Tag Archives: Fat Loss

Want to lose weight? Here’s what you need to know in under 1000 words

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One, you don’t want to lose weight: you want to lose fat. You don’t want to lose muscle or bone because they are very important functionally and metabolically. What you want to lose is fat. So weight loss needs to be reworded as fat loss.

Two, roughly speaking, the body is generally either storing surpluses or using reserves.

Three, the major fuels for the body are glucose and fatty acids.

Four, for the body to use fat reserves, insulin levels must be low. Fat cannot be efficiently utilized as long as insulin is high, because insulin promotes storage.

Five, the thyroid gland regulates metabolism and brain function. It requires adequate amounts of iodine without which it cannot work properly. To ensure healthy metabolic function, iodine supplementation is critical.

That’s what you need to know. If you want more details, I can expand a bit.

Insulin regulates fat storage

Every second that we are alive, trillions of biochemical reactions take place. The energy currency is adenosine triphosphate, ATP. Mitochondria produce ATP primarily using glucose or fatty acids. Fatty acids produces a lot more, but glucose is much easier to use. Both are used but one always dominates. In general, if there is glucose to be used, fatty acids are not much. For fat loss, we want to promote fat burning for ATP production to fuel cellular activity.

High glucose levels from carbohydrate intake trigger insulin secretion. This is necessary to bring the glucose into the cell, and to get rid of it from the bloodstream where it causes damage to the tissues by glycation. Within the cell, glucose can be either fermented without oxygen or oxidised with oxygen. Lower oxygen levels (and very high short term metabolic needs) promote fermentation. Higher oxygen levels (and lower metabolic ATP production rates) favour oxidation. More fermentation leads to greater accumulation of lactic acid, which further decreases oxygen levels. Red blood cells do not have mitochondria and therefore can only produce ATP by fermenting glucose.

Lower glucose leads to lower insulin. This triggers the release of fatty acids and glycogen into the bloodstream. If sustained, low glucose leads to the production in the liver of ketones primarily to fuel the brain whose cells can either use glucose, ketones, or medium chain fatty acids because longer molecules cannot pass the blood-brain barrier.

The higher the glucose, the higher the insulin, and the faster the uptake and storage of nutrients from the bloodstream into cells. The lower the glucose, the lower the insulin, and the faster the stored fat can be released and used.

insulinFatStorageFatRelease

Amount of glucose stored as fat and amount of fat released from fat cells as a function of insulin concentration. Plot taken from https://optimisingnutrition.com

The most metabolically active tissue is muscle. The more muscle we have, the more energy is used, and the faster both glucose and fat are burned to supply fuel to the cells. The more we use our muscles, and the more intensely we use them, the more they grow, and the more efficiently they burn both glucose and fat. Also, the stronger the muscles, the stronger and denser the bones will be. This is very important.

Therefore, as we burn more fat, we burn fat more efficiently. As we use our muscles more intensely, we burn more fat. And as we build more and stronger muscle, we burn even more fat even more efficiently, and make the bones stronger.

Different Carbohydrate Intolerance Levels

These mechanisms are universal in animals, but each animal is different, and each person is different. As far as fat loss is concerned, the individuality of people is related to their predispositions to insulin resistance and carbohydrate tolerance, (or actually, intolerance). Every person is differently intolerant to carbohydrates and differently predisposed to insulin resistance.

This is why in a group eating the same diet, there are people who are thin, people who are chubby, people who are fat, and everything in between. Basically, the greater the predisposition to insulin resistance (and the more sedentary), the lower the tolerance to carbohydrates will be, and the fatter you will tend to get. In contrast, the lower the predisposition to insulin resistance (and the more active), the higher the tolerance to carbohydrates, and the thinner you will tend to be.

This translates into different thresholds in the amount of carbohydrate we can eat without negative metabolic consequences, and consequently, the amount under which we must stay in order to burn fat instead of storing it. As a guideline, if you want to burn primarily fat for your body’s energy needs, this threshold would be around 20–25 grams per day if you are fat; around 30–50 gram per day if you are neither fat nor thin, and could be around 80–100 grams per day if you are very thin.

But no matter what your personal threshold happens to be, it will always be the case that the lower the intake of carbohydrates, the lower the glucose and insulin will be, and the more efficiently your body will burn fat as fuel.

Fat Loss Rate

The amount of fat that is burned is determined by the energy balance. The greater the total amount of energy we use, the greater the total energy needs. Total energy needs will mostly be met by energy from food intake and energy from fat reserves. If food energy intake is high, the need for stored energy will be low. If intake is lower, the need for energy from fat reserves will be higher.

Pushing this to the limit—maximal usage of fat stores—we would provide the protein necessary to maintain muscle and other active tissues and nothing more. In this situation, basically all energy needs would be supplied by stored fat reserves and glycogen when needed. This is greatly enhanced by resistance training.

The amount of protein needed is proportional to muscle mass and muscular activity. As a guideline, you can use 1–1.5 grams per kg of lean mass per day in the case of little physical activity, and 2–3 g/kg/d in the case of high muscular activity levels. Excessive protein is not great, but more is almost always better than less.

Fat burning and protein synthesis can be further optimised by intermittent fasting. Extending the time between feedings allows glucose and insulin to drop lower, which increases the rate of fat burning. And by eating fewer but larger amounts of protein in a meal is better because protein synthesis increases in proportion to the amount consumed.

Thyroid function regulates metabolism. Iodine is used in every cell, but in the thyroid, it is concentrated to more than 100 times the average of other tissues, because iodine is the main structural component of thyroid hormones. Iodine supplementation is critical because most soils are highly depleted. It is water soluble and very safe to supplement with.

Summary

  • High insulin from carbohydrate intake promotes fat storage.
  • Low insulin from restricting carbohydrates promotes fat loss.
  • Individual predispositions determine the threshold of carbohydrate tolerance.
  • Below this threshold fat is used as the main source of cellular fuel.
  • The rate of fat loss depends on balance between energy needs and energy intake.
  • Maximal fat loss rates are achieved by supplying just the protein needed to sustain lean tissues.
  • Iodine supplementation is critical to healthy thyroid, metabolic and brain function.

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Eat your salt, and eat your fat

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A couple of months ago, I had just gotten to the locker room at the gym, when a buddy of mine came in. Changing into his workout clothes, looking at himself in the mirror with his shirt off, he said he was tired of this layer of fat over his abs, that he just couldn’t get rid of it no matter how much he tried. He’s a handsome Columbian guy in his mid thirties, super nice, friendly, and easy going, big open smile with nice white teeth. He’s well built, strong, with balanced musculature but … there’s not much definition.

Everyone wants to be cut, of course, and when you’re working out 5 or 6 times a week, like he does, and you can’t get cut, you get frustrated by that. Quite understandable. Meanwhile, I work out typically three times, and I’m “rallado” as he says to me. In english, the term is shredded: so lean that under tension, we see the muscles fibres. In my case, we can see them in every muscle, including the abs. He knew that, obviously, since I’ve been like this ever since we first met a year and a half ago. The only thing that’s changed is that I’ve put on some muscle and use heavier weights in my workouts.

And so, naturally, that was my queue:

– You just need to cut the carbs. The fat is going to melt off on its own in no time. Especially if you are working out the way you do. Just stick to meat and vegetables. Make it simple for yourself. Have eggs and avocados for breakfast, and meat and veggies the rest of the time. If you can skip breakfast, that’s even better: you’ll give your body a longer time to burn fat.

– Alright! I’ll try it!

After our workout, we said goodbye, and he told me he was going to Columbia for a while for his work (he’s part of a several-generation, several-family-member meat business based there, but lives here in Madrid with his wife and young child). He said that even though they always serve so rice, pasta, and potatoes with every meal, he would do his best to stick to the plan of having only meat and veggies. I gave him a good handshake, told him he could do it, and that it was important to be strict for the first month to allow for a good transition to fat-burning.

A few weeks later, he came back. We bumped into each other at the gym again. I was doing chest and back, he had come to do shoulders. He looked noticeably different: his face was smaller, his features more defined, his neck was thinner and more visible, his eyes were whiter and his skin was smoother. He looked 5 years younger! As soon as I saw him, I told him he looked very good, thinner in the face and neck, younger, and clearly healthier. He was happy to hear me say it, of course. He said that many people had told him that he looked younger, and obviously, he could also see it himself when he looked in the mirror. But it’s always nice when someone tells us we look good; it doesn’t happen very often. He had already lost 4 kg.

We saw each other a few more times at the gym like that, working out, but it took a while before he told me that he was feeling weak, that he couldn’t push as much weight as before, that he was often tired, and strangely, often in an angry mood. Naturally, he thought it was because he wasn’t eating carbs. That somehow he was carb-deficient.

– Do you add plenty of salt and fat with your meals meat and veggies?

– No! I don’t! I haven’t added salt to food in years. And I don’t add fat either.

– That’s the problem. You need to start right away. Lots of salt, and lots of fat with your food, whenever you eat.

– What kind of salt, and what kind of fat?

– Unrefined sea salt, organic butter and coconut oil, and olive oil with salads. With every meal. When you go low carb, you not only get rid of accumulated water in your tissues due to the chronic inflammation triggered by carbohydrate exposure (that’s why your face and neck thin out in the first week or two), but you also excrete more salt in the urine. It’s crucial to eat plenty of unrefined salt every day.

butterAndSalt

Organic butter and unrefined salt

 

Two days later, when I got to the gym, he was already into his workout, and he was pushing heavy weights on the benchpress, he was walking around with a spring in his step, and he was smiling. I didn’t even need to ask, but I did anyway:

– So, how are things going? Lots of salt and fat?

– Yes! And I feel great! I feel strong, I feel powerful, I’m not tired, and I’m not angry anymore.

– Fantastic! Glad to hear that. And from now on, you’ll always feel like this. No ups and downs, no weakness or lack of energy, no hunger pangs, no mood swings.

Each time we saw each other at the gym in the next weeks, I could tell he was getting more defined. The last time we met, he was again walking around feeling strong and working heavy weights with a smile on his face, and he looked ripped, a lot more defined. And he knew it too. I could tell by the self-confidence.

When we parted, I told him he looked good, that he looked more defined, and more energetic. He was happy: “Thanks a lot for all your advice. It’s really made a huge difference. I feel great, and my abs are starting to show!”

Not eating enough salt and not eating enough fat is a classic mistake that too many people do. We have been brainwashed into thinking we should avoid fats and we should avoid salt. So, when we cut the carbs, we continue to avoid fat and avoid salt. Then, we get tired and weak, and we think it’s because we don’t eat carbs. Totally not! We’re just not getting enough salt and fat.

And so, we have to repeat this, and repeat it over and over again. Eventually, it sinks in. Especially when we feel the difference it makes. Just like it happened in this case with my Columbian buddy at the gym. So, what’s the moral of the story?

You want to feel strong, and energetic? You want to look healthy and young? You want to get ripped with tight 6-pack abs? The formula is simple:

Cut the carbs. Fast intermittently. Drink alkaline water on an empty stomach. Work heavy weights 3 times a week. Eat enough protein. Eat your salt. And eat your fat. Try it. You’ll see. It works like a charm.

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Two short fat-loss tales

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– You look like you’ve lost some weight.
– Yes, I have! I’ve lost 12 kg in 4 months. You remember, a year ago, I told you I would do my own diet, and I did!
– That’s great, congratulations!
– You know what I did? I stopped eating junk. I didn’t do anything else. I stopped eating chocolate bars and candy; cakes, cookies and ice cream; chips and fried foods, and that’s it. I eat everything: anything that is a whole food, and I do have bread and potatoes, rice and pasta, as well as cheese and fruit. I didn’t do anything crazy or radical, I just eliminated junk food from my diet.
– That’s really good. I’m happy for you. Keep it up!

This is how went a short conversation I had recently with a colleague who, a couple of years ago, was one of the 25 people who attended the talk I gave at ESAC: Water, sugar, protein and fat. It could be (I’d like to imagine) that the talk was like a little seed in her mind that was what eventually grew into enough of a motivation to start what she had been doing for a few months already, making her feel really great about it, as anyone would, of course. And I’m really happy for her, and also very happy to possibly having been a little positive influence somewhere along the line.

Another colleague stopped by my office in the spring to ask about the fitness club (a club to encourage people to exercise by subsidising part of the monthly membership to a great sports club close to where we work for which I was president for several years until a month ago or so). He mentioned in passing that he wanted to start doing sports in order to lose weight. Naturally, I immediately said that exercising wasn’t really the key to fat-loss. He was surprised, as most people are when they hear this. Being interested and inquisitive about this point (he works as a scientist, after all), I gave him a 10-minute summary of the biochemistry of fat loss, and he left very motivated to start on his fat-loss programme.

About one month later we crossed paths on the main road in front of the canteen. He looked much thinner: he actually looked quite trim considering that as little as four weeks before he not only looked but was definitely quite chubby.

– Things are going well, I see! You look like you’ve lost a lot of weight already.
– Yes, I’ve lost 10 kg. Now, after the first four weeks, I’ve started to eat carbs again, but I’m eating 1500 calories and exercising every day. I started eating some complex carbs because I need energy.

I masked my internal cringing, and just said “well, you are much leaner than you were. Good job and keep it up!” But I thought: What in the world!?! How did he come to think like this after I explained to him how fat loss works, and which he seemed to understand? The thing is, he did cut out all carbs for four weeks—there’s no way in the world he would have lost this much fat any other way—but for whatever reason, he now thought he should start again because he was exercising every day and therefore “needed energy”. He really didn’t understand the most important points I had tried to relate in that chat we had in my office. I am, in any case, very happy for him as well, because it is always better to be leaner than fatter, especially considering that a lot of the excess fat accumulating in our abdominal cavity is stuffed in between and all around our vital and digestive organs, putting constant pressure on everything in there, and that’s really bad.

Now, I would like to think that all of you readers of this blog already know what I want to point out and explain in regards to these two short fat-loss tales. Whether you do or not, I thought it was a good occasion to review the essentials of fat-loss in a quick and focused but more informal style than in other articles I have written. You are more than welcome to take a few minutes and try to guess what I’m about to explain about these two cases before moving your eye gaze down onto the first line of the next paragraph.

Why did the first colleague I talked about lose so much weight? Is it because she started exercising? No. She never exercised and still doesn’t. Is it because she starved herself on a low-calorie diet Weight Watchers style? No. She hasn’t been hungry because she hasn’t tried to eat a lot less, and has three meals a day without paying close attention to how much and is certainly not counting calories. Is it even because she stopped eating “junk food”? No, it’s not. The reason why she has lost this weight seemingly so easily is only because she markedly decreased the amount of sugar she ate, which immediately translated in lower blood sugar levels throughout the day and night, which in turn translated into lower insulin levels also throughout the day and night. As insulin drops, fat-burning starts.

Will she continue to lose her fat reserves indefinitely at this rate until there are none left? No, she won’t: fat utilisation, and therefore fat-loss rate, is inversely proportional to insulin levels. So, the lower the blood sugar, the lower the insulin, and the lower the insulin, the faster the fat-loss rate. Because she still eats sugar in the form of starches, the sugar/insulin concentration will only sometimes drop low enough for fat-burning to start, and will not drop very low and stay there to allow the metabolism to fully adapt and settle into a stable and more or less constant fat-burning mode. She will remain in intermittent fat-burning and sugar-burning. Because her fat reserves are at this stage still very large (from the organism’s perspective they are still effectively infinite), the relatively lower blood sugar for periods of several hours will prompt the body to continue to let go of these excessive fat reserves relatively easily until a steady state is reached and fat-loss stops. At that point she will still have plenty of excess body fat, but will be unable to lose any more without dropping insulin levels lower.

Of course, eliminating junk food—mostly commercial sweets and fried stuff—and feeding ourselves with actual food, no matter what it is, makes a huge difference. This is definitely the very first step in any change of diet towards better health. That’s obviously not something worth debating or even discussing. The point is that no matter what the changes in the diet, the biochemistry of fat loss is always the same, and it is the same for everyone. Everything is about insulin for the very simple reason that it is insulin that shuttles nutrients from the bloodstream into cells. This is true for sugar, protein and fat. But insulin is released by the pancreas primarily in response to the presence of sugar in the blood (but also in the absence of stress hormones which block insulin’s action to retain the sugar in circulation as long as the “potential threat” remains). The gist of it is: high insulin—nutrient storage, low insulin—nutrient release; high insulin—fat storage, low insulin—fat-burning.

What about the second colleague exercising and eating only 1500 calories that include starches and some fruit? He will continue to lose fat until the body determines that the bulk of the really excessive fat reserves have been spent, and then will stop. This will happen probably somewhere around 20% body-fat for guys and 30% for women, but will depend on age, exercise level, food, etc. So, he will get lean enough to appear slim, feel light, and also feel pretty good about himself every time someone compliments him on his figure. The more serious problem for him is that exercise, and especially the aerobic exercise like running that he is does to “burn more calories”, breaks down muscle quite quickly but it is not rebuilt.

The low calorie intake places the metabolism in calorie-deficit given that an average man needs about 1500 calories just for basic metabolic functions. This means that all additional calorie requirements have to come from somewhere other than the food that is eaten. Ideally, of course, these would come from fat reserves of which there are plenty; that’s the idea of the low-calorie dieter. But this will and can only happen if insulin levels are at rock bottom: I mean 1–3 units. Otherwise, the body will cannibalise its muscles because it can most easily get the easiest-burning cellular fuel it needs by converting protein into glucose. And the result? Over time he’ll lose most of his muscle, will retain that 15-20% fat, and will inevitably acquire the skinny-fat look. You know what I mean: the look of a slow, 40-50 year-old long-distance runner on a typical high-carb “runner’s diet” who looks skinny but giggly, with barely any visible muscle and no definition at all: muscle tissue broken down and not rebuilt; fat reserves not used because insulin is too high.

Had you guessed all that? Do you now understand how to burn fat without hunger and without losing muscle? Drop sugar levels, drop insulin levels: lose the fat reserves, keep the muscle. Eat fibrous veggies, lots of unprocessed fats and enough clean protein; don’t eat any sugar or starch. Very simple.

And here’s a teaser for a future series: if you want to build muscle and maximally slow down ageing, you will—in addition to this kind of shift in diet—also start lifting weights: squats and dead lifts, bench press and overhead standing press, bent-over rows, dips and pull-ups; and the heavier and more strenuous the better!

But if you’ve never done any of that, don’t go out and start lifting as much as you can right away because you’ll hurt yourself: you have to start slow, and have impeccable form and technique before starting to put on more weight. However, the fact is that there is really nothing more effective than heavy weight lifting to correct metabolic imbalances, postural problems, muscle and joint weaknesses; to burn fat, build muscle, and increase bone density; and totally rejuvenate the body and restore a incredibly youthful hormonal profile. The most amazing thing is that this is true for men and women of any age. I hope to find the time and write about this in the not-so-distant future.

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Two articles that changed my life

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Two days ago, on October 23, I turned 40. For me, it feels different than every other birthday I have had: it feels like the marker of the transition between what can be considered young adulthood from 20 to 40, and middle adulthood from 40 to 70, which is then simply followed by old age. Maybe this is also linked to the fact that from the time I started competing, first in running track and field, then in road cycling, duathlon (running and cycling), off-road cycling and eventually in long distance running, I have always been in the normal, standard 18-40 category (like almost everyone else, I thought). And now, starting with my first race in the first level Seniors from 40 to 50 a couple of weekends ago in Bordeaux at the Ariane Cross 2012, I am definitely, and will be for the next 10 years, in the over 40 category. So, I have been reflecting a little on the past and the future: What is really important to me, what have I done and accomplished, what do I want to do in the future and how can I get there? Simple questions whose answers are not so simple.

In this context, I want to share two articles that completely changed my life, and completely changed my state of health, in some respects, rather suddenly, and in others, gradually over the years. Interestingly, I stumbled upon and read them both in the same week almost exactly five years ago. I won’t summarise, discuss their contents, nor describe the positive effects the simple but radical changes in dietary habits they prompted me to instil have had on me, on my wife Kristin and on our son Laurent. I simply encourage you to read them for yourself, and sincerely hope they will benefit you as much as they have us, and, I am sure, everyone who has ever read and applied the information they contain to their diet.

What is clear to me now much more than it has in the past, is that no matter what information we are presented, its impact depends entirely on how receptive we are to it. And this depends on all of what we know and think we know, on how we understand the connections between everything we have been exposed to, on our habits and tendencies, on previous experiences throughout our life, and very importantly, on the circumstances that form the context in which the information is brought to our attention. Thus, let me hope that these two articles come at a time that is ripe for you to appreciate their importance in regards to your own health, that of the people you care about, and everyone else for that matter.

The two articles are Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects by Ron Rosedale, MD (you can get the pdf here), and The Skinny on Fats by Mary Enig, PhD (get pdf here). After reading them, please consider sending this link to those you know who will or even possibly appreciate it. As you will see from the few case histories at the start of Rosedale’s presentation, the question of understanding and controlling insulin can really be a matter of life or death.

When you eliminate insulin-stimulating carbohydrates

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Eliminating insulin-stimulating carbohydrates will have a profound effect on your health. What are insulin-stimualing carbohydrates? All simple sugars: white sugar, brown sugar, unrefined sugar, dehydrated cane sugar juice, coconut sugar, honey, molasses, corn syrup, agave syrup, fructose, and also fruit whose calories are typically half glucose half fructose. And all starchy carbohydrates: potatoes, rice, bread, pasta, all grain products and whole grains alike. That’s quite a lot of things we tend to eat, isn’t it? But the truth is that We were never meant to eat simple or starchy carbohydrates in the first place. And the fact that we do is enough to explain why we are all so fat and so sick.

The first and most noticeable immediate effect will be deep detoxification by starving off and killing of the colonies of pathogenic bacteria and fungi in the intestines, all of which live off simple sugars supplied either by your eating of refined carbohydrates or the breakdown of starches to glucose. All these bad bacteria will starve and die, which will temporarily increase the toxins that need to be eliminated from the body. For this reason it is very important to drink plenty of water (see Water, ageing and disease), on an empty stomach, and preferably about 30 minutes before meals (see Why we should drink water before meals) together with probiotics and chlorella supplements, as well as plenty of unrefined sea or rock salt because the body excretes more sodium when it is burning fat. You may very well not feel so good for the first few days or maybe even the first couple of weeks depending on the state of toxicity of your body and its ability to detoxify. But once past this initial detox phase, you will feel great—really great.

The second most noticeable effect will be the transition from using glucose as the primary cellular fuel to using fat instead. As glucose concentrations will fall, so will insulin concentrations. At the beginning, your body is unable to burn fat because it hasn’t had to for a long time. Instead, it will try to manufacture more glucose in the liver to sustain its energy needs. When this source runs dry, the body, now desperate for sugar because still unable to tap into the plentiful fat stores throughout, will turn to muscle tissue, and break down the proteins to manufacture glucose. This is what insulin resistance, even in the mildest of forms, leads to: more fat storage, less fat burning, and breakdown of muscle tissue whenever glucose concentrations drop. What varies depending on the level of insulin resistance is the pace at which fat is stored, the relative difficulty with which fat is burnt, and the speed at which muscle tissue is broken down.

Fortunately, the body is truly amazing, and although you will have periods, some short and some longer, during which you feel weak, tired and sleepy, within days the metabolism will begin to make the switch to fat-burning as the main source of cellular fuel and energy. Then, you will start to melt all of the excess fat that has been accumulating both on the surface of your body (the visible bulges under your skin), as well as the fat that has been accumulating internally between and around all of your organs, especially in the abdominal cavity, but also around tendons and ligaments, and even within the tissues or your liver and heart, and in between muscle fibres—we all know the difference between lean meat and fatty meat, and will have had or at least heard of the french delicatessen “foie gras” (fat liver).

I, for example, a lean 35 year-old athlete who had always exercised extensively through a typically quite intense training programme in endurance, speed and strength since I was 12 (first running, then cycling, then both), with a peak during the university years, when I competed quite seriously first in cycling (road), then in duathlon (run, bike, run), and then cycling off-road, and another during my PhD, when I trained and competed running, with the most worthy achievements being the running of the Mont Saint-Michel marathon in 2:58, but training more or less steadily throughout my life, found the transition from glucose to fat-burning very quick and easy. That was about 4 years ago, and small details of momentary sensations tend to slip out of memory over such periods, but of course I had a few headaches and foul smelling stools. But within days, I had more energy, more endurance and better, longer-sustained concentration, and it’s been getting better ever since! None of my body measurements changed significantly: I was always pretty lean and my clothes didn’t fit differently. However, I lost 4 kilos (9 pounds): my weight went from of 61 to 57 kg, and has remained thus ever since, without any effort, and without hunger. Consequently, most of these 4 kg were surely in part sub-cutaneous, but necessarily in great part internal fat stores: intra-abdominal (between organs), visceral (within organs like the liver and heart), and intra-muscular.

Averagely overweight people typically lose a lot more fat than this. Like a friend who followed my advice closely, and lost more than 25 kilos (55 pounds) in about a year, without hunger. And she is still melting fat reserves that had been accumulating and that she had been carrying around for years. Beyond a certain threshold, as the body gets closer to its ideal weight and composition, the fat reserves naturally begin to melt a little slower every day. Nonetheless, it will continue until there is only the necessary reserves for optimal metabolic function—and that’s not very much fat.

There are thousands of examples such as this one, but this is not the point I want to make. The loss of fat is a trivial consequence of the body’s hormonal and metabolic recovery. It is everything else that happens to the glands, the hormones, the brain, the digestive system, the immune system, the cardio-vascular system, and all other systems, allowing more efficiently and better functioning, that is really important. You should always keep that in mind: it is not about getting thin, it is about getting healthy.

When fat-burning kicks in and especially when it kicks into high gear, all the toxins—heavy metals like mercury and chemicals of various kinds—that have been accumulating in your tissues will be released as the fat cells open up to free these energy reserves. It is crucial to drink a lot of water, especially first thing in the morning, to take plenty of unrefined sea salt to balance the increased need for and usage of electrolytes in elimination through the urine, and take plenty of chlorella throughout the day for it to bind to the metals and toxins, and excrete them from the body.

The third most noticeable effect of eliminating insulin-stimuating carbohydrates will be the gradual extraction and excretion of uric acid from all the soft tissues and organs. Since metabolising simple and starchy carbohydrates leads to acid formation, and that our kidneys—our primary blood filtration and thus acid-removing organ—never developed to handle the huge quantities of acid produced by a diet based on carbohydrates, it tries to filter it out of the blood, but simply cannot take it all out. To make matters worse, 90% of us are chronically dehydrated (see Water, ageing and disease). This not only prevents the proper dilution of the uric acid from the blood and its transfer to the urine, but it also severally stresses the kidneys that are continuously trying to filter this and other metabolic wastes from the poorly hydrated, and thus excessively thick and viscous blood, extracting what liquid they can from it to actually produce enough urine to excrete the wastes out of the body.

To make matter even worse, for years we have been told to avoid salt, and supplement with calcium. As a consequence, 90% of us are not only deficient in most essential minerals (see Minerals, bones, calcium and heart attacks), but also in sodium—probably the most important element for proper health and kidney function, and on the contrary, we are totally over-calcified. All of this makes both calcium and acid accumulate not just in our kidneys to the point of forming “stones” (about 80% of them are calcium deposits with crystallised uric acid seeds and 10% pure uric acid), but everywhere in our body, making all tissues gradually stiffer, from arteries and veins to muscles, tendons and ligaments. What a nightmare! And what a sad state of affairs it is when we realise that this is a highly accurate description of what happens to most of us, day after day, and year after year until our untimely and inevitably premature death.

The last straw is that we are all terribly deficient in magnesium, scarcely found in our soils and therefore in our foods, and this leads to severe problems over time. If you didn’t know or need convincing, read Why you should start taking magnesium today.

What do we eat when we eliminate what currently constitutes between 50 and 70 percent of our daily calories? I’ve written up some general guidelines with brief explanations in What to eat: Four basic rules. And here are some examples of daily meal plans: A simple meal plan for my friend Cristian and Vibrant health and long life.