The Weight Loss-Metabolism Connection

I promote myself as a metabolic health coach, but probably 75% of my clients come to me wanting to lose weight.

Thousands of people hawk weight loss solutions, and there are millions of people who have tried them and failed. When I first started my practice, I didn't want to be part of that.

At the same time, I realized that most people trying to lose weight have never been told that insulin — not calories, not willpower — may be what's driving the weight gain. Addressing elevated insulin and insulin resistance often unlocks the weight loss that they have been chasing for years.

Excess weight is an indicator of metabolic dysfunction. Not the only symptom, but often the first one noticed, so helping clients lose weight fits perfectly with my role as a metabolic health coach.

Insulin's Many Roles

You probably know insulin as the hormone that helps your body absorb blood sugar, and it is. But insulin has many other functions, as described in The Insulin Resistance-Chronic Disease Connection.

In a healthy metabolism, when insulin is released after you eat, a little goes a long way. It efficiently moves the glucose absorbed from your meal out of your blood. Both insulin and blood sugar then return to baseline. When your metabolism is functioning well, your insulin levels are low most of the time.

Insulin and Energy Storage

Once glucose is removed from the bloodstream by insulin, it can be processed in 3 different ways for your energy needs:

•  Immediate energy: Some of the blood sugar gets burned in cells that need energy right away.

• Quickly available energy: Some glucose can be stored in your muscle and liver cells, even after you finish eating. However, there is limited storage capacity for energy storage in those locations.

• Stored energy: If there is excess glucose, insulin tells the liver to turn the surplus into triglycerides, the building blocks of body fat. Insulin then directs the triglycerides to your fat cells, where they are stored for future energy needs.

A single hormone that can direct the glucose in your food to different forms of energy — immediate, quickly available, or stored — makes a lot of sense. This system of fuel partitioning kept the human race alive during times of food scarcity.

Insulin, Insulin Resistance, and Weight Gain

The key takeaway for weight gain is that insulin promotes fat storage — and the inverse is also true: when insulin levels are high, it's hard to release fat from your fat cells.

You may have experienced this if you've ever tried a low-calorie, low-fat diet, which by default is high in carbohydrates. You probably felt hungry despite having plenty of body fat to burn. Because the carbohydrates drive high insulin levels, it's very difficult to access that stored energy. Your clever brain responds by increasing your hunger signals to obtain more instant energy from food.

The problem compounds when your body stops responding to insulin efficiently.

[If you want to learn more about how that happens, What is Insulin Resistance? And how do you know if you have it? gives all the details.]

Insulin levels climb even higher to compensate for the resistance. The higher your insulin level, the harder it is to burn fat.

Weight Loss and Improved Metabolism Go Hand-in-Hand

When I work with clients, and we identify and make diet and lifestyle changes that lower their blood sugar and improve their insulin sensitivity, the weight starts to come off.

They also have many unexpected metabolic benefits  – reduced cravings, more energy, less bloating, better sleep, and an improved relationship with food. Unexpected to them, but not to me. 

Slow weight loss was frustrating for one client, so we made a list of her non-scale victories, which included more energy, her clothes feeling looser, and feeling cognitively sharp. The next week when she weighed herself, she'd lost a total of 10 pounds.

To learn more about working with me to lose weight AND improve your metabolic health, read Curious about Nutrition Coaching? for an overview of the client experience.