De-bunking eddie abbew

Does controlling insulin result in fat loss?

We all have heard the bro science, anecdotal rubbish thatcomes out of Eddie Abbew’s mouth. One of Eddie’s biggest claims is counting calories is not helpful and controlling insulin is all you need to control for fat loss.

Here’s a study PMID: 33479499 looking at what happens when you do control insulin, but you do not control caloric intake.  

“The carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity posits that a high-carbohydrate diet leads to excess insulin secretion, thereby promoting fat accumulation and increasing energy intake.”

In this study, to test the hypothesis they took 20 adults who were randomised to consume ad libitum either a minimally processed, plant-based, low-fat diet or a minimally processed, animal-based, ketogenic, low carbohydrate-diet.

The low fat diet consumed 75% of their total daily diet as carbohydrates but the low carbohydrate diet only 10%. On average, we see a large fluctuation in insulin after a meal as well as much larger fluctuation in blood glucose. Given, they didn’t control their insulin we would suggest that they would gain weight.

At the end of the 20 weeks the high carbohydrate diet lost significantly more fat.

Surprising , right? This begs the questions, “how?”. This is because they ate significantly less calories. Therefore, although having a higher insulin secretion, because of their caloric intake was lower they lost substantially more fat mass.

Interesting, it appeared that the low carbohydrate group lost much more muscle volume due to losses of water and muscle glycogen and possibly a minor loss of muscle proteins (remember, carbohydrates have a protein sparring affect).

There we have it, insulin does not dictate fat loss/ gain. Fat loss is determined by energy intake vs energy expenditure (calories in vs out). This study clearly shows that you can lower weight by reducing insulin but correlation does not equal causation. The law of thermodynamics stands strong, energy intake vs energy expenditure determines weight loss or gain; not insulin.