![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/Eat_this.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis magical, marvellous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain\u2019t normal.\u201d <\/em> Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n A logical follow-up to last week\u2019s note critiquing the National Food Strategy would be to set out a summary of my dietary advice. Dietary advice should achieve two goals. First, it should enable us to obtain the nutrients that we require from food, Second, it should enable us to attain and maintain a healthy body weight. (The two goals are complementary).<\/p>\n Obesity was a major focus of The National Food Strategy, and I liked the way that it was positioned in the plan. The Executive Summary opened by saying “The food system we have today is both a miracle and a disaster<\/em>.” A miracle because it has managed to feed a growing world population (albeit unevenly) and a disaster because “the food we eat \u2013 and the way we produce it \u2013 is doing terrible damage to our planet and to our health<\/em>.” Obesity is a serious health issue in the more affluent part of the world and it\u2019s an indication of a misuse of resources, substances having been consumed that caused harm rather than good.<\/p>\n The following has been adapted from The Diet Fix<\/em> where I set out the basics about food and weight loss, before building on this to propose five principles for attaining and maintaining a healthy body weight (Ref 1).<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with food<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Macronutrients \u2013 fat, protein and carbohydrate<\/em><\/p>\n Somewhere along the way we seem to have forgotten why we eat. We eat because there are nutrients that we must consume. The word \u201cessential<\/em>\u201d in nutrition means \u201csomething that we must consume<\/em>.\u201d There are essential fats \u2013 the two fatty acids known as omega-3 and omega-6. We need both these fats, and we need them in a healthy ratio. This is generally recognised as being between 1:1 and 1:4-6 in favour of omega-6 i.e., equal amounts of the two fats, or 4-6 times as much omega-6 as omega-3. Our current ratio is more like 20 times as much omega-6 as omega-3. Entire books have been written about how harmful this could be (Ref 2).<\/p>\n There are essential proteins \u2013 these are the amino acids (component parts of protein) that the body can\u2019t make, so they must be consumed. There are no essential carbohydrates. This is not a controversial statement. It would be accepted by those same public health authorities that advice us to consume most of our calories in the form of carbohydrate \u2013 the one macronutrient that we don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n Micronutrients \u2013 vitamins and minerals<\/em><\/p>\n We need 13 vitamins \u2013 8 B vitamins, vitamin C and the 4 fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K) \u2013 and we need approximately 15 minerals. The macro minerals (those we need in larger quantities) are calcium; chloride; magnesium; phosphorus; potassium; sodium & sulphur. The trace minerals (those we need in smaller quantities) are chromium; copper; iodine; iron; manganese; molybdenum; selenium & zinc.<\/p>\n What food is<\/em><\/p>\n Before 2014, I developed a diagram to explain what food is (in terms of macronutrients) when I speak at conferences (Ref 3):<\/p>\n The above diagram illustrates the following:<\/p>\n 1) There is only one \u2018food\u2019 on the planet that is 100% carbohydrate and that is sucrose \u2013 what we know as table sugar. Arguably it shouldn\u2019t be considered a food because it has no essential fats, no complete protein, no vitamins and no minerals. It is simply empty carbohydrate calories.<\/p>\n 2) At the other end of the spectrum, there are pure fats. The foods that are entirely fat are oils (olive oil, sunflower oil, coconut oil etc) and lard. Arguably these are not natural foods either. The whole food would be the olive, not a mass of oil extracted from it. Lard is concentrated fat from a pig. The whole food would be a ham joint or pork chop.<\/p>\n 3) Not many people know that protein is in every other food other than these extremes of sucrose & oils\/lard. Protein is in lettuce and apples, as well as the more obvious steak and eggs.<\/p>\n 4) The food factoid that I observed (and find incredibly useful) is that nature tends to provide foods that are carbohydrate proteins or<\/em> foods that are fat proteins. Rarely does nature put carbohydrate, fat and protein in the same foods in reasonable amounts:<\/p>\n i) Carb proteins are foods that come from trees and the ground. These are things that vegans and vegetarians would eat. They include fruit, vegetables, grains, beans and pulses (also known as legumes).<\/p>\n ii) Fat proteins are foods that come from animal sources: meat; fish; eggs and dairy products. These are things that vegans don\u2019t eat (vegetarians would eat eggs and dairy products).<\/p>\n iii) Nuts and seeds are the rare natural foods that contain carbohydrate, fat and protein in reasonable amounts. This is one of the reasons that I advise avoiding these foods if trying to lose weight. The carb fat combo is uniquely fattening. The carb fat combo is also the domain of processed food. Junk-food manufacturers have recognised that we find the carb fat combo irresistible and more\u2019ish and that\u2019s why they\u2019ve developed biscuits, cakes, crisps, ice-cream and all the other stuff that makes us obese and sick.<\/p>\n 5) As foods are positioned closer to the centre of the diagram, they start to contain more of the macronutrient on the other side:<\/p>\n i) Meat and fish are combinations of protein and fat. They contain no carbohydrate, except for glycogen in liver if you eat offal (which you should). Eggs are also virtually entirely made up of protein and fat \u2013 they have just a trace of carbohydrate.<\/p>\n ii) Moving closer to the centre, dairy foods (milk, yoghurt, cheese, cream) are mainly protein and fat, but they can have a measureable carb content. Cream and hard cheese contains very little carbohydrate, but fluid dairy, such as milk and yoghurt, can be as high as 10% carbohydrate. (Please note that dairy products are healthy, but some people can be intolerant to them, so please don\u2019t consume them if this applies to you. Interestingly, dairy intolerance is strongly connected to ethnic origin. Dairy intolerance is not common in northern Europeans, but it is very common in African Americans and people of Asian origin (Ref 4).)<\/p>\n iii) On the other side of the diagram, fruit and vegetables are almost entirely combinations of protein and carbohydrate. They contain traces of fat.<\/p>\n iv) Moving closer to the centre, grains, beans and pulses do start to contain more fat. Most foods contain at least a trace of fat \u2013 this alone tells me that fat can\u2019t be bad for us. If the food provided by the planet were trying to kill us, we would have died out long ago.<\/p>\n What is weight loss?<\/strong><\/p>\n To understand how to lose weight, we need to understand what weight loss is. That should be obvious, but astonishingly few people know the mechanism by which we lose weight. This lack of awareness stems from the calories in\/calories out (CICO) belief. The CICO brigade (I pronounce it psycho!) think that the mere act of putting fewer calories into the body will magically lead to weight loss. If only it were that simple.<\/p>\n Body fat is made up of fat cells that are full of triglycerides. Tri means three, as in tricycle or tripod, and triglyceride is a structure with three fatty acids joined together with a glycerol backbone. Whenever you see \u201cglyc\u201d in reference to the body, think sugar e.g., glycaemic, glycaemia etc. Body fat is thus three fats joined together with a sugar \u2018backbone\u2019. To lose weight, we need to break down this triglyceride structure. So, under what circumstances does this happen?<\/p>\n Fuel for the body<\/em><\/p>\n The human body has options when it needs fuel. The simplest and easiest fuel to use is glucose. Rare exercise exceptions aside, the body will look for stored glucose when it needs fuel. There are also some organs in the body, for example the heart and liver, which preferentially use fatty acids. But, in general, the body will fuel on glucose if any is available.<\/p>\n The human body has just four grams of glucose in the entire blood stream at any one time. That\u2019s one teaspoon of sugar. If you consume any food that contains glucose (that\u2019s any carbohydrate in essence), the body needs to deal with it quite rapidly, because a high blood glucose level can be damaging. Insulin is the hormone, produced in the pancreas, which brings down blood glucose levels. There are a number of ways in which insulin controls blood sugar. It allows glucose to be transported into muscles, where it is stored as glycogen. It also switches on the glucose storage system in the liver, turning glucose into glycogen. In addition to this, it can activate biochemical pathways in the liver that turn glucose into fat.<\/p>\n You may have heard athletes talk about \u2018carb-loading\u2019 before an event. They do this to fill up their glycogen stores. The body only has the capacity to store approximately 100g of glycogen in the liver and approximately 250-400g in the muscles. Given that glucose\/glycogen is a carbohydrate and that carbohydrates have approximately 4 calories per gram, that\u2019s about 1,400-2,000 calories of glucose fuel that can be stored by the body at any one time. If this glycogen (stored glucose) isn\u2019t used within a 24 hour period, the body turns it to fat. Straight away this tells us that the body does not like sugar. It keeps a tiny amount in the blood stream, and it doesn\u2019t want to store much more in the liver and muscles. Sugar is toxic to the human body. I hope that you\u2019re already wondering why we are told to eat so much carbohydrate.<\/p>\n As a rule, when the body needs fuel, it looks for glucose first. If glucose is available, it doesn\u2019t need to look any further. When and only when the glucose has run out, the body will look for other fuel \u2013 fat, for example. The body is quite happy fuelling on fat. However, it finds carbs easier, and our current diet has led to most people having a sub optimal ability to fuel on fat. The body can be retrained relatively quickly and easily. Professors Phinney and Volek have led the way in explaining how to become \u2018fat-adapted\u2019 (Ref 5).<\/p>\n The body has two options for fuelling on fat: dietary fat and stored (body) fat. If you have recently had a butter coffee, for example, your body can use the fat from the butter for fuel. If you are out of stored glucose and out of dietary fat, your body can start to break down body fat. That\u2019s weight loss. The body can also break down body fat if your blood glucose level gets low. The body knows that triglyceride comes with fat and a sugar backbone and thus it can break down body fat to get that tiny bit of glucose in the triglyceride structure.<\/p>\n The mechanism by which body fat is broken down involves a hormone called glucagon. Think of insulin and glucagon as equal and opposite hormones. Insulin takes glucose out<\/em> of the blood stream and stores fuel; glucagon puts glucose back into<\/em> the blood stream and accesses fuel. These two hormones are antagonists. They are not in play at the same time. If insulin is doing something, glucagon is dormant. If glucagon is doing something, insulin is dormant.<\/p>\n For most people in the so-called developed world, the only time we come close to breaking down body fat, i.e., losing weight, is in the middle of the night when we\u2019re asleep. Those people eating the government recommended 55-60% of their diet in the form of carbohydrate, however, probably never get to this stage. They likely always have stored glucose available as fuel and never need to break down body fat.<\/p>\n For those who eat less carbohydrate, at approximately 4am the body might run out of glucose and the body might then break down body fat to access the glycerol and to provide some fatty acids for fuel. During the night, you\u2019re not eating and so insulin is asleep. Glucagon is thus able to do its job as and when needed.<\/p>\n There are two vital points to make here:<\/p>\n i) If glucose is available, there is no need to break down body fat;<\/p>\n ii) If insulin is present, it is not possible to break down body fat.<\/p>\n What makes glucose available? Carbohydrates. What makes insulin present? Carbohydrates again, but also protein. The only macronutrient that doesn\u2019t appear to have an impact on glucose or insulin is fat. I hope that you\u2019re wondering even more by now why we are told to eat so much carbohydrate.<\/p>\n There is no guaranteed way to lose weight in that there is no guaranteed way to activate glucagon. However, there are certain things that we can do that make it possible and even probable that glucagon can and will break down body fat:<\/p>\n a) Don\u2019t have glucose available as fuel;<\/p>\n b) Don\u2019t have insulin present;<\/p>\n c) Do things that enable glucagon to be called upon;<\/p>\n d) Don\u2019t do things that inhibit the operation of glucagon.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s it. That\u2019s how to lose weight. Let\u2019s look at each of these in turn:<\/p>\n a) Don\u2019t have glucose available as fuel. b) Don\u2019t have insulin present. We are told to \u2018graze.\u2019 I give my view on grazing in conference speeches: \u201cUnless you are a cow, or want to be the size of one, stop grazing!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Every single time that you put something in your mouth that contains carbohydrate or protein (that\u2019s everything other than oil or lard basically) you stimulate insulin. Every time you stimulate insulin, you have just ensured that glucagon cannot do anything. You have switched off any chance of burning body fat.<\/p>\n c) Do things that enable glucagon to be called upon. Once conditions a and b are met, the best way to activate glucagon is to increase your need for fuel. Make the following phrase your way of life: \u201cEat naturally move naturally<\/em>.\u201d You need to do what human beings are designed to do. I described this in my obesity book as \u201cwalk, talk, dance, sing, cook, clean and tend the land<\/em>\u201d (Ref 6). This is what we need to do to give glucagon a reason to do its work. And always remember \u2013 conditions a and b must be met first or glucagon won\u2019t be breaking down body fat.<\/p>\n Activity doesn\u2019t have to be physical. The brain is one of the most energy intensive parts of the body. Reading, doing your daily work, doing crosswords or Sudoku puzzles \u2013 these activities require fuel, and the body will look for some if none is obviously available.<\/p>\n d) Don\u2019t do things that inhibit the operation of glucagon. The issue with alcohol is in fact not its calorie content, but the fact that alcohol impairs the operation of glucagon (Ref 7). The body registers alcohol as a poison and the liver thus prioritises getting rid of the substance ahead of doing the many other jobs that the liver must do. This means that maintaining blood glucose levels, by accessing glucose or breaking down body fat, becomes less of a priority.<\/p>\n If you have alcohol in the evening (which is when we tend to consume it), we inhibit glucagon from working for some hours following. Exactly how many hours will depend on how much you\u2019ve had to drink, how quickly your liver gets rid of alcohol and other individual factors. As a rule of thumb, it takes approximately one hour for the liver to process one unit of alcohol. During the time that the liver is getting rid of the alcohol, you won\u2019t be burning fat. Importantly, you won\u2019t be burning glucose either because i) the body will preferentially burn alcohol instead of glucose and ii) the liver is too busy dealing with the alcohol to bother with glucose or body fat.<\/p>\n You may have spotted another issue here. Because the body prioritises getting rid of alcohol above regulating blood glucose levels, alcohol drives the munchies. While the liver is processing the alcohol, it is not topping up blood glucose levels and hence they can fall, which makes you hungry. You know this. You know that the greasy takeaway only ever looks enticing when it\u2019s midnight and you\u2019ve been drinking. In broad daylight, leftovers look distinctly unappetising. This is why some alcoholic drinks are called an aperitif. They are intended to stimulate the appetite before enjoying a good meal.<\/p>\n The principles<\/strong><\/p>\n We now have all the knowledge needed to establish what we should eat to get the required nutrients and to attain and maintain a healthy body weight:<\/p>\n Principle 1) Eat real food.<\/p>\n Principle 2) Choose that food for the nutrients it provides. (This will naturally manage carbohydrate intake).<\/p>\n Principle 3) Eat a maximum of three times a day.<\/p>\n Principle 4) Manage alcohol intake to enable fat burning.<\/p>\n Principle 5) Do what we\u2019re designed to do: walk, talk, dance, sing, cook, clean and tend the land.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a deeper look at the first three principles. Principles 4 and 5 have been covered above in \u201cdon\u2019t do things that inhibit the operation of glucagon<\/em>\u201d and \u201cdo things that enable glucagon to be called on<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Principle 1) Eat real food.<\/strong><\/p>\n We need to eat food in the form that nature provides it. We have evolved to eat food in that form. We have not evolved to eat processed food with an ingredients list that reads more like a chemistry set. This is the phrase that I use to explain what real food is: \u201cOranges grow on trees; cartons of orange juice don\u2019t. Cows graze in a field; Peperami sticks don\u2019t. Fish swim in the sea; fish fingers don\u2019t<\/em>.\u201d You\u2019ve got the idea.<\/p>\n There is another aspect of choosing real food to consider. Remember that nature tends to provide carb proteins OR fat proteins? It is ideal to mimic this in the way we combine food. For this reason, my books recommend consuming what we call fat meals (fat proteins) or carb meals (carb proteins), but not to mix the two in each meal. Vegetables, some fruits, herbs, spices and seasoning can be eaten with either type of meal (because they are low in fat and carbohydrate).<\/p>\n One of the simple reasons for this is the fact that the carb\/fat combination \u2013 which is rare in real food and which is the main attribute of junk-food \u2013 is uniquely irresistible and more\u2019ish. Eat cheese with oat biscuits, or bread with butter, and you may have no limit. Eat cheese with salad, or oat biscuits with humus, and a far more natural intake follows. The fat carb combo is uniquely fattening for another reason. The body will happily use carbohydrate for fuel and store fat for later on. We need insulin available to be able to store fuel and the fat carb combo will ensure that we have insulin available and are thus able to store fat.<\/p>\n Below is a handy table, showing how to adopt the fat (protein) or carb (protein) meal approach.<\/p>\n Principle 2) Choose that food for the nutrients it provides.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now that you know about essential fats and protein, vitamins and minerals, it\u2019s time to see which foods provide these.<\/p>\n – Any food that contains fat contains essential fats \u2013 only the proportions vary. Oily fish, as an example, is rich in omega-3 fats and has an excellent ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats. Sunflower oil is particularly rich in omega-6 fats and thus too much of this can contribute to an imbalance in the essential fatty acid ratio. As a rule, it is far better to consume fats naturally in whole foods (meat, fish, eggs, dairy, olives etc) than it is to consume pure oils. The natural form in which to consume olives is the whole fruit. Extracting fat from hundreds or thousands of olives is unnatural in my view. It\u2019s not as bad as packaged food, but it\u2019s still less than ideal. You will spot that the foods naturally rich in essential fats, and in the right ratio, tend to be animal foods.<\/p>\n – Protein can be considered complete or incomplete. Complete protein provides all nine essential amino acids that we must consume. Animal foods provide complete protein. Plant foods provide incomplete protein, as they only provide some of the essential amino acids. Plant foods can be combined so that, between them, they provide the necessary amino acids e.g., rice and beans (as in vegetarian chilli), although the plant protein strategy is more likely to result in an unbalanced amino acid profile than the balanced one that animal protein provides.<\/p>\n – Vitamins and minerals. The richest source of micronutrients is offal. If you want to win a nutrient contest, pick liver (Ref 9). Other foods that do exceptionally well are meat (especially red), fish (especially oily), eggs, dairy products and green vegetables (especially leafy). Sunflower seeds (more of a real food than sunflower oil) are invaluable for vitamin E. If you choose food for the nutrients it provides, you won\u2019t choose whole grains or fruit, which are what dietary guidelines tell us to prioritise (Ref 10). You can still have carb meals, but you\u2019ll be compromising on principle 2 when you do. That\u2019s your choice.<\/p>\n Sadly, for people who would prefer to avoid animal products, the most nutrient dense foods are meat, fish, eggs and dairy foods. Some nutrients are only found in foods of animal origin: retinol (which is the form in which the body needs vitamin A); D3 (which is the form in which the body needs vitamin D); vitamin B12 and heme iron as the main examples.<\/p>\n You can now see how choosing food for the nutrients it provides naturally manages carbohydrate intake \u2013 because you will naturally tend towards \u2018fat\u2019 meals, rather than \u2018carb\u2019 meals. If you\u2019re considering porridge, potatoes or rice \u2013 there will always be a better food that you can choose (potatoes count as starchy foods, not vegetables). If you are vegetarian, eggs and dairy products will be your best food choices. If you are vegan, vegetables, beans and pulses will be your best food choices. If you put anything starchy on your plate, it is surplus to nutritional requirements. You can have \u2018carb\u2019 meals but try not to have too many too often and always be aware that you could be eating a \u2018fat\u2019 meal that would be more nutritious.<\/p>\n Choosing food for the nutrients it provides also means that you avoid junk-food. Anyone trying to lose weight has no room for empty calories, so ditch the junk and always choose a better option.<\/p>\n Principle 3) Eat a maximum of three times a day.<\/strong><\/p>\n We shared above that, to lose weight, you need to spend as much of your day as possible not eating and not recently having eaten. I recommend eating a maximum of three times a day if you are trying to lose weight. I say a maximum because some people just don\u2019t like breakfast or find it convenient to skip lunch because of their work, and you shouldn\u2019t think that you must eat three times a day if fewer meals work for you.<\/p>\n Design a meal pattern that works for you and that allows you to spend as much as possible of each day not<\/em> eating. You may find that your meals need to be bigger and better (more nutritious) than they are now because each meal needs to get you through to the next one. Principles 1 and 2 will ensure that your meals are optimally nutritious and satiating. Main meals should feature meat; fish; eggs; cheese; yoghurt; vegetables and berries \u2013 real foods rich in fat and protein and naturally low in carbohydrate<\/p>\n You may also like to time your meals to give you the maximum overnight fast that you can sustain. If you can finish dinner by, say 6pm, and not have breakfast until, say 7am, you will regularly achieve a 13 hour fast.<\/p>\n There are benefits to this beyond weight loss. Type 2 diabetes is already at epidemic levels and growing. I think that type 2 diabetes is the body\u2019s way of saying \u201cenough is enough<\/em>.\u201d \u201cI cannot cope with the amount of carbohydrate you are eating and the number of times a day you are eating it. I have evolved to cope with seasonal fruit and some plants, not to have cereals, muffins, sandwiches, fruit, pasta, pizza and confectionery several times a day, all year round<\/em>.\u201d You will substantially reduce your chance of getting type 2 diabetes if you eat less carbohydrate and eat it far less often.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s it! How to eat for health \u2013 nutrition and weight. It\u2019s not difficult when you understand what food is and what weight loss is, but this approach tends to be the antithesis of what we have been advised to do by dietary guidelines worldwide.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Ref 1: Zo\u00eb Harcombe. The Diet Fix. Published by Short Books. 2019. \u201cThis magical, marvellous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1102,1077],"tags":[1300,1331,1002,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8666"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9006,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8666\/revisions\/9006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJoel Salatin, Farmer<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.co.uk\/2021\/posts\/541-1a.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nTo achieve this condition, you need to consume far less carbohydrate than current dietary guidelines advise. A typical female is currently advised to have 2,000 calories a day and she is advised to consume at least 55% of this in the form of carbohydrate. That would be a minimum of 1,100 calories in carbohydrate per day. The body can only use carbohydrate for fuel. The body can\u2019t use carbohydrates for the body maintenance roles, such as building bone density, fighting infection, repairing muscles and cells etc. Those activities require fat and protein. Hence any carbohydrate that you consume needs to be used up as energy, or it will be stored as fat.<\/p>\n
\nTo achieve this condition, we need to eat far less often than we are advised to do. Current dietary guidelines advise us to eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, have dinner and then snack. When are we ever supposed to burn body fat if we are topping up with fuel the whole time? Dieticians advise people to \u2018eat little and often\u2019 and to \u2018top up your blood glucose\u2019. Now that you know that you only have four grams of glucose in your blood stream at any one time and that more than this is toxic \u2013 do you think that this is good advice?<\/p>\n
\nIf you meet conditions a and b, annoyingly glucagon still doesn\u2019t have<\/em> to swing into action. It is more likely that it will, but it doesn\u2019t have to. As equal and opposite hormones, glucagon is the one that we have less control over. Activating insulin is easy \u2013 just eat almost anything. Activating glucagon is more difficult. You need to give glucagon a reason to do something.<\/p>\n
\nThe most important thing to mention here is alcohol. Alcohol beautifully undermines the calorie theory. Alcohol \u2013 as opposed to any other ingredients included in alcoholic drinks, such as grapes or grains \u2013 contains approximately seven calories per gram. The calorie theorists think that alcohol will make you fat from the calories it contains. However, the body cannot store alcohol. There is no mechanism by which alcohol per se<\/em> is turned to body fat. So how can the calories in alcohol make us fat if they can\u2019t be turned into fat?<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.co.uk\/2021\/posts\/541-2a.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nRef 2: David Gillespie. Toxic oil: Why vegetable oil will kill you & how to save yourself<\/em>. Published by Penguin. (2013).
\nRef 3: https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/2014\/11\/norway-lchf-the-doctor-patient-relationship\/ and https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/oslo\/
\nRef 4: Swagerty, DL et al<\/em>. \u201cLactose intolerance.\u201d American Family Physicians<\/em>, 65(2), 1845-1850. (2002). http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/12018807
\nRef 5: Professors Jeff Volek & Stephen Phinney. The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable<\/em>. Published by Beyond Obesity LLC. (2011).
\nRef 6: Zo\u00eb Harcombe. The Obesity Epidemic: What caused it? How can we stop it?<\/em> Published by Columbus Publishing. (2010).
\nRef 7: Amrita Misha & Dr Marina Basina, clinical endocrinologist. \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t glucagon work with alcohol?\u201d (https:\/\/beyondtype1.org\/why-doesnt-glucagon-work-with-alcohol\/)
\nRef 8: The following book explains the issues with modern wheat well: Dr William Davis. Wheat Belly. Published by Roedale. 2014.
\nRef 9: https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/2014\/04\/the-perfect-five-a-day\/
\nRef 10: https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/2014\/04\/healthy-whole-grains-really\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"