How does insulin prevent fat burning?
The key to recovering from diabetes is to lower your blood insulin levels. Insulin prevents your body from burning stored fat for energy. Since carbohydrates cause your blood insulin to rise compared to other nutrients, a low-carb diet lowers your insulin and stimulates fat burning. Learn more about the role of insulin in preventing fat burning and how that affects type 2 diabetes.
The role of insulin in the body
The pancreas secretes insulin after eating to control blood sugar levels. Eating foods rich in carbohydrates leads to a significant increase in insulin levels, as these foods are converted into large amounts of glucose inside the body.
Insulin moves glucose from the blood into muscle and fat cells, to control blood sugar levels, but this leads to the glucose that was consumed being stored in the cells as fat instead of being used as a source of energy, which causes the person to feel hungry again and prompts him to eat again.
Insulin is responsible for storing nutrients and preventing their use as energy sources. It is an anabolic hormone, as it stores nutrients by converting amino acids into protein, and converting carbohydrates into glycogen or fats that are stored inside the body's adipose tissues, which leads to weight gain.
At the same time, insulin prevents the burning of fats in the body when the body needs energy. It prevents the breakdown of protein, fats, and carbohydrates stored in the body. Instead, it stimulates the feeling of hunger to obtain sources of glucose by eating food as a quick source of energy.
The role of insulin in fat storage
When insulin levels rise, it stops burning fat for fuel and stimulates the storage of incoming food as fat. For this reason, as long as the diet is rich in carbohydrates, the body will not have the opportunity to burn stored fat, making weight loss difficult. Therefore, limiting carbohydrate intake through a low-carb diet stimulates increased fat burning and reduced fat storage.
Carbohydrate-rich foods are responsible for fluctuating glucose levels, and thus fluctuating insulin levels, which stimulates cravings for a quick boost of energy by eating sugary and starchy foods, which are quickly converted into glucose in the body, which insulin stores as fat.
How does insulin affect fat burning?
Both the process of fat synthesis and storage within the body, and the process of burning fat in the body are sensitive to changes in the level of insulin in the blood, and one of the most important factors that lead to severe fluctuations in insulin levels is eating foods rich in carbohydrates, as a slight decrease in insulin leads to an immediate increase in fat burning, while an increase in insulin activates the enzymes that convert glucose into fat.
Since low-carb diets significantly reduce insulin levels, they allow the body to use body fat as an energy source. These diets stimulate the burning of stored fat for energy. This also contributes to improving cholesterol and other fat levels in the body, which reduces the risk of heart disease.
Stimulate fat burning during exercise
Controlling carbohydrate intake controls insulin levels, allowing the body to use fat for energy, even during exercise, where fat provides the energy needed to perform physical activity. With a low-carb diet, the body uses both the healthy fats that are consumed as well as stored body fat for energy.
What about diabetics?
A low-carb diet is beneficial for diabetics as it contributes to:
Maintaining blood sugar levels within the normal range.
Reduce hunger between meals.
Increase the burning of stored fat.
Reduce insulin resistance.
achieve weight loss
Maintaining blood sugar
There are three nutrients that provide energy:
Carbohydrates.
Protein.
Fats.
Of these nutrients, carbohydrates have the greatest effect on raising blood glucose levels, followed by protein, which has a small to moderate effect on blood sugar, and then fat, which has the least effect of the three nutrients.
Carbohydrates contribute significantly to raising blood sugar, and protein and fats can also raise it, but to a much lesser extent than carbohydrates. Therefore, the appropriate healthy diet for diabetics is a diet low in carbohydrates, includes a moderate amount of protein, and is rich in healthy fats.
reduce hunger
Following a healthy low-carb diet helps reduce feelings of hunger. High-carb diets cause extreme fluctuations in blood sugar levels, and high and low blood sugar levels lead to feelings of hunger. Therefore, it is best to stick to a diet that leads to more stable blood sugar levels.
The benefit of following a low-carb diet in reducing the feeling of hunger between meals is that it contains vegetables that provide the nutrients and vitamins that the body needs, and it also contains healthy fats that are a good source of energy as they gradually supply the body with the energy it needs.
reduce insulin resistance
Carbohydrates raise blood sugar levels, which stimulates increased insulin secretion. Carbohydrates require more insulin, and very high levels of insulin in the body lead to insulin resistance, which then leads to prediabetes, followed by type 2 diabetes.
Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes can be reversed by reducing insulin resistance. This can be achieved by reducing carbohydrates which reduces the amount of insulin in the body and this works to reduce insulin resistance.
High insulin levels are the reason behind weight gain in many people with type 2 diabetes, as the main role of insulin is to store fat in the body.
achieve weight loss
The main key to losing weight is to achieve lower insulin levels and follow a low-carb diet, as a high-carb diet leads to high blood sugar, high insulin and thus fat storage and weight gain.
The diet allows you to maintain a normal eating schedule while keeping insulin levels low and thus fat storage low, it is important to maintain physical activity as well because this will further help in lowering sugar levels and burning fat in the body.
