Ketosis is all about fat loss via fat-burning hormones activities. However there are opponent hormones work the other way round, generally they called as fat-storing hormones.
Knowing fat-storing hormone is like gettting to know your enemy so that you won’t trigger them to stop your fat-burning hormone from doing their job.
Three main of fat-storing hormones are:
- Insulin
- Estrogen
- Cortisol
Fat storing hormones will trigger your craving to eat sugary carbs and store the excess sugar as fat and cholesterol, ended up with weight gained.
With the presence of glucose, insulin is produced and the presence of insulin will then inhibit fat-burning hormone from “satisfied” and your body will never burn fat as fuel.
Thus, to allow ketosis to run, these 3 “bad guys” or fat-storing hormones must kept at minimal level.
Mr. Insulin
As insulin is commonly found in our body, it belongs to the captain among these bad guys.
(Mr. Insulin: Muahahaha... Let’s triggers human’s eating mode and store up them up as much as possible!)
Insulin is made by the pancreas; it’s function is to lower blood sugar after meals. It will cause the cells to absorb sugar as fuel, stored some excess sugar as glycogen and convert the rest to fat and cholesterol.
In what circumstances it will trigger this fat-storing hormone?
Sugar triggers insulin, large amounts of protein can trigger insulin. The more lean or low-fat a protein is, the more insulin is released. And lastly, eating triggers insulin. This is why “two to three meals without snacking” is very good advice.
Ms. Estrogen
Next it is all about the female hormone - Estrogen.
(Ms. Estrogen: It’s show time ladies!)
Estrogen is responsible for the female characteristics, menstrual cycle and changes of the uterus and breasts.
It provides the fat layer around a female body, especially around the outer thighs. The reason women tend to have more fat than men lies in the fact that women have over a thousand times the concentration of estrogen receptors that men have.
There’s many chemical from daily food consumption that mimic estrogen in our body and cause the hormone receptors to go haywire. All these chemicals came from pesticides and hormone injected to commercial farm animals to increase the yield.
This is why consuming organic and grass fed whole food that is free of pesticides and chemical hormones from commercial farm animals is recommended especially for the ladies.
Mr. Cortisol
Lastly, the youngest brother - Cortisol.
(Mr. Cortisol: I don’t want to be the youngest, sounds weak. I’m the strongest! I like to bully human and put on stress on them. Yes, I mean it!)
This is an important hormone produced by adrenal glands, which is activated by stress of all kinds.
It is anti-inflammatory and releases sugar from the liver and muscles into the blood as an instant fuel source for stressful events.
Cortisol is classified as fat burner; however, it also has an indirect fat-storing effect when it turns body muscle proteins into sugar fuel, since this forces insulin to deal with the excess sugar in the bloodstream, producing weight gain in the midsection.
Get yourself to know them and keep these bad guys at minimal levels to practice your ketosis more effectively!
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