First, let’s talk about insulin responses. What is an insulin response?
An insulin response is how your body reacts when insulin is released into the bloodstream. This typically happens after you eat, especially when you consume carbohydrates or sugars, but it can also be triggered by smelling food, seeing food, thinking about food or in anticipation to eating carbs.
When you eat, your blood sugar (glucose) levels rise. In response, the pancreas releases insulin. Insulin helps cells in your body absorb glucose from the blood to use for energy or to store for later use. As a result, blood sugar levels drop back to normal.
But if your blood sugar is already normal the insulin release causes a brief low blood sugar situation that triggers hunger/cravings.
Just the smell, thought or sight of food can trigger an insulin response!
The smell/thought/sight of food triggers the release of insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar. This is known as the cephalic phase of insulin secretion.
For the science geeks: The cephalic phase of insulin release is a physiological reflex that causes a rise in insulin levels in response to food-related stimuli, such as sight, smell, or taste. The smell/sight/taste of food triggers a short-term inflammatory response in the brain. This response activates the vagus nerve, which increases insulin secretion.
The smell, sight and even thought of food can also trigger salivation. Example: Think about biting into a lemon, your mouth watered just by THINKING about it.
The insulin response to food is a result of the body anticipating glucose entering the bloodstream. The insulin release is relatively small and peaks within 2–5 minutes of smelling food.
So, what does all of this mean and why does it matter?
I have been in the Zero Carb carnivore space for 17 years. I have seen many of the same people come and go, with disappointing results, and I have seen a lot of people still here who just can’t lose weight no matter what they do.
If you can’t lose weight doing the Zero Carb Carnivore diet as we suggest, your problem is not the diet. No amount of tweaking the diet, macros, calories, sardines or iodine is going to help. Your problem is your environment, acculturation and your perception of it. Your environment and thoughts are either creating insulin responses that lead to hunger and over eating, or your environment and thoughts are creating stress, that leads to high blood sugar and fat storage. Stress is like eating cake for most people. Some people lose weight when under stress, but most people, like me, gain when under chronic, daily stress. That being said, you are not doomed, you just have to figure out how rewire your thinking, acculturation’s and perceptions by creating new healthy habits. Easy to say, not so easy to do.
What is “Acculturation”? An example is having to have a “treat” after an accomplishment, having to have “cake” for your birthday, having to have an after school/work “snack”, having to have pumpkin pie for the holidays……the list goes on. You can automatically get an insulin response after work because you had a habit of snacking after work so your body expects food. You have lived your whole life in a culture/ environment with these habits, it is hard wired into who you are. These habits simply need to be changed.
Acculturation is what makes the holidays so difficult on this diet. We want the familiarity and comfort to indulge in our favorite family tradition foods with our loved ones. Many people feel deprived and can’t resist the temptations to have just 1 bite of Grandmas apple pie.
How do you resist? I did it by training myself to see carbs as poison because, for me, they are. Carbs make me fat and sick! If you were allergic to nuts you wouldn’t eat them. News flash, if you are here, you are allergic to carbs, they make you fat and sick, don’t eat them.
Long before I started the Zero Carb Diet, I loved pasta, but I knew it was a problem for me. I convinced myself that pasta was gross wet slimy dough. If you think about it, it is! Plain pasta with no sauce tastes like wet slimy dough, it’s the sauce we like, not the noodles. That’s how I got over my pasta problem. I changed my perception of it.
Just like a nut allergy. You love nuts or peanut butter, but out of the blue, you get sick and find out you have a nut allergy that will get worse and can kill you if you keep eating them. That immediately changes your perception of nuts and you stop loving them. Cravings for nuts magically gone forever because you learned they can kill you.
I changed my perception of all carbs. I do not think about them, taste them or wish I could eat them. I see them as the poison they are.
Just because it says “Zero Carbs” doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat on a zero carb diet. Artificial sweeteners are a perfect example. They may not raise blood sugar (in some people they do, I tested this years ago), but they absolutely create an insulin response to the “taste of sweet”. Artificial sweeteners feed your sugar addiction and can make you over eat due to the insulin response, or they can make you store fat because of the elevated blood sugar response to the “taste of sweet”.
Recreating your favorite carb food with ZC alternatives is a problem and I notice many of the people who can’t lose weight are always making these things. If it looks like cheesecake (bread, noodles or whatever carb dup), smells like cheesecake and tastes like cheesecake, guess what? Your body thinks it’s cheesecake and responds accordingly with insulin and or glucose.
I developed a lot of Zero Carb recipes. I think they are useful in the first 2 years of this diet to help people stay on the diet and not feel deprived during the holidays. Recipes are also a great way to trick your family into eating this way. But, if you are still making these things regularly after 2 years and not seeing the results you expected, then the recipes are a problem for you. Just eat plain meat. If after 2 years plain meat doesn’t appeal to you then you are using food as entertainment not fuel. That’s why you can’t lose weight. You are cooking all these carb looking and smelling ZC foods and your body thinks you are eating carbs and responds accordingly with insulin and or glucose.
Biologically, we are all the same. This diet should work the same for all human bodies. Where we are different is our minds, perceptions and environment.
An example of this would be, one of our long time Zero Carb veterans. She was a cake decorator! It was her job, she didn’t see or perceive the cake and frosting as food, it was art. She was totally disconnected from thoughts or smells of food as if it were paint and clay. This diet worked as it should on her body and she is still ZC today.
On the flip side I have seen members who are always baking or cooking for other people and they can’t lose weight on this diet. The difference is these people have not mentally or emotionally disconnected from the smells/tastes/and past enjoyment of these foods and their bodies behave accordingly with insulin and or glucose responses keeping their bodies fat and unhealthy. Our bodies are the same; it’s our minds that create different environments, perceptions and hormone responses.
To further exasperate the problem of not being able to lose weight or get healthy on this diet is people accepting that they are “different” and this diet doesn’t work for them. That’s bull shit! Once you accept it, you own it and those negative thoughts alone will prevent fat loss. Biologically, this diet works for all of us. You need to understand that. Knowing that opens the door to change and give you hope to find the answer for you. Accepting that this diet won’t work for you, closes the door to change. There is something in your environment that is preventing healing and you need to figure out what it is and change it or stay where you are.
The Zero Carb diet is easy, all you can eat of fatty meat, cheese, bacon, eggs, sausages, seafood, butter steak, chicken, etc. What’s not to like?! Just don’t eat carbs, plants or anything sweet. The hard part is changing your thoughts, environment and perceptions to allow the diet to work.
For more information about the Zero Carb Diet join us in our FaceBook Groups : Zero Carb Health and Zeroing in on Health.
