Getting Started

Hello, everyone!  I just started my project yesterday, which I am genuinely excited about—looking at biochemistry at work should prove to be very interesting.  Basically, the first thing Dr. Walker did was to give me his patented Crash Course in Everything Related to a Low-Carb and Low-Sugar Diet Plan™, which mostly consisted of him explaining how sugars are stored in the body while I sat with a slight deer-in-the-headlights look on my face (hey, it’s been a while since I studied metabolism in biology).  After the initial shock of the words “gluconeogenesis” and “triglyceride storage” wore off, I was actually very surprised to learn that what most people think makes you gain weight is actually completely wrong.

Here’s a question:  what is the most unhealthy thing a person can eat?  What will make a person gain the most weight?  I bet a lot of you said “fat.”  Fat contains a lot of calories, which makes you gain weight when you eat too much of them, right?  And there are a few types of fat, some of which you should avoid, and some of which you should try to eat more of, right?  Also, something about cholesterol.

Here’s my answer: foie gras.

Delicious, delicious foie gras.

What?  I can hear you say.  “Foie gras” doesn’t answer anything.  What a bizarre non sequitur.

Actually, no: the answer lies in how you make foie gras.  Foie gras is the liver of a duck or goose that has been specially fattened by force-feeding them huge amounts of food (placed under a link because the picture is absolutely horrible).  How do you make the liver store huge amounts of fat?  Corn.

Somewhere a duck is crying.

Corn has a lot of sugar.  When a person (or a duck) eats carbohydrates, that glucose is stored in what is called "ectopic fat," which basically means "fat where it doesn't really belong."  This includes areas like the liver (as is the case with foie gras), inside muscle tissue, and around the gut (like a beer belly). Because of ectopic fat within muscle tissue (probably the worst offender), cells' insulin receptors, which allow for the body to metabolize sugar, can become resistant to the presence of insulin.  And when there's excess insulin in your system, where does the sugar go to be stored? As more fat.

This insulin resistance places the body in a constant state of fat storage.  As carbs and sugars are eaten, excess sugars are then "bounced off of" ectopic fat, and the body simply stores it within fat cells.  So we can see that it's not fat that causes problems, it's sugar.

So what happens when you cut off your sugar and carbohydrate supply?  Your body needs glucose to function normally, both physically and mentally.  The thing is, your body can also break down fat to produce fatty acids (which provide energy) and ketones (which supply energy to the brain through the blood-brain barrier).  This process breaks down fat rather than storing it to provide energy because, while your body can turn sugars into fat, it can't turn fat back into sugar.

When you stop eating carbs, the only place your body can get its energy is from fat, and the first place it takes it from is the ectopic fat in your liver and muscle tissue.  The ketones resulting from these reactions are secreted from the body through urine--which is easily measurable through the use of a certain indicator, which turns bright purple, which is awesome.  This state--burning fat instead of storing fat--is called "ketosis."  Being ketotic has a variety of side effects, including losing weight (which is good, especially for type II diabetics), and a number of less pleasant symptoms, including such great things like bad breath, irritability, dehydration, and headaches.

There's more to the story, though.  How come this metabolism doesn't lead to extreme unhealthiness?  Not eating enough carbs can lead to anorexia, can't it?  The answer to this is Batman.  Or at least Christian Bale.

Note: Both of these are the same person.  Taken a year apart.

The one on the left is from The Machinist, while the one on the right is from the Dark Knight trilogy.  These movies are only a year apart, so why the huge change in his body?  Both diet regimens involved eating low amounts of carbohydrates and sugars.  So why does he look like a zombie in one picture and look really muscular in the other?  In the first movie, he ate very little protein, while in the second, he downed tons of protein in a very short amount of time.  This works because of one of those scary words I mentioned before: "gluconeogenesis."  This is the process the body uses to get glucose from other, non-carbohydrate sources in order to prevent hypoglycemia (which is when you don't have enough glucose in your bloodstream).

So, by eating a high amount of protein (which, yes, does include animal fats and oils) and a low amount of sugar and carbohydrates, your body enters a state of ketosis, where it burns fats instead of storing them, and creates glucose from protein, so you stay healthy instead of wasting away like zombie Christian Bale up there.

Later this week, I'll go into more detail on how to get into ketosis in the first place--diet, exercise plans, the works--and how it actually feels being on a low-carb diet, and hopefully ketotic by that point.