3 tricks for faster fat loss
Here's what you need to know...
- Eat for what you're going to do. Carbohydrates serve as a source of energy for intense activity, which is why you shouldn't load up on carbs before going to bed, because you could end up storing those carbs instead of burning them.
- Do cardio in the morning before you've eaten any carbs. Use your fat stores without burning muscle by consuming amino acids (or protein) before cardio.
- Not all carbohydrates work in the same way. Broken down into its smallest components, fructose is transported directly to the liver, while glucose is preferentially used by muscle cells. Control your fructose intake to prevent it from being stored as fat.
Visible abs - at last!
You're doing everything right: cutting out junk food, working out hard, doing some cardio - but none of this seems to be having any effect on the life preserver you're wearing around your waist.
It's not yet time to start saving up for liposuction. If everything in your exercise and diet program says you should have visible abs and you still don't, use these tricks to get lean.
1. optimize the last meal before going to bed
What did you eat before going to bed yesterday? What will you eat before going to bed today?
This is important because what you eat during the last two hours before going to bed has a huge impact on your body development - especially when it comes to fat loss.
Here's the rule: eat for what you're going to do.
Most of us won't go for a walk or otherwise get much exercise during the last two hours before we go to sleep. For this reason, we don't need to eat a traditional bodybuilding meal at this time. We need to eat for what we are still going to do: not very much.
More specifically, carbohydrates need to be dramatically reduced - and possibly even completely eliminated - when you are sleeping. Remember that carbohydrates provide energy for high-intensity exercise such as training with weights or sprints, and that there is no such thing as "high-intensity sleep".
Fat, on the other hand, becomes the primary source of energy when the intensity of exercise decreases. In fact, when you sleep, you burn fat almost exclusively for energy.
For this reason, consuming carbohydrates before going to bed dramatically increases the chance that these carbohydrates will be stored rather than burned. And when carbohydrates are not burned, they are either stored as glycogen or as fat.
If you have been exercising with weights (cardio doesn't count) for the last three or four hours before going to bed, then the chances of the carbohydrates you eat at that time being converted into fat are very low. This is due to the fact that carbohydrate stores are quite depleted and will literally soak up all those carbs, so there is no need to convert carbs to fat.
Those who don't exercise within the last three or four hours before bedtime should eliminate carbohydrates from their pre-bedtime meal. When I say "eliminate," I don't necessarily mean zero grams. Don't be afraid of low starch vegetables at this time.
The fat factor
As far as food intake before bed, I stand by my rule: "eat fat if you don't eat carbs." However, I recommend halving your normal portion of fat.
There is evidence that consuming a large amount of fat - "fat loading" - suppresses hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), which is needed to break down fat.
Even though the amount of fat in one study that claimed this was higher than what a health-conscious strength athlete would normally eat during a meal (40g), I would recommend being even more conservative. Limit the amount of fat at the last meal of the day to 10 or 15 grams.
2 - Perform cardio in the morning without carbs
No, not cardio in a fasted state, but cardio without carbs. There's a huge difference.
Let's say you've just eaten a bowl of fruit loops and decide you want to do some cardio to get leaner. The problem is that the cardio will be primarily fueled by your fruit loops and not your life preservers.
This is because eating carbohydrates inhibits fat burning and encourages the body's use of carbohydrates as an energy source. Surely we don't want to burn carbohydrates when doing cardio to lose fat.
So how do we burn fat for energy?
Fasting - an extended period of time without eating food, such as during sleep - causes a shift in the body towards burning fat for energy. Why? Liver glycogen reserves and blood sugar levels are lower after fasting, forcing the body to burn fat for energy in a fasting state.
Cardio training in a fasting state leads to significantly higher levels of the powerful fat-burning hormone norepinephrine than cardio training performed in a non-fasting state. This is the reason why bodybuilders have been doing fasting cardio for a long time with great success.
The problem with fasted cardio
In addition to burning fat for energy, the body will also mobilize protein to meet energy needs. And it will get this protein, specific amino acids (leucine, isoleucine and valine) from the muscle tissue. Your muscles will be broken down to release important branched-chain amino acids. Not good.
Your body will break down muscle tissue to give you energy while running on the treadmill and this will continue to increase as the intensity increases. But there is a way to break out of this "paying off debt with new debt" vicious cycle.
Consuming BCAAS before cardio reduces or prevents the protein breakdown that would normally take place. This means more muscle and a faster metabolic rate for you.
If you want to do high intensity interval training HIIT, then according to scientific research it is probably not beneficial to do this in a fasted state as the energy source used for this training will not be fat anyway. It's carbohydrates. However, consuming BCAAs before HIIT is still important. The higher the intensity of the workout, the greater the role that BCAAs play in energy production.
3 - Eat to replenish your muscles - not your liver
It's a fact: you need to eat carbohydrates to replenish muscle glycogen stores for optimal performance and muscle growth. Trying to build muscle without carbohydrates is like driving on flat tires. It's possible, but it's not fast and it's not fun!
But it's not enough to just eat carbohydrates and hope they get into your muscles. You need to know that they will get into your muscles. Ditch the strategy of hoping and implement a scientific protocol of carbohydrate consumption.
Let's take a look at some carbohydrate science. There are three types of monosaccharides that are of interest to humans: Glucose, fructose and galactose. The latter comes from the breakdown of the disaccharide lactose, which is primarily found in dairy products. I highly doubt that lactose makes up a significant amount of the carbohydrates consumed.
Irrespective of this, lactose is broken down into one part glucose and one part galactose. Galactose is then quickly converted into the body's favorite monosaccharide - glucose.
Glucose is the body's preferred carbohydrate currency. Once in the body - either consumed directly or created by breaking down more complex carbohydrates - glucose is used as an energy source, stored as glycogen or converted into fat.
In previous articles, we have already discussed the importance of not eating too many carbohydrates so that excess carbohydrates cannot be converted into fat. We want to eat just enough carbohydrates to meet our current energy needs and replenish glycogen stores - especially muscle glycogen stores.
The cool thing about glucose is that it preferentially replenishes muscle glycogen stores rather than liver glycogen stores. It seems as if the skeletal muscles have negotiated a deal with the body to get the first boost of extra glucose before the liver gets a chance to get its hands on this energy source.
This is great for us because we desperately want our carbohydrates to go to our muscles and not our liver.
The fructose dilemma
When we consume fructose, it is quickly absorbed and transported to the liver. It is then stored as liver glycogen and slowly released when blood sugar levels drop.
There are two problems with fructose:
- Storing carbohydrates in the liver doesn't do our muscles any good.
- Once the liver glycogen stores are full, the liver will convert any more fructose into triglycerides. And the liver can only store about 100 grams of fructose.
What does this mean for us? It means that we don't need to be too liberal with our fructose intake.
It also means that your dietary intake around exercise should include glucose-containing carbohydrates and non-fructose-containing carbohydrates. This is because any carbohydrates you consume in the form of fructose will ultimately not end up in your muscles, which will benefit most from carbohydrates after exercise.
So you should keep an eye on fructose and also control your sucrose intake. Sucrose, common household sugar, is a disaccharide consisting of a fructose molecule and a glucose molecule. In other words, sucrose is half fructose.
Sugary soft drinks are definitely not a good choice for post-workout carbohydrate intake, but there is a much less obvious group of foods to keep an eye on: Fruit. Of the approximately 25 grams of carbohydrates contained in an apple, for example, 15 grams are made up of fructose.
This is not about giving up fruit completely. In fact, because of the micronutrients it contains, I typically recommend that most people should eat one or two portions of fruit a day. It's more about avoiding eating some fruit and thinking that all of the 50 grams of carbohydrate you consume will end up in your muscles - because it won't.
A better approach is to eat no more than one piece of fruit at a time - even during the post-workout window. And if you want to eat fruit after your workout, consider eating a banana, as it contains more glucose and only half as much fructose as an apple.
Basic prerequisites
These fat loss strategies won't make you lean if you add them to an otherwise crappy diet and exercise program.
However, I can tell you from experience that your abs will stay hidden a lot longer if you try to get lean without these tricks.
References:
- Effects of an oral and intravenous fat load on adipose tissue and forearm lipid metabolism. Evans K, Clark ML, Frayn KN.
- Effect of moderate incremental exercise, performed in fed and fasted state on cardio-respiratory variables and leptin and ghrelin concentrations in young healthy men. J.A. Zoladz, S.J. Konturek, K. Duda, J. Majerczak, Z. Sliwowski, M. Grandys, W. Bielanski.
- Effect of branched-chain amino acid supplementation on the exercise-induced change in aromatic amino acid concentration in human muscle. Blomstrand E, Newsholme EA.
From Clay Hyght, DC | 03/16/11
Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/3-tricks-for-faster-fat-loss