it causes insulin to rise if given repeatedly over weeks and years.

When grilling meat, basting sauces are coated on meat beforehand to produce a particular aroma and flavour.  Most basting sauces contain quite a lot of sugar for one reason:  Under the influence of heat, the sugar binds chemically with the meat to form a crunchy, caramelly crust.  This reaction is known as the Maillard (“my-YAR”) reaction.  When fructose lands in the arteries, the same reaction

takes place. Where the interior of the arteries is damaged due to friction, fructose attaches itself and causes the artery to become brittle.  This is the source of inflammation which starts the plaque cascade which results in a heart attack or stroke.

In other words, fructose is responsible for fatty liver disease, hypertension, increased insulin levels and brittle arteries. It is not safer than glucose.

Talking about fruit in the diet is a touchy subject.  Our mothers insisted on us eating apples to keep the doctor away.  Every great myth has a kernel of truth.  The truth is, fruits are a source of some great (even essential) nutrients.  But the type of sugar we find in fruits (fructose) can trigger fatty liver if taken in excess.

Eating fruits in large amounts will delay weight loss or even cause weight gain. In order to LOSE FLAB, you will need to limit fruit intake to the bare minimum over the next weeks.  Once your liver is free from fat, you can eat more fruit, as long as it is the whole fruit and not in a dried or processed form.

Myth 6: Eating smaller, more regular meals boosts metabolism

The theory behind this myth is that you “keep the fire burning” by adding coals to the fire.  The reality is that, as long as food enters your gut, you stop the body’s reserves from being used to fuel your metabolism.  Every time you eat, insulin levels rise. And elevated insulin levels are the root cause of insulin resistance. Eating six meals a day means you will never lose weight, even if the total calorie count of those six meals, put together, is less than the calorie count of the three meals you used to eat.  Eating fewer meals (one or two a day) helps your body tuck into its fat reserves, even if the total calorie intake stays the same.  This is known as meal timing or intermittent fasting.  By spacing out meals, insulin levels drop between meals, and fat burning is triggered.  Fat burning cannot happen until insulin levels drop.