I used to think weight loss was pretty simple – calories in vs calories out. No matter what you consume, the total number of calories are what make you gain/lose/maintain weight, right? I was recently diagnosed with PCOS and mild insulin resistance. Everybody’s saying that IR makes losing weight incredibly difficult, which is quite a bummer as I’m currently trying to drop several pounds. What I’m wondering is: How does insulin resistance affect the whole CICO rule (the law of conservation of energy, nonetheless!)? It seems sort of unrealistic for IR to make you an exception to the laws of physics. Is it more related to appetite and increased food intake or does it actually alter the way your body uses energy?
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You have it about right. insulin resistance does not violates any basic principles of physics or chemistry. Instead, it just profoundly messes up a great many normal body functions, thus making normal weight loss approaches that much more difficult.
Insulin resistance messes up all kinds of normal functions beyond just promoting inflammation, stimulating growth of body fat, and causing Type II diabetes. It interferes with multiple signaling channels that affect satiety and fat reduction, and it affects the organisms living in the human gut that are critical to proper digestion and metabolic balance.
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