By Dr. Di Meo Vincenzo
What is insulin?
Insulin is a hormone produced by pancreatic beta cells and has the important function of regulating glucose metabolism in almost all tissues of the human body.
Therefore, understanding how and why the secretion of this hormone is linked to weight loss processes is of fundamental importance, both to optimize our diet and the precious time spent training.
Under normal conditions the pancreas responds to the increase in the concentration of glucose in the blood, due to the ingestion of a food, through the secretion of insulin, in order to re-establish a balanced situation in the blood. By binding to specific cellular receptors, it favors the entry of glucose into muscle and fat cells, allowing the human body to use it as an energy source and, if in excess, to transform it into lipids (liposynthetic action).
During a prolonged physical activity, on the other hand, a condition of hypoglycemia is created inside the organism, mainly due to the increase in the production of catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline). These two hormones have an important inhibitory effect on pancreatic beta cell activity (and therefore on insulin) and allow fatty acids released by triglycerides to be mobilized and used as an energy substrate for oxidative processes.
Check the insulin
But is it right to limit the use of carbohydrates to the only dose before and after a hard training so that there is not a sudden rise in blood sugar level? Is this the only way to get that insulin calm so important for our weight loss?
Well no ...
In fact, not all carbohydrates are the same because not all of them have the same glycemic index (IG).
Glycemic Index (IG)
IG, assigning a value ranging from 0 to 100 to a single food, provides us with a classification based on the capacity that each of them possesses to vary their blood sugar and stimulate insulin secretion.
Therefore, based on this, the right starting point for a correct and healthy diet would be to orient our choices towards all low GI foods. But it's definitely not banning others, the right way to behave. First of all because the concept of GI refers to a quantity of product equal to 100 grams.
Glycemic load
The glycemic load, on the other hand, examines, in addition to the relative numerical values of the food, also the quantity of the portions. In the case of honey, for example, which is among the highest GI foods, one cannot help but take into account the difficulty of eating 100 grams in a single meal ...
It would therefore be advisable not to eliminate high glycemic index foods from our tables, but simply limit their quantities. Furthermore, cooking and the combination of different nurienti play an important role in the probable variation of the values corresponding to the single food.
In conclusion, it is wrong to give excessive and exclusive importance to the concept of IG, neglecting then the loads, the values after cooking and the right combinations of nutrients.
Feeding with intelligence is one of the keys to not making the hours spent in the gym to train vain and useless.
Let's not forget ...
