Dr. Krohse's Top Tips to Lose Weight and Improve Nutrition

One picture holds the key for most people to lose weight more effectively! Keep reading and scrolling and you'll see what I mean.

Let me ask you a few questions:

When a girl’s body adds fat to the hips and breasts during puberty, what causes the increase in body fat?

If a bodybuilder takes testosterone and HGH and adds muscle mass, will he be more hungry and gain weight?  What causes both the increased hunger and weight gain?

Picture an elite 11 year old gymnast whose parents are both over 6 feet tall. What will keep her from going to the Olympics? If she starves herself and works out constantly, can she overpower it?

Congrats if you answered "hormones" to all three questions! If you answered correctly, you just said that hormones can increase fat, weight, hunger, and are more powerful than “eating less and exercising more”. Don’t you think that maybe they should be part of the weight-loss discussion?

Certain hormones tell our body to grow; some tell us to get taller, some tell us to add muscle, and some tell our bodies to get fat.  When these hormones are present in our body at high levels, our bodies will follow those messages with any energy present in the body.  If that gymnast starves herself, she will experience extreme fatigue, but her body will grow anyway!

So what hormone tells the body to get fat?  Insulin!  Look up insulin on Wikipedia and you’ll see that insulin “forces fat cells to take in blood glucose, which is converted into triglycerides.”  Having high insulin is like taking a fat-producing steroid.  The bodybuilder above eats more because the hormones are causing his body to grow.  The same logic applies to insulin. Insulin causes fat growth causes increased hunger.  Look at the picture to the right to see how powerful this effect is.  The picture is a person with diabetes who injects himself with insulin in the same two locations over a period of years.  The fat cells in those areas respond by growing.  Simple!  Notice the man is thin overall…

People’s bodies have regions that respond to the hormone insulin differently.  If a man has higher amounts of insulin present, his belly will usually get bigger.  If a woman has higher amounts, her hips and butt will often get fatter.  Ever seen a person with a big mid-section but slim arms and legs?  Every day, right?  We all also know people whose bodies don’t get fat at all even when high amounts of insulin are present.  Lucky them!  But if your body has regions that respond to high insulin by getting fat, your way to decrease fat is to consistently keep your body in a low insulin state.

Insulin increases in direct response to the amount of sugar and simple carbohydrates you eat.  Eat a 600-calorie bowl of ice cream, and the sugar in it spikes insulin.  It’s like you flipped the on-switch for your fat-building machine.  Then the sugar and fat in the ice cream are the building blocks to create fat.  In contrast, 600 calories of meat, cheese, and vegetables won’t spike insulin.  Even though some building blocks are present, the on-switch for fat building isn’t flipped so your body simply won’t create fat.

Soda, candy, frappucinos, and ice cream are obvious sources of sugar.  However, many foods thought of as healthy create large spikes in your insulin.  Many wheat breads and pastas, tortilla shells, bagels, rice, fruit juices, milks, and yoghurts have the same effect on your insulin as eating a candy bar (or two).  To learn more about different foods’ effect on your blood sugar look up “glycemic index” and “glycemic load”. Low glycemic index and load foods do not cause your insulin to increase much, while high glycemic foods can be thought of as the insulin on-switch for your fat-building machine.  Click through to Harvard Medical School’s webpage “Glycemic Index for 60+ Foods” and you can see that wheat bread has a glycemic index just one point below white bread!

“Why don’t we just follow the common advice to ‘eat less and exercise more’ to lose weight?”  Imagine you were invited to an expensive, deluxe all-you-can-eat dinner with the instructions to show up as hungry as possible.  What would you do that day to make sure you show up absolutely ravenous? Personally, I’d eat less and exercise more!  Can you see the irony that the plan to be as hungry as possible is also the plan that we’ve been told to lose weight?  It’s no wonder that “eat less and exercise more” doesn’t work well for most people!

So to have successful weight loss and maintenance, we’re looking for plans that consistently keep your body in a low-insulin state and that don’t have you feeling hungry.  My research and observations of patients, family, and friends who have had success dropping weight and keeping it off have led me to recommend three main diets, though there are many variations of these.

Weight Watchers – The most recent update to the Weight Watchers plan allows unlimited vegetables and fruits and assigns the most points to higher glycemic load/index foods.   As a result, we have had patients drop between around 30 pounds up to 160 pounds and maintain the improvement for years while being able to eat enough to never feel hungry.  If you enjoy the group meetings, points-based food tracking app, and the ability to have some insulin-spiking treats with clarity about how much you can have, consider Weight Watchers.

Paleo/Primal – These diets cut out food groups that a theoretical hunter/gatherer human wouldn’t be able to get while roaming through the woods.  No grains, dairy, sugar, or processed foods.  However, you can eat unlimited vegetables, moderate fruits, healthy fats and protein sources so you shouldn’t feel hungry.  The most popular version of this is the Whole30 challenge diet where people eat this way for 30 days and often drop 15-20 pounds in that time.  Personally, I dropped 25 pounds in two months through the Standard Process Purification Program in 2010 and have maintained the improvement ever since by basing my diet on these philosophies.  These diets also eliminate many foods that can negatively affect people’s health, and the period of elimination can reveal the problem food.  I personally found out that gluten was the underlying cause of year-round allergies causing sneezing, stuffed-up sinuses, and constantly itchy roof of my mouth. I'll share more about this below.

Ketogenic/Keto – Starting with Atkins and popular recently as a result of many stars slimming down the keto diet ("Kim Kardashian dropped the baby weight with keto!")can result in rapid weight loss.  With the keto diet you significantly restrict carbohydrates while eating unrestricted fats (healthy ones are recommended such as coconut oil, real butter, olive oil, nuts, and avocados) and moderate vegetables and protein.  Fat is highly satiating, and we have had multiple patients come in reporting rapid 20-plus pound weight loss while sharing, “I don’t feel hungry!”  After a person reaches their goal through keto, they will probably want to increase vegetables and fruits for their nutritional value.

Look at any diet that works through this lens of how much insulin is in your body and you can see that effective diets all lower insulin, some by decreasing caloric intake overall while others just lower the insulin-producing foods. The current trend toward intermittent fasting works in part because your body is in a very low insulin state for a large portion of each day.

“Can I just exercise more?”  Years of dietary advice have suggested that you can just exercise more to lose weight.  That may work for some people.  However, if your body responds to insulin by adding fat, then increasing exercise while still eating a consistently higher glycemic diet won’t work very well.  I bike about 7,000 miles a year and understand that if I still ate the way I used to I would be significantly overweight today.

“What if I try one of those three diet types and I don’t lose weight?”  Again, the answer is to look to your hormones.  If you diligently try one of the diets above and your body doesn’t slim down at all then you most likely have another hormone problem.  You might have low thyroid or an adrenal imbalance not letting your body lose weight.  When estrogen and progesterone change as a woman goes through menopause, that can trigger a period of weight gain as well.  You may need to consult a skilled doctor, dietitian, or endocrinologist who can determine what’s stopping your body from decreasing fat.

If this has you intrigued, I have to recommend reading the book: “Why We Get Fat & What to Do About It" by Gary Taubes. For me this book read like a suspense thriller and kept me up reading till 1 in the morning! It's a truly fantastic read. View thousands of reviews by people who also found this book eye-opening on Amazon!

I also recommend you spend a few minutes watching the video below by the Youtube Channel, "What I've Learned". Also follow this channel to learn the best information on all types of nutrition information and strategies.