In games and contests, there are always elements that are devastating in their dominance. It may be as simple as rock always beating scissors in the hand game “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” or it may be as complex as the M1A1/2 Abrams main battle tanks loaded with depleted uranium penetrators in Operation Desert Storm. In the battle against fat, the devastator is insulin.  Body fat generally reflects long-term energy balance. In other words, it is a sign of how your eating habits (calories in) compare to your metabolic demand (calories out). It is not as simple as that though, as many people can attest after diligently carrying calorie tables about in a futile effort to match the numbers to the readout of a treadmill or recumbent bike.
For decades, nutritionists and cardiologists extolled the virtues of low-fat dieting to reduce the risk of heart disease and aid in weight loss. On the surface, it made sense to replace the most calorie-dense macronutrient (fat) with carbohydrates, which contain less than half the number of calories, gram for gram. Yet, cardiovascular health was not greatly improved and the prevalence of obesity nearly tripled in the United States.

When dieting pioneers such as Barry Sears (the Zone Diet) and Dr. Robert Atkins (the Atkins Diet) suggested reducing carbohydrates dramatically and thusly adding fat back into the diet, the ideas were scoffed at by experts who staked their reputations on the risks and dangers inherent with such food practices. When the diet programs were newly released to the public’s attention, they were called “fads.” Over the next several months to years, as it was discovered that low-carbohydrate diets were effective for many people and became increasingly popular, the challenge of “no long-term studies” was pulled out of the critic’s handbook. Yet, as studies showed low-carbohydrate diets to be as effective, quicker and resulting in some cardiovascular benefits (not risks) when compared to low-fat diets, fickle America turned its attention-deficit addled focus to other issues. Doughnut sales began to recover from the Atkins-induced drop-off and crowds waited to form about the Alli stands at the local retailers. Even when a reasonable answer exists to a problem as personal and encompassing as obesity, America’s “been there, done that, bought the T-shirt” mentality has caused the nation to move on. Yet, there is a silver lining to the large-scale social experiment that was the Atkins craze. It stimulated research in the field of fat loss and pressured the editors of medical and science journals to publish articles that otherwise would have been passed over, since weight loss is considered to be a trivial subject by many professionals. A great deal has since been learned about fat loss. Given the success of low-carbohydrate dieting and the focus placed on the hormone insulin, which controls blood sugar, many researchers designed and reported on elaborate studies that investigated insulin’s role in weight management with unprecedented detail. Though often thought of in terms of its role in regulating blood sugar and treating diabetes, insulin has other functions. Among these is the regulation of fat stores in adipocytes (fat cells). Fat cells are sensitive to a number of hormones that control whether fat is taken up from the bloodstream and stored or if stored fat is broken down and released back into the circulation; chief among these hormones is insulin.