The video below is an easy way to learn more about the issue of insulin resistance or high insulin levels. The first three-fourths of the video contains information on scientific research with some interesting charts and graphs.

When considering insulin levels, it is important to remember that a high insulin level can exist within a body even without a high blood glucose level.

Below is a transcript of the final one-fourth of the 32 minute video which encapsulates “Butter Bob’s” own personal viewpoint of the solution to the fat dilemma.

“Fat, your body fat is there around your middle, because your body thinks it is in a fed state all the time. And if your insulin pattern is like these we’ve looked at, you probably are in that fed state most of the hours of the day, everyday.

There’s only one way of getting this fat off. If the body believes that fat needs to be stored and held onto because there’s plenty of food, and it does believe this if insulin remains high, then it is waiting for something.

What is it waiting for?

It’s waiting for the signal that food is not available, that’s what it’s waiting for.


What is that signal? Low insulin levels is that signal.

As soon as you give it that signal, that food is not available, it will start releasing the fat. It just will, the work of George Cahill has shown us that.

That’s why so many different diets work, any diet that restricts your calories, makes your calories really low, therefore lowing your insulin levels, is going to send that signal, because it lowers your insulin level and this sends the signal to release the fat.


The problem is sustainability, in a world where food is everywhere, it’s hard to sustain a low calorie diet. Is it impossible? No. People have done it, many people have done it.


A Low Carb – High Fat diet (the diet I used to lose 150 pounds) is a diet hack, it’s a trick. It’s an imitation of fasting, an imitation of starvation. Starvation itself is a situation where circulating fat is high and insulin is low, a LCHF diet is also a situation where circulating fat is high and insulin is low.


So what’s the trick? We are restricting carbs, and we’re keeping our protein fairly low, not low enough to make us sick, but low, because protein has an effect on insulin that is about half that of carbs. That’s right, when you eat protein, especially some low fat lean protein, you are actually raising your insulin about half as much as eating carbohydrates.


We feed our body fat for a reason, firstly, so we can have something to eat, which makes this diet sustainable. You know trying to go without food long enough to make a difference is extremely hard to do. But this way of eating allows you to eat.


This sustainable fat diet allows us to eat, which makes the diet easy and the high fat part of this diet sends the signal to the body that we’re not eating, you see it’s a trick, because if the body has a lot of fat circulating around inside, fat from the diet, the body thinks it’s in starvation mode already, because if it was actually going without food, the body itself would be releasing fat.


So if we eat fat, when we do eat, it’s sending the SAME signal that the body would get if it was actually going without food.


Fat is also the food with the LEAST effect on Insulin, so insulin is kept low by the fatty food and the very fact that fat is in the system at a higher level, and insulin is low, sends the body the signal that it’s not eating.


To the body, it’s all the same, if you are actually starving, insulin is low and the body is releasing fat from your belly, so the levels of circulating fat are higher.

Eating a LCHF meal in essence tricks the body into believing that food is scarce because insulin is low and there’s fat in the system.


So this LCHF diet trick makes this diet sustainable, because we can eat during eating times, and here’s the trick, you need to find a way to not eat and this is the way.

This is the way to not eat, because when we eat a high fat, low carb and a very moderate protein diet, it kills our appetite.

BTW, even George Cahill tells us in his work that you only need about 15% of your calories as protein. These people telling you that if you eat fat it will prevent you from losing body fat are just plain wrong. Fat controls the appetite because it controls insulin, but protein has half the effect on insulin as carbs. And therefore, if the appetite is controlled by the relatively small amount of fat we are eating – calorie wise, then we can go long periods without food, because our body will make up the difference by releasing our stored fat from our belly.

When I say eat a high fat diet, I’m not talking about a high calorie diet. I’m not talking about eating sticks of butter. I’m talking about eating a high percentage of the lower calorie diet that you will be eating as fat. A high fat percentage meal or two, not a high calorie diet. And you don’t have to worry about your calories that much, just eat low-carb, high fat, moderate protein until satisfied, then listen to the appetite control that diet will give you and don’t eat when not hungry. You’ll end up eating a lower calorie diet without effort.

Now listen, this is the trick, not eating and fasting, intermittently fasting. Going without food is what the body has been waiting for, it is the signal that tells it to get rid of the fat.

Because looking for a time when we’re not eating is the whole reason it stored fat in the first place.

This fat that’s around your belly and your butt and chinny chin chins is there and it’s been there waiting for you to NOT EAT. And this diet makes it simple to NOT EAT.


You are fat because you’ve been trying to live off the food you take in, instead of the food you’ve already stored on your body.


In the FED state, this higher and longer lasting insulin level has locked up a huge amount, a big fat bank account of fat and the only way to make a withdrawal on that fat bank account is to stop eating and get the insulin down.


And being able to do that on a regular basis, being able to do that for months, many even for a couple of years, because some of you are so fat it will take a LOT of withdrawals on your big fat bank account before you spend all that extra fat for energy. It took me 14 months to withdraw a hundred and forty five pounds.


A sustainable long term plan of intermittently NOT EATING.


You can only be in one of two states, FED or FASTED.
 Fed doesn’t mean, “I just ate but an hour later I’m fasted”, no, it takes time to transition from the fed state to the fasted state. As we’ve seen from the work of Dr. Joseph Kraft, for some of you, it will take several hours to get into this fasted state. And that means not eating.


The good news is THIS DIET, this LCHF diet makes not eating easy, because FAT controls your appetite. No will power required.


So to be in a fasted state, means you’ve lowered your insulin levels down low, you’ve kept it there for hours and hours on end.


We do this with a high fat diet, that’s what we do, this is a trick.


If you don’t like this high fat diet, go and do a LOW calorie diet, if you can sustain it, have at it. But, it’ll probably be hard for you, you won’t control your appetite as easy as the high fat diet controls your appetite.

But if you go on this LCHF diet, You’ll find yourself going for hours and hours without eating, naturally and without effort, because you’ll be living off your big fat bank account of energy. You’ll be making constant withdrawals on that account and you’ll soon see your pants are falling off.

Because if there’s only two states of either fed or fasted, once we lower the insulin level, that’s one of the signs to the body that we’re not eating. Once our appetite is gone, we actually won’t be eating.

So we eat a high fat meal, it tricks the body into believing that we’re already in a fasted state, it gives us something to eat too, so it makes this diet more sustainable, then we use the actual appetite control to not eat for 12, 14, 15, 16, maybe even 24 hours in between meals. I know for some of you that sounds like B.S., but believe me, this diet makes going without food easy. It’s easy because you’ll be living off your fat savings account.”

Does Fasting make you fat?
            by Brad Pilon

If I remember correctly, the FTC views the use of animal research in supplement advertising to be one of the most heinous advertising infractions, right up there with Photoshopped before and after photos.

Why?

Because they believed that due to the lack of transferability of animal research to humans, doing so would be intentionally misleading the customer as to the potential benefits of said supplement.

Even the most ‘fly-by-night’ ethically-devoid supplement companies do not use animal trials in their marketing for this reason.

Keep this in mind when you see journalists and bloggers reporting on the latest mouse research, using it to create clickbait style articles about human diet, nutrition and weight loss.

Alright, now that I’ve said that, lets get to that article that appeared on Yahoo suggesting that skipping meals will actually make you fatter.

It was an animal study, using mice.

We know that mice are extremely sensitive to fluctuations in both body weight and meal patterns. They are very small animals, and without getting too technical I’ll just say it’s well known in the scientific community that many parts of metabolism scale with size.

For 5 days the mice in the diet group were given half the amount of food as the control mice, and all of the food was provided in one meal per day (that’s why it’s being referred to as a ‘fasting study’).

After 5 days of dieting the mice were allowed to gorge for 13 days, they were given an amount of food that was the same or more as the control mice, and were still only eating it all in one meal.

So what happened?

The control mice continue to grow normally, and their weight increased throughout the study, but the fasting diet-restricted mice lost almost 20% of their body weight in the first 5 days of the study. (This should be your first hint that mice are different than humans. If you and I eat 50% of our daily intake for 5 days we’re not going to lose 20% of our body weight – heck, we could do this for a month and we’re probably not losing 20% of our body weight.)

Then, the fasted mice were fed 98-122% of the amount of food as the growing control mice, so the fasted mice started to grow… and they grew quickly. If you think about it, they were getting fed the same amount of food (or more) as the mice that were 30% heavier then them… so rapid weight gain (and fat gain) make sense.

So end result? Mice who rapidly lost 20% of their body weight and then regained most of that weight by overeating ended up with larger fat cells then the control mice. I’m not sure why this is surprising.

They also had worse measurements of a bunch of health markers… again not surprising.

I’m not sure how much the eating cycle mattered here. Again, as I stated earlier, mice are really sensitive to eating patterns so it probably did play some sort of role, but rapid weight loss then overfeeding causing increased fat stores and messed up glucose control isn’t surprising.

What’s surprising is the reporting.

Overeating and causing rapid weight gain is generally not a good idea. Losing excess body fat generally is.

So what does this have to do with humans and Intermittent Fasting?

Simple. Fasting is popular, so it makes for great headline fodder.

We were baited in with the headline, then they attempted to blind us with the science.

Here’s the truth – There are lots of ways to lose excess body fat – Fasting is just one of dozens.

They all work, and some will obviously work better for you then others, based on your personal likes and dislikes and styles of eating.

The bottom line is please don’t worry about the mouse study, and feel free to voice your anger when people use mice to try and tell you how to eat.

Mice aren’t people, people aren’t mice. Yes, there is value in animal research and animal research can lead to proof of concept for human studies, but jumping right from animal trials to setting dietary recommendations for humans is reckless.

Brad Pilon is an expert on intermittent fasting as it relates to losing weight and gaining muscle. He's a bodybuilder, and the author of Eat Stop Eat.