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Lose Weight, and how to Enjoy Fasting with L-CAT
Did I hear enjoy? Are you kidding me?
First let's put down few facts, as a guide for our discussion:
1. Eating is not just biochemistry, for most people is a form of pleasure
2. Fat is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact we need 'good' fats in a balanced nutrition
3. Fat cannot be used directly as a form of energy, it needs to be converted back into glucose (and then ATP)
4. When fat people accept they're overweight, usually they continue to eat (as something inevitable)
5. Fat people tend to eat more than non-fat ones
6. The mechanism of putting weight is complex and includes psychology and physiology
7. How getting fat impact our health
Then we'll look at the following:
8. How fasting work
9. Why it's not that bad
10 Where the fat goes when we lose weight
Finally, few misconceptions:
11. 'Carbs and Fats makes you fat'
12. 'Eating breakfast is necessary to lose weight.'
13. 'I eat more because I need more energy'
14. 'Eat less, move more'
15. 'Supplements can help you lose weight'
1. Eating is usually a pleasant affair, and the thousands of restaurants, and recipes around just confirm that.
Giving up a pleasure is difficult for many people, and against the nature of the human mind. Therefore it's hard to accept for most people. The motivation to stay fit, is linked to our mind, and the image that we've created about ourselves. According to TCM, the mind is affected by our internal organs and viceversa. This means that if we're already overweight the will-power decline, and losing weight become more difficult for us.
In TCM, the Heart houses the mind, the Spleen the intellect, and the Kidneys regulate the will power.
Note how in TCM our organs extend beyond the physiology of the medical science.
2. When trying to explain what is overweight, people usually tend to blame all forms of fat. However there are good and bad fats. The 'good' ones (mono- and poly-unsaturated) are easily assimilated and a source of vitamins essential for our metabolism. The 'bad' ones include those 'invented' by man to extend the shelf-life of food, such as hydrogenated fats, common in 'junk food'.
3. When we eat, the food is digested and converted into glucose (simple sugar). The energy that runs the body is obtained from the transformation of glucose into ATP, Adenosine triphosphate, also called the energy carrier.
Our muscles need ATP to work, and if we don't burn all the sugars that comes from food, our body transform them in fat, and store it into adipose tissue for later use.
Fat, or lipid metabolism, means converting sugar in fat, and viceversa. The majority of lipids found in the human body from ingesting food, are triglycerides and cholesterol (also called fatty acids). Noe that they're good, as long as they don't accumulate too much in the adipose tissue. For instance, moderate quantity of adipose tissue serve as cushions and protect the body from cold, pretty much like a blanket.
Because lipids are insoluble in water, they need special proteins (lipoproteins) to transport them. These proteins are LDL and HDL, often called bad and good cholesterol.
The conversion of fat in sugar, called Fatty acid catabolism, is complex and partially described in the citric acid cycle. Eventually the liver convert the breakdown of lipids into glucose, which in turn build ATP. The opposite process is called fat anabolism.
Now, let's come to the point. Why isn't tough to lose weight?
It's the catabolism of lipids that reduce adipose tissues and convert it into glucose, which in turn transform in energy. The short answer is that unfortunately we're not all equally good in fat-catabolism. This, and other factors, explains why losing weight can be challenging for many.
So to recap, our body can store energy in two ways: adipose tissue (Triglyceride), called long-term storage, and Glycogen stored in Liver and muscles, that account to short-term storage.
Glycerol: Glycerol is a precursor for synthesis of triacylglycerols and of phospholipids in the liver and adipose tissue. Triglyceride stores in adipose tissue. When the body uses stored fat as a source of energy, glycerol and fatty acids are released into the bloodstream, and in the Liver they're transformed into Ketone bodies. Ketones are used to produce energy during periods of low food intake. (a temporary replacement of glucose).
Glycogen: is a polysaccharide (a form of glucose) that serves as energy storage, primarily in the cells of the liver and skeletal muscle.
Liver glycogen serve as a store of glucose for use throughout the body, particularly the central nervous system. The human brain consumes approximately 60% of blood glucose in fasted, sedentary individuals.
Glycogen forms an energy reserve that can be quickly mobilized, whereas converting Glycerol in ATP is more complex.
4-5. Accumulating fat results in various psychological and physical effects. The body becomes heavier, and the mind more reluctant to change. It's the same inertia that apply to both the physical and mental level. In Ayurveda this inertia is represented by the guna Thamas. Inertia promote further eating in a process called positive feedback, where 'positive' in this case means adding up. In other words uncontrolled Thamas support the vicious spiral of increasing the inertia, or the resistance to change. This inertia tend to protect itself and become bigger, like adding positive numbers together. Using a numeric example, it's like a series of positive integers which eventually diverges to infinity.
6. As the individual become aware of being fat, and of the challenges of reversing it, they often accept and live with it. The metabolism of lipids is more or less efficient for each individual, and hormonal imbalances can affect it (cholesterol is used to create hormones in the Liver). So we put weight in different ways, depending on our age, sex, and many other factors.
7. Clinical studies have linked excess of fats to the risk of developing degenerating diseases including: Diabetes, Stroke, Heart attack, and Cancer.
8. Fasting is the voluntary reduction of food intake, over a period of time.
How long shall we fast? There are many ways to fast, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you don't eat at all.
Here is my personal experience: Although my BMI is good, I usually fast as long as I need to lose some extra 2-3Kg, say 5,6 days. Of course it depends how much you eat during fasting.
This my agenda, which can be started on Fri, so you can hold fasting true for the next week while working.
Did I hear "Really?", Yes fasting done properly releases enough energy to support all you daily activities, except when your energy consumption is really high. If you are not going to climb mount Everest, that will hold true.
This is my agenda when fasting, starting from Sat
Sat Morning: I drink some water then I run 2-3km outside. I run only Sat-Sun, since I go to the office during the week. When I come back I have a cup of Tea with half tea-spoon of honey, and a quarter of lemon juice in it. I just can't drink Tea without lemon. Then I drink plenty of water during the day, and for dinner a (fat) carrot, with a small portion of salad. This can go on for weeks without any problem, and I'll just stop when the excess fat is gone.
Day 1: this is probably the most challenging one. We should start easy because the body-mind complex needs to adapt to the new style. Give it some time to switch-on the biochemistry of lipid-catabolism (L-CAT). Yes, our mind will try all sort of tricks to get us back under control. "Oh come on, 2-3 Kg is nothing, and your BMI is good. Why on Earth you want to torture yourself like this? Why you want to punish yourself after all the hard work? etc.."
This is when the will-power is needed the most. Just don't listen, and move on.
Remaining days: Just follow your new habit, don't bother about anything that comes in between. Note that you'll probably start losing weight after 2-3 days, so be patient.
The sleep pattern may change while fasting, why? Because when we eat the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) is stimulated, and other changes happen in our body. The PSNS will stimulate the "rest-and-digest" pattern, and if we don't eat it will keep us awake. While fasting our body tries to save energy by diverting the blood inside, so our skin get colder and this too may impact our sleep. Since the PSNS doesn't go to sleep, our brain functions, like cognitive, learning, memory, and alertness are increased by fasting.
9. Fasting can easily be controlled and enjoyed because you doesn't lack energy. On the contrary you feel perfectly fit while your body engage with L-CAT reactions. Note also that since your body is burning internal fat, you will not crave for food as you approaches noon, or evening's hours. By not craving for food, you also know that your body has switched successfully to L-CAT. The lower you crave for food, and the more your body is efficient with L-CAT.
10. Where our fat goes when we lose it? Good question. To answer we need to look at the molecular composition of fat.
Fat is made by: H,C, and O atoms, in English: Hydrogen, Carbon and Oxygen.
Glucose is made with the same atoms, just combined (bound) in different ways.
Stoichiometry, or the law of conservation of mass, says that any chemical reaction has to balance. So if F is the mass of fat that we want to lose, and B is the mass equivalent that must leave the body, at equilibrium F must equal B. If this happen F do not accumulate in the adipose tissue, and we stay fit. Otherwise we put on weight.
F= B
By applying this law we physically need to lose the mass B which represent the excess fat F, but how?
The answer to this question comes from thermodynamics and biochemistry. Let's check Thermodynamics first.
Thermodynamics: If we look at our body as a closed system, (imagine a box) the change of its internal energy E, is equal to the Heat coming inside the body Q, minus the Work done by the body W. This means E= Q-W. In other words, when we exercise, our muscles exchange Heat from our body to the external (Q is negative in this case), and they do Work to the external (eg. walking or running). So the molecular energy (ATP) is transferred outside the body (system) as Work and Heat.
Now coming to the biochemistry of weight loss. We know that when we exercise we sweat. But sweat is mostly water, and water is H2O, or 2 atoms of Hydrogen and 1 Oxygen. But we know that fat is made by H,O, and C. How do we lose C?
While we exercise we breathe, and we exchange CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) outside the body, so the equation balance.
There you go, our fat leaves the body as: Heat, Work, Water and CO2. In other words:
B= Heat+ Work+ Water+ CO2
Simply by breathing we also lose weight (as when we sleep), but if we don't control our food intake, then we keep on adding Fat.
11. 'Carbs and Fats makes you fat' is not true. Any food potentially become Fat. It's true that Fat may come from Carbs and ingested Fat, but we can regulate B and the food intake in such a way to compensate F. So if we don't want F to accumulate in adipose tissue, we must either exercise or limit the food intake. Not just Carbs and Fat.
12. 'Eating breakfast is necessary to lose weight.' This is not true. Obviously by ingesting food we potentially put weight, not viceversa.
13. 'I eat more because I need more energy' Energy comes from ATP, and if we eat more than necessary, excess food is stored as fat not ATP. We've plenty of energy if we eat less, and a lighter body requires less energy to move.
14. 'Eat less, move more' Though this satisfy the equation F = B, we forget the motivation factor, and that's why this statement doesn't work for most people. Nothing can be achieved if we don't put our mind under control. Moreover an individual may have hormonal or metabolic imbalances that prevent L-CAT to work properly.
"Blaming people for their obesity is never helpful," says Professor Sadaf Farooqi. "It is a complex problem. It is not simply just about people choosing to eat too much or to not do enough exercise."
15. 'Supplements can help you lose weight' This sounds more like a commercial Ads rather than a true statement. As long as we think that a pill will save us (either natural or synthetic), we'll need to reply on someone else to resolve our problems. If we dedicate just a little time to the physiology of our body, we'll find that it's not that complex, and we can get rid of external dependencies by leveraging on Nutrition, Lifestyle and Psychology.
