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According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans –

• About 74% of adults are overweight or have obesity.
• Adults ages 40 to 59 have the highest rate of obesity (43%) of any age group with adults
  60 years and older having a 41% rate of obesity.
• About 40% of children and adolescents are overweight or have obesity; the rate of obesity
  increases throughout childhood and teen years.

How does this happen? What can we do to make sure we take care of our bodies to prevent disease and to ensure longevity? Let’s talk about how “overfueling” can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes.

For those of us fortunate enough to have a working one, insulin is produced and released by the pancreas. Type 1 diabetics must rely on exogenous insulin (synthetic, injectable insulin) because their pancreases do not work. When we eat a carbohydrate-heavy meal (which most of us do, many times a day), our bodies are able to quickly break these down into useable fuel in the form of glucose. When the pancreas senses glucose (fuel) in the blood, it produces and releases insulin to transport it to each cell for immediate use. The pancreas will continue to produce and release insulin as long as blood glucose levels remain elevated. If all cells are powered and fueled up, any remaining glucose is stored as glycogen mainly in the liver. Once all glycogen stores are filled up (and they fill up fast!) any remaining glucose is stored as fat.

So in summary – you eat, your blood glucose levels go up, the pancreas produces and releases insulin, the insulin transports the glucose (fuel) to the cells for immediate use. If your cells don’t need fuel – say, because you’re sitting at work and not moving much – insulin takes the glucose to the liver for glycogen production and storage. Once glycogen stores are filled up, insulin signals that any excess fuel should be converted and stored in fat cells, which is the bodies long term storage of fuel.

When do we use this stored fat you ask? Well, if you follow the Dietary Guidelines for Americans as published by the USDA, the answer is that you may never break into your stored fat reserves. Our bodies have unfettered and continuous access to fuel. Our pancreas release more and more insulin to try to manage the constant, and often rising, levels of glucose in the blood. Our cells are always fueled up, our glycogen stores are full, and all there is left for insulin to do is to continue storing the excess fuel as fat. More and more glucose is converted and stored in our fat cells, and as those fill up, more fat cells are created to be able to manage the excessive amount of fuel in our bodies, leading to unhealthy levels of body fat and obesity.

Extended periods (think many years) of living in this state, where our blood sugar is consistently elevated, which triggers more and more insulin production to transport it, and really nowhere to put this excess fuel, is commonly referred to as insulin resistance. The term itself implies that a person becomes less sensitive to the insulin released by the pancreas. More and more is produced and released, yet it is ineffective at lowering blood glucose levels, which leads to type 2 diabetes. What is really happening is that the pancreas is working as hard as it can to produce insulin to transport the fuel as needed, but there is no more room for the excess fuel we have consumed, therefore our blood glucose stays high. It’s not that we are less sensitive to insulin, we just have over-fueled our bodies!

See Reversing Insulin Resistance & Healing Our Bodies for tips on how to reverse the effect of “overfueling” has had on your body.