If you read the title above and cursed me, that's good. Strong emotion can easily be channeled into what you need to do to lose weight.

Change.Since the creation of this article has an interesting back story, I'll share it. A buddy of mine who wants to lose a bit of weight asked for my opinion on one of those packaged healthy-eating programs advertised on cable TV as an infomercial. He couldn't remember many details, but he could explain the overall concept.It wasn't a bad plan, but the more we talked, the more I realized it wasn't exactly tailored for the type of weight loss he desired and the type of workouts he liked to do.Instead of paying for such a program, I suggested he reread some articles that I had given him previously, write down some meals that he'd enjoy eating from the articles, and then meet with me and fine tune the meals to specifically suit his purposes.The next day I was proofreading the "Fitness Master" article you read last week, and it occurred to me what I had really told him to do was the crux of that article (and the prior one, as well): create "personal constants."His wife had watched the infomercial with him and asked me about it even before her husband did. During that discussion, I said something very similar to this article's title. The wife who has a background in biology, wholeheartedly agreed with me.That's because we both know that weight loss and weight gain are controlled by what is called the glucagon-insulin axis. Understanding that is the key to regulating your weight.Since the glucagon-insulin axis creates an either-or situation where you either store dietary fat as body fat or you don't, calling it "child's play" really is not an exaggeration. You simply manipulate the amount of fat, carbohydrates, and protein in your meals to create one or the other.Insulin, the better known of the two hormones, has one primary job: to escort glucose and amino acids (broken-down protein) not needed by the liver to the cells of muscle tissue. Being a well-mannered escort, insulin does more than accompany; it holds the door open, so to speak, for these nutrients when they get there.This last point is significant.These nutrients can't open cell "doors" themselves. Neither glucose nor amino acids would gain entry into muscle tissues without the presence of insulin.In fact, without some secretion of insulin, you'd have no energy and keep losing muscle mass until you turned skeletal.People who don't produce insulin and therefore can't process glucose suffer from type 1 diabetes, a lifetime condition that produces excessive thirst, excessive urine, increased appetite, weight loss, weakness, extreme fatigue, and a myriad of other health problems. Yet only 5 to 10 percent of diagnosed diabetics have this type.About 90 percent suffer from type 2 diabetes, the type brought on by years of a lifestyle that features too much junk food and not enough exercise.The junk food produces too much glucose (the final conversion of nutrients into usable energy). Too much glucose overworks the insulin response and leads to weight gain.Here's why.The muscle cells store a finite amount of glucose (your liver, for example, can only hold about 100 grams), so if your carb consumption exceeds the need and your body produces too much glucose for the muscle cells, insulin takes the glucose back into the blood stream and converts it into triglyceride, a type of fat. What doesn't get wasted in this conversion insulin again escorts this time to the fat stores.The fat stores readily accept the triglyceride because the secretion of insulin also increases the production of lipoprotein lipase, an enzyme that aids the uptake of fat from the bloodstream to your body cells. These two functions of insulin are why guys like Dr. Atkins create diets that severely limit carbs. And while limiting carbs somewhat is important if you're trying to lose weight (especially at night), there is a more pressing matter to long-term weight maintenance: the type of carbs you're ingesting.The simple carbohydrates found in refined foods like breads, pastas, pizza, cookies, cakes, and crackers, and dairy products affect your body much differently than the complex carbohydrates found in vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. Simple carbohydrates break down into glucose and enter the bloodstream rather quickly; in response, the pancreas overreacts and floods the bloodstream with insulin.Since there is only a finite space for energy storage in muscle cells (250-400 grams) and that space isn't even fully utilized by glucose from simple carbs (glucose from complex carbs does a better job), there's a higher likelihood that some glucose will not be accepted.And leftover glucose goes where? That's right. Back to the bloodstream to be converted into triglyceride to be stored in the fat stores.More about the problems of excessive insulin and how secreting glucagon creates weight loss will be found in next week's column.