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Diet

Six Rules to Use to Avoid Becoming Fat (& if You’re Fat these’ll help You Get Thin…)

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Welcome back – there are six rules to live by contained in this post.

Six rules that will keep the fat off, keep you lean and if you are fat already will help you re-condition your metabolism and get leaner and healthier.

Six rules that if you adopt them will improve your quality of life.

Six rules that if you pass them on to your family and your kids they all will live better, less disease prone lives.

Rule #1: Severely Limit Fructose in Your Diet

I’ve written before about the evils of fructose (http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/2011/10/01/fructose-but-not-glucose-knocks-your-metabolism-backwards/) and the evidence against this ghastly additive continues to rise.

You need to realise that we are programmed through evolution to desire sweet and salty foods. This is hardwired into us and what was once a survival mechanism has become an out of control craving. A hunger that food manufacturers use to their advantage.

HFCS – the worst form of sugar for your health & leanness!!

 

I’ve often said that you can’t out train a bad diet – that exercise alone, no matter how often or how hard, will keep you lean. It is your diet that makes the difference and it is the easiest thing to lose control of.

Simply put ant exercise you do can be undone just by ingesting fructose laden beverages and foods. Soft drinks / soda, fruit drinks and sports drinks – most if not all are full of fructose and make you fat. Vitamin Water for example has 33 grams of sugar in its regular sized bottle, a can of Coca Cola had 27.

The science is not in dispute (again click on & read the above article for the facts)

By now you should be used to reading the labels on any & all processed / packaged foods that you eat. If you don’t then when you start the amount of sugar in the food you routinely eat will shock you. Even worse because it is cheaper to manufacture & use much of this sugar is fructose.

Restricting the amount of fructose in your diet is vitally important for fat loss, lean maintenance and overall health.

There are numerous reasons for this but latch onto this one if no other: eating fat does not make you fat; eating excessive fructose does!

Right message wrong marketing!! Water is the best beverage…not soda.

Look at cans of soft drink / soda as you have been taught to view a chunk of fat and you would be on a truer road to wellness. (BTW the fat would be healthier for you!)

Fructose simultaneously promotes fat storage and maintenance by:

  • Impacting your Leptin levels resulting in reduced feeling of being full (satiety) so you stay hungry for longer and eat more. (for more on Leptin read this: http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/2011/08/20/metabolism-what-it-is-how-you-can-make-it-work-for-you-part-7/)
  • Excessive fructose actually enhances ghrelin release – the ‘keep eating I’m still hungry hormone’  (Glucose however does suppress ghrelin – see all sugars, like all calories are most definitely NOT equal!!)
  • Over time, excessive fructose contributes majorly to the development of insulin resistance.
  • It raises triglyceride levels significantly
  • It converts to fat more easily and readily than any other sugar.
  • Etc etc etc – do you need more reasons to avoid this additive?

Many health experts are now suggesting that we all strive to keep our daily fructose levels – including that from fruit – to under 25 grams per day. Aim for 15 conscious grams from fruit and try to have zero from other sources this way you’ll hit the 25 gram level easier.If you need to drop body fat then you need to aim for 15 grams total.

Rule # 2: Reduce Your Grain Carb Consumption

Like fructose there is an increasing amount of research coming out that says that grain based foods and carbs are bad for us and are another major player in the obesity epidemic.

Some of the common side effects associated with high grain based food intake are:

Excess body fat Depression Abdominal Bloating High blood pressure
Fatigue and frequent sleepiness Brain fogginess Low blood sugar High triglycerides

If you experience any of these symptoms, then the chances are very good that the excess grain carbohydrates in your diet are to blame.

No where near as healthy as we’ve been brought up to believe…

The main reason to cut down if not out grain based foods from your diet is that these foods convert easily into sugar and cause insulin spikes. A few slices of bread has the same effect on blood sugar levels as a Mars bar or two…

Insulin spikes eventually lead to the development of insulin resistance and more fat storage as well as Type II adult onset diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases.

So to be come healthier & leaner reducing your grain based carb consumption is a must!! This means cutting down or preferably OUT:

  • Breads and baked goods (ALL grains, organic ones aren’t any better)
  • Breakfast cereals (including oats & muesli)
  • Rice (white, brown & wild)
  • Pasta

Your body needs carbs but due to clever & insistent advertising most folk think carbs means grains & cereals when what we need to eat for our carbs are fruit and vegetables.

Our ability to store carb created sugars (as glycogen in the liver & muscles) is limited so excessive carbs, especially those readily converted to sugar get stored as fat.

Grains are at best left to be an optional & rare extra.

Rule # 3: Increase Your Healthy Fat Consumption

Fats are where its at in terms of fuelling your body.

Avoid these – check labels trans fats are everywhere in processed foods…

NOT TRANSFATS though – they are dangerous (see http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/2011/10/29/the-fat-in-your-diet-is-not-the-fat-on-your-hips-or-belly-or-thighs-or/) See below as well.

Carbs provide sugar and provide quick burning fuel when taken in the right amounts. But for endurance and satiety fat is what your needs.

Once you reduce your sugar load through avoiding grains & fructose  then you need to replace them with increased amounts healthy saturated fats. Fats provide you with high quality fuel your body needs and do not cause insulin spikes. However eating a lot of  margarine, or vegetable (more correctly seed) oils is asking for trouble as these types of trans fats have been linked to:

Cancers of various types Lower immune function: Obesity
Diabetes Hormonal problems – especially testosterone in males Heart disease: Trans fats can cause major clogging of your arteries

Healthy fats are:

The preferred fuel for your heart Useful antiviral agents (caprylic acid) Useful for lowering cholesterol levels (palmitic and stearic acids)
Carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, and required for the conversion of carotene to vitamin A, for mineral absorption, and for a host of other biological processes Effective as an anticaries, antiplaque and anti fungal agents (lauric acid) Modulators of genetic regulation and prevent cancer (butyric acid)

Good sources of healthy fats include:

Olives and Olive oil (for cold dishes) Coconuts, and coconut oil (for all types of cooking and baking) Butter, best made from raw grass-fed organic milk
Raw Nuts, such as, almonds or pecans Organic pastured egg yolks Avocados
Grass fed meats Palm oil Unheated organic nut oils

 

Healthy fats

Lastly let’s not forget Omega #’s. Best gotten from dep cold water fish like salmon, mackerel or sardines or from quality Krill supplements Omega 3’s are the closet thing to a winder drug in terms of fats yet discovered.

For more information about omega-3’s please read this Dr. Mercola article. I do not agree with everything he says but he is on the money more often then not!!

Rule # 4: Avoid All “Diet” Foods.

Diet anything is best avoided…

It turns out that artificial sweeteners may be linked to weight gain. This appears to be because the artificial sweeteners are less satisfying for your body and may actually increase cravings for the real thing.

If a food says it is diet & contains any of the artificial sweeteners avoid it unless you want stronger sugar cravings…

Rule # 5: Eat lots & lots of Vegetables

Two posts ago we looked at the incredible story of Dr Terry Wahl & how she reversed her MS by eating the equivalent of 6 heaped dinner plates of fruits & vegetables with lean protein everyday.

Her story and more research than you can jump prove that one of the easiest and most effective ways to improve your health and drop body fat is to increase your intake of fruits & vegetables.

These are real carbs with real benefits…

 

There is a lot of talk about the need for these to be organic and there is some truth in this, but if you are currently eating a typical western diet don’t worry about the source so much as worrying about getting more F&V into your diet. (BTW frozen F&V has been shown to have vitamin & mineral profiles as good as if not better than many ‘fresh’ F&V from supermarkets…)

Rule # 6: Exercise often and smartly.

Lift some weights, walk often, sprint once a week, play a sport, do some yoga but move more & sit less whilst challenging your muscles & cardiorespiratory system.

Go back though this blog for programs to use or check out Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence

KBs are a great exercise tool!!

Training programs (link to the right a and yes it is an affiliate one!)

The secret to increasing your fat loss is to include some high-intensity, short-burst-type exercises, two to three times per week. Several studies have confirmed that exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising continuously for an entire session. Forget hours on exercise bikes or treadmills try metabolic resistance exercise.

Use a  variety of exercises  (weight training, cardio, stretching, etc.) Alternate difficult days with easier days Exercise outdoors, which helps maintain vitamin D levels and improve mood
Partake of Interval training sessions 2 x a week Lift weights 3 x a week Walk and run on softer, uneven terrain, such as sand, grass and dirt, possibly barefoot or in your Vibrams.
Vary your weight program every 30 or so days Ensure that you leave enough time for recovery after physical exertion Include Recreational activities, including dancing and sex

If you’re like most Western adults, especially those of us over 35 years old then you’re likely carrying at least a few too many pounds / kilos of excess body fat.

If you adopt these 6 rules you’ll lose them and quicker than you imagine.

Give these a go and let me know how you find them!!

See you next week.

Be well.

By the time you read this you’ll need it…

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Welcome Back!!

I hope that you all had a great Christmas day and that Santa brought you what you wanted!!

I hope that you spent good times with family and friends. That the food was good & plentiful, the company enjoyable and the weather good…

Well Christmas lunch has come & gone and dinner is over, done and dusted. And you’re feeling….well stuffed, over fed, pants too tight, got a good case of belly bloat going on and that furry tongue feeling that comes from either too much alcohol. too many sweet carbs or a mixture of both. (in my case Lynne – as she always does – cooked up a superb all day feast that began with Christmas Brunch and continued all day…)

Ahh.. post Christmas Dinner bloat...

You know you should have followed the last post and eaten your Protein first but the honeyed veges looked too good, the egg nog was too plentiful, the christmas cake too inviting and well you just let go and enjoyed yourself. You let go of all of that hard won disciplne, that laser like focus on only eating to stay healthy & lean… Another Christmas day come & gone and you feel a bit guilty, like you blew it and find part of your mind saying (again) never again..

Okay time to move past this, time to get back on track, time to recognise that this was a temporary diversion and most of all time to repair some of the damage done.

So how to do this?

Firstly realise that letting go of your diet control once & a while is okay, just make sure that you climb back on the wagon. It’s really not something to beat yourself up about unless ‘once & a while’ turns into every week or….

Here’s how to get back in harness– your metabolism has been given a hiding, and your digestive system has been stressed far beyond normal limits… You need to hit the ‘reset button’.

This little trick will do what’s needed:

Once Christmas day and the following one (Boxing Day here in Australia) are done then make a decision to stay away from all highly processed, high GI foods and focus on lean Protein, fresh fruit and fibrous vegetables. Add some healthy fats via nuts & avocado and you are well on the way to getting back on track.

This means waking up and having an omelette with some Spanish onion and mushrooms in it and avoiding cereal & milk. It means grabbing an apple or a peach and some almonds for a snack, having big salads with

Drink lots of this...

olive oil dressing and chicken or turkey breast, it means avoiding breads, crackers or that the left over Christmas pudding, Pavlova or pie.

It means drinking a lot of water. A lot of water.

Eating like this will reduce the bloat, ease the stress on your digestive system and beat back those sugary carb cravings.

This works by allowing a number of things to happen – fewer carbs means your body has a chance to normalise & stabilise blood sugar levels after the havoc of the days just gone.

Your pancreas gets a break and you insulin levels will drop also. Your body will release excess fluids (high sugary carbs creates water retention – and drinking extra water when eating lower carbs actually forces a situation where excess retained water is ‘let go’).

High sugary carbs also unleash the cravings monster and eating as described above will blunt these.

So December 27th or 28th get stuck into water and left over protein, veges and fruit. Pass on the potatoes, the bread and sweets, pie & cakes. Not only will you lose the bloat but you’ll feel better quicker and be back on track for a fit & lean 2011.

Oh yeah add some gentle exercise – go for a walk, toss a Frisbee, ride a bike do some tai chi or or some swimming. The key here is to eas back into exercise not jump back in like a demon! There are some

May your dreams come true in 2012

psychological considerations for this time of year to take into account as well. Our mind tells us we should be taking it easy, we should be on holidays so our bodies are going this way as well. Don’t stop exercising just ease back into instead…

My best wishes for a Safe & Happy New Year – may 2012 be the year all your dreams come true!!

One Simple Trick to Avoid Overeating on Christmas Day…

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Welcome back!!

Happy Festive Season to you & yours from me & mine!!

Just because its Christmas doesn't mean undoing all your hard wrok...

Look – we all know the sad truth of what is going to take place once the presents are opened, the hugs exchanged, and you and your family sit down for Christmas lunch – you’re all going to eat too much, way, way too much.

If you’re like me, you vow every ear not to overindulge, and every year you slip up. (in my case it is particularly hard – my much better half Lynne is a gourmet class cook who loves to put on a huge spread for the family for Christmas and damn it she knows ALL my favourites!!)

The calm before the (eating!) storm...

Once we sit down then the aromas of the Turkey, the roast Pork, the leg of Lamb, the baked Ham; the sight of the salads, the roast vegetables, the fresh  prawns and sea food, then desserts – all combine to overwhelm even the best intentions and steeliest of wills.

So what are we supposed to do?

How can we avoid eating until we become Michelin Man-like and need to have a lie down?

How can we avoid the nasty latent sense of guilt that rears its ugly head over the next few days and makes us feel bad about our lack of control?

It’s simple – apart from the most fanatical amongst us we really can’t… BUT there is one simple thing we can do that will give us at least a modicum of control…

Eat your Protein foods first.

Gotcha!! Hah!! You thought I was going to say use smaller plates, or drink a glass of water first, or chew on a chunk of cheese – nope – a very important part of Christmas (or Hanukkah or Ramadan, or Chinese New Year – whatever your particular celebration is, no matter when it is, is to celebrate and to let go – even if it is just a bit!

Start off with the Ham or the Turkey, with the Pork or the Lamb or the Prawns – just eat your proteins first.

If you have been reading this blog for a little while  you’ll know that Protein foods not only fill you up faster, but they assist in the secretion of the chemical messengers that let your brain know you are full. Eating protein gives your leptin a kick in the pants and tells your brain that you’ve had enough.

You can use this tip even with a smorgsabord!!

Protein first eating actually cuts down on the time it takes for your brain to register that your stomach is full and you’ve eaten enough. In general it takes about 20 minutes from the time your stomach is full until your brain gets this message, but Protein has the ability to send get that message from your stomach to your brain much faster than other nutrients. Protein promotes feelings of satiety (feeling full & satisfied at the same time) better than any other food.

Eating your Protein first will prevents over eating because it helps you realize you’re well-fed and not starving!! Even better, Protein will not elevate your blood sugar as dramatically as high GI ‘fast’ carbs. A rapid rise in blood sugar (almost an instant hyperglycaemia experienced at just about every Christmas Dinner) can actually make you feel more hungry by stimulating the hormone Ghrelin which is the ‘feed me more’ appetite stimulating hormone. Protein shuts down this hormone – a good thing!

Even worse a sugar ‘high’ actually switches off your ‘stop eating you’re full’ mechanisms so you get shaky and start shovelling food in – usually faster and faster, without even really tasting it.

Even he keeps in shape over the holidays...

Instead, protein keeps your blood sugars within a normal range so you don’t go through the rollercoaster highs and lows that make you feel even less satisfied.

So Protein first, then eat the high fibre vegetables (think broccoli, green beans, asparaghus etc). These too will add your sense of satiety so you feel full & satisfied.

Once you’ve done this (and enjoyed it!!) then it is open slather – go for the high carb, low fibre fare that remains. Thing is though you’ll likely find that your servings of those desserts and so forth will be smaller and you will need less to satisfy your taste for them.

There you have it – a simple plan for Christmas that will enable you eat well, feel full & satisfied, indulge without bloating and more importantly not upset the cook by eating like a monk!!

I hope that you & your families have a great Festive Season, no matter what your spiritual beliefs.

May your God go with you!

Enjoy!

6 Simple Diet Rules to Lose 15 Kg in 12 weeks

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Welcome back…

Regular readers know that I am a proponent of  reconditioning your metabolism through a strategic mix of challenging, high intensity (but brief duration!) exercise, tactical food intake to manipulate hormones and to harness the thermic effect of eating.

I also believe that over 80% of our body’s composition is down to diet, and if your diet is wrong then you’ll stay fat.

Diet did this

There are two real culprits in the obesity crisis. One is the fast-acting carbs and sugars in breads, cereals, pastas, desserts, cakes, rolls, crackers and fast foods that we all tend to eat. The other is that we tend to eat overlarge portions of just about everything.

With this in mind here are six simple but effect rules to introduce into your eating habits that will enable you to drop 30 lbs or 15 kilos over about 12 weeks.

Give them a try and let me know what you think.

THE ACTION PLAN

To the remaining horror of many an ill-informed Dietician if you want to lose body fat you have to immediately go on a “controlled-carbohydrate diet “.

Now unlike what the Newspapers will tell you (or those pesky Dieticians) this doesn’t mean cutting out carbs altogether, but it does mean eating strategically and with a degree of awareness so that you restrict the carb types that significantly raise your blood sugar and thus your insulin levels. For example, the carbs found in soft drinks, sweets, baked goods like cakes & cookies, bread & pasta.

Cut down or out completely for the first few weeks

I even recommend that you cut out multigrain breads and cereals for the first few weeks. Why? Well multi-grain foods still raise insulin levels. Avoid as many grains as possible – including rice & pastas, no matter what their colour. Because milk has a significant number of carbohydrates, it is off-limits for at least the first 6 weeks – so are other dairy products except cheeses.

The upshot is that this plan limits your carbs to those found in vegetables and fruit.

Now on this plan you should also:

1)      Eat only when you’re hungry

2)      Eat only to the point of feeling full.

3)      Eat as much protein as you like

4)      Eat as many non-starchy vegetables as you like.

5)      Eat no more than 80 – 150 grams of cheese daily and no other dairy for at least 6 weeks.

6)      Restrict your fruit to no more than 3 daily servings of low glycemic fruits like berries, melon, apples, plums, citrus like oranges, apricots, kiwifruit or peaches or nectarines

7)      Drink at least 2 litres (2 quarts) of water every day

Follow these guidelines and you’ll also lose 15 kilos in three months.

Here are the Six Simple rules:

1. Cut out quickly digested carbs.

Fast carbs to avoid - sugar to sugar!!

Use the Glycemic Index as a rough guide, use the Glycemic Load of a food as an even better one. Foods that have a high glycaemic index (GI) tend to raise blood sugars quickly – it’s not the whole story but it is a good rule of thumb to follow. (more on this in Rule #2)

You’re an adult – eliminate junk food from your diet at least until you have lost the desired amount of body fat.

No soft drinks / soda pop, no sugary sweets, desserts or baked goods, no bread or biscuits etc. If it is a processed carb avoid it!

Eating these foods signals your body to release a flood of insulin – eliminate them and your insulin levels stay where you want them to be: low. This in turn improves both your health & fat loss. Need proof?

A University of Connecticut research study analysed why low-carb dieters were so successful and they calculated that at least 70 per cent of the fat loss stemmed from low-insulin levels.

2. Eat more vegetables.

Yep – your Mum was right – eat more vegetables, cliché or not there is no denying that for overall health and fat loss this works.

You need to aim for 4 or more servings of non-starchy vegetables every day. Why non-starchy?

There’s a lot of confusion about certain starchy vegetables that have a “high glycemic index”, vegetables that people following lower-carb eating plans have been told to avoid.

The glycemic load is a far  more meaningful measure of the effect of foods on your  blood sugar and insulin levels.

  • Peas and Carrots are good examples – they have a GI of above 60 (80 for peas) but a GL of only 3. In other words a serving of carrots and / or peas will have a negligible effect on your blood sugar.
  • Potatoes however have both a high a glycemic load and index – as does corn so you have to avoid these.

Take home message is that you can eat  virtually any vegie of your choice other than potatoes (white, sweet or fried), and corn.

Cheeses - especially hard cheeses is okay!!

3. Have protein at every meal.

By having protein at every meal you not only promote your body’s TEF (Thermic effect of food), support muscle preservation (vital to fat loss) but you also help trip the satiety signals. Eating protein at every meal helps you feel fuller quicker and for longer.

This is particularly true for breakfast when you body is essentially coming off an 8 hour+ fast.

The best sources are beef, chicken, fish, whey protein powder and eggs.

4. Don’t be afraid of natural fat.

Fat does not get stored as fat – all foods are broken down into their components and largely turned into blood sugar(a simplistic view) and it is an excess of blood sugars that get stored as fat.

The natural (ie non-transfats, non-manipulated by man) fats like those found in unprocessed meats, avocadoes, olives or olive-oil-based dressings do not raise your insulin levels, and have little to do with making you fat.

It is when high amounts of carbs are coupled with high levels of fat(regardless of source) that insulin release is stimulated causing your body to store fat instead of burning it.

God what about cholesterol and the health of my heart??

The Journal of Nutrition reviewed 13 studies of low carb diets and found that this type of diet – even with 50% of calories typically coming from fats – were more effective at reducing heart-disease risk than traditional

NOT the protein that you want to be eating...

low-fat diets.

5. Forget about processed foods.

This includes luncheon meats, cereals, snacks, baked goods etc etc.

If you follow only one rule, make it this: if it comes in a box or a bag, skip it. I guarantee you’ll have success.

6. Make Calorie Density work for you.

Calorie dense food...

In addition to adding protein to every meal another way to eat well and to feel full is to utilise calorie density. Caloric density is the amount of calories present in a given amount or volume of food.

This means that a food that contains a large amount of calories in a small volume of food has a high caloric density.  Sometimes very high. At the other end of the scale are thiose foods which are large in volume but low in calories – these foods are considered to have low calorie density.

NB The carbs with the highest caloric density tend to be those that are nutrient sparse and low calorie density carbs are nutrient dense. Fruits and vegetables have very low caloric densities, especially green and leafy vegetables. So do lean proteins.

Foods with low caloric density therefore allow you to eat more volume of food for fewer calories. You can eat more and ingest fewer calories.

Think of it this way – what is easier to eat – 1000 calories of cheesecake or 1000 calories of spinach?

So part of fat loss is to be able to eat well, eat healthily and in a way that leaves you feeling full and less likely to develop cravings. So it is important that you combine lots of fruits, veggies, beans, and lean proteins for meals that leave you full with a lower calorie price to be paid.

Nothing Tastes as Good as Being Lean Feels...

Here are the Six Simple rules:

1. Cut out quickly digested carbs.

2. Eat more vegetables.

3. Have protein at every meal.

4. Don’t be afraid of natural fat.

5. Forget about processed foods.

6. Make Calorie Density work for you.

Eating by following these 6 rules will enable you to shave hundreds of calories off your daily total while being completely content with the amount of food you’re eating. Not to mention how much healthier overall you’ll feel.

See you next week – Be well.

Using Carb Refeeding to shake things up…

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Welcome back!!

This week I want to take a bit of a different look at low carb eating & lifestyle.

As always seems to be the case, information taken solid research seems to lead to extreme pendulum swings in terms of belief & perception.

High protein, low carb is the perfect example of this. Too many folk don’t bother to learn about this and adopt one of 2 opposed stances – all carbs are ‘bad’ or eating high protein is ‘bad.’ Of course neither is correct nor entirely wrong.

Protein & low processed carbs - Ideal!!

Eating low carb means eating low glycemic index. Low glycemic load, low-or- no processed carbs, it doesn’t mean avoiding carbs. It also means pretty much avoiding starchy carbs, but as we will see even these have their uses.

Let’s make no mistake- there is such a thing as ‘bad’ carbs and they are the highly processed calorie dense nutrient sparse crap that fills our western diet. Eating highly processed, high GI and high GL foods are detrimental to your health – the evidence has been in for over a decade on this!!

Likewise eating high protein will not cause heart disease or any of the other highly touted but never proven side effects – but like any fuel source too much can cause imbalances in your body systems and in every case too many calories eaten above those needed for your activity level and you’ll put on fat. No matter what the source of those calories. (But as we discussed in earlier posts the source & type of calorie does matter – processed foods with HFCS and transfats elicit different & damaging responses from our metabolisms compared to salad & steak!)

Many ‘fans’ of low carb diets will only eat the bare minimum of carbs that they feel is necessary to maintain health – this is extreme and wrong. Carbs do not have to be shunned – just chosen wisely, and eaten in line with body needs. This means that it is alright to go high carb if you earned it!! The immediate post work out period is one such time as is first thing in the morning or after a long period of intense mental effort.

The best, the healthiest and most ‘acceptable’ forms of carbs are vegetables & fruits. So although most carbs aren’t the “bad guys” they’re not viewed in the same light as “heroes” like protein and healthy fats and there’s good reason for the food discrimination.

Perfect carb sources

Of course most of us are now aware of the processed carb / insulin /fat storage connection (see last week’s post on Obesegenics) and this is one of the biggest reasons to keep processed carb consumption low. If you can keep insulin sensitivity high and insulin levels low you will not only be maintaining a healthy and optimally functioning body, you’ll also be able to drop body fat if you need to.

We also know that our bodies love to become efficient at everything they do so they can reduce the amount of energy used (our bodies are still focussed on energy  conservation) – this is why you should alter your workouts at least every 6 weeks – to keep ‘inefficiency’ and therefore metabolism high…

Likewise your body seems to adapt and get used to any particular diet. Research supports the view that most of us eat fewer than 20 different meals on a regular basis. Again our body becomes efficient at handling these foods and the results we may be trying to use diet to achieve can become blunted.

This is as true for low carb diets as for any other eating pattern. This means that if you’ve been on a low carb diet for a prolonged period of time, an occasional ‘spike’ in your carb intake can actually be beneficial for your health.

There are a number of terms for this, the most common being ‘carb refeeding’.  Really it is a way to give your metabolism a bit of stimulation that is not activity dependent, and if you’ve hit a fat loss plateau it can help restart it.

It works like this – you add starchy carbs (strategically chosen – see below) to your diet in amounts that actually increase your insulin production.  Notice I said strategically chosen – junk is junk and processed

Junk is still junk - refeeding or not!

carbs are processed carbs no matter when you consume them. The only real exception to this is if you are using a short term carb ‘surging’ protocol to replenish glycogen stores after some serious depletion. This is using the famous ‘cheat day’ once a week.
So bad carbs (processed and / or high glycemic index & glycemic load) remain not good for you and too many calories are still too many – even on programmed cheat days. The goal is to stimulate your insulin, not release so much that it begins to create an environment of insulin resistance in your body!
There are healthier ways to increase your carb intake that’ll help re-stimulate your insulin and make sure that this hormone is working efficiently.

In normal practise I recommend that we keep our carb intake to around 100 – 150g a day. This level is easy to maintain and means that you are able to consume enough nutrient dense vegetables and fruits to sustain a very healthy diet.

Eating this way though means that starchy carbs are likely to be a part of your diet very often (a good thing except in this case). Starchy carbs are what we use to re-stimulate your insulin.

Let me be clear – by starchy carbs I don’t mean breads, muffins or any baked goods; nor do I mean pasta or rice. Why? It is becoming increasingly supported that grain based foods are actually detrimental to our health largely because they contain plant proteins called ‘lectins’ and a host of enzyme inhibitors. (look up Marks Daily Apple for a Paleo style run down on this – my own research mans that I only any grain based foods on a Sunday – and that is usually for the family brunch…)

Definately NOT the type of starches I'm talking about...

No the starches I recommend and am talking about here are grain free foods that don’t contain these harmful, if natural, compounds. I recommend: potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, plantains, squash, beets and taro.  This is by no means a complete listing – but the foods on it are easily found in most areas.

Here are some rules to cover off your carb re-feeding:

Carb refeeding is not suitable for everyone.  If you have insulin resistance, metabolic disorder, diabetes or any auto-immune disease it’s not recommended.

Carb refeeding is for you if you’ve been eating low carb for over 2 months and you’re beginning to feel a bit ‘flat’, and you fat loss has slowed or even stopped.

Carb refeeding doesn’t mean adding if foods you don’t normally eat (Yams, sweet potato etc should be a part of your regular diet!) but it does mean increasing the percentage of them for a short, insulin ‘invigorating’ period of time.

Carb refeeding is meant for short time use, not daily / weekly regular add-in to your diet. It is best done like a cheat day – once a week and usually never more than 3 or 4 weeks in a row.

If you do the weekly version then you can increase your carbs up to 500 g for that day if you’re eating vegetable starches (never grain) – but try to make it a day where you have a challenging weight lifting session.

Carb refeeds work better on days when you move some iron...

Remember the idea is to ‘tickle’ your insulin, not to undo the good work of your previous weeks of diet. This means that if you’re doing a carb refeed once a week; make sure that the very next day you get right back to your low carb diet.  Don’t lose control and let your carb intake remain high. You can even lower your carb intake further than normal – by about 50% – the next day to get you back to your normal routine.

Likewise you should decrease your fat intake for the day when you’re carb refeeding.  A good range is around 200 – 500 calories.

Carb refeeding is really designed for folk who have been eating low carb for at least 10 weeks, 12 – 16 is even better. The reason is that if you use carb refeeding before your body has the chance to adapt to burning fat as its main fuel source (which is a part of the reasoning behind low carb diets – metabolically switch your body’s fuel preference) it will hinder your fat loss progress.

If you’ve been leading a low carb lifestyle for some time now (at least 10 weeks) and you’re feeling great – don’t change! It is working for you and you should stick with it.

Conversely if you’re feeling like things have stagnated and you need to shake things up a little, incorporating a carb refeed may be just what your body and mind needs.

 See you next week.

Harness the Power of Insulin

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 Welcome back –

There have been millions of words written and many millions more I’m sure to come all on the subject of how to lose weight and build muscle. Now regular readers know that I hate the term ’lose weight’ it is inaccurate & wrong – your goal is to lose body fat. It is entirely possible to lose kilos of fat but have the scales drop by less than that amount because you’ve added some muscle.

So losing weight is out, losing fat is in.

The questions usually revolve around two polar opposites – either how do you eat to add muscle without adding fat, or how to diet to lose fat whilst still adding muscle.

Do use intermittent fasting? Atkins? Palm Beach? Drink Shakes 3 x a day? Run miles every day? Work out twice a day? Eat low carb? Eat high carb? Add the latest magic food?

You know there are plenty of available strategies to consider and they all try to address one or both of the needs mentioned above but results are mixed. What works for some fails for others. The unpalatable truth is that there is no magic one-size fits every metabolism solution available. The cookie cutter approach needs to stay in the kitchen with the pastry.

For Fat Loss there isn't a cookie cutter approach...

There is a common thread in all of the effective strategies though – they utilise your metabolism to work with you for the desired results and they all – the ALL – harness the power of insulin.

Insulin has been given a bad rap in the popular press – it does not cause obesity, it is not the ‘fat hormone’. It is true because it is a ‘carrier’ hormone insulin has the ability to induce fat storage if the environment allows for this.

However id allowed to work as it is supposed insulin is in fact the single most anabolic hormone present in your body (remember anabolic means build, catabolic is to tear down)

Insulin ensures that your cells are ‘fed’, that amino acids are taken up and protein synthesis is completed.

Energy cannot be destroyed, just transformed.

If I remember my High School science correctly we were taught that energy can be changed from one form to another (ie transformed) but it can’t be created or destroyed.

To lose body fat you need to use up more energy than you take in. To lose a pound you need to either take in an amount equal to; or use up a total of 3500 calories. To gain weight (I deliberately did not say fat in this case – to build serious muscle you have to eat a lot of nutrient dense foods. Google Chris Hemsworth’s diet for his muscle gain for Thor) you have to ingest more calories than you need to remain in energy homeostasis if you are going to support lean tissue gains.

 

Serious training needs serious eating to support serious growth...

Of course if you eat more than you need and you are not exercising to create lean body mass then you’ll get fat. The Bottom line is that if you eat too much, without the mitigating effects of high intensity exercise, you’ll get fat, no matter where the calories are coming from.

In the real world, the world without chemical interdiction of the body’s processes, there is simply no mystical combination of nutrients – macro, micro or otherwise – of meal timing of super supplements etc et that can change this fact. It simply is – eat more than your body needs on a consistent basis and you’ll get fatter.

BUT – we know that a calorie is NOT just a calorie and all calories are NOT created equal. Different macro- & micronutrients produce different long-term effects hormonally and metabolically.

This brings us to nutrient partitioning.

Nutrient Partitioning: Macronutrients Matter

Nutrient partitioning is another of those scientific sounding terms that a lot of folk use to make their theories for weight loss (not fat ahem…) sound more solid. Dr Scott Connelly the man who with Bill Phillips ‘created’ MetRX, was the first to use the term I supplement marketing. Now a lot of folk do.

This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, or that it’s not rooted in solid science it is. Nutrient partitioning is regulated by a co-ordinated, multi-part symphony that consists of liver & gut action, brain & Central Nervous System (CNS), of muscle & fat tissues, of hormones & ion channels and more besides. Even now we are still not entirely sure of all of the components and exactly how nutrient partitioning works…But work it does.

The supplement that introduced the term 'Nutrient partitioning' into marketing speak...

More importantly we can make it work for us.

What is done with the food we eat by our bodies is a function of nutrient partitioning.

The calories we ingest are either burned for fuel, used for repair & growth or stored as energy for future use (yep – glycogen first then fat once the glycogen stores are full).

Naturally we’d want as much of the food we eat to be used as fuel for repair and lean tissue growth with as little as possible being stored as fat. Whether we are a week end athlete, a couch potato or a real athlete we all agree on one thing we want to eat our food with the absolute minimum stored as bodyfat.

So whilst you can’t destroy the energy we gain from food the macronutrients we ingest do matter and have an effect on nutrient partitioning. The question is how do we maximise the glycogen stores in our muscles & liver and minimise our fat stores whilst conditioning our metabolism to either maintain or gain lean muscular tissue?

Part of the answers lies in the fact that nutrient partitioning becomes less efficient, less effective the more insulin resistant that you become. In diabetics and the obsese nutrient partitioning is so out of shape that it becomes dysfunctional.

Insulin is enormously important in the actions of nutrient partitioning – the more insulin sensitive you are the better it works, the more that nutrients are partitioned & used by your body towards our muscle building, low fat storing goals.  The more insulin resistant – the more fat you store as Nutrient partitioning twists out of true.

Insulin: Sensitive = Good, Resistant = Bad

You keep a knockin' but you can't come in - Insulin Resistance

We eat food and the carbs are broken down to glucose and absorbed by our blood stream. This gives our bodies an immediate and easy to access source of fuel. If the fuel is required it is burnt (via ATP synthesis) if not needed it is stored – both of these actions are controlled by Insulin.

Under insulin’s direction glucose is either stored as glycogen in the liver and muscle tissues, or it is converted to triglycerides and stored as body fat. That’s it, only 2 possibly outcomes.

Despite what we have read, and the fact that we want to max out glycogen storage and restrict fat storage – Insulin doesn’t care. Its action is constant – it gets out fat cells to be always taking up glucose. Once in the fat cell the glucose is transformed to fatty acids or glycerol both of which are needed to make up triglycerides. Which then get stored as fat.

So what?! you say – well this means that our bodies are ALWAYS storing fat after each & every meal. It sounds scarier than it is really is though…

The amount of fat stored under normal circumstances is under 15% because the lion’s share of the glucose (85 – 95%) is taken up & used by the muscles and as a part of body repair actions.

The key here is ‘under normal circumstances’…

Eat too many nutrient sparse, processed carbs and the whole glucose as our nutrient partitioning friend scenario alters radically. Too much available glucose means that the glycogen stores quickly fill up (their storage is limited) and the excess glucose is turned to fatty acids and then stored as triglycerides – you add fat. Speed is an issue here as well glycogen stores rapidly fill as they are the primary source of energy for our muscles and major organs like the liver. These stores can empty at a slower rate than they fill (although it is still quite quickly) even if we are out under sudden wide ranging stress, hit a hard exercise session etc. This emptying requires that more glucose be taken up to place what is used. Thing is if there is an excess of glucose in the blood stream and the just filled glycogen stores are not given a chance to empty then we

They don't come much more processed than this...

store it as fat.

Too much glucose in our blood stream is, ironically, poisonous – this is why insulin’s main purpose is to clear it from the blood through glycogen and / or fat storage. Our bodies are designed to constantly clear glucose from our blood streams. It does this by using insulin to interact with a specific receptor on fat cells that signals the fat cell to uptake the surplus glucose. This signal is sent once the glycogen stores are full.

Thing is – Insulin is just the messenger, the uptake of the glucose is controlled by a receptor. If your body has become insulin resistant the receptor ignores the insulin. But the glucose remains toxic so more insulin is released in quantities that force the receptors to allow the glucose & other nutrients to get into the cells.

Gain so what?! You say – well thing is a non-virtuous circle of feedback is created – the more insulin used to ‘pry’ open the cell receptors the more resistant to the actions of insulin they become so the more insulin is released…Even worse the insulin resistance in muscle & other tissues also rises meaning that the insulin sensitivity has decreased.

Normally this happens in these tissues when the glycogen stores are full, but with increased resistance mimicking the ‘full’ signal glycogen stores may not fully fill up falsely creating an excess of glucose in the blood stream which causes the dreaded insulin spike to get it cleared. Not only does insulin resistance cause you to get fat but it also robs your lean tissues and organs of a full complement of energy.

Consistently increased insulin levels also cause the metabolism to become “stuck” in its carbohydrate-burning mode. It does this by inhibiting the fat burning genes and by activating the carb metabolism ones. So your body develops a preference for carbs as all fuel and fat as little or none.

So we need to restore or at least improve our insulin sensitivity.

How to go about Improving Insulin Sensitivity

Good Carbs

Realise as a start that carbs are not bad, they’re not the enemy. Excess carbs, especially from highly processed nutrient sparse sources are.

Firstly watch what types of carbs you are eating. Again – you know the drill eat carbs from sources as unprocessed and as nutrient dense as possible. Next look at when you are eating you carbs. Aim to have about 30% of your daily intake at breakfast with a godly amount of lean protein.

Spread the other 70% over the day – again being aware of the source of them. If you are working out ensure that you have a decent ‘hit’ of carbs with protein in the hour after working out.

Look everyone’s metabolism and its needs are different – these are only rules of thumb – you have to see what works best for you. Main thing is to eat fibrous, unprocessed carbs mainly from fruit & vegetables and sparingly from grains. Eating this way will bolster your chances of nutrient partitioning working more for and less against you.

Remember that most folk have about 100 grams of glycogen in their liver and another 400-odd in their muscles. If you were to totally deplete these stores any amount of carbs over 500 grams not burned immediately for energy would be destined for fat storage.

So again try to limit your carb intake to avoid taking in an excessively high amount. Also again – check your sources of carbs – lean towards the fibrous, the unprocessed as much as possible.

What we really need is a way to improve our nutrient partition by increasing our insulin sensitivity, or by decreasing our insulin resistance.

Improving nutrient partitioning by combating insulin resistance

I have written before about the effect of whole body inflammation on metabolism, fat storage and heart disease. It should come as no surprise that by reducing any inflammation in the body we also improve our insulin sensitivity.

Look for oils that have a low Omega 6 and a high Omega 3 porofile

Leaving aside the cogent arguments of the Paleo folk regarding the inflammatory effects of grains, we know that a major cause of inflammation is the imbalance between Omega 3 & 6’s. Turns out that this imbalance is also a supporting factor for insulin resistance. High Omega 6’s means a higher than desirable level of inflammation regulators, whilst a high level of Omega 3 means higher levels of the anti-inflammatory ones. (we do need both but it is the ration that effects out sensitivity.)

A common denominator in obesity & diabetes (especially type II), is chronic inflammation of the cell membranes. This means that poor insulin sensitivity means you’ll gain fat, and that  your ability to effectively partition nutrients will suffer.

Increasing your Omega 3 ratio is the easiest way to limit if not decrease inflammation and also improve your insulin sensitivity. Fish or Krill oil supplements, eating fatty deep sea fish and even supplementing with alpha-linolenic acid, an omega 3 fatty acid will all help.

Using olive, coconut or macadamia oils for cooking & dressings and cutting down as much as possible on ‘vegetable oils’ (seed oils really) like canola, safflower, peanut and blended oils will help also. All of these oils have a much higher level of Omega 6 than omega 3.

Now here is some concerning news – whereas fat tissue was once thought to be passive and largely inert, we now know that fat stores also have a function to control our whole body insulin sensitivity. Inflammatory responses in our body that cause insulin resistance & diabetes are in fact linked to our fat stores. The more of these you have the more likely it is that you will have insulin resistance and be at high risk of diabetes.

Fat it appears acts more as endocrine (hormone producing) organ, releasing hormone types called “adipokines.” It is these adipokines that control whole-body insulin sensitivity and inflammation. The famous hormone Leptin is an adipokine that is a strong nutrient partitioning agent that increases fat burning, decreases fat storage and improves insulin sensitivity.

Other adipokines work in the opposite direction. The way to influence which ones are produced is to up our Omega 3’s so the ‘good’ adipokines are released and the ‘bad’ ones are not..

Lastly – Don’t Stress!

This'll kill you - destress!!

Our insulin sensitivity falls off a cliff if we are under chronic, not acute stress. In these days of traffic jams, deadlines, taxes, poor economies etc etc it is hard to avoid experiencing at least some form of chronic stress.

Unchecked. Constant stress is a killer. It affects a plethora of body systems and erodes your health in numerous ways.

Learn to get enough sleep, exercise hard & regularly, enjoy regular sex, relax, do some meditating, choose who you spend time with and work at not worrying about the things outside of your control.

You’ll live longer, be happier and have much better insulin sensitivity…

See you next week – don’t forget to Tweet or face Book us!!

References

Kahn BB. Lilly lecture 1995. Glucose transport: pivotal step in insulin action. Diabetes 1996;45:1644-54.

Kahn SE, Hull RL, Utzschneider KM. Mechanisms linking obesity to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Nature 2006;444:840-6.

SchutzY. Concept of fat balance in human obesity revisited with particular reference to de novo lipogenesis. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord 2004;28 Suppl 4:S3-S11.

Schwarz JM, Linfoot P, Dare D, Aghajanian K. Hepatic de novo lipogenesis in normoinsulinemic and hyperinsulinemic subjects consuming high-fat, low-carbohydrate and low-fat, high-carbohydrate isoenergetic diets. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2003;77:43-50.

Parks EJ. Dietary carbohydrate’s effects on lipogenesis and the relationship of lipogenesis to blood insulin and glucose concentrations. Br J Nutr 2002;87 Suppl 2:S247-S253.

KoltermanOG, Greenfield M, Reaven GM, Saekow M, Olefsky JM. Effect of a high carbohydrate diet on insulin binding to adipocytes and on insulin action in vivo in man. Diabetes 1979;28:731-6.

Roberts R, Bickerton AS, Fielding BA, Blaak EE, Wagenmakers AJ, Chong MF, et al. Reduced oxidation of dietary fat after a short term high-carbohydrate diet. Am J Clin Nutr 2008;87:824-31.

SemenkovichCF. Insulin resistance and atherosclerosis.J Clin Invest 2006;116:1813-22.

Calder PC. n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, inflammation, and inflammatory diseases. Am J Clin Nutr 2006;83:1505S-19S.

SerhanCN, Hong S, Gronert K, Colgan SP, Devchand PR, Mirick G, et al. Resolvins: a family of bioactive products of omega-3 fatty acid transformation circuits initiated by aspirin treatment that counter proinflammation signals. J Exp Med 2002;196:1025-37.

Schwab JM, Chiang N, Arita M, Serhan CN. Resolvin E1 and protectin D1 activate inflammation-resolution programmes. Nature 2007;447:869-74.

SimopoulosAP. Importance of the ratio of omega-6/omega-3 essential fatty acids: evolutionary aspects. World Rev Nutr Diet 2003;92:1-22.

BurdgeGC. Metabolism of alpha-linolenic acid in humans. Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids 2006;75:161-8.

DeFilippisAP, Sperling LS. Understanding omega-3’s. Am Heart J 2006;151:564-70.

WellenKE, Hotamisligil GS.Inflammation, stress, and diabetes. J Clin Invest 2005;115:1111-9.

ShoelsonSE, Lee J, Goldfine AB. Inflammation and insulin resistance. J Clin Invest 2006;116:1793-801.

Rosen ED, Spiegelman BM. Adipocytes as regulators of energy balance and glucose homeostasis. Nature 2006;444:847-53.

GnudiL, Tozzo E, Shepherd PR, Bliss JL, Kahn BB. High level overexpression of glucose transporter-4 driven by an adipose-specific promoter is maintained in transgenic mice on a high fat diet, but does not prevent impaired glucose tolerance. Endocrinology 1995;136:995-1002.

Abel ED, Peroni O, Kim JK, Kim YB, Boss O, Hadro E, et al. Adipose-selective targeting of the GLUT4 gene impairs insulin action in muscle and liver. Nature 2001;409:729-33.

TrayhurnP. Endocrine and signalling role of adipose tissue: new perspectives on fat. Acta Physiol Scand 2005;184:285-93.

Havel PJ. Update on adipocyte hormones: regulation of energy balance and carbohydrate/lipid metabolism. Diabetes 2004;53 Suppl 1:S143-S151.

Wall R, Ross RP, Fitzgerald GF, Stanton C. Fatty acids from fish: the anti-inflammatory potential of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. Nutr Rev 2010;68:280-9.

Murata M, Kaji H, Takahashi Y, Iida K, Mizuno I, Okimura Y, et al. Stimulation by eicosapentaenoic acids of leptin mRNA expression and its secretion in mouse 3T3-L1 adipocytes in vitro. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 2000;270:343-8.

Perez-Matute P, Marti A, Martinez JA, Fernandez-Otero MP, Stanhope KL, Havel PJ, et al. Eicosapentaenoic fatty acid increases leptin secretion from primary cultured rat adipocytes: role of glucose metabolism. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 2005;288:R1682-R1688.

ItohM, Suganami T, Satoh N, Tanimoto-Koyama K, Yuan X, Tanaka M, et al. Increased adiponectin secretion by highly purified eicosapentaenoic acid in rodent models of obesity and human obese subjects. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol 2007;27:1918-25.

Oh DY, Talukdar S, Bae EJ, Imamura T, Morinaga H, Fan W, et al. GPR120 is an omega-3 fatty acid receptor mediating potent anti-inflammatory and insulin-sensitizing effects. Cell 2010;142:687-98.

KreierF, Fliers E, Voshol PJ, Van Eden CG, Havekes LM, Kalsbeek A, et al. Selective parasympathetic innervation of subcutaneous and intra-abdominal fat–functional implications. J Clin Invest 2002;110:1243-50.

RobidouxJ, Martin TL, Collins S. Beta-adrenergic receptors and regulation of energy expenditure: a family affair. Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol 2004;44:297-323.

Schwartz MW, Woods SC, Porte D, Jr., Seeley RJ, Baskin DG. Central nervous system control of food intake. Nature 2000;404:661-71.

Drawn in part from an excellent article on www.t-nation.com by Bill Willis PhDc and John Meadows, CSCS, CISSN – 9/14/2011

 

 

Fructose, but not glucose, knocks your metabolism backwards!!

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Welcome back – A short sharp post this week…

Glucose & fructose are both types of sugar and they are both the ones most often mentioned in a negative health context. Fructose, particularly in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup, continues to gain a (deservedly in my opinion) reputation in both nutruitional & medical circles.

Brown suagr - just one of the many forms of this carb that abound in our diets...

It has been linked in numerous (and a growing number of) studies with a wide range of preventative illnesses. Obesity, type 2 diabetes, increased whole body inflammation, deranged insulin processing, altered liver function, increased risk of heart disease and is now being considered an adictive substance.

A recent study . namely:  Cox CL, et al.Consumption of fructose-sweetened beverages for 10 weeks reduces net fat oxidation and energy expenditure in overweight/obese men and women. (Advance online publication European Journal of Clinical Nutrition on 28 September 2011)

In this study glucose & fructose were lined up head to head for 10 weeks. Overweight and obese men and women were fed glucose or fructose sweetened drinks for this time period. The sugar content was designed to represent 25% of the daily energy requirements of these folk.  (If they normally eat 2400 calories a day then the sugar content was 600 calories  – about over 150grams.

Whilst there were a whole lot of measurements were taken of the participants the two of real interest to us are: Metabolism after eating (measured fat oxidation) and measuring theiur BMR (basal or ‘at rest’ metabolic rate)

The resulting measurement of these two areas showed that the consumption of high amounts of fructose (let’s face 25% of your daily calroes as fructose, or glucose or any other sugar IS a lit!) led to significant reductions in both measures. Inother words it slowed down the participants metabolisms both after eating (where you would expect in usual circumstances at lease a small spike upwards due to the Thermic effect of food) and at reast. Don’t forget we burn most of our calories at rest.

Fructose in fruit = good, as corn syrup = BAD!!

What was surprising was that these reductions were not seen with the same level of glucose consumption.  Based on this it would be correct to assusme that on a gram for gram basis, fructose carries a much larger potential for adding fat to your body than does glucose.

So what do we  conclude from this? That glucose is good & fructose is bad? That we should therfore eat glucose laden foods with abandon and at the same time forgo all fruit?

No. The amounts of sugars in this experiment were large and hopefully way above anything you or your loved ones consume. What this does show though is that high amounts of fructose can harm health, and can be viewed as being more damaging than glucose.

So still eat fruit but cut down on if not entirely eleiminate ay processed food with Fructose (especially in the HFCS form) to protect your health & stay a bit leaner.

See you next week.

Metabolism – What it is & How you can make it work for you Part 3

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Welcome Back!!

Today we look at the 4 components of metabolism and how you can manipulate them to drop fat…

The Four Components of Your Metabolism:

Human metabolism is basically made up of four parts which combine to become our metabolic rate.

In any 24-hour period, our bodies ‘burn’ a given number of calories – this is called TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) or TEE (Total Energy Expenditure) – and this calorie / kilojoule burn is a measure of our body’s metabolic rate.

Your body’s metabolic rate (or TDEE) can be divided into four components:

Broadly speaking this is our metabolism...

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is the number of calories your body burns while sleeping. Many factors can affect your BMR, including your age, health, stress level, and even the temperature of your environment. Your BMR, like all of your metabolic elements, decreases as you age. This means that it is harder for your body to burn calories and harder for you to lose fat the older you get. Increases in BMR are possible but this increase comes about through the actions of the next three components.

Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is a measure of the amount of calories / kilojoules your body burns at rest just to maintain it. The RMR accounts for 50-80 per cent of the energy we use doing ‘nothing’ whilst being awake.

In reality even when lazing around or just chilling out watching DVDs our body’s metabolism is still active. The total lean mass of our body, especially muscle mass, is largely responsible for the RMR.

So, anything that reduces your lean mass will reduce your RMR. RMR is the largest part of our total metabolism and accounts for 50 – 80% of the calories burnt in a day. This is why it’s so important to preserve lean tissue mass when you are working at shedding fat – your RMR is your main metabolic ‘furnace’. This means that exercise that encourages the preservation or growth of muscle is a must if we are to get the RMR working for us.

Your RMR is also affected by the simple act of eating which leads us to…

The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) – this is covered in depth in the Lose 20 in 30 Fuel Manual but essentially TEF is a measure of the energy that your body uses to eat, digest and metabolise food.

Really it is the second law of Thermodynamics at work – converting energy from one form to another is never 100% efficient. This means that to release the energy in food we need to expend energy to ‘fuel’ this process.

TEF accounts for about 5-10 per cent of our energy use. Our RMR rises after we eat because of the energy

Maximise your TEF by eating lean proteins with low GI, high fobre carbs...

we use to eat, digest and process the food we’ve just eaten. The rise occurs soon after we begin to eat and peaks two to three hours later. The RMR rise can range from between 2-3 per cent to up to 25-30 per cent, depending on the size of the meal and the types of foods eaten.

For example:

  • Fats – generally raise the RMR about 4 per cent
  • Carbohydrates – can raise RMR up to 6 per cent
  • Proteins –  usually raise RMR up to 30 per cent

Unfortunately, since our body can store excess dietary fat pretty much directly as body fat, there is no need to convert it, so eating fat generates virtually no thermic effect at all.

Another factor that affects your TEF is your body composition. Basically the leaner you are the higher your TEF is. Columbia University ran a trial with a group of lean individuals and a group of obese ones and then tested their TEF at rest, during exercise and after exercise.

Compared to the obese group the lean group TEF was:

  • 70% Higher at rest
  • 316% Higher during exercise
  • 175% Higher after exercising.

This is proof that shedding fat helps to recondition your metabolism which in turn helps keep you lean.

The Thermic Effect of Activity (TEA) – this is the amount of energy that we use during physical activity – and for in a ‘normally’ active person, this accounts for 15 – 40 per cent of our daily energy use depending upon the type of activity and its metabolic ‘cost.’ The range in effect is because of the variance in the amount of and type of activity we can indulge in.

This will up your TEA no end!!!

TEA includes all physical activity whether conscious exercise, climbing stairs, brushing your teeth, shivering in the cold or even fidgeting. At rest, by themselves, our muscles can account for about 20 per cent of our total energy expenditure. Not too shabby but during strenuous exercise, our rate of muscular energy expenditure can increase 50-fold or more. During heavy physical exertion, our muscles can burn through as much as 3,000kJ per hour. This is the only type of energy ‘burn’ that we can directly control – the energy used during conscious exercise.

After food intake, movement and conscious exercise are the final keys to fat loss and a reconditioned metabolism.

It is here where we can have the greatest immediate effect on our metabolism. The metabolic effects of food work hand in glove with conscious exercise, but nothing revs up your metabolism in the short term as much as vigorous exercise. The intensity, type, frequency and duration of any activity will have an effect on metabolism. We need to choose wisely and use those which have the highest metabolic cost and the create the strongest afterburn.

I can’t stress it enough – the effect of your TEA on your metabolism will vary depending on your individual activity level each day. The more you move the more you burn. The smarter you move the even more you burn.

A sedentary person will require fewer calories to maintain their current body composition than a busy worker on a construction site or someone who uses metabolic resistance training at least 3 times a week.

Of these 4 metabolic components we are most interested in and most able to directly positively affect the TEF & our TEA. Once get these 2 components working for us, our RMR & BMR will both rise, and our set points can be altered. More importantly our body composition can shift.

Okay so how do we use these components? That’s the subject of the next post…

Take Away: By raising your RMR we can become leaner and stay that way – the 2 ways we can do this most easily are by manipulating our TEA & the TEF.

No More Excuses – Plan your new body using the New Financial year…

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Welcome back!!

Let’s put a new spin on the usual New Year’s Resolution  mess – let’s use the start of the new Financial Year (July 1st)  as the deadline to get our house in order and be ready and able to shed fat, refire our metabolisms and get healthier & fitter!!

This is how it works – it’s the 10th of June as I write this and you have until the 30th to get your kitchen prepared and ready for the next 12 months of right eating, exercising and living…You’ll have to hustle to get everything ready for the new, improved you…

Why wait for january 1st??

What will your fridge have inside of it? Your cupboards and your pantry? What will be in your freezer? Don’t forget – you cannot out train a poor diet so your health & leanness and fitness will depend upon on your kitchen and food supply…

The question is this. Is your kitchen prepared for the new you? Will they look inside your fridge and be impressed with your nutritional choices or will they cancel their developing path in your future? Will they have to call in a kitchen version of Extreme Makeover?

In this week’s blog I’m not going to try to give you an idea of what, where, when and why to eat – I presume that you’ve done enough research both here and on other blogs to have an idea of what works best for your body to become fit & lean…

Instead I’m going to try to give you an idea of the action-steps you need to take in order to execute your ‘new, leaner me’ plan effectively in  FY 2011/12.

Get Started- Create a Safe House

No – not one with safety bumpers and all sharp corners padded… Before the new Financial Year arrives you have to get the nerve centre of the house, the very heart of it in shape. We need to alter it so that it starts to resemble a place where Pro athletes and the lifelong lean come to eat. Let’s try to set a high standard from the get go. If you want a healthy lifestyle, a lean fit body then your kitchen has to become transformed into a place where you can eat like a champion.

The plan is to remove all foods that are not conducive to and supportive of your revitalised metabolic, lean body, fit goals and replace them with foods and a variety of better choices that do.

I’ve already made reference to the study that showed the closer candy is the ore you eat, the more visible junk food is the more folk eat…so if you get the junk food, the processed food out of the house you will not eat it. If it is there don’t try to kid yourself – you will eventually eat it.

If they're in your house you'll eat them sooner or later...

The key here is to view your home like a Neighbourhood Watch credentialed ‘safe house’ – that is a place where you can find sanctuary from poor foods & food choices. A safe place where you are free from all the temptations of the food we know do not support a reconditioned, fat free, lean physique. Everywhere else you go there will be temptation – fast food for the quick lunch, finger food at socials, alcoholic beverages at parties, sweets at a friend’s house or apartment, birthday cake at work and.. the list goes on. With all of this temptation, this potential for sabotage, you need to create a safe house you can return to each night.

Here’s how to do it right for  FY 2011/12:

The Fridge and Pantry Makeover

Okay – empty your fridge, pull everything out & put it on the kitchen counters. Look at the cornucopia of uncleanness you have brought into the light of day… and move it to one side for the moment. Now strip out the pantry – same drill put everything onto the kitchen counter, if you don’t have room then bring out the garbage bin, put a fresh liner into it and walk around and start to fill it…

Now you need to call your family, your wife, your husband, or your boy / girlfriend together ‘cause tis fridge & pantry cleaning time!

For some reason it is easier to re-stock a clean empty fridge with healthy food choices if it has been scrubbed within an inch of its life first. Don’t take my word for it – try it!!(if you are feeling really ambitious throw in an oven clean as well…)

What to put in the Bin

In reality there are few actually ‘bad ‘foods, just foods that are eaten at the wrong times. An occasional Big Mac or packet of crisps or Mars bar or handful of M&Ms will not hurt you – the trick is occasional.

Here are some guidelines that, if you follow them, will get you into a smaller pair of jeans sooner…

SODAS AND JUICES – Both are essentially water and sugar – if you want fruit eat the real thing or juice your own.

PROCESSED MEAT – store pre-made burgers, sausages, pepperoni, bacon and related foods are

Fats, Nitrates & sodium - not what you want to be eating...

absolutely full of fat. We know that all fat is not bad for us but heaps of saturated fat with lots of nitrates (just one of the 10+ preservatives used in the meat processing industry) lots of sodium and you have a heap of protein that will set your health & quest for leanness way back. These foods are NOT good sources of protein.

FROZEN DESSERTS AND ICE CREAM – Sugar, artificial colours, preservatives, fats – nothing here is a good choice to eat. Want some dessert try Greek yoghurt with some peanut butter whipped in…

SAUCES & DRESSINGS – doesn’t matter the name if it falls into the categories of ketchup, barbecue or mustard sauce, mayonnaise, French, Italian or greek dressing most of these are really just another way to get a lot of HFCS. Use pan juices or homemade. You’re much better off spicing up your meals naturally with spices and herbs and just avoiding all the sugar and extra empty calories commercial sauces & dressings provide.

PROCESSED FOODS – View with suspicion anything that is in a box, a wrapper or bag. Especially beware those with lots of bright colours and which proclaim ‘Low Fat’ or ‘Reduced’ something… You should hear an air raid siren when you look at these types of ‘food’ choices. Rule of thumb – if sugar (any type) is in the top 5 ingredients, if it appears in more than 1 form or if the label has more than half a dozen ingredients that sound like they belong in a Lab – then out it goes.

More likely than not what you were looking at was de-natured, processed, nutrient-sparse and not really fit for humans to eat. Most of these foods have a long list of binders and fillers that give a longer shelf life but add nothing nutritionally. The other test is if your Grandmother would not recognise it as  food then out it goes… Avoid this processed stuff at all cost!

SAVOURY BISCUITS & CRACKERS – As per the above – but with the delights of added sodium and more than likely a helping of trans fats…

BISCUITS & COOKIES – Fat, sugars, flavourings, binders, fillers, artificial creams – just a disaster..

White flour as an ingredient - not what we want...

WHITE FLOUR & WHITE FLOUR PRODUCTS – Let’s see white bread, bagels & rolls, packet cake mixes, muffins, etc etc. Denatured, nutrient sparse and bad for you. Whilst there is a growing view (supported by science) that we are not meant to eat grains or grain products the ones we do eat come from sources where the nutritional value has been all but removed in the processing. The removal in milling of a wheat seed’s bran and its ‘germ’ sees over 70% of the nutrients also taken out. (0+% of fibre is lost and then the resulting denatured mess is bleached to get that lovely, deathly shade of white so it looks attractive and has a long shelf life…

Then of course they add back vitamins & minerals & fibre – they call this enriching – but use the cheapest materials possible to supposedly add nutritional value when really all that is occurring is a shell game to cover up the paucity of real nutrients present.

PASTA – unless it is wholemeal (and even then it is a bit suspect) out it goes for all of the reasons pertaining to white flour.

POTATO CHIPS – Loads of saturated fat? Lots of sodium? Lots of laboratory designed ‘nature identical’ flavourings? Colourings? Preservatives? Yep – they’ve got them all…If you have to have potato chips use your oven & make your own. The chemical load from these store bought ones put one heck of a strain on your body…

ANY ‘SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS’ IN CONTAINERS – TUPPERWARE OR OTHERWISE – Good rule of thumb, great lamb roast or not, terrific stir fry ot stew if it has been in the fridge for more than a day after it was first served up it is time to go…Likewise check the ‘Use By’ or ‘Best By’ dates on foods as well. If they are past it throw them.

Check your labels – Trans fats – in the bin, Sugar in the top 5 ingredients? In the bin. Sugar over 12

Now stage 2...

grams per serve – in the bin. You know what to look for – really look at the packaged food labels & don’t be surprised if most of it you throw out (or put in a box and give you your neighbours or your son’s girlfriend’s family – whatever, whomever – just get it out of the house!!

Now What to Add to the Kitchen

Feeling virtuous now? In charge? A little guilty perhaps – no matter here is what you need to use to replace all of the non-goal supporting food stuffs. Your pantry & fridge probably look like Old Mother Hubbard’s place and that means that it is time to re-stock it.

BEVERAGES – Water, water & more water – get several litres / quarts a day into you. Drink filtered or boiled and avoid tap water unless you live in an area with safe supplies. Don’t buy bottled water – it is more expensive than petrol or scotch, and bad for the environment.

Have some green tea, make some of your own juices and perhaps a glass of red wine (a glass not several)…If you must have a zero calorie soda but if you can avoid all sodas, store bought fruit juices, flavoured milk, store bought iced teas, etc etc

BEEF, LAMB, FISH – go for lean cuts, use a slow cooker for cheaper cuts, get creative on the barbeque or watch Master Chef. Fresh Salmon is great!Lean protein is an absolute must!

BONELESS CHICKEN THIGH FILLETS & BREASTS – Essential, wonderful, versatile, low fat high protein. The thigh fillets stay moister and have more flavour but are a little fattier.

LEAN TURKEY OR CHICKEN SAUSAGES – Great for a change and for breakfast – again go for low processed ones. (My local butcher makes his own)

Lean protein is on the list to keep!!

LEAN TURKEY AND CHICKEN MINCE – Another great way to add variety to meals.

TINNED SALMON OR TUNA – water packed and low salt. Great for a snack or a standby…

COOKING SPRAY – Olive oil is best, canola second, nothing else is third or below…

CHEESE – Use in moderation but am important source of calcium, protein minerals and more. Have a variety of soft & hard, use as a garnish or to flavour salad. Beware parmesan that is not bought in a block – check the label. Avoid processed cheddars – you know the ones the soft, yellow plastic like ones…

NUTS & DRIED FRUIT – Brazil nuts for their zinc (men you need this – trust me!), walnuts for their ‘best of all nuts’ antioxidant profile, macadamias for their beneficial fats. No salted or roasted, no mixed or sugar coated…Dried fruits are packed with energy & calories. Use to head off sweet cravings and for a snack replacement, Use sparingly – they are calorie heavy. Also be careful – many dried fruits have an ingredient profile to match food from a box. Read the labels.

EGGS – For the socially conscious & well heeled chose free range, for the rest of us aim to get Omega 3 eggs in preference to others. Bottomline, no matter the source eggs are the closest thing nature has produced to the perfect convenience food.

FRUIT – Get an assortment of types & colours. Aim for at least a couple of pieces everyday and yes – one of them should be an apple of some variety.

A VARIETY OF GREEN TEAS – Plain green tea is great but  like the peppermint variety – up to you. Again just check your labels because even tea can be stuffed up.

GRAINS & GRAIN BASED FOODS – I love my bread – especially the ‘rustic’ styles and a bacon &

Get ready to drink lots of this...

cheese pull apart…But I indulge in these white flour products at Sunday brunch only. The rest of the time it is real wholemeal, seeded or rye. In every case it is used sparingly.

In terms of grain foods – oats, steel curt in preference to instant 9additives) but oats for breakfast along with an egg, a coffee and fesh juice is the best way I know to start off a working day…

PASTA, NOODLES & RICE – Not eaten very often, always wholemeal for pasta, brown for rice and as low preservative / low additive as possible for noodles. Never white rice or ‘normal’ pasta.

BEANS / LEGUMES – Kidney beans, split peas, chickpeas and lentils are excellent sources of fibre, a great way to add body to a stew or casserole of substance to a salad. Look for tinned with few ingredients beyond the beans & water or go frozen.

SAUCES AND CONDIMENTS – Make your own (it’s worth the trouble) use vinegar, olive oil infused with spices, wine or again – low ingredient ones from the store. Look in the Asian section of your supermarket – try adding coconut milk or even using some of the green or yellow curries.

SPICES – Rosemary, oregano, thyme, basil, mints, chilli, coriander, oregano – the list is almost endless – not only do ‘hot’ spices give your metabolism a boost but spices in general add flavour, lift a dish and also boost your immune system. Grow them yourself or get fresh ones…

VEGETABLES – Easy lots & lots of these with as wide a variety of type & colours as you can find. 4 or

Spices - boost immune systems, metabolism & flavour!!

5 servings a day. Buy often to ensure freshness. Greengrocer in preference to supermarket, market in preference to greengrocer. Staples to have are: spinach, broccoli, capsicum / peppers, asparagus, tomatoes, mushrooms, Spanish onions, cucumbers, sweet potato, Bok Choy, fresh garlic & ginger, celery and carrots.

Planning & then Shopping Smart

Create a weekly meal plan based along sound nutritional (ie low processed carbs, high lean protein, high natural carbs) and shop to this. On average you will be eating between 21 and 42 times a week, every week depending whether or not you are eating 3 or 6 (recommended) times a day.

Aim for a 90% success rate. When, if, you fall short and eat some crap don’t berate yourself, enjoy the fact that you are indeed human and then get back into the right food right action saddle.

It can be hard replacing old behaviours with new habits (that’s all habits are – repeated behaviours) but once you have done something 21 times in a row it becomes a new habit. This is not as easy as it sounds but it holds enough truth for you to use it as a guideline! Add in the 90% compliance target and eating better is not as daunting as it first seems.

Use a list when shopping. Develop the list from your meal plan. Plan to buy fresh foods a couple of times during the week. Plan to buy non-perishable foods in bulk to cut down on expenses & time.

Shop the periphery of the supermarket (the fresh, frozen & refrigerated food departments) first then dive – fleetingly – into the aisles for other essentials. Avoid the soda & sweet aisles.

There you have it – clean out the crap, clean the kitchen and bring in the new!!!

Whatever body you are living in now – perhaps it is too fat or too thin, not tight enough or too tight, soft flabby or muscular – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that if you are not happy with it a new FY kick off starting in the kitchen could be all you need to transform your body for the better. You are, in the end, responsible for how you look & feel.

Your shape ultimately is up to you.

Remember how you are now is the direct result of the person you are, and the decisions you have made. Stay the same and you’ll stay the same

Make the new Financial year – 2011 /12, not only the year that you master your meal plan – but the year that you stick to your resolutions and create a new body and a new life!

See you next time!!

A Simple Swap To Lower Body Fat

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Hi & Wecome back!!

This week’s post is relatively short because the message is simple – to lose body fat and get healthier alter the source & types of carbs you eat.

Regular readers will know that I am not anti-carb, but anti- processed, denatured, nutrient sparse carbs. Our bodies need carbs and the micronutrient that come with natural source carbs, so the whole ‘no

Swapping these for simple carbs...

carb’ thing does not make any sense to me except for specific and strategic short term use – but that is another post.

So here is the message short & sharp – replace starchy, processed carbs with vegetables and fruit. Yep just like your Mum & her Mum and her… used to say. They were & are right – fruit & veggies are the best sources of carbs and the co-factors and micronutrients that our bodies need for peak efficiency.

Vegetables should be the main type of carb you eat with fruit also essential but insmaller quantities because of the effects of fructose.(quick side note fructose from fruit is not a problem except in a society that add high fructose corn syrup to damn near everything – this creates a sensitivity to fructose that leads to various not so good halth effects. Fruit is good but in moderation…)

Here’s why you choose these natural sources:

Lots of carbs here - just not the ones that are good for you...

All of the carbs that you eat end up as glucose (blood sugar) after your body has processed them, taken out the vitamins & minerals, the antioxidants & co-factors; the fibre and leaves only its preferred energy source.

So after processing by your body; a piece of bread, an apple, a tomato, some potato or broccoli; a spoonful of sugar, a soda, a strawberry or even an Oreo are turned into your body’s main fuel source, blood sugar.

In other words – any carb, no matter its source, ends up in your blood stream as glucose.

What makes a spectacular difference to your health and body fat is the rate at which the carbs you feed your body are processed and metabolised.

Tim Ferriss talks about ‘Fast’ & ‘Slow’ Carbs in his book the ‘4 Hour Body’ and diabetics (and savvy folk) are familiar with the Glycemic Index which lists carbs as being high ‘GI’ (fast to break down to glucose) and low ‘GI” (slower to break down to glucose).

Simple / Fast carbs are those with a high GI and tend be starchy carbs. They are easy to spot – they have been processed and often are white in colour (no not cauliflower – but white flour products, white rice, white sugar, etc etc – all processed, starchy high GI foods) Some fruits fall into this category as well – especially dried fruits. Simple carbs are converted more rapidly into glucose for a quick energy boost.

Only a little goodness here

Complex / Slow carbs are those with high levels of fibre, generally a low GI rating, can often be imagined as coming from a farm or an orchard and tend to come in many colours with green being the predominant one. Oats is an example of a processed carb that is low GI (Steel cut, NOT instant). Complex carbohydrates take longer to break down into glucose and therefore offer a more sustained supply of energy for your body.

This sustained energy supply is why you must choose complex carbohydrates as your main carb source. Blood sugar spikes from simple, fast carbs cause insulin spiking and fat storage. Slow carbs do not.

However this is a simplistic view – ‘Fast’ versus ‘Slow’ carbs, high ‘GI’ versus low ‘GI’ the truth is more complex than this. It always is when we begin to look at the processes of our bodies – they overlap & interact at so many levels that simplistic approaches can be dangerous at worst or just misleading at beast.

Why? Well take watermelon. It is a high GI food but eating it actually has a negligible effect on glucose levels – even in large quantities.

Watermelon may have a high GI, but compared to other carb foods you might eat, it doesn’t have as much carbohydrate because it is mainly water.

Hi GI or not???

There is a small amount of carbohydrate in watermelon. This amount is processed into glucose very quickly making it a high-GI food, but because there is so little of it, it just doesn’t have much of an effect on your blood glucose levels, so in terms of impact, it is very low. This impact of the amount of carbs in a food is called the ‘Glycaemic Load’.

This is an important point – it is the amount of carbohydrate in a food that matters, not just the speed at which it is processed into glucose. We know that all carbs are turned into glucose – so it follows that the more carbs in a food, the more glucose that will be produced from it. Again this by itself is not  clear guide – what is needed is a method that takes into account the amount of carbs in a food and the speed at which those carbs are metabolised into glucose by our body. This measure is the Glycaemic Load (GL) which considers the amount of carbohydrate in a food as well as its GI. Both of these factors acting together determine the blood glucose response from any food.

To work out glycaemic load (GL), multiply the GI x the grams of carbohydrate, then divide by 100.

For example:

  • 1 cup of watermelon: (GI of 72 x 9 grams carb) / 100 = 6.5.
  • 1 cup of sweetcorn (GI of 37 x 32 grams carb) / 100 = 11.8.

Your body’s glucose response to the same amount of these 2 foods will be quite different because the amount of carb present in each. The differing amount of carbohydrate affects the glycaemic load. Portion size is another way to affect the glycaemic load of a food. For example, one cup of sweetcorn has a GL of 11.8 but half a cup only has a GL of 5.9.

What this shows is that using the GI by itself is okay as a rough rule of thumb, but it does not give you the full story. You need to also take into account the amount of carbohydrate in the food you are eating.  For this reason, the GI is most useful when choosing between foods with a high percentage of carbohydrate and but becomes fairly irrelevant when foods contain a low percentage of carbohydrate.

However the carb content should be taken one step further – the amount of carbs in a food that comes from fibre also affects your body’s speed of metabolising carbs to glucose. The Atkins people introduced the idea of ‘Nett’ carbs years ago and this was arrived at by subtracting the amount of fibre in a food from its total carb count. The remaining amount is the ‘Nett’ carbs and you apply the GL to this.

This is important because foods with a high carb% that also contain a high fibre % will convert to glucose to more slowly than high carb / low fibre foods. This also highlights that when a food has a low GI it does not mean you can eat huge volumes of it.

Bottomline – fibre counts – big time! And fibre comes from lightly to unprocessed foods, not factory processed ones.

So when considering a low- or high-GI food we need to also take into account how much carbohydrate a food contains and how much of that is fibre.

Bread, rice, pasta and cereals are mainly carbohydrate so choosing low-GI varieties makes a difference – but only if they are high fibre varieties.

All fruit and vegetables are fantastic for health because they are packed full of antioxidants and nutrients. But some fruits are low in fibre but high in carb content and therefore should be eaten sparingly.

Go for lots of colours when you are getting your fibre...

The biggest reason to switch from a diet full of starchy carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and rice to a diet with more fibrous, leafy ones like vegetables is the calories involved.

By ‘swapping’ out starchy, fast, simple carbs and replacing them with slow, complex, fibrous ones you will create a significant drop in calories. To lose fat we know we need to create a calorie deficit so fewer calories with more stable blood sugar will certainly assist in leading to a significant drop in body fat.

Just like it’s wise to moderate fats because they are very calorie dense, starchy carbohydrates like bread and pasta are more calorie dense (and definitely more nutrient sparse!!) than fibrous, carb sources like vegetables in general and leafy ones in particular.

What you want to do is eat a lot of calorie sparse, nutrient dense foods that makes us feel full without over-doing it with the calories. (See my earlier post – February I think – on achieving healthy satiety)

For effective, permanent fat loss, I feel it’s important to choose foods that are in high fibre are nutritionally dense but low in calories. This way you do not feel hungry because you are full from the fibre of the carbs, you don’t feel too deprived as the improved nutritional impact will help you cope with any cravings that arise from a ‘fast’ carb withdrawal. You will still be eating a lot of food but you’ll be getting a lot fewer calories.

Vegetables & most fruits offer this luxury. You can eat a lot in volume, but you just don’t get a lot of calories in return. (Unless you deep fry them, drench them in honey or drown them in butter on a consistent basis…)

Increased Complex Carbs = Fat Loss

This high volume, low calorie luxury doesn’t exist with starchy carbohydrates.

A small serving of starchy carbs like pasta, bread, and rice is still high in calories.

For example, a 1/4-cup of rice has approximately 150 calories, but you can eat an entire bag of carrots or 8 or more cups of broccoli and still have ingested fewer calories than if you the 1/4 cup of rice.

Look I love bread as much as the next person, especially Sunday morning brunch with a fresh loaf from the local bakery, and I am not suggesting that you stop eating grains, pasta, oatmeal or rices. I am however suggesting that you eat less of them, swap them out for more vegetables, reduce their serving size at your meals and add some leafy green stuff!

Supplement smaller servings of simple, fast carbs with more vegetables.

Your body absolutely needs carbohydrates. Carbs are the body’s main source of glucose. Your brain cannot function without glucose; in fact, you’d die without blood sugar.

Cut down on these don't cut them out...

So to start cutting excess calories from your diet, start to limit the amount of starchy carbs like bread, pasta, rice, oatmeal, bagels, that you eat and swap them instead for more vegetables like broccoli, carrots, green beans, spinach. lettuce, peas, and so on.

You’ll lose fat. Your skin will improve and so will a lot of other health indicators.

Be well, see you next time.