Green tea helps you lose weight. When tea has been substituted for coffee, especially green tea, it had the opposite effect—it helped people lose weight.18 Avoid green tea (and all other sources of caffeine) if you are hypothyroid, have adrenal stress, or are hypoglycemic; green tea does contain caffeine, which should be omitted until these conditions are corrected.
Increase your intake of essential fatty acids. You can increase cell receptor activity by increasing the fluidity of cell membranes. Omega-3 fatty acids, especially docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) actually make cell membranes more fluid. Essential fatty acids also help to lower levels of “stress chemicals” such as Cortisol and norepinephrine. This may account, in part, for one weight loss study’s success with omega-3S, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, that showed the best weight loss results, along with reduction of glucose and insulin, in the group that ate one meal of fish each day.19
Learn stress reduction techniques and how to manage stress effectively. This can definitely help improve insulin resistance. High levels of stress activate the “fight or flight” response, which stimulates the production of epinephrine. Epinephrine causes the liver and muscles to convert glucose from its reserved state as glycogen to its active sugar form. Insulin rises to control glucose and increased insulin levels signal fat storage. This is one reason why some stressed individuals cannot lose weight regardless of how strict they are with their food choices. Relaxation techniques such as massage, hydrotherapy, aromatherapy, and prayer can improve insulin sensitivity and fat loss.20
Six Steps to Improving Blood Sugar Balance and Insulin Sensitivity
1 Follow the Coconut Diet. The meal plans and recipes in this book are designed to help you improve your blood sugar balance and improve insulin sensitivity.
2 Eat only healthy fats and oils. Healthful oils help promote insulin sensitivity. This is one more reason we recommend only virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, and essential fatty acids (the omega-3s), which are found in coldwater fish such as salmon and sardines, fish oils such as cod liver oil (rich in EPA and DHA), flaxseeds, and evening primrose oil or blackcurrant oil.
3 Eat only complex carbohydrates; avoid simple carbs. Vegetables, legumes, whole grains, and fruit are rich in fiber; they release their sugars more slowly into the bloodstream. Simple carbohydrates such as sugar, refined flour products, and starches like white potatoes and white rice, break down rapidly into glucose and cause blood sugar to rise. They should be avoided as part of a healthy lifestyle.
4 Eat a moderate amount of lean protein. Protein stimulates the release of glucagon, a hormone that mobilizes fat stores into energy, and it plays an important part in blood sugar stability. Choose naturally raised, organically fed animal products. Such animals yield healthier, leaner proteins. But eat protein moderately. Over consumption of protein can cause an increase in uric acid and taxes the kidneys.
5 Exercise on a regular basis. Aerobic exercise and strength training help increase insulin sensitivity. See pg. for exercise recommendations.
6 Drink green or herbal tea, avoid coffee, and drink at least 8 glasses of water each day.
Now that you know which carbs are good and which ones are bad, you can make wise choices the rest of your life that will encourage healthy blood sugar balance. In the next chapter, you’ll learn the truth about fats and oils. If you were surprised by some of the information in this chapter, I think you’ll be amazed at how misinformed our culture has been about fats. Saturated fats have gotten a bad rap for no good reason. And, a lot of misinformation about these fats has been popularized in mainstream media. Chapter Three presents the lowdown on fats and oils. It is quite possible that your entire manner of preparing food will never be the same after you finish this section. Best of all, you’ll discover which fats make you fat and which ones help you trim your waistline in The Big Fat Misconception.
chapter 3
For decades we have been told to cut back on the fats in our diet if we want to maintain a healthy weight and prevent heart disease. Marketers of low-fat foods have championed this concept. But according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) statistics, the results have not been what we were promised. In 1999-2000, an estimated 30 percent of U.S. adults aged 20 years and older—that’s nearly 59 million people—were obese, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, and 64 percent of U.S. adults aged 20 years and older were either overweight or obese, defined as having a BMI of 25 or more.1 (The BMI is a measuring system that determines obesity based on body-fat content rather than weight.) That accounts for almost two thirds of our adult population being classified as overweight. And heart disease is still the number one killer in the West.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said, “We’ve seen virtually a doubling in the number of obese persons over the past two decades and this has profound health implications. Obesity increases a person’s risk for a number of serious conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and some types of cancer.”2
Obviously, low-fat diets have not helped us lose weight. Isn’t it time to “stop the insanity” about fat. Fat is not the substance making most of us overweight. Not that overeating certain fats wouldn’t put weight on, but the major culprit for most people is refined carbohydrates—foods like sugar, potato chips, soda pop, pasta, pizza, breads, and other products made with refined grains. These types of foods are without doubt the major reason we are fat. And it’s no wonder! They are a big part of the typical Western diet.
We’ve been told for years that we should avoid fat as much as possible. Some people have been on a torturous low-fat regimen, trying to avoid all fat in their diet. Now we are learning about the dangers of low-fat diets. Health professionals have had a chance to observe the results of years of eating low-fat and no-fat diets—results that have been very detrimental to our health. We need good fats, especially the essential fatty acids, to stay healthy. And we need a certain amount of fat in our diet to prevent overeating.
We are also learning that the saturated fat scare has turned out to be—a “big fat lie!” Gary Taub wrote a startling article in the New York Times in 2002 titled “What If it Were All a Big Fat Lie!” In it he stated:
The cause of obesity [is] precisely those refined carbohydrates at the base of the famous Food Guide Pyramid—the pasta, rice and bread—that we are told should be the staple of our healthy, low-fat diet, and then add on the sugar or corn syrup in the soft drinks, fruit juices, and sports drinks that we have taken to consuming in quantity if for no other reason than that they are fat free and so appear intrinsically healthy. While the low-fat-is-good-heatth dogma represents reality as we have come to know it, and the government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in research trying to prove its worth, the low-carbohydrate message has been relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy.
Over the past five years, however, there has been a subtle shift in the scientific consensus. Now a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition