What is Insulin Resistance?

All foods can raise insulin, which leads to obesity. But there is another important contributor to high insulin levels outside of food – insulin resistance. This refers to the situation where normal insulin levels are unable to force the blood glucose into the cells. In response, the body raises insulin in a knee-jerk reaction to ‘overcome’ this resistance, and these high levels will drive obesity. But how did insulin resistance develop in the first place?

Our body follows the biologic principle of homeostasis. If exposed to any prolonged stimulus, the body quickly develops resistance. 

Insulin resistance is simply a reaction to too much insulin. The body compensates by raising insulin, but that only makes things worse because higher insulin levels lead to more resistance. This is a vicious cycle.

• High insulin leads to insulin resistance.
• Insulin resistance leads to higher insulin.

The end result is higher and higher insulin levels, which drives weight gain and obesity. Therefore, a high insulin level depends on 2 things.

1. High insulin levels
2. Persistence of those high levels

​Providing extended periods of low insulin levels can prevent the development of insulin resistance. How to provide those low levels? A daily period of fasting.

​Eating constantly does not provide the critical period of very low insulin to balance the high insulin periods. Persistently high insulin leads to insulin resistance, which leads only to higher insulin. This is the vicious cycle of weight gain that we must break with fasting.

Rules for ‘When to Eat’

1. Don’t eat all the time (time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting). Stop snacking.
2. If you want to lose more weight – increase the fasting periods

We often obsess about the foods we should or should not eat, the question of ‘what to eat’. But we often ignore the equally important question of ‘when to eat’. By attacking the insulin problem on both fronts, we have a far higher chance of successfully losing weight.