Where does stored fat go on The Harcombe Diet?
How does stored fat disappear on The Harcombe Diet?
We will keep all the answers in “The Big Issues” as simple as possible, but we will need to get into some science, as the world of dieting has been massively and wrongly oversimplified and we need to put this straight. There are sadly no easy answers to The Big Issues that are rightly being asked. Do come back with queries on bits you don’t understand and I will try to put things in a different way, until we can understand the principles in a way suitable for own learning style. We have many super members, who also approach things from different angles and between us we should be able to help each other understand where some things have gone horribly wrong… How does stored fat disappear on The Harcombe Diet? Jenny Wren asked a great question on 5 May 2010: How does stored fat disappear on The Harcombe Diet? In the first “The Big Issues” we showed that the calorie theory is absolutely, fundamentally wrong. We showed that you will not gain 1lb of fat for every surplus of 3,500 calories that you consume. Sadly, the opposite is also true. You will not lose 1lb of fat for every deficit of 3,500 calories that you create. In the other main article in this issue, you will see an amazing chart – the most recent (2007) definitive obesity journal study on eat less/do more dieting – and you will be stunned to see that barely 3-6kg are lost in 4 years. The calorie theory states that, if you create a deficit of 1,000 calories a day (e.g. Weight Watchers), you will lose 50kg a year in fat alone. That should be 200kg in fat alone in 4 years – not 3-6kg in weight. The magnitude of this lie, as well as the lie itself, is breathtaking. The good news is that the chart does not look at diets that manage carbohydrate intake and we will see in this article where The Harcombe Diet gets its advantage.Let’s start with the science. Here is what you need to know about fat: 1) There are two forms of fat: fatty acids and triglycerides. 2) Fatty acids are the form in which fat is burned for fuel by the body; 3) Triglycerides are the form in which fat is stored by the body as human fat tissue (also called adipose tissue); 4) A triglyceride is three (tri means three) fatty acids bonded together by glycerol (Glycerol is a sugar essentially); 5) Fat enters and exits fat cells as fatty acids, because triglycerides are too big to move across the cell membrane; 6) Fatty acids go into and out of the fat cells continually, ‘cycling’ across the cell membrane. If three fatty acids are bonded by glycerol to form a triglyceride, they can’t get back out of the fat cell until the triglyceride is broken back down into glycerol and fatty acids. That’s all you need to know to ask the two key questions: Q1) How is fat stored? A1) Fat is stored when triglyceride is formed, locking three fatty acids together in the fat cell. The pivotal role is played by a molecule called glycerol-3-phosphate (also called alpha-glycerol phosphate). Without this there is no glycerol to bind fatty acids as triglyceride. The main source of glycerol-3-phosphate is dietary carbohydrates. (We are learning that fructose particularly is the carbohydrate most easily turned into glycerol-3-phosphate). The more glycerol-3-phosphate available, the more fat can be stored. There is one final thing needed to make all of this happen – the glucose needs to be transported to the fat cells and that’s what insulin does. So, eat carbohydrates and you have the glycerol ready to make fat and you have the insulin stimulated to make sure that this happens. Hence why you will have seen me simplify in other threads “carbs and insulin put you in the perfect fat storing mode”.