A few questions about picking the right eating habit

Everyone's body works differently. I figured out that i'm sensitive to grain based carbs and sugar, so I avoid those for the most part, I would die without grains though so I limit myself to one serving a day of something I really like now and then.

I wouldn't drop your calories too low for more that 2 or 3 days at a time! It will wreak havoc on your metabolism!!! You don't want to go into starvation mode, it will just make it harder to lose weight in the future!

I had 2 large dinner banquets 2 days in a row and I pretty much hit the caloric limit by over 1,000 calories a night. I feel somewhat disgusted with my lack of control but that's not the way to do things. I need to just start anew, feed myself with food choices that make me happy and less likely to binge on white bread roll and sweet treat.

I tried to go onto a low-carb eating habit by restricting myself to about 90 calories but that just makes me think of my wholemeal bread more and more. Chocolate too. =/

I looked up on the internet and it says that low-carb vs low-fat yield similar results in long run. The choice depends on whether you are insulin resistance or insulin sensitive. I am thinking of heading back to low-fat for my sanity and mental health but before that, I have a few questions.

1. How do you know which type of body you are? Insulin sensitive or resistant?
(I once ate some chinese food - white rice + other noodles and dishes and my blood glucose shot to 140+ while my friend who ate similar amount had her level went up to 120 or so. I look more like a pear than an apple. My fasting glucose level one year ago when I checked was around high 70s and doctor said I could afford to eat a bit more chocolate. But that's one year ago.)

2. Is it better to write down all the food I ate in the banquet in one entry or should I distribute it over days?
The reason I ask this is because if I overshot by 1,000 and I placed 200 over the next 5 days, I technically could reduce 200 per day over the next 5 days to neutralize that big dinner.
On the other hand, if I place 1,000 in one entry, I might still eat like normal over the next 5 days, hence I do not neutralize the dinner.

how about getting a plan together BEFORE you go and have a banquet where you have no idea what you can eat and stay within your dietary limits?
Your "blood sugar" is a reaction of your body to the intake of nutrients.

Insulin can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. Insulin’s main role is to control the storage of nutrients. In fat cells it promotes fat storage. In the liver it promotes glycogen and fat storage and, most importantly, in the muscle it promotes growth! No wonder this hormone intrigues both those trying to lose weight and those trying to gain muscle. It’s also not a surprise that some use exogenous insulin…however stupid I personally feel that is. But never mind that right now. Insulin is also the hormone that’s secretion is most easily influenced by diet. Insulin responds primarily to glucose, but other stimuli, such as gut hormones secreted in response to food, also influence insulin secretion.

Simply put, the role of insulin is to decide when and where you store nutrients. So whether you are looking to get big or trim down, controlling your insulin levels should be more than a minor concern.

The Glycemic Index (GI)

When you eat carbohydrates, they eventually end up in your bloodstream as glucose. This is true of all carbohydrates. The difference is that some carbohydrate sources are absorbed and increase blood glucose faster than others. The faster carbohydrates raise your blood glucose, the higher glycemic index (GI) they have. The ability of ingested glucose to increase blood glucose is given a value of 100. All other foods are given values in relation to this. For example, sweet potatoes are assigned a value of 54, meaning it can raise blood glucose 55% as well as glucose. In general, foods below 55 are considered low GI while foods above 70 are considered high GI.

A better measurement is the insulin index. This indicates the ability of a food to increase plasma insulin. I know what some of you are thinking: isn’t that the same thing? Well, not exactly. As I mentioned earlier, there are factors other than plasma glucose that increase insulin release. Let’s take milk for example. The glycemic index is rather low. However, it has been shown to induce an insulin response similar to very high glycemic index foods. That’s reason enough for me to put it in my post-workout shake (high insulin post-workout is beneficial for muscle gain – more on this later). As a side note, dairy calcium has separate beneficial effects on weight loss, not to mention the multitude of vitamins and minerals.

The Science of Insulin Release

Insulin is secreted by the pancreas in response to a glucose stimulus. The higher the glucose concentration in the blood, the more insulin the pancreas will release. Glucose enters pancreatic beta cells (the ones that secrete insulin) through GLUT2 transporters. These differ from the GLUT4 transporters of other cells (such as adipose and skeletal muscle) in that GLUT2 transporters have a much higher Km – making them highly susceptible to glucose availability. In contrast, the GLUT transporters of other cells are primarily regulated by insulin levels. I recommend anyone who doesn’t care much about glucose metabolism to skip the next 3 paragraphs.

Upon entering the beta cell, glucose undergoes glycolysis and is transformed to pyruvate. The rate-limiting step of this process is glucokinase (GK). This is important because many factors upregulate or downregulate the activity / expression of this enzyme. Pyruvate is then further broken down in the mitochondria to yield ATP. However, the ATP in beta cells is not used for energy as such. Rather, it serves to stimulate insulin release. This is mediated through closure of the K+ATP channels and subsequent opening of the voltage gated calcium channels. Calcium is the primary stimulus for insulin release.

That said, there are many other factors that affect insulin release. However, many of these cannot in themselves stimulate insulin release. The majority of them only potentiate (read increase) glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS). Sympathetic input decreases insulin release while parasympathetic input increases insulin release. The effect of sympathetic input is apparent when one is exercising. When exercising (sympathetic input is high), there is no need for insulin release so it seems natural for such input to decrease insulin secretion. On the other hand, when one is laying on one’s *kitten* watching the ball game, that’s a perfect time to store nutrients.

Gut hormones also potentiate insulin release. When food is ingested, hormones such as CCK, GLP1 and GIP are released. These hormones aid insulin release provided the pancreas is also stimulated by glucose. This is the reason that infused (read injected) glucose does not have the same effect on insulin release as ingested glucose. For the scientifically inclined, these act on G-coupled receptors affecting either adenylate cyclase / PKA or the PLC pathways. PKA affects numerous steps of insulin release such as the K+ channel and Ca++ channel as well as being involved in the movement/release of the insulin granule. PLC leads to the formation of PKC and IP3. PKC acts similarly to PKA in the pancreas while IP3 acts on the endoplasmic reticulum, increasing intracellular calcium. I won’t go into any other pathways since I don’t see the point and there is still much to be determined. Plus, I’m too lazy.

Probably the most important mediator of insulin secretion in the long term is the type of fats we consume. Polyunsaturated (good) fats have been shown to maintain/improve pancreatic function while saturated (bad) fats impair function. These effects are thought to be mediated partly via transcription factors (such as the PPAR family and SREBP1c) and the subsequent effect on expression and/or activity of key enzymes in glycolysis and the TCA cycle. However, effects of free fatty acids (FFA) on the hypothalamus have also been implicated in insulin release in both the short- and long-term (and in hepatic glucose production I might add).

So why is any of this important? Loss of beta cell function is a bad thing because dysregulated insulin secretion is known to cause insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity. I won’t go into the mechanisms behind this now as it is quite complicated. Nevertheless, suffice it to say that maintaining your ability to secrete insulin is important and the easiest thing we can do to ensure this is chow down the polyunsaturated fats (i.e. fish oil or SesaThin) and lay off the saturated fats (i.e. Burger King).

Insulin Resistance

The importance of insulin resistance is obvious. If you are dieting, insulin resistance will cause more muscle loss and less fat loss. If you are bulking, insulin resistance will lead to decreased muscle gain and increased fat gain.

Insulin resistance refers to when the cells of your body (adipose, liver, muscle) become resistant to the effects of insulin. This means it will take more insulin to clear the blood of glucose. Needless to say, this will result in more insulin being released for a given concentration of glucose. It is important to note that skeletal muscle is much quicker to become insulin resistant than adipose tissue. So, even though your insulin levels are higher, the anabolic effect of insulin on muscle remains the same. The effect on adipose stores, however, is increased. This puts you in a situation where storing fat is favoured while gaining muscle is stable or reduced.

I think the best way to decide what eating plan works for you is to try different ones and see. We're all different so different plans work better for some than others.

I do best low-carb, high-fat, mod-protein. And, yes, all my blood lipids, pressure, etc., are in great shape eating this way. I also can't lose unless I go lower carb. I aim for 60 grams/carb per day but, to be quite honest, it's not unusual for me to get up to 100 grams. I gained weight eating low-fat/high-carb/mod-protein even if I kept my calories low. On lower carbs, my energy levels, mood, and mental clarity are much better, too. Eating higher carbs made me sluggish including needing naps, gives me brain fog, and puts me on an emotional roller-coaster. Obviously, it effects my blood sugars causing spikes and crashes. If none of this sounds familiar to you, you probably don't need to watch your carb intake as closely.

Personally, I would put the food into MFP on the day you ate it. Make a mental note to yourself that you need to cut XX number of calories from your eating plan over XX amount of days to make up for it. Or don't make up for it. An occasional 1000 extra calories in a week is not going to derail your weight loss.

Do you have a smartphone? If so, do you have MFP on it? My Android MFP has a feature that is missing from the website that I find very helpful. When you look at your weekly food intake, it tells you how many calories you are under your goal for the week. I purposely use this to bank some extra calories on days I'm not hungry and not eating all of them so I can do planned splurges on days when I have an event or just because it's fun to splurge sometimes without going over my weekly total calorie allowance. You can do this with the website too, of course, but you'd need to track it yourself instead of the program keeping the calorie county for you.

I'm going to a dinner/auction on Saturday night and then, later that night, to a Halloween party. I'm seriously banking calories for that night so I can splurge without going over my weekly calorie goal or, if I do go over, it will be minimal and can be easily managed by eating a bit lower for a day or two after. This has not hurt my weight loss and, actually, makes it much easier for me to eat well most days as I know I can splurge on other days.