Actually, in many cases exercise is completely irrelevant to weight loss unless you first get insulin production under control. What I learned after testing, testing, testing, and more testing is that my pancreas pretty much leaks insulin if I'm just in the same room with a carbohydrate. It's kinda like the opposite of what you think of as diabetes. As long as there's insulin in the blood, the body's ability to burn fat is disabled no matter what. No amount of exercise will make any difference until that insulin has been metabolized because even if my body wants/needs to burn stored fat, the insulin is still there preventing me from burning my fat reserves. The second insulin whammy is glycogen. Glycogen is your body's short term energy storage and it's what keeps you going between meals, overnight, etc. If your body has extra insulin laying around, the only thing it's good for is making glycogen. With practice (40 years worth), my liver and muscles have gotten really good at storing glycogen and even if I manage to shut down insulin production for a few hours or a few days, my body is going to burn that stored glycogen first because that's more efficient. Urine testing can very easily monitor the transition from burning glycogen to burning fat and I've found that my body stores about 3 days worth of glycogen which means I have to stop my body from producing glycogen, then burn through all of the stored glycogen, and only then will I start burning fat.
5% of the US population is diagnosed with diabetes and another 2% to 10% are undiagnosed with a lesser degree of diabetes. That diagnosis usually comes because they have
hypoinsulinemia in which the body doesn't produce enough (or any) insulin and the options are to either fall over dead or start managing it. If somebody is sweaty, trembling, fainting, etc, it's pretty obvious that they need medical help and they end up with a diagnosis and a treatment. On the other end of the homo sapiens bell curve,
hyperinsulemia doesn't cause those easy symptoms. Instead its symptoms are weight gain, sugar cravings, intense hunger, fatigue, memory loss, emotional instability, and lack of motivation. In other words fat, lazy, and cranky but NOT passing out or dying so nobody calls an ambulance, there's no diagnosis other than being shunned by society, and there's no treatment.
So, for me, the only way to control my weight is to control the insulin. No amount of exercise will ever make me lose weight if the insulin is out of control and I've proven that my body is quite capable of maintaining 380+ pounds on a 1500 calorie diet of fruits and other "healthy" stuff. Now that I understand what's going on, it's easy to handle. I can still have that piece of red velvet cake, I just need to be smart about what other raw materials I give my body to play with while the insulin flood is being metabolized.
I'll get down off my soapbox now.
It's hard to shut up when something completely changes (saves?) your life.
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