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.

The Fat in your diet is not the Fat on your Hips…(or Belly or Thighs or…)

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Welcome back!!

There has and continues to be a lot of debate about the best ways to lose weight. Regular readers know that I think that is a poor term – what we want is to drop fat!!

Eating fat in your diet is not associated with cancer

Regardless – if you talk to a Dietician or Nutritionist – they say it is all in the food & calories or else in eliminating particular foods or eating special ones. Doctors tend to say eat less and exercise more. Personal Trainers will emphasise exercise.

One thing that they will all tell you is to eat less dietary fat, that fat in your diet is the enemy and you should eliminate it.

They’re wrong.

More & more research is coming to light that shows that dietary fat is in fact beneficial to your metabolism, your nutrient partitioning and your health. The real message that we should be getting is that most fats are good.

The Chairman of of the Department of Nutrition of the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr Walter Willett, said back in 2000 that ” the relationship of fat intake to health is one of the areas that we have examined in detail over the last 20 years in our 2 cohort studies: The Nurses Health Study & the Health Professionals Follow Up Study. We found virtually no relationship between the percentage of calories from fat and any important health outcome.” (Bold & Italics mine)

So what you say – that was 11 years ago… but wait a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition saw researchers reporting on the results of a recent study looked at the relationship of dietary fat and cancer risk using data taken from 4 separate studies in Great Britain.

But Trans fats will increase your cancer risk...

They looked at the data from 657 breast cancer cases in pre and post menopausal women and compared this data to 1911 control subjects. Essentially they crossed tracked the results with the incidence of breat cancer, with a specific interest in this and the intake of saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturtated fats.

They were unable to find any link.

Yep none. In fact what they did find was that those with a higher dietary fat intake actually enjoyed a slight protective effect. In fact the highest fat intake when compared to the lowest has a 10% reduction in the liklihood of breast cancer.

Now before you go off and start eating deep fried foods etc there are a couple of things for you to put into perspective:

Let’s be very clear – your risk of various cancers (not to mention other chronic health ailments) rises in line with your body fat – this is an identified and recognised medical fact.

Carrying extra body fat, especially a lot of extra body fat is a definite risk factor for many cancer types. Fat cells pump out hormones and inflammatory substances which can increase the risk of cancer (&diabetes & heart disease &…)

The fat on your plate, the marbling in your steak – are not the same as the fat on your belly or on your hips.

You don’t get fat from eating fat. Fat does not magically go from your plate through your digestive system & end up on your waist. You get  fat from eating more calories than your body needs for your level of activity.

The percentage of fat in the excess food in your diet does not matter at all when it comes to putting on fat.

It's the Trans fats that'll do you in...

Likewise if you are lean & active – if you are eating calories in line with what your body needs for fuel & to stay lean, then the percentage of those calories that come from fat doesn’t matter either.

The fact is that dietary fat intake has little to no effect on insulin and doesn’t stimulate the fat storing hormones in the same way that an identical number of extra calories from sugar, or cereals or bread or pastries will.

There is one fat, and one fat only to be vigilant about: Trans fats. These, along with high fructose corn syrup are man made disasters and responsible for more health issues than any thing else we have in our diets.

If the fat on your plate has been excessively heated, or does not come from a whole food source, then don’t eat it.

So do something about the fat on your belly & hips – but don’t lose too much sleep about the fat on your plate or in your diet (so long as it is not transfats!!) We know that in order to lose fat you have to increase your metabolism through regular challenging exercise, use foods in a strategic way to support a faster metabolism and to manipulate your hormones (Leptin, Ghrelin etc) and generally avoid nutrient sparse but energy dense processed foods.

In a nut shell – you can’t out train a poor diet. But you can lose fat quicker and become healthier by combining these three things:

  1. Exercise
  2. Food choice
  3. The intelligent use of 1 & 2 to manipulate your hormones

We can't all look like this, but dietary fat in line with our calorie needs won't be the reason if we don't...

In reality, the key to losing body fat is to adopt a strategic, holistic approach that emphasises an intelligent diet, good challenging exercise and lots of rest.

The rules are simple – eat as much nutrient dense, unprocessed, as-close-to-whole-foods as possible, line up your calorie intake with your energy needs, exercise often & in a challenging fashion, move more, sit less and get a full night’s sleep.

Not only will you be healthier anbd happier but you’ll stop worrying about bogeymen like dietary fat.

See you next week.

From Dr. Johnny Bowden – Why You Don’t Need to Worry About that Women and Vitamins Study

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Welcome Back!

As most of you know I rarely have guest posts and even more rarely do I re-publish something from someone else.

However the post I’ve included today is so important for our understanding of how the media and unfortunately many medical companies & practitioners twist the tuth to give their p[referred story that I felt that I had to put ti up here.

The original can be found here: http://jonnybowdenblog.com/women-and-vitamins-study/bowden.

If you’re not on his mailing list you should be – he provides great, unbiased information. (& no I am NOT an affiliate, nor do I earna cent from recommending his site…)

Without further ado – here is this imprtant article – it’s long but well worth a read. More from me next week.

Why You Don’t Need to Worry About that Women and Vitamins Study

by Dr. Jonny · 14 comments

 

Before I start talking about that vitamin study you all want to know about,  I want to say a few words about MSNBC and FOX NEWS.

Trust me, it’s relevant.

No matter what side of the political fence you’re on, I’m sure you’ll agree that cable news has become extremely shrill and highly partisan. Both MSNBC and FOX may agree on the facts they are reporting but then spin them in an entirely different way to reach entirely different conclusions.

Each political argument is founded on certain “if’s, and’s and “maybes”; i.e. this policy will lower (or raise) the debt assuming certain projections (such as medical costs or unemployment) are in fact true. Different researchers come up with very different projections (just read the Wall Street Journal stock advice columns!) Depending on whose projections and figures you use, even well-intentioned honest people can come to very different conclusions.

So why am I talking about cable news in a story about women and vitamins?

Because, sadly, the same thing that happens on cable news happens in nutrition science.

The problem is everyone knows it’s happening in cable news, but people naively think science is always “objective” and reporting about science is actually accurate.

Neither is true.

Take the latest scary study that’s got everybody all a-dwiddle about how if you’re an older woman taking some common vitamins, you might die.

The Media’s Take: Fair and Balanced, Anyone?

Let’s start with the reporting. One typical headline I saw about this story shrieked, “More Bad News About Vitamins!” Now if you read that without slowly shaking your head, go back and think for a minute about what’s implied in that headline.

We’re talking one study with a very mildly (and very questionable) negative result (we’ll get to that in a minute).

Now compare that one study to the dozens and dozens and dozens of studies that come out on a regular basis showing the benefits of vitamin K, vitamin D, vitamin C, minerals like selenium, magnesium, fats like omega-3’s, and even- in several studies- the lowly multivitamin. A writer or newspaper or television station with a different slant might easily have titled this story, “A Surprising Negative Study on Vitamins Amidst a Sea of Positive Ones”. “More Bad News About Vitamins!”? Serious?

(Yes, I used “serious?” instead of “seriously” on purpose. I feel like it gives me street cred. Please humor me.)

OK now let’s get to the study itself, and what it found.

Which isn’t very much. But let’s take a look.

“Let’s Go To The Videotape”

The study was titled “Dietary Supplements and Mortality Rate in Older Women: The Iowa Women’s Health Study“.

The researchers took the database of the Iowa Women’s Health Study and examined the records of 38,772 older women- average age 61.2 at the start of the study—looking specifically at their use of dietary supplements.

Well, they didn’t exactly look at the women at all, since it was not a clinical study. No one was given supplements and monitored, supplement use wasn’t confirmed by any outside source, nothing like that.  No, they assessed supplement use with three….count ‘em, three… self-reporting questionnaires given to the women at three different points during the 18 year study, which began in 1986  and continued through 2004.  (No one was asked about doses, brands, combinations, nothing. Just “did you use a supplement?” “Yes: Vitamin C, vitamin B, vitamin E, multivitamin, calcium, iron”.)

OK, cool, see you in 11 years or so!

The researchers then examined the death records through the State Health Registry of Iowa and through the National Death Index. They checked for all original 38,772 women and found that by Dec. 31, 2008, 15,594 of them had indeed died. (Which was approximately 40% of the women. But do remember, at baseline- 1986—they were pushing 62. This is 22 years later. An optimistic way to look at it is that 60% of these ladies were living into their mid-eighties! But I digress, and this really has nothing to do with the story.)

But that’s OK, because the study itself is pretty boring and doesn’t have very much to tell us. Although you’d never know it from the media attention it got (see above).

First let’s look at the conclusions of the study, then we’ll talk about what they mean. (Spoiler alert: they mean next to nothing. I’ll show you why.)

The conclusions of the study (in the researchers’ words): “In older women, several commonly used dietary vitamin and mineral supplements may be associated with increased total mortality risk; this association is strongest with supplemental iron. In contrast to the findings of many studies, calcium is associated with decreased risk”.

Since the words “associated” or “association” are used three times in the above paragraph, let’s take a minute and look at what an association (observational) study actually is.

What Exactly Is An “Observational” Study?

In an observational study from which many associations are generated, you take a whole bunch of people- thousands of them—and you gather data about a zillion different things.

Maybe it’s blood pressure and cholesterol, maybe it’s heart disease, maybe it’s what they ate for breakfast, how often they brush their teeth,  how many of their parents had diabetes,  how many of them own television sets, practice the rhumba, love Lady Gaga, take antidepressants, or pop a Centrum now and then.

OK now you’ve got a statistician’s version of heaven—tons and tons of data. Eighty gazillion gigabytes of numbers from thousands of people, and it’s your job to see if there’s any pattern, to determine which things are “associated”, meaning “found together”. If two things are said to be associated, that means there is some relationship between these two things that’s unlikely to be an accident.

Which brings us to “yellow finger syndrome”.

Correlation, Cause and “Yellow Finger Syndrome”

Interestingly, people with lung cancer are more likely to have yellow, stained fingers. So yellow stained fingers are positively “associated” (correlated) with lung cancer. In any given group, the more cases of yellow fingers you see, the more cases of cancer are likely.

Hmm…so who would have yellow fingers?

Let me guess. Smokers?

You can see in this case how wrong it would be to assume that because two things are associated, there is a cause and effect relationship. An association is not proof of cause. Yellow fingers don’t cause lung cancer, and lung cancer doesn’t cause yellow fingers. They’re found together because they’re both associated with a third variable, namely smoking.  Smoking causes lung cancer, and yellow fingers are a kind of irrelevant by-product of the real cause. (This kind of mistake is made all the time in cholesterol studies where high cholesterol is “associated” with heart disease except it’s not a cause even though everyone thinks it is. But I digress.)

So one thing we might ask is, what else might be true of women who are taking vitamins? Remember this study began in 1986, and vitamin usage wasn’t what it is now. Maybe these people were a bit sicker at baseline and were seeking out vitamins as a way of not getting sicker? Maybe they were people who were eating a particularly bad diet and told themselves that vitamin caps would make up for it? Who knows?

You always have to ask yourself, with any association, what else might be going on here? What else might be interfering with or “confounding” the results? Were all the vitamin takers, for example, also soccer players? (Of course not, but there’s a wild example of how an uncontrolled variable can have a huge effect on the results without anyone noticing.)

The Confounding Variable Issue

Researchers are very aware of confounding variables, so they try to adjust for these influences with statistical techniques (“adjusting for possible confounding variables”) but they don’t always adjust for the right ones. Or they can over adjust and wind up with an “association” that’s a pure statistical fluke. I’ll come back to this “adjusting” thing in a minute-  it’s very relevant to our little story, and wait till you hear how it relates to this study.

Though you’d never know it in a million years from any newspaper article or television story about this study, here’s what was true of the supplement using women at the beginning of the study: (This is taken directly from the actual research paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine.)

“At baseline, compared to nonusers, supplement users:

  1. had a lower prevalence of diabetes
  2. had a lower prevalence of high blood pressure
  3. smoked less
  4. had lower average BMI
  5. had lower average waist to hip ratio
  6. had higher educational levels
  7. were more physically active
  8. were more likely to be on estrogen replacement therapy

Then, get this—(you’re going to love this one!)

Adjusted for age and (calorie) intake, supplement use of vitamin B complex, vitamins C, D and E and calcium had significantly lower risk of total mortality compared to nonuse.

Wait, I thought the study concluded vitamin takers had a higher risk of total mortality?

Patience, grasshopper. We aren’t finished with the data.

OK, the researchers must’ve thought, age and calories are important, glad we adjusted for those, but there are probably a few other things to adjust for, so they did just that. “With further adjustment only the use of calcium retained a significantly lower risk of mortality”, they explain.

So none of the vitamins (except calcium) had a protective effect, which was exactly the hypothesis they set out to prove. (Their words: “Our hypothesis, based on the findings of a previous study by some of us, was that the use of dietary supplements would not be associated with a reduced rate of total mortality”.)

Great, hypothesis confirmed, vitamins suck, we can all go home now, right?

Ah what the heck. Let’s squeeze the data a little more, throw in some more things, see what we come up with.

Uh oh. Squeeze that data even more and presto now those three-times-in-18 years self-reports of vitamin use are now “associated” with a higher rate of mortality.

Do I have to tell you they were serving champagne that day in every marketing department of every pharmaceutical company in America?

So What’s the Risk?

The real punch line is that with all that hoopla, what “increased risk” of mortality are we talking about? Depending on the vitamin, maybe 6%- 15%. But let’s look at what that means, since it sounds way worse than it is.

Let’s say non-vitamin users died at a rate of 15 per 1000. A 6% increase in the risk of dying associated with vitamin use would mean that vitamin users would be now be expected to die at a rate of  15.9 women per 1000. A 10% increase in risk would mean that 16.5 women per 1000 would be expected to die. Now that’s no small thing if you happen to be among the .9 – 1.5 women affected, but let’s keep it in perspective. It’s a tiny association of questionable meaning-not exactly the death toll for the multivitamin, as Dr. David Katz solemnly proclaimed it on the Huffington Post.

I mean, come on.

Look, I’m not dismissing this study completely. But I am saying that there’s very little likelihood there’s anything to it. Put enough data into the mix and you can come up with associations to make almost any case. (The China Study, T. C. Campbell’s book about The China Project—a massive study of diet and health in rural China– is a perfect example of this kind of data selecting. Out of 8000 associations generated in the original China Project, T.C. Campbell picked just those that supported his pro-vegan hypothesis and put them in his book, The China Study, conveniently omitting all the many associations that refuted his theory. But don’t get me started.)

Now if I were preparing a scholarly rebuttal to this study, I’d put it in perspective by citing the the hundreds of studies that have shown benefits for vitamins and minerals. I could easily go back and search out the many, many studies showing how low folic acid is a risk for cancer, how folic acid helps prevent spinal tube birth defects, how vitamin D affects mood, physical performance, obesity, cancer, how vitamin C increases phagytosis (a function of the immune system), how magnesium is associated with lower blood pressure and better blood sugar control, indeed how virtually every vitamin tested in the study has been shown in other studies to perform vitally important functions essential to your health.

But honestly, I give speeches, write books and columns and run a health website for a living. I don’t have research assistants. I don’t have graduate student interns who can look all this stuff up and find the references.

So what I’m hoping is that one of the more brilliant health bloggers like Denise Minger or Chris Masterjohn, avowed and self-described data-nerds, will spend a week sitting up all night with the research and will come up with their usual brilliant, referenced, unimpeachable, “just the facts, ma’am” rebuttals to the findings in this study.

Meanwhile let me just say this: It’s a tempest in a teapot.

Does it make any logical sense that in a study of over 30,000 women lasting 19 years, with eight gazillion other factors involved, popping the equivalent of a Centrum or One-A-Day (or saying that you did on the three questionnaires you filled out over the course of the study) made you more likely to die?

Seriously?

That just doesn’t pass the smell test for me.

 

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

 

 

Fat Loss, Pain & Metabolism

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Welcome back!

If you’re a regular reader of this blog then it’s a sure bet that you are either looking to take back control of your body or are at least pursuing a leaner, more toned body.

It also means that you know that I believe that reconditioning or at least elevating your metabolism is the keyto achieving this.

Body Weight works well...

There are many definitions of metabolism the one I like is: “Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in living organisms to sustain life.”

However if you are carrying too much body fat, or want to develop more muscle and become stronger and fitter, not to mention healthier – then simply sustaining life isn’t the goal to aim for.  Just surviving shouldn’t be your standard. Changing how you look & feel, what you eat, how (& how often) you move basically moving past mere survival towards thriving, growing, exceeding, and surpassing – this is a worthy goal.

It is in fact a life goal.

Becoming fitter & leaner is as simple (& as complex) as the fact that the higher level your metabolism functions, the better become your results as far as fat loss and maintaining a slim, trim body. Notice I didn’t say the more efficient your metabolism becomes…(although it will of course do so)…in many ways we want our metabolism to stay somewhat irregular because once your body become efficient at anything homeostasis sets in and your body fights against change…

It is better to think in terms of elevating your metabolism by manipulating the components of it that we can exert influence over. Of course once you’ve achieved your desired fat loss / lean body then keep doing what got you there and create a new metabolic set point – this way you co-opt your body’s desire for homeostasis to work for your goal, not against it…

Metabolism is complex (& simple)

So let’s revisit some of the strategies that you can utilise to make your metabolism work at a higher rate for you…

Human metabolism can be broadly broken down into two parts: catabolism and anabolism. Catabolism is concerned with tearing things down – it is the burning of calories, the digestion of food, the breaking down of body tissues for energy or as a precursor to rebuilding (think sore muscles after a hard work out – for the sake of simplicity the muscle soreness you feel is associated with catabolic processes). It is essential the processes whereby your body fuels your cells with energy by breaking down available fuel sources.

Without the catabolic part of metabolism we would not have the energy to provide the energy to our muscles that is needed to stand, sit, move, breathe and generally create movement. It is often talked about in a negative sense but without catabolism we would just be inert sacks of chemicals & minerals.

The other side of this simplified metabolic coin is Anabolism. The anabolic side of the equation is the building part of our metabolism. Cell repair, muscle, hair, & nail growth are all anabolic processes. Basically anabolism takes energy and uses it to link / bind chemical compounds together to make larger molecules & cells.

In order to use these processes in your quest to become less fat, stronger & healthier you need to maximise both of them. For catabolism this means challenging, regular exercise that causes your muscles & other energy pathways to burn fuel like fat, carbohydrates, and sugars. For anabolism it too means challenging exercise coupled with protein and nutrient rich foods. The more intensely that you

Tabata protocol using KBs works both sets of muscles & burns fat...

train the more your metabolism elevates and more opportunities your body gains to shed fat and gain lean mass.

As we’ve seen intense training is not long duration training and more importantly training that uses protocols like Tabatas or HIIT tend to work a lot of muscles – and this is important for overall fitness, well being and fat loss.

Muscles are the furnaces that burn fat in your body. Muscles are numerous and together they have 2 general roles to play – mobility & stability. You know by now my preference for whole body workouts that use compound movements. Compound movements are important because they not only use the large muscles but they also activate and exercise the stabilising muscles. Stabilising muscles are an often overlooked component of movement & fat loss.

The larger muscles (think quadriceps, deltoids, pecs & lats) are called ‘prime movers’ and allow your body to move with what is called ‘Dynamic Mobility’– which is another way of saying through a full range of motion.

The stabilising muscles tend to be smaller, less obvious (even when developed) and lie deeper in the body & closer to the joints. Their role is to do as their name suggests – to stabilise. Stabiliser muscles like your shoulders rotator cuff, like your deep abdominals, like your infraspinitus and spinal multifidi all work to keep our bodies ‘together’ whilst it moves. Whether walking, pitching a ball, skiing a slope or sitting in a meal these muscles stop the actions of the prime movers from pulling us apart as we move dynamically. They are in use all of the time and as such are major (but oft times unsung) users of energy.

Working both types of muscles is important for another reason – if the Prime Movers become too strong &

Stress releases cortisol - belly fat anyone!!??

overwhelm the stabilising muscles then we begin to collect injuries – often chronic ones. Or if the stabilisers become weak then the Prime Movers have to pull ‘double duty’ and act not just as movers but also as stabilisers. This type of overload can lead to joint dysfunction and pain. Note I mean pain, not the soreness that accompanies a good workout, but deep lasting hurt!

Pain is read by your body as a source of stress and causes it to release stress hormones like cortisol which not only blunts anabolic metabolism but also directs fat storage to the belly area.

Chronic muscle imbalance = Pain = more belly fat.

 So in order to avoid this you’ve got to move often, move intensely, & move well. This means using compound movements (think Olympic style lifts) with activities like sprinting and walking.

To get the most out of your metabolism, both in terms of catabolism & anabolism your training should involve training intensely in a way that is without pain. Chronic Pain will constantly undermine the effectiveness of your workouts and pull your metabolic levels down.

See you next week.

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.

Metabolism – What it is & How you can make it work for you Part 2.

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Welcome back…

A lot of fitness writers rattle off all sorts of terms and don’t realy either expalin what they mean or use them in ways that are, well… dubious at best.

Here is the most common terms used in conjunction with metabolism and what they really mean!!

Some Terms to know:

Metabolism: The various ways the cells, organs and tissues in our bodies use and handle the fuel derived from the food we eat.

Homeostasis: The term was coined in 1932 by Walter Cannon from two Greek words meaning’ to remain the same’. In particular it refers to the body’s preference to remain as it is today. Your body does not like to change – especially quickly, and it resists our efforts to alter it from where it is today.

keeping things dead level is what homeostasis means - hard to do though!!

The thing is the way your body is today as you read this just did not happen overnight – it arrived here by a gradual slowing of your metabolism, the accretion of bad exercise & food habits and so forth. Your body accepted these gradual, incremental changes to its composition and metabolism until they became a part of what your body now considers ‘normal’.

Homeostasis is the desire of your body to stay the way it has been gradually conditioned to consider normal.

If you are fat, and have been for some time, your body will consider this ‘normal’ and fight to stay that way. This is particularly true in times of calorie restriction.

Basically our bodies were designed to store fat against future food scarcity and are very good at it. Too rapid a fat loss can threaten what your body considers to be ‘normal’. Even if you are overweight! Your body is trying hard to keep what it considers your normal weight within a narrow margin.

The good news is that your body accepts changes to its composition and metabolism when they are repeated. The Lose 20 in 30 Program uses this fact to ‘reset’ your homeostatic trigger point.

Simply put homeostasis is your body using a host of internal feedback mechanisms in an attempt to remain the same. It is what makes it easier to gain body fat than it is to shed it. But we can make homeostasis work for us by creating a new ‘norm’ that it will fight to preserve.

Metabolic Set Point: The metabolic set point is an inbuilt survival mechanism, and is a major part of the homeostasis systems used by your body to resist changes to its composition. Your metabolic set point acts to ensure that there is adequate body fat for survival in the event food becomes scarce. Our bodies are

It's not easy but you change your 'set point' & alter homeostasis...

great at fat storage. Unfortunately, in modern times, with food in abundance, our body cannot easily distinguish between what is a real famine and what is an attempt by us to get leaner. Certainly our bodies cannot differentiate between a crash diet and a strategic approach to body recomposition. This makes altering this metabolic set-point difficult.

Not one of us has the same metabolic set point; your body composition is as individual as you are. What is the same though is that it can be hard to shift this set point because your body likes stability. In fact, as we saw above in ‘Homeostasis’,  your body will fight hard to maintain what it has come to accept as your normal amount of body fat and lean muscle mass. But, again, we can make this work for us. Once reset, this survival mechanism becomes our supporter, not our adversary.

Metabolic rate: Your metabolic rate is a result of a combination of your activity levels, caloric intake, the types of foods that you consume and the way your hormones react to this. Sudden changes to your calorie intake or sudden weight loss can trigger a defensive reaction which manifests as a slower metabolism as your body tries to maintain what it has come to view as your ‘normal’ weight.

Metabolic Cost: The amount of energy consumed as the result of performing a given work task; usually expressed in calories / kilojoules. In the Lose 30 in 30 Exercise manual we use a program that creates a high metabolic cost to really burn calories and recondition our metabolism.

EPOC: Formerly called Oxygen Debt, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) refers to the body’s continued need for higher amounts than normal (ie non-exercising) of oxygen after metabolic, cardiovascular exercise or weight training. It is closely tied to Metabolic Cost and you could almost consider it the ‘follow on’ effect of the exercises used the Lose 20 in 30 Exercise program. Often it is referred to as the ‘Afterburn’ effect.

Because your body will experience a heightened metabolism after our strategic exercise programs, it will continue to burn fat for hours after the exercising is completed – this is EPOC / Afterburn and is an important part of your fat loss and metabolic reconditioning tool kit.

One way to up the metabolic cost of exercise - add a weighted vest...

Metabolic Conditioning: A type of exercise protocol that creates both an enormous metabolic cost and a strong EPOC that is the most effective way to burn fat and reconditions your metabolism. A strategic mix of cardio, and resistance training performed using an interval training protocol. This is covered more fully in the Lose 20 in 30 Exercise program, and is the best way to rev up your metabolism and burn fat through activity.

Hypothalamus: this is the main organ responsible for regulating your metabolism. The hypothalamus is located on your brain stem. Its chief functions are:

  • The control and integration of the activities of your autonomic nervous system (ANS)
    • The ANS regulates the contraction of both smooth muscle and cardiac (heart) muscle, along with the secretions of many endocrine organs such as the thyroid gland – which controls many of your hormone levels.
    • Your hypothalamus uses feedback from the ANS to regulate activities such as your heart rate, the movement of food through your gastrointestinal tract, and the contraction of your bladder.
  • The control & regulation of your body temperature
  • The regulation of food intake, through your feeding centre:
    • The feeding centre or hunger centre is responsible for the sensations that cause us to seek food.
    • When sufficient food has been eaten and leptin is high, then the satiety centre is stimulated and tells your feeding centre that no more food is needed at this moment.
    • When insufficient food is present in the stomach and ghrelin levels are high, receptors in the hypothalamus make you experience hunger.

Taken together, the functions of the hypothalamus form one of your body’s survival mechanisms that enable us to sustain the body processes that make up your BMR and RMR.

Well a bit dry this wekk but important nonetheless…. Back to more fun stuff next week when we look at making your metabolism work for you…

Be well.

Metabolism – What it is & How you can make it work for you Part 1

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The next few posts on this blog will be all about giving you a solid understanding of what your metabolism is, what affects it and how you can make it work for you.

The information here will give you a better working knowledge of those parts of your metabolism that you exert some direct control over, those you can exert some indirect control over and those you just have to live with!

Having a fast metabolism means more than exercising...

If you have ever felt like you’re fighting a losing battle to shed pounds, in a sense you are.

Metabolism is NOT just about energy in versus energy out.

In our primitive past our bodies evolved so that we could store energy as fat in times of plenty (feasting) so that we are able to survive in times of scarcity. In these modern times we feast and then feast again without ever really enduring times of scarcity where food becomes rare and starvation looks likely. So this survival mechanism keeps storing energy as fat against hard times that frankly most modern humankind will never experience.

That creates problems for us because our bodies are basically fat storage machines. Very efficient ones.

The Body Shape Shifters philosophy is based around the idea of reconditioning your metabolism through a strategic mix of exercise, diet and hormone manipulation. A high metabolic rate means that we use the nutrients from our food more efficiently, maintain healthy body composition (lower fat and higher muscle levels) longer, feel better, think clearer and live healthier lives overall

What is Metabolism?

Beginning with birth and ending at death, our body receives the energy it needs to fuel itself through the processes of metabolism.

Yep - it can appear complex...

Metabolism is an umbrella term that covers the non-stop chemical processes that operate to keep our bodies functioning. Your Metabolism is primarily 2 things:

1)      The rate at which your body uses energy to support all of the basic functions that are essential to sustain your life,

2)      Plus all of the energy requirements for needed for additional activity and digestive processes.

Think of it this way – just being alive requires energy so when we talk about Metabolism it includes standing, sitting, sleeping, running, jumping, breathing, eating, digesting, having a beating heart, growing new cells, hair, skin, muscle and bone. So when we talk about our metabolic rate we are talking about the rate at which our bodies are burning the calories / kilojoules we have stored and that we get from food.

Your metabolism burns calories / kilojoules all the time, whether you’re just sitting on the couch or you’re jogging around the block. Even while we sleep our metabolism is working.

Every process that takes place in our body ultimately gets the energy to do so from the food we eat. The food we eat is broadly made up of Carbohydrates, Fats or Proteins with some micronutrients in the form of vitamins & minerals. (More detail on the effect that different nutrients have on our metabolism in later posts.) The amount of calories your body burns at any given time is regulated by your metabolism. In other words, it’s not just about burning up the food we eat, but about how the various nutrients from that food are used to help us maintain a healthy body.

There are two primary metabolic processes that take place in your body:

Catabolism – this is the breakdown of food components such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats into

No! Not that sort of anabolism!!

their simpler forms, where they are then used to create energy which can be turned into heat or burned up by your cells. This can also mean the breakdown of body tissue like muscle in the absence of other fuel sources. Catabolism is the destructive phase of metabolism, and the critical partner to anabolism, as they rely on each other to do their specific jobs. Digestion is a catabolic process that breaks your food down into smaller particles that can then be used in anabolism.

Generally characterised as ‘bad,’ catabolism is an essential part of our metabolic processes.

Anabolism – means growth or storage so energy is stored as glycogen in the liver & muscles, in fat cells (once the glycogen stores are full) or used to help build and repair structures of the body. It is most often associated with muscle growth. Anabolism is the constructive phase of metabolism, as it produces all of the substances needed in our body for it to grow, maintain and repair itself.

These two processes are carefully monitored by our body to make sure they remain in balance. However our diet, our environment and our type & amount of daily activity can all affect them both.

Ultimately our metabolism is controlled by hormones (think chemical messages that trigger processes) and by our nervous system. Hormonal problems, our physical environment and genetic disorders can all affect our metabolism. Whilst we cannot control our metabolism per se, we can make it work for us.

In part, Hormones determine how much of each of these you have...

Studies conducted by Spennewyn in 1990 found a number of strong correlations between lean mass and metabolism based on indirect calorimetry measurements. Spennewyn discovered that lean tissue in men and women required approximately 16 calories per pound per day. This means that once a person’s lean mass is known then it can be multiplied by 16 to reveal ball park daily caloric needs based on the activity level of the individual. This method has been used in many gyms, health clubs and dietician settings to determine daily caloric needs. It is not perfect.

Where is the energy used?

Energy expenditure for your body is roughly broken down like this:

  • Liver 27%
  • Brain 19%
  • Heart 7%
  • Kidneys 10%
  • Skeletal muscle 18%
  • Other organs 19%

To shift our shape by getting rid of fat we need to understand the ways & the speed with which we burn the calories from the food we eat. We cannot necessarily speed up all of your metabolic processes but we can make them more efficient.

Well that’s the basic stuff out of the way – next week we get into some terms to know and then the 4 components of your metabolism & how you can affect them for your benefit.

Be well.

Simple Way to Shed Pounds and Decrease Tiredness – Stop Eating This

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Welcome back –

Here is a post from Dr Mercola’s site that I think everyone who loves bread should read.

I’ll be back next week with more of my own research & findings….

Simple Way to Shed Pounds and Decrease Tiredness – Stop Eating This

Posted By Dr. Mercola | June 30 2011 | 31,338 views | Disponible en Español

In 1911, the bread which made up 40 percent of the diet of the impoverished people of Britain was blamed for widespread poor health. Modern nutritional science confirms the accuracy of this assessment.

Refined white flour contains almost no natural minerals and vitamins. In particular, vitamin B deficiency from poor diet resulted in a range of illnesses that the Victorians called ‘wasting diseases’. And white flour at the time was usually laced with alum, which made bad flour look whiter.

According to the Daily Mail:

“[In modern times], the Real Bread Campaign, a non-profit pressure group, claims that bread has actually gotten worse since 1911 in terms of secret adulterants — enzymes that do not have to be declared on labels — still being smuggled into it. Today, despite the modern fashion for healthy eating, ‘nutritionally empty’ white bread accounts for more than 50 percent of what we buy.”

Sources:

The Daily Mail June 15, 2011

 

 

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

It’s truly astounding—100 years ago, low-quality bread made up about 40 percent of the average Briton’s diet (and the situation was likely similar in the US as well), and today, even lower quality bread makes up nearly 50 percent of the average diet!

Back in 1911, white bread was identified as a primary culprit for the declining health of the British population, which led to a massive campaign to revert back to more wholesome bread. At the time, wholegrain bread was considered a sign of poverty, so people from all levels of society sought after white, refined flour bread.

The campaign spearheaded by The Daily Mail was eventually successful. But it didn’t last long… White bread was actually banned during World War II in the UK, and as a result, Britons were said to be in better health by 1947 after subsisting on limited rations of wholegrain breads for eight years.

However, at the end of the war, white bread was rendered legal once again, and today, more than 60 years later, our grocery shelves are stocked with breads and grain-products that are of even lower quality than 100 years ago… And, as in 1911, white processed bread is a major contributor to rampant obesity and poor health.

Do You Know the Chemicals Lurking in Your Bread?

As illustrated in The Daily Mail, the quality of bread has gotten far worse rather than better over the years. Back in 1911, salt, cheap fats, alum, lime powder, and bleaching constituted “bad” bread. Today, there’s a whole new breed of health-harming ingredients to contend with in your typical store-bought bread, including:

Processed salt High fructose corn syrup Trans fats (hydrogenated oils)
Soy Treatment agents (oxidant chemicals) Reducing agents
Emulsifiers Preservatives Enzymes (typically from fungi or bacteria)

 

Many of these ingredients are hidden, as they’re not required to be listed on the label. I’ve written numerous articles on many of these ingredients. For more information, simply follow the links provided. But hidden and potentially harmful ingredients aren’t the only problem with modern bread. Today we have such things as Wonder Bread, and it’s a wonder that anyone even considers it to be “bread” in the first place…

Refined Foods are Devoid of Nutrients

It’s important to realize that when food is refined, vital nutrients are destroyed. In some cases it’s questionable whether what remains is even fit to be considered food… at least if the term “food” implies something of nutritional value. In terms of bread, once you remove the most nutritious part of the grain, it essentially becomes a form of sugar.

Consider what gets lost in the refining process:

Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids 50 percent of the calcium 80 percent of the iron 50-80 percent of the B vitamins
Virtually all of the vitamin E 70 percent of the phosphorus 98 percent of the magnesium And many more nutrients are destroyed — simply too many to list.

How Processed Grains Can Deteriorate Your Health

The end result of the excessive consumption of white bread and other processed forms of grain products can be seen all around you in the form of:

Obesity Diabetes Heart disease
Allergies and asthma Gluten intolerance and Celiac disease Vitamin deficiencies and related health problems

 

Vitamin B deficiencies in particular contribute to a wide range of illnesses, and vitamin B deficiencies are pervasive around the world. For example, an estimated 25 percent of American adults are deficient in B12.

We’ve also seen an extraordinary rise in digestive illnesses, such as gluten intolerance and Celiac disease, and modern industrial baking methods are likely a major contributor to these widespread problems. The rise in asthma and allergies may also be related to our modern food processing and manufacturing practices. For example, one of the enzymes commonly used in modern bread making is amylase, which is known to cause asthma.

Many also forget that most commercial wheat production is, unfortunately, a “study in pesticide application,” beginning with the seeds being treated with fungicide. Once they become wheat, they are sprayed with hormones and pesticides. Even the bins in which the harvested wheat is stored have been coated with insecticides. These chemicals all contribute to increasing the average person’s toxic load, which is a contributing factor to virtually every possible disease imaginable. I can’t think of any illness that is not made worse by frequent toxic exposure, such as what we get through conventionally-grown foods and unfiltered water.

Whereas old time mills ground flour slowly, today’s mills are designed for mass-production, using high-temperature, high-speed steel rollers. Next, it’s hit with another chemical insult–a chlorine gas bath (chlorine oxide). This serves as a whitener, as well as an “aging” agent. Flour used to be aged with time, improving the gluten and thus improving the baking quality. Treating it with chlorine instantly produces similar qualities in the flour (with a disturbing lack of concern about adding another dose of chemicals to your food).

The resulting white flour is nearly all starch, and now contains a small fraction of the nutrients of the original grain. Additionally, the chemical treatments on the grain results in the formation of a byproduct, alloxan—a poison used in the medical research industry to induce diabetes in healthy mice. Alloxan causes diabetes by spinning up enormous amounts of free radicals in pancreatic beta cells, thus destroying them. Beta cells are the primary cell type in areas of your pancreas called islets of Langerhans, and they produce insulin; so if those are destroyed, you develop diabetes.

Given the raging epidemic of diabetes and other chronic diseases in this country, it may be unwise to be complacent about a toxin such as this in your bread, even if it is present in small amounts…

Why a High-Carb Diet Can be Disastrous to Your Health

Overconsumption of carbs is the primary driving factor for insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, the dietary establishment has unwisely been extolling the virtues of carbohydrates while warning you to avoid fats. But anyone who bought into the high-carb, low-fat dietary recommendations has likely struggled with their weight and health, wondering what they’re doing wrong…

The truth of the matter is that a diet high in grain carbs (as opposed to vegetables) and low in fat may be dangerous to your health, and if you want to shed excess weight and improve your health, the converse diet is what you’re looking for!

Why are high-carb diets so bad?

In a nutshell, overeating carbohydrate foods can prevent a higher percentage of fats from being used for energy, and lead to an increase in fat storage. It also raises your insulin levels, which in short order can cause insulin resistance, followed by diabetes. Insulin resistance is also at the heart of virtually every disease known to man.

Contrary to popular belief, eating fat does NOT make you fat—carbohydrates, such as sugar and grains, do. Your body has a limited capacity to store excess carbohydrates, but it can easily convert those excess carbohydrates into excess body fat. Any carbohydrates not immediately used by your body are stored in the form of glycogen (a long string of glucose molecules linked together). Your body has two storage sites for glycogen: your liver and your muscles. Once the glycogen levels are filled in both your liver and muscles, excess carbohydrates are converted into fat and stored in your adipose, that is, fatty, tissue.

So, although carbohydrates are fat-free, excess carbohydrates end up as excess fat.

But that’s not the worst of it. Any meal or snack high in carbohydrates will also generate a rapid rise in blood glucose. To adjust for this rapid rise, your pancreas secretes insulin into your bloodstream, which then lowers the levels of blood glucose. The problem is that insulin is essentially a storage hormone, evolved to put aside excess carbohydrate calories in the form of fat in case of future famine. So the insulin that’s stimulated by excess carbohydrates aggressively promotes the accumulation of body fat!

Too Much Wheat or Grain Converts Into Fat

In other words, when you eat too much bread, pasta, and any other grain products, you’re essentially sending a hormonal message, via insulin, to your body that says “store fat.”

Additionally, increased insulin levels also:

  • Make it virtually impossible for you to use your own stored body fat for energy
  • Suppress two important hormones: glucagon and growth hormone. Glucagon promotes the burning of fat and sugar. Growth hormone is used for muscle development and building new muscle mass.
  • Increases hunger: As blood sugar increases following a carbohydrate meal, insulin rises with the eventual result of lower blood sugar. This results in hunger, often only a couple of hours (or less) after the meal.

So, all in all, the excess carbohydrates in your diet not only make you fat, they make sure you stay fat. Cravings, usually for sweets, are frequently part of this cycle, leading you to resort to snacking, often on more carbohydrates. Not eating can make you feel ravenous shaky, moody and ready to “crash.” If the problem is chronic, you never get rid of that extra stored fat, and your energy and overall health is adversely affected.

Below is a list of some of the most common complaints of people with insulin resistance (IR). Many of these symptoms may occur immediately following a meal of carbohydrates; others may be chronic:

Fatigue. Some are tired just in the morning or afternoon; others are exhausted all day. Brain fogginess. The inability to concentrate is the most evident symptom. Loss of creativity, poor memory, failing or poor grades in school often accompany insulin resistance, as do various forms of “learning disabilities.” Hypoglycemia. Feeling jittery, agitated and moody is common in IR, with an almost immediate relief once food is eaten. Dizziness is also common, as is the craving for sweets, chocolate or caffeine.
Intestinal bloating. Most intestinal gas is produced from dietary carbohydrates. Sometimes the intestinal distress can become quite severe, resulting in a diagnosis of “colitis” or “ileitis.” Sleepiness. Many people with IR get sleepy immediately after meals containing more than 20-30 percent carbohydrates. This is typically a pasta meal, or even a meat meal that includes bread or potatoes and a sweet dessert. Increased fat storage and weight. In many people, the most evident sign is a large abdomen, or belly fat.
Increased triglycerides. High triglycerides in the blood are often seen in overweight persons. But even those who are not too fat may have stores of fat in their arteries as a result of IR. These triglycerides are the direct result of carbohydrates from the diet being converted by insulin. Increased blood pressure. It is well known that most people with hypertension have too much insulin and are IR. It is often possible to show a direct relationship between the level of insulin and the level of blood pressure: as insulin levels elevate, so does blood pressure. Depression. Carbohydrates are a natural “downer,” and it’s not uncommon to see many depressed persons also having IR. Carbohydrates do this by changing your brain chemistry—they increase serotonin, which produces a depressing or sleepy feeling. (This is a significant consideration for those trying to learn, whether at school, home or work.)

 

Does this sound like you?

One of the Fastest Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Health

The best suggestion for anyone wanting to shed excess fat and improve health is to moderate and normalize your insulin response by limiting (ideally, eliminating) your intake of refined sugars and fructose, and limiting all other carbohydrate intake as much as possible. (Proteins and fats generally do not produce much insulin.)

With the stress of insulin resistance eliminated, your body can finally be able to correct many of its own problems, and this is also why I keep reminding you that the underlying factor of most disease states that MUST be addressed is insulin resistance. Once you’ve normalized your insulin levels, your body actually has a phenomenal capacity for self-healing.

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