Food Freedom Friday Edition 289 - Carnivore & Weight Loss

Weight loss comes down to two things. What to eat and when to eat. A properly formulated carnivore diet might be a great way to tackle both.

Many people on the carnivore diet are eating steaks to satiation and effortlessly burning body fat. There are a few resons why a carnivore approach may be so effective:

Reduced Insulin Levels

The most effective way to begin to reduce insulin levels is to eliminate the foods that significantly spike it. It might seem obvious, but it is not yet common practice. 

For most of evolution the foods humans were eating did not raise insulin much at all. The newest additions to the human diet included grains, cereals, sugars and starches.

A properly formulated carnivore diet is the least insulinogenic diet that is also nutritionally complete. Protein and fat do increase insulin, but the impact is negligible compared to the response to carbohydrates. Furthermore, in the context of a low carbohydrate diet, protein does not raise insulin levels. 

Ultimately, the first simple step of lowering high glycemic foods, will dramatically reduce your hyperinsulinemia.

The Reduction of Insulin Burns Body Fat as Fuel

When insulin falls, you begin to use your body fat as fuel instead of the sugars in your diet. Low insulin signals fasted state which in turn signals your body to consume body fat for fuel. 

This is one of the main reasons why low carb diets are powerful for weight loss.

The carnivore diet helps to lower your insulin levels and thus increases how much body fat you burn.

Increases Metabolism

Instead of fighting your body, a diet low or absent in carbohydrate is the best way to work with it. 

One of the other main benefits of going low carb is that your metabolism actually increases. (This one of the many reasons why approaching weight loss from simply a caloric deficit perspective is unsuccessful.)

The number of calories you burn on a daily basis are not constant. Your metabolic rate fluctuates based on what you eat. When you are using fat for fuel, your metabolic rate increases. 

Your body does this by upregulating mitochondrial uncoupling and creates brown fat. Brown fat wastes energy as heat, burning more energy than you require for normal use.

This in turn gives you more flexibility in your caloric intake and allows you to eat to satiation and still lose weight. This is a big reason why people on the carnivore diet lose so much body fat without exercise. Insulin has the opposite effect, shutting off fat burning.

Improves Satiety

Controlling hunger is one of the most important aspects of weight loss. The carnivore diet is able to reduce your incessant hunger and improve satiation through several mechanisms.

Fat and Protein Satiation

The carnivore diet is high in fat and protein, which are the two most satiating macronutrients. Humans have a strong protein drive and will eat more calories than necessary if they fail to obtain sufficient protein. Protein also releases peptide YY which signals that you’re full. Fat is also highly satiating from the CCK release in your gut. 

Many people report that when they up their fat on the carnivore diet, their overall caloric consumption drops substantially. 

Reversing Leptin Resistance

Additionally, by reducing insulin levels you may be able to reverse your leptin resistance. Leptin is a satiation hormone, and obese people are uniformly resistant to its action because it’s persistently high. 

The carnivore diet will help to increase the Leptin signal.

Ketones Improve Hunger

Ketones have been shown to lower ghrelin, the hunger hormone. One explanation is that beta hydroxybutyrate (the main ketone) is a very efficient fuel. When levels are elevated, you need less exogenous fuel to power your metabolism. 

The carnivore diet will lead to elevated ketone levels as you switch your metabolism from glucose dominant to fat burning.

High Nutrient Density

The carnivore diet is the most nutrient dense diet in the world. It has every nutrient you need in their most optimal ratios and without the antinutrients and inflammatory factors from plants.

One reason people are hungry all the time is due to nutrient deficiency. Most people are extremely deficient in vitamins. Some common include

·       Vitamin D

·       Vitamin B12: Amongst Vegan’s and Vegetarians vitamin b12 deficiency is much more common

·       Vitamin A: Vitamin A is only found in sufficient amounts that your body can absorb in animal products. It’s likely that if you’re not eating enough animal products, you’re deficient.

·       Iron

·       Calcium

·       Zinc

Low Glycemic

The carnivore diet is also low glycemic. Carbohydrates have been shown to decrease hunger initially, but increase it later on. This is referred to as biphasic hunger.

Think about bread at a meal. Every wonder why restaurants always serve it to you at the beginning? Does it ever really fill you up?

The carnivore diet is a shock to your system that resets your broken satiety. 

Low in Linoleic Acid

One of the most disastrous recommendations from health authorities was to increase seed oil content. This flooded people with inflammatory, unstable and toxic omega 6 fatty acids. 

Recent studies have shown that exposing mice to a high omega 6 diet results in the accumulation of body fat across generations.

HNE, a by-product of excessive omega 6 consumption, triggers fat accumulation by altering fat tissues. 

Omega 6 fatty acids also suppress fat oxidation and you can add these fats to the list of foods that raise insulin.

A carnivore diet removes these harmful and inflammatory oils by default!

High in Protein

Humans have a strong drive for protein. Unfortunately, protein has been massively diluted in modern diets because it is one of the most expensive inputs. Carbohydrates and fats (largely from seed oils) have increased in consumption diets over the last 30 years, but protein has not increased. 

Currently, over 40% of Americans fail to obtain sufficient protein and it has fallen to 10% or less of calories.

Instinctively, humans search for 15%+ protein intake. When this is lowered, even slightly, the body begins to massively overcompensate with lower satiation and increased carbohydrate and fat intake. A meagre 1% decrease in protein can result in up to 14% increase in carb and fat intake

One of the fastest ways to lose weight is to increase protein

Glucagon And Insulin

The carnivore diet increases your glucagon to insulin ratio, which can help burn more body fat. 

Obesity is a hormonal disease not a caloric one. The two major hormones that regulate body fat storage and mobilization are Insulin and Glucagon. The two are antagonistic Insulin tells your body to store away nutrients. Glucagon signals to your body to mobilize them out of storage for energy. When the glucagon to insulin ratio is high, you burn your body fat and enter ketosis.

Protein increases both insulin and glucagon. Whereas fat is the only macronutrient that only increases glucagon. To burn more body fat, you want to increase the glucagon to insulin ratio. The more fat you eat, the higher this goes. 

If you are metabolically unhealthy, this is especially pertinent. Your fasting insulin is likely abnormally high, so your body most likely releases even more insulin in response to protein than what’s normal. 

Fasting Burns Fat 

Having covered what to eat, the question now arises of when to eat.

Fasting is one of the most effortless ways to eviscerate body fat. 

You can only get energy from two sources: Food or body fat, but you can’t get energy from both simultaneously. When you obtain energy from food, this is called the fed state. When you are accessing your energy from body fat, this is called the fasted state. Insulin regulates this process.

When you eat insulin levels increase, which signals to your cells to suck in energy from your bloodstream. When you sleep, insulin falls, telling your body to use stored energy to run your vital organs. This is why you don’t die when you sleep. 

Most people are eating all day, and not giving their bodies enough time to lower insulin levels and burn body fat. It takes ~12 hours to lower insulin far enough to actually burn body fat. This natural process is often shut down by eating a high carb meal first thing in the morning.

Insulin shuts off all body fat burning, so all the fat you eat goes straight to storage, instead of being used for energy. 

In a fasted state, you can finally unlock your body fat as fuel. This was a vital mechanism for survival when humans did not have constant access to food. Today, most people have lost this mechanism. If you don’t use it you lose it. 

Additionally, fasting triggers epigenetic changes in your body that promote more fat burning. Fasting has been found to upregulate UCP3 gene expression. This gene is responsible for fat burning in muscle cells. 

No More Fighting Hunger

The carnivore diet doesn’t fight your hunger mechanism. It works with it.

Well the assumption with most weight loss plans is that your caloric expenditure remains constant. Thus, if you lower your caloric intake, you will automatically lose weight.

While it is true that caloric intake needs to be below caloric expenditure to lose weight, attacking weight loss from the perspective of simply reducing calories will lead to disaster. Your body is too smart to be fooled with calories alone. 

If you cut calories but do not reduce your insulin levels, you are unable burn your stored body fat for fuel. One of two things will happen as a result.

Hunger drives an increase of your intake back to baseline.

Your basal metabolic rate will slow down and meet the lower caloric expenditure.  

What happens next is something you might be familiar with – weight loss plateaus and feeling awful. This happens because you are used to burning 2000 calories and now are only burning 1500 resulting in you generating less body heat (feeling cold) and more tired

Without cutting carbohydrates sufficiently, you can’t effectively burn any fat. Your body fat is frozen in place by the insulin.  

If you tackle the elevated insulin levels first, you’ll be able to utilize your body fat to make up for the caloric difference.  When you drop your calorie intake to 1500, you can still burn 2000 a day, and the remaining 500 will come from stored body fat.

Why do you think nobody loses weight on their diets? Because when you fight your innate mechanisms, YOUR BODY WILL WIN. It’s almost like trying to slow your heart beat. You can’t be successful long term. 

If, on the other hand, you leverage your innate mechanisms to bring you back to body fat homeostasis, fat will effortlessly melt off your body. 

Eat meat. Drink water. Fast.

It’s as simple as that.

Don’t believe me? Try it yourself and you may be surprised.