If you are afraid of insulin, then you shouldn’t be. Of course, you don’t want your insulin levels too high for obvious health reasons, but at the same time, you don’t want them too low. It wouldn’t be optimal for muscle growth.
In this article, we are going to address:
- What Exactly is Insulin
- What is True About Insulin
- Myths About Insulin
- Ways to Naturally Fix Insulin Resistance
What Exactly Is Insulin?
Insulin is a storage hormone produced by the pancreas. It is responsible for regulating the distribution of glucose throughout the body. When we consume food, it is then converted to glucose, which can be stored in 1 of 3 places:
- The Liver
- Muscle Tissue
- Fat Tissue
What Is True About Insulin?
It is true that carbohydrates spike insulin levels the most. It doesn’t mean that carbs should be villainized, but you should be selective of the kinds of carbs you allow into your diet.
Fast-digesting carbs like soda, fruit juice, sweet tea, and bleached-white flour products will cause the greatest spike in insulin levels.
Why do these types of carbs have such a high impact on insulin? Well, these carbs have the highest concentration of processed sugars. They are very addictive and not very satiating.
Diets high in sugar stimulate the hunger hormone ghrelin. If your ghrelin levels get too high, you end up eating more calories than your body needs.
If you take in more calories than your body needs, insulin will store the excess calories as body fat.
Myths About Insulin
1. Protein and Fats Don’t Activate Insulin
It is commonly believed that proteins and fats don’t stimulate insulin levels. This is monumentally false. Anytime you consume food regardless of the macronutrient, you are spiking insulin.
Yes, it’s true carbohydrates elevate insulin levels the most, but protein is your second most insulin-inducing macronutrient.
Are we supposed to demonize protein too because of its impact on insulin? Should we adopt low protein diets to keep insulin levels low?
The answer to both questions is an easy no. We know that low-protein diets are not optimal for fat loss and muscle building. The same way low-carb diets are not optimal for muscle growth/retention.
The danger to your fat loss efforts is not in any one macronutrient. It is in too much food energy point blank period.
2. Insulin Only Stores Glucose as Body Fat
This is another false claim about insulin. As we stated earlier in the article, there are 3 places in the body where insulin can store glucose.
The Liver
The liver is the first place. You can think of your liver as the smallest parking garage in your body. There is a hard limit to how much glucose can be stored in the liver.
Let’s say you been fasting for 12-hours, and you break your fast with a small meal that’s under 500-calories. This amount of food energy is not powerful enough to evoke a significant insulin response.
Even though you are experiencing insulin elevation immediately after consuming the meal, it doesn’t mean the glucose from the food is going into fat storage.
Humans require a lot more than 500 calories a day to sustain themselves. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about an insulin spike from a little 400-500 calorie meal causing you fat gain.
Since liver glycogen is the first thing that gets depleted from either fasting or exercise, it would be the first parking lot to be filled after consuming some food.
Muscle Tissue
Why would insulin store glucose in muscle tissue? Well, once the liver parking lot becomes full, insulin heads for the second parking lot, which is muscle tissue.
If you’re someone who is new to strength training and you are eating a maintenance or deficit caloric intake, you can increase your muscle parking garage very quickly.
This is a good thing because the bigger your muscles get, the more room it makes for glucose. You wouldn’t have to worry about insulin storing the glucose as body fat. Of course, this assumes you’re managing your caloric intake properly.
Why else would insulin store glucose in muscle tissue? Once you complete an intense workout, your muscle glycogen storage becomes depleted. After you have your post-workout meal, you refill that glycogen storage.
The body would get the best hormonal response to calories especially carbohydrates post-workout. Basically, post-workout carbs would aid in muscle building.
Here’s one last reason why insulin stores glucose into muscle tissue. Let’s say you are only focused on building muscle. You are strength training hard and you’re eating in a small caloric surplus, ideally 200-calories a day above maintenance.
In this instance, you are lean bulking, which is gaining weight without gaining fat. Just because you are eating in a caloric surplus, it doesn’t mean insulin is storing excess glucose as body fat.
If you are lifting weights a few days a week, eating enough protein, and maintaining a small surplus for slow-weight gain, that glucose is mostly going towards muscle.
Fat Tissue
Why would insulin store glucose as body fat? To most people this is the million-dollar question, but it’s really not. The answer to this question is very simple.
If you are consistently eating in a caloric surplus that exceeds both your metabolic needs and what you can utilize for muscle growth, insulin has no choice but to store the excess glucose in adipose fat tissue.
Your fat storage is a parking garage that can grow without limitations. As this parking garage becomes bigger, your risk for some of the more common metabolic diseases becomes greater, especially Type 2 Diabetes.
Ways to Naturally Fix Insulin Resistance
Insulin resistance is not a rear disorder in western society. About 70% of U.S adults over the age of 20 have insulin resistance, because this same population is either overweight or obese.
There is no pill or medical procedure you can undergo to fix insulin resistance. The best you can do is get your body fat to healthy levels.
For men, 15% bodyfat or below optimizes health and lowers disease risk. For women, 20% bodyfat or below optimizes health and lowers disease risk.
Now, let’s get into some strategies you can utilize to fix insulin resistance and lose more fat.
1. Practice Intermittently Fasting for 12 -18 hours a day.
Intermittent fasting is a great place to start in your efforts to fix insulin resistance. Fasting for 12+ hours a day depletes the cells of excess blood glucose, thus stabilizing insulin levels. At that point, you have accessed your fat storage and will be burning that as a fuel source.
When you fast for more than 16 hours a day, you are drastically reducing your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
If you reach a point where you are fasting for 18+ hours a day, you are getting autophagy benefits.
Autophagy is an important but underrated process in the body. This is where you see benefits as far as reducing your risk of certain cancers.
This cannot be stressed enough. Intermittent fasting is not weight loss science. It is a tool used for weight loss or fat loss.
If you want to lose weight or fat, you must place your body in a prolong net-energy deficit. You can fast 18 hours a day, but if you’re significantly over-consuming calories, you won’t lose fat.
Yes, it is true that intermittent fasting has been shown to raise metabolism by up to 11% but that is not a significant increase. It still doesn’t give you a pass on not tracking your caloric intake.
If you want to read more about the benefits of intermittent fasting, check out this article Intermittent Fasting Windows.
If you are already familiar with intermittent fasting but want a different perspective on fasting for lifestyle, go to this article The Most Lifestyle-Friendly Approach to Intermittent Fasting.
2. Learn How to Track Your Calories
Tracking calories is a fundamental fitness skill. If you are trying to eat in a caloric deficit to lose fat, you actually have to verify you are in a caloric deficit. Tracking calories paired with intermittent fasting gives you tremendous dietary freedom.
You would be able to eat foods that are higher in volume, but lower in calories. Of course, 70 -80% of your food intake will be healthy. However, you would have a 20-30% margin of junk food that you can fit in daily.
- Tracking calories ensures you’re in a caloric deficit.
- Being in a caloric deficit ensures you lose fat.
- Losing fat fixes insulin resistance.
Hopefully, all that makes sense.
A lot of people will try intermittent fasting, combined with low-carb or “portion control” and then complain about not being able to lose weight. When you ask them how many calories they’re eating a day, they can’t tell you.
They will also try doing an hour of cardio every day to compensate for not tracking their calories. You can’t out-exercise a high-calorie diet. It is harder to burn 700 calories than it is to eat 700 calories.
Unless you are an athlete training for 3 hours a day, you most likely can’t out-exercise a bad diet.
If you want to learn more about how your body burns calories, check out this article 3 Ways Your Body Burns Calories in a Day.
3. Strength Train a Few Days a Week
No form of exercise reverses insulin resistance better than strength training. Muscle is a byproduct of strength. As you increase muscle mass, you are increasing room for glucose storage.
This means you won’t have to worry as much about excess glucose being stored as bodyfat.
Now, you don’t need to be in the gym 5 or 6 days a week lifting things. All you need is 2 or 3 intense workouts per week with a focus on progressive overload.
If you need help with structuring your gym workouts, go to this article The Best Number of Exercises, Sets, and Reps Per Workout.
4. Try Carbohydrate Backloading
Carb backloading is highly effective for fighting insulin resistance. It’s basically a pattern of eating where you’re keeping your carb intake low throughout the day and allocating most of your carbohydrates to the nighttime.
Carb backloading is utilized by people who tend to train in the evening once they get off their job. Essentially, your pre-workout meals would consist of proteins, fats, and no carbs or very little carbs.
The pre-workout carbs would come from fruits and green vegetables. With carb backloading, having up to 50grams of carbs before your workout is permissible.
Post-workout, you can consume the rest of your carbs along with any other protein and fats you still need.
The main benefit of carb backloading is satiety. If you save all or most of your carbs for the night, you will have better satiety in a caloric deficit. You will also sleep better.
Carb backloading can also be done on days you are not training. You would just eat your starchy carbs at night with your dinner. You can even fit in some bad carbs if you want.
Of course, the bulk of your carb selection should be quality carbs that promote fullness, if you need an idea of what those are, check out this article 9 Best Carbohydrate Foods For Satiety and Fat Loss.
5. Walk 7,000+ Steps a Day
Walking is the best form of low-intensity activity for your insulin levels. When you walk more, your blood sugar levels come down naturally allowing it to stabilize.
A good goal to aim for is between 7,000 and 10,000 steps daily. This number of steps will put you in a good place for fat loss and metabolic disease prevention.
You don’t need cardio, just need daily physical activity. Cardio and physical activity are two different things. Also, cardio is not really for fat loss. It is more so for athletes that need the conditioning benefits.
Walking is one option. If you want to do other daily physical activities that would still allow you to hold a conversation with someone, that is fine too.
If you want more insight on the benefits of walking, go to this article Why Walking is the Best Exercise for Long-Term Fat Loss.
Conclusion
The big takeaway here is that insulin spikes do not always equal fat storage. If you’re not in an excessively high caloric surplus every day, there is no reason for insulin to store glucose as bodyfat.
Remember, you have 2 other places where insulin can store glucose, which are the liver and the muscles.
Keeping insulin hormone low and staying in caloric deficit goes hand and hand with fat loss. If insulin resistance is a problem for you, follow the steps laid out in this article to stabilize your insulin levels.
If you want to learn more about other hormones that are important to manage for weight loss, go to this article 7 Hormones You Must Manage on a Weight Loss Program.