Why It’s Hard For People To Lose Fat and Keep It Off
Written By: Scott Compton
Q: Why can’t people Lose Fat and Keep it Off?
A: My answer…Most people are addicted to sugar (it takes about 22 to 26 days to end this addiction). There is some level of willpower and Self-Control needed here, to a point, but this isn’t the full story. It’s also our attitudes about how we view foods and have used them in the past matters (traumas).
Sugar metabolically is a glutton-maker. We are not inherently gluttonous. In other words, we do not need to shame or guilt ourselves for eating treats if we are self-honest and have actionable strategies of other foods to replace the sugar-laden foods with something else.
Some good alternatives could be things that fill us up, things with more fiber in particular. Whole blueberries have a very good ratio of more fiber and less sugar with an antioxidant load if someone is having a sweet craving. But, this also doesn’t give us an excuse to eat bowls of blueberries either. We may need something that pulls ghrelin down that really satisfies like an egg or a fatty-food source.
However, if you still believe you overeat due to your past traumas and this will continue until you fix the trauma, my analysis here is that it’s “probably” a half-truth because you may be using this attitude to believe, “I’m a victim because of my past trauma and until I can fix my past trauma, I’m *allowing* or justifying myself it’s okay to do this at times.” This can have some truth that it’s a trauma and you may reach for things, but you still get choices about what types of foods you reach for. Have things in the home that are not going to be as poisonous to the body if you feel like you must overeat.
The DEEPER TRUTH: In addition to your trauma, sugar is a highly addictive substance, which is more addictive than cocaine. So, is it All-Your-Trauma? Overeat the fibers instead. The important takeaway to understand is that when we eat sugar that’s not in the presence of fiber, that poison is going to do far more damage. I call it a poison because the dose size makes the poison. The Fiber lowers the dose size and lets your gut work on the poison so your cells and liver don’t have to strain as much.
So, let’s get back to this question why you can not lose fat…
Insulin! Insulin! Insulin!
Understand this for the rest of your life. Insulin-Is-The Fat-Storage hormone in our bodies. When insulin is present in the blood, you will have an incredibly hard time shedding any fat, you’re storing fat in this state, not shedding fat. Let’s exclude exercise for a minute here, because often people believe “I exercise and burn fat, you’re wrong Scott.” Well, truth be told, the metabolism is quite complex because hormones are influencing everything for signaling as to what your body wants to do. Your exercise is helping many hormonal processes, but we need to stop and think about the “when” of this equation even more.
The “after-burn” is huge here because if you exercise at noon by getting in a strong workout, you’re not burning much fat at that moment. Then you have lunch after your exercise. Now you’re telling your body to draw from the incoming energy you eat. If that includes enough sugar, like 20+ grams is usually enough to switch yourself more metabolically into Fat-Storing mode, unless these sugars are trickling in from the gut because there’s enough fiber in your lunch or you have extremely good gut health.
Now let’s say you’re not eating too many sugars at lunch, but you still have a lot of food volume. The body will want to work on this food before your own energy supplies (fat cells) saying, “let me tap the fat from your body.” The order of operations is important, but at least you haven’t spurted out a ton of insulin. Instead of waiting about 10 hours after that sugary lunch to get out of Fat-storing mode, you might only need to wait 6 hours, and if your insulin is closer to baseline, yes, you might now start tapping some fat off the body. But, the Real Magic happens when you’re sleeping that same night of your exercising because the After Burn is helping to switch over to fat-burning in many hormonal pathways. What I’ve described is a somewhat simple way of telling you “why a calorie is not a calorie” and this all has to do with Sugar.
What is sugar? Sugar is Glucose+Fructose bonded together as Sucrose. Glucose increases insulin; Fructose DOES NOT. However, Fructose is more dangerous because it is processed in the liver and taxes the liver. Fructose not only damages the liver and helps to form more Non-alcoholic liver disease, it damages our mitochondria complexes more, especially Complex I where glucose metabolism takes place; this Complex is far less protected than the other Complexes which makes is more Free Radical Leaky. Fructose generates roughly 100x more ROS (reactive oxygen species) compared to Glucose. Fructose has no use in the human body as to why it’s being resolved in the liver. Alternatively, we produce a bit of Glucose if we need it for the brain, via the liver, but consume too much Glucose Load, we make way too much insulin, which then keeps the Fat on the body and around organs, or keeps us from burning fat.
Therefore, the #1 reason to me why people don’t lose fat and cannot keep it off is hormone influences, too much sugar load and food-timing… not enough downtime, lack of eating, to get insulin levels back to baseline. Translation: ~8 to 12 hours after eating a meal, we enter the magical moment when our bodies metabolically switch from Complex I energy generation (glucose) to Complex II energy generation (fats). We turn on fat-burning in the 12-16 hour fasted window after falling to sleep and waking up in a fasted state when fat-burning is happening. “Morning breath” typically means more ketones from the lungs liberating fat in the body.
Professional body-builders figured this out decades ago by eating a tiny amount of protein (like BCAAs) after waking up in the morning after not eating for 12-16 hours, and then weight-lifting. Why? Because the real secret of body building is removing fat off the body and getting the overall bodyfat levels down below 8% for men. It’s the fat on the body that visually impairs seeing the muscles underneath. Body-building is just as much about stripping fat as it is about building muscle. That’s the secret. What this means: the secret involves food-timing to keep bodyfat %s lower.
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