Carbohydrates, Insulin, Will Power And Weight Loss

We have all heard this before. As teenagers from our school coaches who would constantly belt out the proverbial "no pain, no gain" concept, this ridiculous idea that unless we exercised like crazy people, we would not likely see the benefits of our effort, and then from family and friends commenting on our lack of success in weight loss. "If there is a will, there is a way" we were told, or in other words, the reason we were overweight was simply because we just didn't really want to lose weight.

That is not to say of course that to achieve any of the above goals doesn't require effort and dedication on our parts. It does.. And lots of it. But research has shown that the majority of people with substantial weight problem have become pre-conditioned to the inevitability of their current situation and thus, their attempts to lose fat become more compromised with the failure of each diet. Putting them (or yourself) down for being fat or overweight may feel like a powerful motivational tool in the reverse psychological perverse sort of way, but in fact, it actually hampers any efforts to change our eating habits.

Talk to any weight loss doctors who were once overweight and successfully lost their excess weight and fat, and chances are you'll be told that food cravings and weight gain are not always the result of a lack of willpower.

! Most of us who are chronic dieters have one thing in common then. We are not short of willpower (feels good just writing this again!) and likely suffer from a metabolism that produced too much insulin due to an addiction to carbohydrate.

So what's the deal with insulin? Well:

Insulin tells your body when to eat
Insulin sends food energy wherever your body needs it
Insulin instructs your body to save food energy which is then stored in fat cells for the time when food becomes unavailable.

This overproduction of insulin levels caused by the over absorption of carbohydrates causes a chain reaction which then leads to hunger pangs. Put in another way, the more carbohydrate you eat, the more insulin your body produces. This causes an imbalance which then leads to a cycle of overpowering cravings for more carbohydrates, such as breads, pastas, snack foods and cakes which then leads to even more insulin and so on..

You are a carbohydrate addict if:

You are hungrier after breakfast and before lunch time then if you had skipped breakfast all together.

You are tired and sluggish after a large meal (particularly in the afternoon)

You have been on diet after diet and have as much weight to lose (or even more) as when you started.

You want to eat when you are bored or tired

You feel that you are not satisfied, even after a meal

You find it harder to lose weight then when you were younger.

If you answered "yes" to any two of the above six question then you are mildly carbohydrate addicted. You are moderately addicted if you have answer "yes to three to four questions, and you have a severe carbohydrate addiction if you said "yes" to five or all of the above questions.