We call it Metabolic Syndrome and blame it on Insulin Resistance. It’s really Fuel Resistance.

High levels of insulin and other secretions released into blood have toxic effects. It all creates an Excess Calorie Toxicity Syndrome.

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What is Metabolism?

Metabolism is the chemical activity in our cells.
Cells of our body act like tiny machines. They convert fuel into energy for chemical reactions and mechanical work. They build and repair structures, secrete molecules, and regulate normal function.

All cells use sugar, fatty acids and proteins as fuel for their function.
Some molecules are converted immediately into chemical or mechanical work. The rest are converted into energy carriers and stored for work when needed.

Energy needs of cells depend on the work they’re doing. When resting, they need very little energy. When working, they need a lot more. For example, during strenuous exercise, skeletal muscle uses fifty times more energy than when it’s resting.

What we eat becomes fuel for function.
Consuming food, extracting nutrients and converting them to fuel takes some time. Fuel is not immediately available and converting it does require some energy. Much more energy is required during normal daily activities. Those requirements can occur suddenly. The least energy is required while sleeping.

Fuel is available when we need it.
In some situations, fuel suddenly is required for work. For sudden demands, energy carriers are charged up and stored right in the active cells. More slowly, sugar, fatty acids and proteins are absorbed from the blood. Inside the cells, they are converted to fuel fairly quickly. Then, if that’s not enough, liver, fat tissue and skeletal muscle are converted to sugar and fatty acids. But that takes a little longer.

Balancing intake of nutrients and energy for work.

At the end of the day, everything balances out. If energy for work was more than energy in food consumed, sugar, fat and protein in liver, fat and skeletal muscle are taken down. If food consumed contains more fuel than required for work, the excess nutrients are stored in fat tissue.

Storage Of Excess Calories

High blood levels of sugar.
Insulin secreted by the pancreas signals cells to absorb sugar, fatty acids and proteins from the blood. As work requiring energy is completed, fuel is converted to energy carriers for short-term storage.

Cells continue to absorb nutrients as long as they require more fuel for work. Finally, when they have all the fuel they need for work and energy carriers are fully charged, they no longer respond to insulin. They simply stop absorbing sugar and fatty acids from the blood.

No more fuel needed for work.
As long as levels of sugar and fatty acids remain high, the pancreas keeps secreting more insulin. As insulin levels keep rising, they stimulate fat tissue to absorb excess calories. Cells in fat tissue are less sensitive to insulin than skeletal muscle and liver.

Takes more insulin to move excess nutrients into fat tissue than into skeletal muscle and liver.

No more fuel accepted.
Slower and lower response to insulin when muscle and liver are already full, is called insulin resistance.

Storing excess calories.
As excess nutrients are stored in fat tissue day after day even fat tissue stops absorbing excess nutrients. Gradually, more fat tissue is formed to take in sugar and fatty acids from circulating blood. Forming new fat cells requires high levels of insulin in blood.

Overweight and obese individuals keep building new fat cells. More and more new fat tissue requires more and more insulin to keep levels of sugar and fatty acids in blood in a safe range.

Eventually, the pancreas can no longer secrete enough insulin to keep up with all the demands for more insulin.

Daily Patterns Of Sugar And Insulin In Blood

Clinical studies.
Investigators in Chicago measured concentrations of glucose from sugar and insulin from the pancreas in 29 men and women who did not have diabetes. Fourteen of the subjects had normal weight and 15 were obese. All were given 3 meals with 14 kcal/lb and blood was sampled several times each hour for 24 hours.

Levels of glucose in blood.


The first figure shows levels of glucose in blood before and after 3 meals and overnight. The only difference between normal and obese subjects was higher levels of glucose in obese individuals after the evening meal and overnight.

Levels of insulin in blood.

The second figure shows levels of insulin in blood before and after 3 meals and overnight. Difference in levels of insulin to remove glucose from the blood in obese subjects were more than twice the levels measured in subjects of normal weight.

What makes the difference?

This enormous difference in insulin requirements was caused by the difference in total kcal/day. Subjects of normal weight were given about 2,000 kcal/day while the obese subjects were given about 3,000 kcal. Extra insulin was required to remove excess glucose from blood and deposit it into fat tissue.

How would anyone overweight/obese know there’s a problem?

Couldn’t tell from levels of sugar in the blood. After fasting with nothing to eat all night blood sugar levels were less than 100 mg/dL in both groups.

Couldn’t tell from levels of sugar in the blood 2 hours after each meal. Blood sugar levels were less than 140 mg/dL in both groups. Never reached more than 180 mg/dL at any time.

What happened?

We don’t know the body composition of those test subjects. We can only guess. It is highly likely that Maximum Weight Circumference was greater then 35 inches in the obese women and greater than 40 inches in the obese men.

Storage of fat in the abdominal cavity almost certainly was greater in the obese subjects than in the subjects of normal weight.

Toxic Effects Of Excess Calorie Storage

It is hard to ignore these effects of Excess Calorie Toxicity.

Failure to remove sugar and fatty acids from blood.
• Cause of Type 2 Diabetes
• Risk of Ketoacidosis

Harmful effects of increased insulin levels in blood.
• Increased Sodium Retention by Kidneys
• Increased Blood Pressure
• Increased Response to Adrenal Steroids

Release of fatty acids into liver.
• Increased Production of Triglycerides
• Decreased Production of HDL
• Decreased Liver Function

Secretions that damage microvascular circulation.
• Loss of Vision
• Chronic Renal Disease
• Loss of Normal Nerve Function

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Eventually, storing excess fat needs more space.

Expanding fat storage requires a lot more insulin. Otherwise, levels of sugar and fat in the blood get dangerously high.

How to use up calories? How to increase your Metabolism? Keep using your muscles all day! Park far away from where you’re going. Take the stairs.

Call us or contact us and we’ll help you get everything working like it’s supposed to.

Results of Metabolic Overload

Guinness World Records, 2019 lists the heaviest known human weight as 1311 lb. That’s how much a Mexican man weighed in November, 2016. Since then, he has lost almost half his weight down to 669 lb. in November, 2018.

To keep gaining that much weight requires unique fat cell function and expansion. For most of us, fat tissue spills over into places where it damages organ function. When it expands inside the abdomen, fat tissue there releases fatty acids and secretions directly into the liver causing fatty liver, as well as inflammation, vascular damage and blood clots everywhere.

The increased insulin required to move glucose and fatty acids into fat tissue instead of skeletal muscle also increases fat inside the abdomen.

Metabolic Supply And Demand

When cells are active, they use calories and when they are resting, calories are stored in the cells. When the cells have all the energy they need, they simply stop bringing in glucose, fatty acids and protein from the blood.

During a meal when blood levels are high, liver and fat tissue take in glucose and fatty acids and release them between meals when blood levels are low. At the end of the day, any excess fuel still circulating in the blood moves into fat storage.

Heavy muscle work can be sustained for hours without much fat tissue. An NFL offensive tackle weighing 290 lb. consumes about 9,000 kcal a day with about 7% of body weight as fat. A ballerina weighing 100 lb. has about 4% body fat. Sustained muscular work has little to do with % body fat.

It doesn’t require much insulin to move glucose, fatty acids and protein into liver and skeletal muscle. When liver and skeletal muscle stores are full, moving them into fat tissue, takes more insulin. High levels of insulin in blood also starts making new fat tissue.

Energy Storage

Storing excess calories is where trouble starts. Some people who are like the Guinness World Record holder keep adding to their subcutaneous fat stores. Most people start storing fat in the abdominal cavity as soon as fat stores increase anywhere. It’s not long until fat increases in liver, pancreas, kidneys, adrenal glands, thyroid, breast tissue, skeletal muscle and heart.

Normal pancreas supplies all the insulin that’s needed and blood levels of glucose and fatty acids stay normal. It’s when pancreas can’t supply enough insulin to control increased levels that the most serious trouble starts.

If glucose and fatty acid levels in blood keep rising, dehydration and acidosis rapidly lead to death. While treating dehydration and acidosis, enough insulin is injected to restore normal storage function.

Fat In The Abdominal Cavity

Men and women with ideal good health, weigh 2 to 2½ lb. per inch of their standing height. They also have skeletal muscle weighing at least 25% of their total weight. Fat tissue is less than 25%. (Men have about 5% more muscle and 5% less fat than women.) Fat in the abdominal cavity, called “Visceral Fat”, is less than 3% of their total body weight.

In ideal good health, you have more muscle than fat.

Fat tissue does store twice more calories than muscle. Each pound of pure fat has 4000 kcal while pure protein has 1800 kcal. Both fat tissue and skeletal muscle have mixtures of fat, protein and carbohydrate, but fat tissue stores more than twice as much as muscle.

That’s probably why fat tissue is where all excess calories are stored!

Gaining weight adds more and more fat. Overweight and obese men and women have more fat tissue than muscle. Often more than twice as much!
Worse, still, fat in the Abdominal Cavity (Visceral Fat) increases, pound for pound, about as fast as fat in subcutaneous tissue.

Maximal Waist Circumference

It’s hard to measure exact amounts of fat stored anywhere. However, we do know that good health includes Visceral Fat less than 10% of Total Fat and less than 3% of Total Body Weight. That amount of fat in the abdominal cavity fits inside a Maximum Waist Circumference (maxWC) of 37 inches for Men and 32 inches for Women.

Because we know ideal limits for maxWC, we can test its relation to Risks for developing Diabetes and Risks for Premature Death. Studies with 1400 adults in the US showed that maxWC more than 43 inches doubled the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes in 7 years. Similar studies with 650,000 adults from several countries showed that max WC more than 43 inches increased risk of Premature Mortality by 40%.

These results indicate that adults 50 years of age with maxWC more than 43 inches for Men and 38 inches for Women lost 5 years of life in good health and died 2½ years prematurely.

Increase Metabolism and Burn Calories

The only sensible way to Increase Metabolism is to increase Using your Skeletal Muscles. The more muscle you have, the more calories you can burn during exercise.

The average adult in good health has about 50 lb of muscle. At rest, all day and all night, that muscle uses about 500 kcal which is about 20 kcal every hour. During 1 hour of moderate exercise like brisk walking, that muscle uses about 250 kcal. That means 50 lb of muscle uses about 20 kcal every hour at rest and about 250 kcal every hour during moderate exercise. More than a 10-fold increase!

The total amount of muscle doesn’t have much effect on metabolism while resting. It does have a substantial effect during moderate exercise walking about 3 mph or 6000 steps in an hour.

Increase Metabolism and Decrease Fat in the Abdominal Cavity

An important benefit of exercise is that it reduces the amount of fat in the abdominal cavity. We know that exercise increases sensitivity to insulin. Probably because exercising muscle needs fuel for energy. When more fuel is needed, muscle cells open up their channels to admit glucose and fatty acids. Insulin becomes more effective. It also acts on adipose tissue to break down fat for fuel. The end result reduces fat in stores everywhere, especially in the abdominal cavity.

The type of exercise doesn’t seem to matter very much. Intensity and duration of effort are what’s important. Endurance exercise probably is more effective than strength training but strength training produces more muscle that can be exercised. Vigorous, sustained exercise is probably more effective than brief, light exercise but increasing total steps during the day is just as effective as brief intense muscular work.

To increase metabolism, build muscle and use it!

Note what happens during exercise when insulin becomes more effective. If you’re injecting insulin or using other medications to control blood sugar, exercise will make levels of blood sugar fall. Especially during vigorous exercise.

You must monitor levels of blood sugar 20 or 30 minutes before exercise, time enough to take some sugar if levels are below 100 mg/dL. Also, you must measure levels every 30 minutes or so during exercise and again after you stop.

Exercise is doing what you want, making insulin more effective as well as burning calories. You just need to anticipate its good effects which include drawing more sugar from your blood during and after exercise!

How Much Fuel You Need For Your Metabolism

A long time ago, I owned a Volkswagen Beetle. It was a low-cost car with very few conveniences. It didn’t even have much of a heater. On the control panel, there was a speedometer and an odometer. That’s it.

The reason I’m telling this story is that it didn’t have a gas gauge. You knew how fast you were going and how far you’d gone but you didn’t know how much gas you had left.

It had a kick valve that controlled the last cup of gas in the tank. When you ran out of gas, you kicked the lever over to get enough gas to reach a gas station. That was a real nuisance if you were in the fast lane of a highway. It was especially disappointing if you had forgotten to reset the kick valve the last time you filled the tank.

I quickly learned to fill the tank every Saturday even if there was still lots of gas in the tank. Even then, I ran out of gas a couple of times. That’s when I learned to fill the tank every 200 miles.

We don’t have a good fuel gauge. As it is, we eat regularly whatever is on our plate. We seldom get really hungry and even then, we don’t think a lot about how much we eat. Probably, we really ought only to eat after every 6000 steps.

About all we can do is watch our weight. If you’re gaining weight, you’re eating too much. If your maximum waist circumference is more than 40 inches for a man or 35 inches for a woman, you’ve been eating too much for a long time.

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