Buckle up and listen up, get ready for some Fat Loss truths! For those who have delved into the research behind Fat loss and weight control etc you will already know what i am talking about. Fat Loss is all about hormone control and one major player in the Fat loss fight is the hormone- Insulin!

What is Insulin? Insulin is a hormone released from the pancreas to control blood sugars in the blood stream. Some of you might now be wondering how do the blood sugars get high in the first place??

Lets go back to basics, when you eat your meals your food is digested (broken down) into a liquid state called blood sugar. When your blood sugars go up, your pancreas releases the hormone insulin to transport these the blood sugars to your muscles for energy or stored as glycogen for later use…This is when Insulin is your friend!

However, when you eat high sugar or starchy carbohydrate it is converted into blood sugar extremely quick! when this happens your blood sugar shoots up too fast and your pancreas has to work overtime and pump out even more Insulin to control the sugars in your blood stream. If sugars go too high, your body jumps into a Hyperglycemia attack! not good!! So more Insulin is released, once the insulin has filled glycogen stores to capacity in your muscles and liver etc this is where it gets ugly!

To prevent the hyperglyceamic attack, Insulin pulls the sugar out of the blood and converts it into body fat, yes….FAT!

So in order to control fat Storage the answer is pretty simple………….Control Insulin (the FAT storing hormone)

Now how do we do that? Remember earlier what caused the blood sugar to rise rapidly! Yes, you got it. High sugary foods, high starchy foods cause increased Insulin levels. The best foods to eat to control your Insulin levels are low GI (Glycemic Index) foods. These are foods that convert into blood sugar slowly and control energy AND appetite much better. The GI index was invented by Dr David Jenkins in 1981, he measured the rise in blood sugar for 50g of pure glucose, a scale was created with pure glucose equalling 100. Each food measured after this was given a percentage from 100, example peanuts only made blood sugars rise 25% of pure glucose therefore gaining a score of 25 on the scale now called the GI INDEX. You can find various different tables available on the internet!

So you have it, control your hormones and you can control your body fat! hope this helps with your bootcamp effort’s!

Remember knowledge is Key, you cant follow points and count calories for the rest of your life. Learn why and how food effects your body and you WILL get better results!

By North East Personal Trainer and Biosignature practitioner Darren Tyrie