Chapter 1 - Contrasting Type I and Type II Diabetes

glucose source, the glucose is fed to the blood stream, not in massive, concentrated doses, but slowly, over time, in small quantities. If we want to kill lots of birds with a single stone, training our bodies to use fats as its source of glucose is an effective way to do it. Can we train our bodies to use fat as its food source by eating carbohydrates? Absolutely not. That makes fat! Can we train our bodies to use fat as its food source by restricting our fats? Can you train an Olympic runner for successful competition by having him sit on a couch all day? In order to train our bodies to use fats as their food source, we must specifically give them fats while we dramatically restrict carbohydrates! In the absence of simple molecules to break down into glucose (carbohydrates) our bodies resort to the next most available source – fat. By including fats in our diet, we train our bodies to rely on fat (including its own) as a food source. And because fats break down more slowly, we don’t have resulting spikes of insulin response and subsequent over-lowering of the blood sugar causing us constant hunger. Our energy level smooths out over the day, we’re far less hungry and hungry far less often. We can eat less and actually be more satisfied!

If you’re a type II diabetic, it’s vital to include fats in your diet if you want to train it to use fats instead of relying on carbohydrates and to decrease your weight.

But there’s a balance you must observe here too. Fat has 9 calories per gram compared to only 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates. If we want to reduce our weight, we can’t use this recommendation about including fats in our diets as carte blanche to indulge so deeply in fat consumption that we’re getting all of our glucose from what we eat and not requiring our bodies to mobilize some of their own fat stores. The amount of fats we can eat without gaining weight varies for different people, but it’s usually a fairly generous amount. You’ll want to eat enough fats to train your body to use them as a food source instead of relying on carbs, but you don’t want to be consuming so many fats that your body stores them as temporarily unusable fat in your cells.

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