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medpundit |
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Wednesday, July 10, 2002I've been on a variation for one over the last year, and I'm losing weight. I'm not sure why, other than the fact that, yes, I'm probably eating less than I burn (and hiking more, but I've always hiked as much as I can.) But there's one thing I've noticed. The big reason it seems to work for me "I'm not hungry." When I eat large amounts of carbohydrates (a trivial thing to do in our society,) I'm never satisfied. When I don't, I am. One cheeseburger, without a bun, and I'm fine until dinner. Two cheeseburgers, with, and fries, and I'm hungry again at 2PM. Once I figured this out, I stopped eating the rice with Chinese, stopped eating potato chips, and I've lost weight. I'm wondering if anyone's looked at this. If some people's hunger mechanisms are reacting incorrectly to large carbohydrate intakes, which all "classic" diets have, I'm not surprised they fail -- either they fail to follow the diet from hunger, or they eat so much "diet" food that it doesn't work. The New York Times Sunday Magazine article that inspired this, did mention that eating carbohydrates seems to stimulate hunger: David Ludwig, the Harvard endocrinologist, says that it's the direct effect of insulin on blood sugar that does the trick. He notes that when diabetics get too much insulin, their blood sugar drops and they get ravenously hungry. They gain weight because they eat more, and the insulin promotes fat deposition. The same happens with lab animals. This, he says, is effectively what happens when we eat carbohydrates -- in particular sugar and starches like potatoes and rice, or anything made from flour, like a slice of white bread. These are known in the jargon as high-glycemic-index carbohydrates, which means they are absorbed quickly into the blood. As a result, they cause a spike of blood sugar and a surge of insulin within minutes. The resulting rush of insulin stores the blood sugar away and a few hours later, your blood sugar is lower than it was before you ate. As Ludwig explains, your body effectively thinks it has run out of fuel, but the insulin is still high enough to prevent you from burning your own fat. The result is hunger and a craving for more carbohydrates. It's another vicious circle, and another situation ripe for obesity. I don’t know how important this mechanism is in controlling hunger, but there might be something to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us are more sensitive to it than others. (DB’s Medrants has more technical observations on this.) posted by Sydney on 7/10/2002 01:13:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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