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Muscle Growth, Preservation, Insulin & Leucine

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Welcome back!

I believe that as a species we humans were designed to be lean, fit, muscular and healthy. We were not designed to be fat, overweight, beset with diabetes, whole body inflammation, heart disease and the rest of the gamut of modern lifestyle diseases. Our genetic promise is being steadily eroded by lack of exercise and a diet high in ‘fractured’ / denatured / highly processed foods that predisposes us to chronic diseases…

And no I am not about to start ranting about the need to return to eating & living like our pre-agricultural forebears. (Although a lot of the anti-grain information does bear at least some consideration if you want to pursue optimal health…) Even those folk who exercise regularly have trouble reaching and then maintaining a state of lean muscular health.

With all of the information available, with the explosion in personal trainers, DVDs for home and gyms why is this case?

Certainly a major part of the issue is the fact that despite the huge amount of information out there and the writings of people like Craig Ballantyne, Pauls Rigby and John Romanello people still chooses ineffective types of exercise.

I have written at length here about the benefits of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), of mixing low rep high weight training with medium rep medium training – but done circuit style. I have sung the praises of sprinting and Tabata protocols and kettle bells… Once you begin to work out in HIIT fashion using whatever modality you choose you can and do shift your body shape amazingly fast.

I think a major part of the problem from an exercise perspective, is the overuse of ‘Trash’ exercise – and most traditional cardio falls into this category. Too much focus on cardio (especially the ‘normal’ treadmill, exercise bike etc) with little strength or mobility work is, I am convinced the reason why so many folk try so hard yet see so little change in their physique.

Doing long sessions of cardio just does not work except to perhaps help you convince yourself that you are doing all you can and the fat that is not shifting is due to genetics or you being ‘big boned’ or…when simply you are indulging in a form of exercise that was prescribed back in the 1970’s when the scientific study of exercise performance was in its infancy. It still has a lot to learn but this exercise science is now at least a robust adolescent yet we persist in following outmoded and discredited exercise protocols.

I’ve already written extensively about the benefits of HIIT & Metabolic Conditioning exercise protocols, so here I will look at what you need in terms of nutrition to achieve optimal muscle building for leanness, fitness, and health.

Nutrition for Fitness

The commonly held belief is that if you want to build muscle, you need to eat lots & lots of protein and stacks of carbs because after all aren’t carbs our bodies preferred fuel? Yes & No. However, the evidence that has emerged over the past several years shows us it’s not that simple.

In the upcoming ‘Lose 20 in 30’ program I talk about research that shows that your body has a mechanism that allows it to build muscle even when deprived of food. Basically it is tied to a number of survival mechanisms which you can turn on by lifting heavy weights for lots of low rep sets – your body becomes convinced that it is under threat from the weights and so shifts gear to preserve if not actively build muscle even in a state of calorie deficit.

An important part of this mechanism is that some types of amino acids can act as signallers to certain muscle cell genes and turn them ‘on’ to grow muscle tissue. See, it turns out, that amino acids and protein are not just present in our bodies to act as the building blocks for tissues and muscle. Even during times of food deprivation, as long as these amino acids are circulating through your blood stream, you can preserve and even build muscle.

I have said many times before that we eat too little lean protein and too many processed carbs. The ratio between your protein intake and carbs is important for muscle preservation and growth – and it becomes even more important the older we grow. Time & again research from all over the world

has shown that high-carbohydrate diets fail to build muscle. Even in younger people. In study after study it is always the high-protein, low processed-carbohydrate diet that proves the most effective both for muscle building, metabolism boosting and fat loss.

So in order to live up to our ‘genetic promise’ of being lean, fit & muscular; there are two primary nutrition factors we need to pay attention to:

  1. A high-protein, low processed -carbohydrate diet
  2. And a diet high in amino acids – especially one called leucine

One Amino above them all…

Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) are truly the building blocks of our bodies and, as we have seen, also serve as gene signallers as well as a number of other functions.

Amino Acids are split into essential and non-essential. The difference being that essential amino acids cannot be made in the body (like Vitamin C) and needs to come from our food. Non-essential amino acids CAN be made by the body.

The amino acids regarded as essential for humans are phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, isoleucine, methionine, leucine, lysine, and histidine. (Histidine was added in the last decade expanding the traditional 8 essential BCAAs to 9)

Leucine is a very powerful muscle preserver & builder. It serves multiple functions in your body the most important of which (for today’s blog) is that it acts as the signalling mechanism for the mTOR (Mammalian Target of Rapamycin) mechanism. No need to reach for your BioMed dictionary – simply put this mechanism is the one which causes protein to be created and builds your muscle.

However, as is so often the case, in order to get its full benefits, you need to take in far more than the recommended daily allowance (RDA).

Don’t forget the RDA is based on the minimum amount of a vitamin or mineral or other nutrient that a body would need to stay alive. It is not based on the amount needed for optimal health.

It turns out that we need what the RDA advocates would view as massive amounts of this amino acid.

Outside of BCAAs supplements, Whey protein, and quality cheeses (again because of their high whey content) have the highest concentrations of leucine and a number of other BCAAs.

Getting leucine into your diet is easy. However it is also a BCAA that is used very much for energy, recovery and repair which for most of us leaves very little over for use as a muscle building agent. This is why we need large quantities of it to get enough into our bloodstream in excess of the repair & recovery needs so that it can signal the genes to grow more muscle. We need more than maintenance quantities.

Okay I hear you say, we’ll simply take a supplement. Like so many other chemicals which our bodies use there can be side effects. Leucine from food sources has zero potential for causing side effects, but using a leucine only free form amino acid supplement can be counterproductive.

Too much of leucine by itself can cause insulin resistance ( and we know that this means slower metabolisms and increased storage) by impairing your body’s glycemic control.

Now as much as I believe in supplements (especially Fish / Krill Oil and Vitamin D) in general macronutrients act in concert with one another and too much of one affects the interplay of others. Really wherever possible it is best to eat whole foods – we appear to be programmed to benefit most from whole food nutrition.

So how much leucine from food instead of supplements, do you need to consume to get results?

Maintenance doses of leucine range from 1-3 grams per day, in order to move beyond this it has been estimated that leucine requirement should be about 8g – 16g daily. Given that per 100 grams, Whey has 8 grams of leucine, cheddar cheese about 4 grams, egg yolks 1.4 grams, beef about 2grams, chicken 1.4 grams and salmon 1.6 – there seems to be a lot of food needed to be eaten.

So in order to get your 8 gram leucine to preserve & grow muscle you would need to eat the following amounts of food:

  • a pound and a half of chicken (750grams)
  • three pounds of pork (1.5 kg)
  • over a pound of almonds (500 grams & over 3000 calories)
  • over a pound and a half of raw eggs (16 eggs)
  • half a pound of raw cheddar cheese (250grams)

And only 3oz (about 100gr) of high-quality whey.

So once again it is a no-brainer – adding a good quality whey protein to your diet will help you preserve & grow muscle even if you are cutting overall calories.

Carb Quality is important as well…

In order to get to our genetic promise we need to be careful about where we get our carbs from. You can get your carbs from cakes, cookies, sodas, foods containing high fructose corn syrup, from breads and pasta, or from vegetables, legumes & fruits. The source of the carbs you eat makes a major difference to your metabolism, leanness & overall health.

It only takes 1 meal of high GI carbs to reduce the sensitivity of your insulin receptors. Follow it up with a second and your body will use this next load of carbs, especially if they are simple carbs even less effectively and so on…

It is no secret that I am pro-carb and anti processed carbs. Processed carbs are denatured / fractured foods and just not good for you on a regular basis. Low-glycemic fibrous carbohydrates are best for your body. Best for insulin sensitivity, best for increasing metabolism (see my previous posts). Nuts and seeds especially walnuts and almonds contain not just carbs but healthy fats, lots of fibre and even some protein.

I personally believe (and there is an increasing amount of research to bear this out) that grains are rarely ideal sources of carbs. I love good bread as much as the next person and I certainly view Oats a great breakfast food but vegetables & fruits are the way to go for the carbs you need.

Fructose containing foods are at the bottom of the list. No, not fibrous fruit like Apples, pears or Kiwi fruits – but processed carbs & foods especially those containing High Fructose Corn syrup. HFCS is widely viewed as the main culprit in the ever increasing waistline of the Western world.

Whilst fructose is low on the glycemic index, it’s vital to realise that it is metabolised differently from other sugars and can directly – and adversely – affect insulin and leptin signalling. Both of which are near the top of the list in terms of controlling fat storage and metabolism.  Your liver detects insulin activity, which helps your body determine how to metabolise your food. Insulin spikes caused by sugars in your blood stream are detected by your liver and it takes steps to regulate this. Because fructose rarely ever appears on its own in nature when it hits your liver with only a certain amount it can process and lacking an insulin spike the waste products of this metabolism accumulate in your liver. Too much of this and the liver itself develops insulin resistance.

But it gets worse – these by-products are then released and your body converts them to triglycerides whilst lowering HDL (the good cholesterol). All of this gives you a cocktail of insulin resistance, high blood lipids and likely hypertension and heart disease.

I’d even go so far as to say that if a food contains HFCS it is bad for you.

Want to lose Muscle? Get Insulin Resistant…

Insulin is a prime mover hormone – one of the most important, and amongst the most anabolic.

Insulin helps signals your body to move glucose from outside your cells into them, it affects your hunger levels on its own and through interaction with both ghrelin & leptin.

The insulin cascade is also a vital part of the mTOR signalling (other hormones do as well like testosterone, but the effect is greater with insulin as a part of the process) – if your body is insulin resistant this muscle preserving & building signal just does not get out and your muscles waste.

So use HIIT, eat more protein, include whey and cheese to get your leucine and lastly avoid the processed carbs. This is as close to a magic bullet for fat loss as there is.

Be well.

How you can fix a Broken Metabolism Part 2

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Welcome Back!!

Remember – if you are more than 20lbs (10 KG) overweight the chances are your metabolism is slowing and may even, in terms of fat loss, be broken.

No sign of a broken metabolism here…

Today in part 2 of how to fix a broken metabolism we look at the Affect of Diet on Hormones:

The Affect of Diet on Hormones:

  • Fat Storage
  • Fat Sparing
  • Fat Burning

The main hormones in question are:

  • Cortisol – the stress & belly fat storing hormone
  • Leptin – the anti-starvation hormone,
  • Ghrelin – the ‘I’m hungry‘ hormone
  • Insulin – The blood sugar controller

In the last post we looked at the effect various foods can have on our metabolism – either raising it or blunting it. Now we need to look at the effect of diet on our hormones. Hormones are responsible for just about every physiological / chemical process that starts or stops in our bodies.

How we react to stress, how happy we are, how quickly a bruise disappears, a cut heals, a fingernail grows, how much lean tissue we create, how much fat we store (& where), gain or burn for fuel, how & what is repaired – our hormones control all of this and more besides.

No excess fat here – this is a peak metabolism…

To lose a pound of fat we have to shed / use / forego 3500 calories. That is the mathematical fact and in the past most fat loss programs looked at cutting calories as the main way to lose fat. What they did not take into account was the type of calories (see http://bodyshapeshiftersonline.com/?p=100) or the unintended consequences of calorie restriction on our body’s hormonal systems.

Our bodies equate a sudden & sustained drop in calories (especially those from carbohydrates) as a famine situation and they have a sophisticated defence system to stop us starving. If our body thinks we are starving then these hormonal systems kick in and fat loss becomes that much harder.

In many ways successful fat loss has more to do with our body’s hormonal environment than any other factor. As important as exercise and metabolic training is, as important as sleep and the right fuel is – the battle to lose fat is won or lost largely on the hormonal side. And this side of the equation is incredibly complex. Because of this complexity the discussion on hormones & their manipulation here will be necessarily lacking in depth and detail.

Unlike poking out your tongue, whistling, lifting your arm, rolling your eyes or breathing more deeply we cannot consciously control our hormones or their actions. But we can manipulate them in a gross sense through diet, sleep and exercise. Further if we know what certain hormones do and what triggers their actions we can at least alter our internal environment enough to make these hormones work with us rather against us as we work on losing body fat.

Cortisol:

Cortisol is not a villain – it is essential to our health and performs many beneficial functions. Cortisol is released in response to physical, emotional & mental stress. If this stress is constant it signals your body that it’s under attack and your body responds by

The best way to stop the negative effects of Cortisol – get plenty of sleep!!

increasing the amount of cortisol in circulation. Through cortisol, our bodies by increase our belly fat reserves. This location not only offers protection to our organs but also positions this fuel source for easy availability for sudden energy needs.

Too much cortisol has the following effects:

  • Increased belly fat storage
  • Increased sugar cravings
  • Lowered immune system
  • Slower healing
  • Increased lean tissue breakdown
  • Decreased Liver function
  • Impaired cognitive performance
  • Suppressed thyroid function
  • Blood sugar imbalances such as hyperglycaemia
  • Decreased bone density
  • Higher blood pressure
  • Higher LDL (the ‘bad’ cholesterol)
  • Lower HDL (the ‘good’ cholesterol)

So how do we manipulate our cortisol levels?

Firstly by getting more sleep. Cortisol levels can increase by up to 30% just from missing some sleep. Getting at least 8 hours a night is a solid way to reduce Cortisol.

Secondly by lifting heavy weights. Although Cortisol is released in response to stress and weight lifting is a physical stress – lifting heavy weights also increases the release of Human Growth Hormone. HGH has many actions but one of which is to reduce cortisol levels. (HGH levels also increase with sleep – another reason to use sleep to blunt cortisol) By heavy weight lifting that increases HGH release

Thirdly by eating frequently. It takes only 14 days to kick in fully but by eating ‘mini-meals’ no more than 3 hours apart, during the day has been shown to reduce Cortisol levels by up to 17%.

Lastly decrease your intake of simple starches (breads, pastas, processed junk) and sugars. In a vicious circle increased sugar intake increases the release of cortisol which in turn increase the craving for sugar which…

Leptin

Sharply lowering carbs creates lower leptin levels in the body. Falling leptin levels triggers signals to the brain suggesting that a famine is imminent and that the body needs to slow the metabolism, hold onto fat and try to maintain the current state of homeostasis in terms of body composition. Low leptin levels are the surest way to hold onto body fat.

Fortunately it is relatively easy to fix – add more carbs back into your diet, and eat 5 – 6 times a day. Whilst it takes a week for leptin levels to drop, they can be replaced with only a day of carb loading. This is the thinking behind carb cycling diets.

Ghrelin

Ghrelin is the hormone which controls cravings – heightened levels of it mean that your appetite is elevated. Ghrelin reacts in concert with Leptin so long carbs, sustained low calorie intake and low leptin levels means that ghrelin levels rise and you are hungry. The fix for ghrelin is the same for leptin – add in more carbs and if leptin rises ghrelin will fall and appetite drops off as well.

Insulin

Insulin is most associated in people’s minds with diabetes and fat storage – two things no-one wants. However a bit like Cortisol Insulin is not a villain – it is the main hormone responsible for helping your body recover properly after exercise. Insulin increases blood

Insulin resistance is a result mainly of a poor Western diet…

transport to and from your muscle cells so the “waste products” of exercise, like carbon dioxide, can be removed; helps reduce elevated cortisol levels that are formed during intense exercise, which helps reduce stress on your body and ensures that the muscles get sufficient nutrients for repair.

Insulin is both a storage and a transport hormone. It transports glucose from the blood into the muscles (&liver) to replenish glycogen stores. When these are full it then changes to a storage medium and moves the excess glucose into your body’s fat cells.

So if your glycogen stores (muscle & liver sites) are full and you eat enough simple carbs to cause a blood sugar spike then insulin spikes as well and stores the excess glucose in

Here’s one way to help overcome insulin resistance – move heavy weights…

the fat cells. Creating a ‘spike’ in blood sugar causes the body to ‘over react’ and release a surge of insulin. This causes a sudden drop in blood sugar creating tiredness and increased fat storage.

Unfortunately high insulin levels triggers a halt in fat burning when there is glucose present in the blood stream. Basically Insulin activates the shift from fat to glucose burning.

We can manipulate Insulin by:

  • Eating 5-6 times a day (seeing a pattern here?) which keeps blood sugar levels & therefore insulin levels more stable.
  • Eating complex carbs and avoiding simple carbs, sugars & starches which quickly metabolise into blood sugar.
  • Cut out processed foods as much as possible – including Bread, Biscuits, Cakes
  • Basically up your vegetable and fruit intake, cut out the grain based foods…
  • Increasing the amounts of healthy fats in our diet.

Don’t forget our next post will look at the ways that you can use the burn rate of different macronutrient types, meal timings & meal frequency to recondition your metabolism.

So we can manipulate our hormones by eating 5 -6 times a day, avoiding / reducing simple carb intake, getting enough sleep and exercising with heavy weights.

Next time we’ll look at the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)

Thermic Effect of Food

  • Macronutrient ‘Burn rates’
  • Food timing
  • Meal Frequency

Don’t forget our next post will look at the ways that you can use just eating food itself to recondition your metabolism.

Be well!!

A quick Food Change That Will Lower Body Fat.

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Hi – Welcome back!!

Here is a quick food change that will lower your body fat:

It’s really quite simple – choose and eat more vegetables and fibrous fruits as your main carbohydrate sources and ditch the starchy foods.

Why?

Pizza sliced

Well every Carb you eat, no matter what type gets broken down to glucose (blood sugar).

So a slice of white bread, cup of rice, a pear , an apple a piece of broccoli or that iceberg lettuce all end up being processed by your body to end up as its’ preferred fuel source – glucose.

If this is the case then why is the type of carb we eat so important and how can it affect our body fat??

It’s really quite simple – different types of carbs are metabolised at different rates by your body. A couple of posts a go I referred to the Thermic Effect of Food and how different food types are processed at different rates by our bodies.

Processing food goes further than just macronutrient type though – different sub-types of macronutrients are processed at different rates. So with carbs some are processed more quickly than others.

This difference processing rate affects how quickly glucose is produced and even how much.
High Glycemic Index Carbs (ie those carbs that are closest to glucose already) are processed more quickly than Low GI carbs (the ones furthest away from glucose). The other way to look at these is processed versus lightly or un-processed carbs.

Processed carbs tend to be high GI and are processed rapidly whilst low GI carbs are digested more slowly.

So why does this matter? Well the quicker a carb is processed the quicker glucose is created and ‘dumped’ into the blood stream. This is handy for quick energy boosts. The slower carbs are digested, the slower glucose is released into the blood stream which leads to a more sustained the energy release.

Therefore complex carbohydrates should be your main choice for energy because they offer more of a sustained energy supply. Simple carbohydrates create a quick boost of energy followed by a rapid decline, almost like a “crash.”

Complex carbohydrates mainly come from those lightly or unprocessed foods which are high in fibre. Foods like nuts, broccoli, peas, and green beans.

Sidebar: Fruit is often called a simple carb – not true for all fruits. Those fruits with a significant amount of fibre are actually digested slowly. So yes grapes will be processed quickly but apples or kiwi fruit will not. On the other hand most types of breads are ‘quick carbs’ their lack of fibre means quick digestion, quick glucose release…

There are three reasons to switch from a diet full of starchy carbohydrates like bread, pasta, and rice to a diet with more fibrous, leafy ones like vegetables. First is the metabolism raising effect of eating more fibrous carbs – we’ve already mentioned the Thermic Effect of Food.

Fibrous vegetables

Add more of these to your diet...

Secondly is that by switching away from starchy, processed carbs we will see a drop in the number of calories ingested without (more likely an increase!) a drop in nutrients. Starchy carbohydrates like bread and pasta are more calorie dense than fibrous, leafy ones like vegetables.

The third reason to eat this way is the fact that sudden ‘spurts’ of glucose into the blood stream causes insulin to be released.

Insulin’s role in this case is to ensure that the glucose is shunted into storage as glycogen in the liver & the muscles. If the storage in these areas is full the glucose is stored in fat cells. Quick spurts of blood sugar are more likely to create this insulin response than slower sustained glucose release.

So what we want is to eat more of the foods that make us feel & stay full, that raise our metabolic rate, and at the same time giving us the nutrients that we need. Many processed starchy carbs are nutritional wastelands, quick to digest and do not promote feelings of fullness. Unprocessed carbs like fruit & vegetables are nutrient dense, fibre rich and calorie low – unless they are deep fried or drowned in margarine or butter..

I believe that for effective and permanent fat loss to occur it is important to choose foods that offer high fibre, high volume, high nutrient content, low calories and a sustained glucose release. Eating this way, you do not feel empty and because you are feeling full you tend to avoid developing the cravings that make staying on a change of diet so hard.

Look I know that you are thinking: ‘I can’t live without Bread / rice / pasta / biscuits etc’ Nor should you. But if you want to drop some fat and get your metabolism firing better you need to moderate the amount of High GI, starchy processed carbs that you eat. The sensible middle path to take here is to eat true multigrain breads, swap the white rice for brown and durum pasta for a more fibrous variety.

If you put your mind to it this is surprisingly easy and the Bread etc becomes not only less important on a daily basis but more enjoyable when eaten less often.

I’ll be back in a couiple of days – in the meantime why not leave a comment, Tweet us or visit our Face Book Fan Page???

4 Ways to Speed Up a “Slow” Metabolism

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Welcome back!

How my friend wants to go back to looking like…

I was talking a friend of mine the other day who is trying, to lose weight. (Long term readers will know that I consider this ‘wrong thinking’ we should be focussed on losing fat, not weight…)

The amount of weight in question is only 7 kilos (about 15lbs) so my friend is not obese yet she has been struggling with this same 7 kilos for years now…losing most if not all of them only to have them come back often with extra  ‘friends’…I’m sure that this sounds familar to many of you – it was certainly my experience in the past.(For my story and why this happens to so many of us sign up for the free report at the top right of this page)

You know the situation Lose 5kg.  Gain 4. Lose that 4.  Gain 6. And so on.

From our chat it was obvious that this pattern had been repeating over & over since her early 20’s. Having 3 kids in her late 20’s may have made it a bit worse, but nonetheless this weight has become a decade long issue. Her husband, a big athletic ex-kickboxer has also been fighting the same fight since he hit his late 30’s. This is not just a female or male only issue – we all want to look and feel healthy and the older we get the harder it becomes to get into and then stay in shape.

This is because our metabolism becomes de-conditioned. It is just not a matter of it slowing down – it actually becomes less efficient in a whole lot of areas all of which impact our health & well being.

This how we want see ourselves – lean & fit…

Now my friend & her husband are example so this. They get in shape about once a year through an all out campaign of huge exercise increase and dietary restriction. They drop weight (though not necessarily fat) look slimmer for a period of time and then the slow (or not so slow) weight regain happens and they end up being the same size as before if not larger. Even worse it takes more & more effort to get into shape each year and once there they are staying ‘slim’ for shorter & shorter periods of time.

Accepting a future of becoming ‘comfortably chubby’ is on the cards as far as they are concerned…My friend is concerned about this and wanted to know how she can speed up a slowing metabolism.

So how do you speed up a “de-conditioned” metabolism?

The bigger you are the faster your metabolism will be – this is simple fact. However if you took 2 people the same size and weight – the one with the lower body fat would have the faster metabolism and the easier time of it when it came to losing fat and getting healthier.

Why? Well because muscle – lean tissue – does increase metabolism more than fat, so less fat and more lean tissue keeps your metabolism running faster. A faster metabolism burns more calories and this means decreased fat.

Build muscle. The more muscle you have the faster you metabolism, the lower your body

Lift weigths, move more – get your metabolism reconditioned…

fat and the better you look naked – pretty good reasons to strive to get more lean tissue onto your frame don’t you think!!??

Muscle is more metabolically active at rest and when moving. Now some folk will tell you not to get too excited about this because for every 1 lb (500 grams) of muscle, research shows its only about a 9-15 calorie/day increase in metabolism. But as you know losing fat and looking better and being healthier is a game of synergy  and incremental gains What you eat, when you eat, how often you eat; when & how you work out, how much sleep you get, your stress level, your DN – all of these things work synergystically for or against your fat loss. So in the scheme of things burning an extra 9 or so calories a day at rest is not exciting BUT fat loss is a game of increments not huge differences!! It all adds up – so while 1 lb of muscle doesn’t offer a huge calorie benefit, adding on more muscle than that does.  Plus working out to gain that muscle has a ton of other health related benefits – including better calorie burn! If you work out properly you can be burining extra calories for hours afterwards.

Eat More.Unprocessed carbs and protein that it. It sounds contradictory but the other way

Eat more often & eat more protein with unprocessed foods…

to speed metabolism is to eat more. I have spoken about the Thermic Effect if Food (TEF) here: Metabolism-what-it-is-how-you-can-make-it-work-for-you-part-6

When you eat, especially if you eat protein and fibrous vegetables & fruits, your body has to use energy to digest & process your meal so your overall metabolism increases.  Protein, of course, does more to boost metabolism than either carbs (even unprocessed ones) or fats because it takes more energy to break it down & process it.  So make sure each meal includes a little protein — fish, eggs, chicken, turkey – skip the nuts, beans or soy their protein is not complete (they have to be eaten with foods containing a complete amino acid profile – ie flesh based protein) are less bio-available and does not have a) the same thermogenic affect and b) confer fewer health benefits.

Eat breakfast.  Eating a good solid breakfast after what is effectively at least an 8 hour

A family favourite at our place….

fast gets the metabolism rolling in quick order. Again though it is protein and fibrous carbs that do the trick. That oatmeal, boxed muesli or buttered toast are marginally better than skipping breakfast entirely but only just.and is likely to be causing a lot of other less desirable health effects. (Mmm – insulin spikes for breakfast just what I need to stay fat!!)

The best breakfast to rev up your metabolism is eggs with spinach, mushroom, onions and capsicum as an omelette, along with some cheese, some fruit and a small handful of nuts. (Colby cheese and pear is one of Nature’s great duos – right up there with tomato and onion, bacon & eggs, cauliflower and cheese sauce..)

There’s now some solid data suggesting eating eggs in the morning boosts weight loss above and beyond choosing toast, cereal or a bagel.

Do HIIT for your workouts. I’ve said it before (Interval-training-the-1-not-so-secret-fat-loss-tool) – long, slow cardio sessions do next  to nothing in terms of creating a post

When you’re fit enough sprints are a great HIIT workout…

exercise calorie burn (EPOC) when the workout is done.  On the other hand, shorter, harder intensity exercise bouts cause a much longer increase in metabolism, even hours after your workout is finished.  In fact, a number of studies show s much as a 14+ hour increase in metabolism after a high intensity bout of exercise.  This boost burned an additional 190 calories!  Again it is a game of increments so this will add up.

There you have it — 4 simple strategies to boost a slowing metabolism. If you’d like to know more about speeding up and reconditioning your metabolism go here and read the series.  How-you-can-fix-a-broken-metabolism-part-1

PS My firend & her husband have adopted the above and in addition have gone ‘paleo’. They’ve never looked or felt better. I’ll write about Paleo soon.

See you next week – be well.

 

 

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!!

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