Last year I lost 50 pounds. It’s a long road. Still 30 to go but what I’m mainly interested in is getting rid of the visceral fat, that hidden fat that envelops my heart, liver, pancreas and stomach. This is what will kill me young, not the curvy (OK, blubbery bits) on the outside.
Angela Rippon, slender, athletic, with those famous legs that so entranced Morecambe and Wise, was recently horrified to find she had more than 6 litres of invisible visceral fat padding her internal organs and threatening her health.
Insulin resistance
Stubborn diet resistant weight gain isn’t about eating too much, exercising too little, excess calories or saturated fat. It’s a complex hormonal issue and the one that plays a central role is insulin. It is this hormone that floods the blood after eating, moving excess sugar out of the temporary stores in the liver and longer-term fat stores elsewhere in the body. If this remains permanent due to poor food choices and stressful lifestyle you become ‘insulin resistant’, where the body no longer responds to insulin’s directions and you’re stuck on a fat-storing high permanently.
Fasting
The only way to correct this is by fasting periodically or reducing your calorie intake to less than 800 daily for three months. This resets insulin levels. Personally I find periodic fasting easier. A twenty four hour fast twice a week produces brilliant results and is not as draconian as it sounds. That means twice a week only one meal a day at the same time with 24 hour gap before the next meal. Lots of filtered water, herbal teas, potassium and bone broth too, of course.
Insulin resistance is exacerbated by poor sleep patterns and continual stress which saturates the body with raised cortisol levels, telling it to flood the blood with sugar. Insulin levels rise in compensation.
After nearly 40 years in practice I’m still astonished at the number of my patients who suffer from insomnia. Seven hours is a must. Five / six hours risks a 50% increase in weight gain. I’m continually teaching patients meditation and do so too in my residential detox courses and talking to them about how to sleep properly.
Insulin resistant diet
Lots of fibre as in vegetables and legumes (which also blocks the absorption of that dangerous visceral fat, as does inulin richly present in chicory and dandelion root and in my famously tasty detox tea). Pure fats like avocados, butter, nuts, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil and the natural fat that marbles meat if you’re an omnivore. Good vegan sources of protein are nuts and pea/hemp/flax/lupin protein powders. No sugar in any form whatsoever except in the occasional helping of antioxidant rich berries, apples and pears and definitely no artificial sweeteners. Whole unprocessed foods (no bread or pasta).
Long-term health
The last 30 pounds may be slow in coming off but at least I know I’ll be thin on the inside too and saving myself from the possibility of developing diabetes. Correcting insulin resistance and getting rid of visceral fat is nothing to do with luck, it’s all about informed persistence.
