The All-Day Fat-Burning Diet: The 5-Day Food-Cycling Formula That Resets Your Metabolism To Lose Up to 5 Pounds a Week by Yuri Elkaim Read Free Book Online Page A

“spillover” occurs. This leads to any additional sugar or carbohydrate being stored as fat.
    Insulin is not your friend if your goal is to lose fat. Since insulin is a storage hormone, elevated insulin levels force you into fat-storing mode. Conversely, when insulin levels are low, your body can start breaking down fat for fuel—if the conditions are right.
    But the problem with sugar doesn’t just stop there. Sugar is actually 50 percent glucose (the form of sugar we just discussed that your body actually uses to produce energy) and 50 percent fructose. The latter is arguably even more devastating to your health and waistline. For years, the medical and dietary community has mainly been concerned with the glycemic index (GI) of foods, which only accounts for the glucose-mediated rise in blood sugar after eating a specific food. The glycemic index typically ranges between 50 and 100, where 100 represents the standard, an equivalent amount of pure glucose.
    Foods with carbohydrates that break down quickly during digestion and release glucose rapidly into the bloodstream tend to have a high GI; foods with carbohydrates that break down more slowly, releasing glucose more gradually into the bloodstream, tend to have a low GI. A lower glycemic index is ideal since it suggests slower rates of digestion and a muted insulin response. Carbohydrates with a low glycemic index include slow-burning foods like beans and legumes, whereas breads and cereals tend to have a much higher glycemic index. It’s no surprise, then, that the latter are more heavily involved in the development of diabetes and obesity.
    The trouble is that nowadays almost all fast foods are loaded with high-GI carbs. Just walk into your local Starbucks and look at all the food options in the display case. What do you see? Bagels, muffins, scones, and a host of pastries. These are all high–glycemic index carbs that spike your insulin, increase your fat storage, and take you on an up-and-down energy roller coaster.
    Now back to fructose for a second, because this is really important to understand: With all the attention that the glycemic index has received, many people have forgotten (or are completely unaware) that fructose is potentially a bigger problem. After all, the GI does not account for the fructose content in foods. And since table sugar is 50 /50 glucose and fructose, we’re overlooking a big piece of the puzzle. The trouble with fructose is that it cannot be used by our cells. It must first be metabolized by the liver and converted into glucose before it can be shipped to the rest of our cells to be of any use to us.
    But here’s the problem—our liver can process only so much fructose at once. It is a rate-dependent process, where any excess ends up being converted into uric acid and triglycerides. Think of it as an assembly line where parts move down the conveyor belt as workers deal with them in a timely fashion. Now, what would happen if the speed of the conveyor belt increased? Obviously, the workers would not be able to keep up and parts would be flying off the belt and piling up on the floor. That’s what happens in your liver when you consume too much fructose. And here’s the worst part—it doesn’t take a lot of fructose to create this problem. Drink a can of soda or a bottled juice, and you’re already there.
    The only ways to avoid this backup and spillover into triglyceride formation are to eat less fructose (ideal), slow your intake of it, or exercise intensely (which is the only known way to increase your liver’s ability to handle more fructose at once).
    Understanding this is very important, especially if you’re a relatively sedentary person. If you train like a pro athlete, then you have some more wiggle room, but the average person simply doesn’t.
    So fructose is bad news. Here are just a few more reasons why.
    •Fructose forces your liver to create fats, which are exported as very-low-density-lipoprotein (VLDL)