Hi {!firstname_fix}

Well, Greetings for the new year! Some of you may have heard that I have been collecting info about folks who have lost weight on the program. I get emails about it all the time, but since I am so adamant about getting people *out” of diet head and into healing, I have not focused on pounds lost.

With the new year, we have scads and scads of sugar sensitive people anxious about weight (smile). So I am adapting to your concerns some. I am going to put up a page with all the weight loss stories. You may go and read them over and over. You will be comforted. I also am going to start a four-week series on insulin resistance.

Now, we will NOT be discussing weight loss on the forum or in the regular community lists. The focus will stay the same – healing the biochemistry that makes you fat, not dealing with the pounds per se. We do talk about weight loss issues on YLDonline. And we will be talking about the articles I post here in the weekly YLD chats.

I will be simplifying what we include in the newsletter for the duration of the series. I am playing a bit to see what works best. And you know you can always share your opinion. I listen and welcome your input.

Warmly,
Kathleen

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January 12, 2004

** Quote From Kathleen **

Doing the food will balance you, and you will know exactly what to do to heal yourself.

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** Testimonial for the Week**

I have lost 65 lbs. and counting. Although I feel so much better with the weight loss, I can honestly say that the radiance is even better. I have lost a lot of weight in the past and never got out from under the misery cloud. That is why I gained it all back and then some. I picked up my first "Potatoes not Prozac" book in February of 2001. It's so much more than the weight loss. It's about healing the mind, spirit, and body. One cannot be done without the other. It won't work if you just want to heal the body. All things in balance. Kathleen will help you achieve that balance. Have patience, love yourself, and work the program everyday. The sun will shine. KathyH

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** Your Last Diet: More Than What You Think**

Now is when the rubber hits the road. We do 3 weekly chats in YLDonline. I am going to be talking about insulin resistance and weight loss for the 4 weeks of this series. Transcripts are posted as well. So if you have thought about joining, now is a great time!

http://www.radiantrecovery.com/YLD_signup.htm

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** Featured Product: Autographed Book Set **

	Autographed Bookset Includes Potatoes Not Prozac, The Sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program, Your Last Diet!
	Hardcover Price $59.99 + shipping	Paperback Price $28.10 + shipping

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** Featured Topic**
Insulin Resistance

Part One of a Four Part Series
Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D.

Many of you have heard about the relationship of insulin resistance to obesity. Recently, we have heard a lot about the danger of high insulin levels and our health. The buzz abounds, but few people actually really understand what it all means. In these articles, I want to walk you through these issues so you can start to make sense of insulin resistance and how it applies to you. I will be doing a 4- part series over four weeks. You may send questions to me if you like. I will post a few of them here. The rest I will answer over on YLDonline. In addition, I will be discussing each segment in the YLDonline Wednesday chat that follows the Monday newsletter. For those of you who are not yet familiar with YLDonline, it is a weightloss membership program for our community.

Bet let’s get started with our insulin resistance talk.

I assume you are sugar sensitive. You want to lose weight. You want those pounds OFF! Most of you get incredibly frustrated when you do everything “right” and you STILL don't lose weight the way you think you should. I want you to lose weight as well. But I want you to lose weight without creating havoc in your system. I want you to repair the deficiencies and damage from a thousand prior diets. I want you to restore what sugar sensitivity has taken away. I want you to really understand the big picture. If you can do this, you WILL lose weight, lose it permanently. You will balance your brain and your body and you will achieve enormous health benefits.

I want you to shift from the concept that losing weight will solve all your problems. It will make a huge difference. But do it wrong and you will make everything else worse. Do it with an understanding of all the variables involved and you will get more than you ever dreamed of.

I thought I would give you a working summary of the issues. As I have researched it and really started to make sense of it, I have realized that it is not only fascinating, but also highly complex. I want to give you some background on how the body utilizes carbohydrates. You will learn how the system should be working. Then I will show you what happens in the insulin-resistant person. And finally we will connect this with the sugar sensitive biochemistry. You will learn how sugar sensitive people who are also insulin resistant and overweight have to deal with a triple whammy.

The Heart of The Issue

Insulin resistance is a VERY complex story. We have to sort out the interwoven action of insulin, serotonin, beta-endorphin and sugar sensitivity. We have to add in exercise and metabolism, and add a little emotional stuff to make sense of this. But you have been working on all of that already. The science you have been learning through Your Last Diet and Potatoes Not Prozac will help you understand this story. The more that you can really understand the science I have laid out, the more you will be able to connect the dots and create a plan that works for you.

Why I Care About Insulin Resistance

On a personal level, I have found this insulin resistance story fascinating. I have been flirting with it for many years. Like you I had tried Protein Power,The Zone, The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet and Atkins . Twenty years ago Atkins started teaching us the insulin story. I have also now read many scientific articles on the subject. But I have had a hard time really making sense of it. I would start reading and all that talk of glucose and glycogen and “don't eat carbs” would make my eyes glaze over. I would think, “AH, just stop eating carbs and you will be fine.”

So I would and I would feel fabulous and would lose weight and be thrilled. And then four to six weeks into it, I would get really crabby, really unsettled and say, “I HAVE to have some bread.” And I would have “just a little.” And POW, I would be on a bread run and then a sugar run and then I would gain back the weight I lost and more. I would feel hopeless, overwhelmed, ugly, inadequate and fat. And each time, it would get worse. And I would be fatter .

Through the work that led me to Potatoes Not Prozac, I started to make sense of what happened with the “POW.” I learned about beta-endorphin priming and upregulation of a brain that makes you fall into a bread-induced “drug run.” I understood all that and felt absolutely confident that the PnP/YLD food plan would protect us from a re-enactment of it.

But I still couldn't make sense of the insulin resistance story. So, let’s walk through the issues.

Some Background

We eat food as a way to get fuel for our body. (Well, actually many of us eat for a whole lot of other reasons than that, but we can come back to that in another article.) Carbohydrates such as sugars, breads, pasta, fruits and vegetables provide the basic fuel our bodies burn in order to function. Our muscles, our tissues and our brains all use glucose, the simplest sugar that is derived from carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are long chains of sugars. The longer the chain, the slower the carbohydrate. During digestion, our body takes the chain apart to make the sugars more and more simple until it finally gets to glucose, the simplest and most usable form. This is why long chain carbohydrates (those with more fiber) take longer to digest. They are “slow” because the breaking down takes longer.

After the body has converted the carbohydrate to glucose in the blood, the body will use it in three ways:
Burning it for energy in the tissues
Storing it in the liver and muscle for future use
Storing it as fat

Looking For Optimal Levels

The body is set up to function at an optimal level of glucose. Too much and we get into trouble. Too little and we get into trouble. When the glucose level in the blood is too high, the body will work to get rid of the glucose in the blood and put it somewhere else. If there is too little glucose in the blood, the body will send signals to eat. The signals get louder and louder until you do something to get food into your system.

The system is set up to do a couple of things. First, the body needs to have enough fuel for regular daily life - keeping your brain active and making sure your cells have what they need. Second, the body needs to have a good back up system to tide you over when you aren't eating. It has a couple of storage systems.

The first of these is in your muscles and your liver. Think of your muscles as the kitchen cabinets and your liver as your garage. The extra supplies are put there until you need them. But they are close by and it is easy to go into the cabinets and garage to get what you need. The glucose storage in your muscles and liver is meant for “short term” needs like the time between dinner and breakfast. Ten hours, not twenty-four.

The third storage place is your fat cells. I like to think of these as the storage center down the street. This are where you put stuff you don't need very often. Fat cells were designed to protect you when times were lean. Fat cells are for winter when the hunters haven't found any meat for weeks. Fat cells actually were life giving in those times. The ones who were fatter were the ones who survived.

When the glucose system was designed, people were not drinking wine, eating bagels or ice cream. Pasta and Halloween candy were not around yet. And people moved a lot. Exercise meant survival. You didn't hop in the car to go to MacDonald's. So the system worked really well.

The Ideal Function

Let's start with understanding how the original system was designed. It will show us what “normal” can look like. For most of us who are sugar sensitive, we may not have really seen much of “normal.” We all have met friends or family members who don't gain weight. These are likely to be the same people who take a bite of cookie and leave the rest on the counter. They are also the people who stop eating when they are “full.” Sometimes I laugh to think that some of my understanding of “normal” comes from watching my dog eat. No eating disorder, no emotional overtones. Ran around a lot, wanted more. Hungry, eat. Finished, stop eating. Not exactly how it is for many of the rest of us.

Our bodies respond differently to different types of foods. Carbohydrates are considered the first line for fuel because they are the easiest to digest. The “easiest to digest” means they are available for making glucose the quickest. So carbohydrates are the daily operating fuel for the body.

The body will digest the carbohydrates and turn them into glucose that will be carried to different parts of the body. How much glucose there is in the blood determines our blood sugar level. But having glucose in the blood isn't the most useful part of the story. The blood simply carries the glucose to where it is needed - the organs, the muscles and the brain.

Let's take a look at the glucose going to the muscles. This is what allows us to move, to function, to talk, etc. Glucose in muscle was really important - it meant that we could go and get more food. Legs walking and running meant staying alive. So when we eat carbohydrates, our body starts to get ready for the glucose it knows will be coming into the blood. It releases the hormone insulin. Insulin is responsible for telling our body what to do with the glucose. Insulin goes and tells the cells, “Hey guys, delivery time. Got what you need. Open up.” The insulin actually creates the way for the glucose to move from the blood into the cell .

More next week. Spend this time seeing if you can really understand part 1.

Copyright © Kathleen DesMaisons, 2004. All Rights Reserved.