Nutrition

When you fry meat, it turns brown. This is a process known as the Maillard reaction, which is a binding of sugar to protein.

This is almost identical to what happens in your body when you habitually keep your blood sugar levels above 85 dl/mg. If blood sugar levels are kept high enough for long enough, you basically cook yourself, leading to kidney disease, joint deterioration, stiffening of connective tissue, hangovers and arteriosclerosis.

Can you pass me the Franky Barbecue Sauce ?

Continually high blood sugar levels not only cause you to slowly cook yourself, but also lead to metabolic problems including, but not limited to, insulin resistance and obesity.

The logical question that follows from this is what causes persistently high blood sugar levels. Well, aside from someone who follows a typical American diet, the person who is most susceptible to high blood sugar levels is someone who eats large amounts several times a day and never lets it get to the point of being hungry. Basically, this may be a person who, on the advice of hundreds of nutrition experts, keeps their blood sugar levels "stable" over a period of several years.

Does this sound like someone you know? If I'm not mistaken, this sounds like the way pretty much every bodybuilder or "physique athlete" on the planet diets.

I think it may be time to adopt a new way of eating....

The problem

In normal, healthy people, glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream and transported into the cells where it is burned for energy. This whole thing is mediated by insulin, which is produced and released by the pancreas after you've eaten a meal.

However, in diabetics, glucose builds up in the blood because the cells are unable to use this glucose correctly, leading to a condition known as insulin resistance. Over time, the pancreas gives up and can no longer produce sufficient amounts of insulin to successfully transport the glucose into the insulin-resistant cells. As this disease progresses, the pancreas produces inadequate amounts of insulin or no insulin at all, leading to all the terrible health problems I mentioned above.

Frighteningly, there are estimates that between one-fifth and one-third of all Americans will reach this disease state by mid-century.

A large percentage of these people, perhaps including you, are merely insulin resistant right now and years away from reaching the condition that is virtually indistinguishable from Type I diabetes. Nevertheless, you may already be experiencing some of the negative side effects and this could very well be related to the supposedly 'healthy' diet you are following, the cornerstone of which is your rigid '6 meals a day' eating plan.

The dubious thing about this is that this continuous eating keeps your insulin levels permanently elevated for years.

While your cells were once very sensitive to insulin, you have gradually become more resistant to insulin because you have been exposed to a rush of insulin in your bloodstream all this time. It is quite possible that your average blood glucose levels are well above 85 mg/dl and you are already insulin resistant, or already on your way to full-blown diabetes.

A little blood sugar history

Between 1979 and 1997, the medical establishment said that one of the criteria for diabetes was a fasting blood sugar level of 140 mg/dl.

In 1997, they re-estimated their levels and moved the diabetes level to 126 mg/dl and added that anyone with a level above 110 had an "impaired fasting".

Let's jump forward to 2003, since then doctors have been saying that no one should have a reading above 100 mg/dl and this is the cut-off point that still applies today. Clearly they were concerned about elevated blood sugar levels and their potential problems, and they don't know exactly where to put the milligram per deciliter bulwark.

One hundred seems like a logical number, but there are a number of problems with that number. For one, glycation, or the "cooking" that I mentioned in the introduction, seems to start at blood glucose levels above 85 mg/dl.

Furthermore, the whole concept of fasting blood glucose levels seems kind of twisted. For those unfamiliar with the term, fasting glucose levels refer to blood glucose levels measured in a blood sample taken in the morning after a night without eating.

The problem with this is that not eating - especially for us strength athletes - is kind of a rare situation. Most of us eat practically all the time. That being said, even normal people eat throughout the day and experience chaotic blood sugar spikes and low blood sugar levels. To really get a useful idea of how your body is dealing with food, you would need to take several blood samples throughout the day and analyze the results.

However, this does not happen.

So we don't really know our blood sugar levels. Sure, you could buy a blood glucose meter and test your blood sugar several times a day, but few of us would go that far. Instead, I prefer to use this assessment scheme:

If you're a massager type, if you eat multiple times a day, if you eat carbs indiscriminately, if the only veins you can see on your body are the veins on your penis, if the existence of your abs is as dubious as the existence of Nessie, then you're probably at least a little glucose intolerant and insulin resistant and are probably on your way to full-blown diabetes.

And for you, you vain bastard, probably more importantly, getting lean becomes less and less likely with each carb-overloaded day of elevated blood sugar levels.

Do you have any evidence?

Do I have any evidence for this? Admittedly not a great deal. However, I do have logic, empirical data and at least one or two studies on my side.

Logic tells me that if you expose your body to a continuous flow of blood sugar, your cells will become less sensitive to insulin over time. It's simply the way the body works.

I have also experienced it personally. I've been eating six meals a day since the late eighties, only to watch my fasting blood sugar levels rise year after year until they peaked at 117 mg/dl in 2010. And no, I didn't eat junk. I haven't eaten a McDonald's burger in over 20 years and I don't even remember what doughnuts taste like.

Nor do I have an obvious genetic predisposition to high blood sugar levels.

No, it seems like my 6 meals a day thing was the culprit.

Last but not least, there seems to be some experimental evidence to back me up. One study in particular seems to confirm my thoughts: "Effect of meal frequency on glucose and insulin excursions over the course of a day" (Holmstrup, et al, 2010).

Rather than go into all the details of the study, suffice it to say that a group of normal weight subjects who ate 6 meals a day showed significantly higher blood glucose levels than a group who ate only three meals a day. Despite eating the same amount of calories, the members of the group with fewer meals had lower blood glucose levels than the members of the group that ate 6 meals.

And even though the insulin response did not differ between the two groups, the group with a higher meal frequency had higher blood glucose levels throughout the day. This means that insulin was more efficient at lowering blood glucose levels when fewer meals were consumed.

In addition to this, there are several studies suggesting that fasting - which is effectively a term meaning eating fewer meals - significantly increases insulin sensitivity.

What can I do, oh, what can I do?

The easiest way to treat the insulin resistance problem is to change your eating habits. Go down from 6 meals to 4 or even 3 meals a day. You don't necessarily have to eat less, just less frequently.

In my opinion (and experience), an ideal eating pattern on non-training days would include a large, conventional bodybuilding breakfast with an emphasis on protein, healthy fats and functional carbohydrates.

I would follow this a few hours later with a lunch that has a similar micronutrient profile, which would be followed a few hours later by a protein boost in the form of 5 grams of branched-chain amino acids or something similar.

(And yes, I know that protein and/or amino acids are insulinogenic - but not nearly as much as carbohydrates, which is especially true if you're only eating a few grams).

I would follow this with a big, late dinner of protein, fats and as few carbs as possible.

The diet on non-training days:

• Big breakfast: protein, healthy fats, functional carbs
• Lunch: Protein, healthy fats, functional carbohydrates
• Afternoon: 5 grams of protein pulse
• Late dinner: Protein, fat

On workout days, I do virtually the same thing, either replacing my lunch with my workout nutrition protocol or simply taking my workout nutrition protocol with me in addition to my planned meals.

On Saturdays, I do what I call a "fasting cheat day," which seems unorthodox because it is unorthodox.

I eat a big protein-based breakfast and then - apart from my protein pulse in the afternoon - I don't eat anything else until my late dinner, when I pretty much eat whatever I want. No matter what dietary excesses I indulge in during the evening, I have fasted throughout the day, which increases my insulin sensitivity and - at least in theory - allows my body to weather the evening calorie storm.

My plan, unlike similar plans, was developed as a whole life nutrition plan. Also, my plan is specifically designed to lower your blood sugar levels in a healthy way and keep them low. Fat loss and improved body composition are a side effect of my plan.

My plan is also not a fasting plan. I am not promoting squeezing multiple meals into an 8 hour window and fasting for the rest of the day. This type of eating plan might work for improving insulin sensitivity, but my hypothesis is that it will inevitably lead to a loss of muscle mass. Not eating for 16 hours forces your body to rob your muscles of protein. Apart from this, such a plan is not practical in real life. In other words, fasting for 12 hours is okay, but 16 hours is not.

This is not to say that my plan is free of problems. There is a price you have to pay for eating three times a day: it's harder to achieve a calorie surplus - enough to build muscle - if you don't eat so frequently.

The benefit, of course, is that you'll get leaner, be more efficient with carbs and feel electrified instead of lethargic.

This is the reason that Cyanidin 3-glucoside (C3G) has become so popular. It allows you to dance at two weddings at the same time.

One of the things that C3G does is dramatically improve the way your body deals with blood sugar. One study showed that C3G caused a 22.2 percent (+- 5.8 percent) improvement in insulin sensitivity (Stull, et al, 2010).

In addition, it blocks an increase in leptin levels (while improving leptin sensitivity), lowers LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels, promotes glucose uptake into muscle tissue, blocks fat accumulation and inhibits digestive enzymes that break down starch for absorption (meaning that carbohydrates cannot be absorbed and remain in the digestive tract).

This is why people who use C3G can eat more - often a lot more - while keeping their insulin sensitivity extremely high and becoming leaner and more muscular.

It seems to restore insulin sensitivity in affected people, while in people with supposedly normal insulin sensitivity, it further increases insulin sensitivity.

I was able to lower my fasting blood glucose levels from 117mg/dl to 77 mg/dl by using this diet plan and taking C3G, where it has remained to this day except for a few fluctuations.

And when I check my blood sugar levels throughout the day (as I do occasionally to make sure I'm on target), I see my blood sugar levels rise only moderately after a meal and drop back to baseline within an hour or so, which is exactly what you would want.

However, C3G is not essential. However, it is especially important that our little subculture starts to rethink our time-honored but horribly wrong 6-meals-a-day eating pattern.

You can improve your insulin sensitivity through diet alone, but it won't be as easy as with C3G and you won't be able to get extra carbohydrate calories into muscle tissue. Nevertheless, improving insulin sensitivity through diet alone is a reasonable and necessary goal.

The frequent meal eating plan, may have originally been developed with the best of health intentions, but this won't help the legions of insulin resistant, thick skinned, bulking bastards out there who can't for the life of them figure out why food is their biggest obstacle to becoming a lean, muscular, high energy, fat burning machine.

Let the multiple meals a day be, let it be.

Part 1

By TC Luoma | 02/24/12

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/new-way-to-eat-part-1

Related blog posts:

>> The eat as much as you want diet
>> Why insulin is an advantage.

Here's what you need to know...

1. Forget counting calories. If you eat food from a nutrient-dense food list (which includes bacon), then you can eat as much as you want as often as you want.
2. Eating nutrient-dense foods leads to "toxic hunger" and even withdrawal symptoms when you try to clean up your diet. Toxic hunger is a condition in which the body lies to the brain and tells it that it's time to eat, even when it's not.
3. The list of nutrient dense foods contains a large number of surprises including nutritional powerhouses like liver. Surprisingly, fruit has a relatively low nutrient density.
4. By using foods from the nutrient density list, you can combine nutritionally appropriate foods that allow you to control your hunger, become healthier and lose body fat.

Counting calories is unnecessary

Has anyone ever lost weight effectively and consistently by counting calories? To do this properly, you'd have to weigh all your food, take into account your age, activity level, weight and body fat percentage, and then do a bunch of calculations that could give you a math prize.

And all of that would be pretty worthless if you weren't able to somehow figure out how much brown adipose tissue you have and whether the mitochondria in that and your muscles are youthful and vibrant or old and sluggish. Yes, calorie counting is a job for fools.

If you want to lose fat, forget about counting calories. Instead, eat as much as you want, whenever you want, as long as your diet consists of a balanced selection of specific foods.

I know, I know. Eating as much as you want was what was responsible for your fat deposits, but hear me out further. If your diet was based on what you need and not what you want, then you would say goodbye to hunger, lose body fat and get healthy. But what is what you need? Foods with a high nutrient density instead of foods with a high calorie density,

I'm going to throw a handful of new stuff into your mental blender - some new or little-known paradigms about nutrients and how your body responds to them and food in general. And I'm even going to throw you a tasty, nutrient-dense morsel right now to keep you interested: Bacon is high in nutrient density and it's something you should be eating more of. I'll tell you why soon.

What does "nutrient density" mean?

The main problem with nutrient dense foods has always been defining exactly what the term means. For now, let's just say that nutrient dense foods contain a high amount of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, antioxidants, etc. relative to their calorie content. Spinach, the first "super food", for example, contains a lot of nutrients and very few calories, so it fits the above definition very well.

But before we figure out what are bad foods, what are good foods and what are great foods, let's first figure out why you can eat a balanced diet consisting of all the nutrient-dense foods you want and lose body fat at the same time. Yes, eating too much food of any kind can lead to fat storage, but it's harder to overeat on protein or high nutrient density foods than on the processed carbohydrates found in high calorie density foods.

In other words, you would have to stuff yourself to the gills with high calorie density foods over and over again to reach a caloric surplus. Not so with junk food with a high calorie density. In general, eating foods with high nutrient density has the following benefits:

• High nutrient density foods allow you to control your calorie intake without counting calories.
• You will feel fuller for longer between meals.
• It will be much harder to overeat.

And it would also eliminate the newly recognized villain in the fight against fat: toxic hunger.

Real hunger vs. toxic hunger

There is a new theory in the nutrition community and it has to do with the difference in the physiological effects of hunger between a person who eats a diet that is nutrient dense and a person who eats a diet that is nutrient deficient.

Those who eat unhealthy foods experience a hunger response that is more reminiscent of the response of a heroin addict who has gone too long without shooting up. In other words, the hunger experienced by a person following a lousy diet, which by definition includes a lot of pro-inflammatory foods, is more like withdrawal symptoms than true hunger.

Normally, hunger occurs when glycogen stores are nearing their end. Hunger signals are sent to the brain and you feel compelled to search for food in the deep, dark recesses of the fridge. Eating prevents the process of gluconeogenesis, also known as the breakdown of lean body tissue to meet the need for glucose. Eating is a process that prevents the body from using muscle tissue as an energy source.

Compare this to toxic starvation. When someone continually eats nutrient-poor foods, hunger signals are sent to the brain much earlier in the digestive process and long before a breakdown of lean body tissue could become a problem.

"The body lies to the brain and tells it it's time to eat, even when it's not really."

Experiments have shown that people who go from eating high calorie density foods to eating high nutrient density foods actually go through an adjustment period during which your body learns to wean itself off eating pro-inflammatory foods. It's something similar to cold turkey withdrawal from drugs.

The implications of all this are that if people learned to eat foods with high nutrient density, they wouldn't need their "fix" of lousy food, even if it's not really needed. They would probably only eat when they are really hungry and when the body sends signals to the brain to start eating to protect muscle tissue. Hunger is one of the main obstacles to fat loss and people who follow a high nutrient density diet experience less hunger - and when they do get hungry, it's legitimate hunger.

For this reason, a diet consisting of high calorie density foods will make a significant difference in how you look naked. Such a diet also has far-reaching health benefits, but I'm going to avoid that discussion because you're not a beginner. This is not "living beautifully", this is just common sense.

Heck, you know riboflavin is better for you than propylene glycol, which aside from being one of the main components of airplane de-icing fluid, is also a widely used food additive. Instead, let's tackle the more interesting topic of how some people have tried to define exactly what makes a food a nutrient-dense food. The answer might surprise you.

Beware of nutrition experts with agendas

When it comes to measuring nutrient density, there's no shortage of food rating systems that can supposedly help consumers figure out what's good for them and what's not. The problem here, however, is that many of these systems reflect the biases and prejudices of the people who developed them.

Some systems, like the ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) system you see on signs hanging around Whole Foods stores near Leapin' Lemur's Organic Grains, were developed by pale-skinned vegetarians wearing underwear made from unbleached organic hemp.

In addition to omitting a staggering amount of vitamins and minerals, these lists, including the ANDI list, include little protein overall, and especially little animal protein.

The ANDI system assigns foods a value between 1 and 1,000 based on certain nutritional parameters. Kale, collard greens and watercress get a score of 1,000, but meat, seafood and dairy products score below 50 and are not considered health-supportive. When you consider that chicken and beef only get a score of 27 and 20 on the list, you'd want to beat the ANDI people up with a hormone-free chicken leg.

Other systems judge the value of a food by what it doesn't contain, such as saturated fat, cholesterol or sodium, but this type of system is highly problematic. Among other things, scientific data suggests that cholesterol and saturated fat may be yesterday's villains and not today's, but the creators of these lists have not read the nutritional crime report to find that these "bad" nutrients have been exonerated.

As an example, consider that some fat-free yogurts contain only one-sixth the protein of cheese, but calculated per 100 grams, yogurt ranks much higher on the list because the fat in cheese skews the math in favor of yogurt.

Other systems weight things like fiber, but fiber is certainly not an essential nutrient. However, one of these systems gives fiber the same weight as 16 other nutrients including protein, calcium, iron, potassium, folate, etc. This system is called the "Powerhouse Fruits and Vegetables" (PFV) classification scheme.

Unfortunately, as the name suggests, this list only looks at fruits and vegetables. Surprisingly, watercress is the food with the highest nutrient density in this list. Equally surprising is that only 7 of the 41 foods on the list are fruit, with all of these fruits at the bottom of the list. Interestingly, raspberries, blueberries and cranberries are missing from the list for unspecified reasons. These fruits are not used to being rejected in such a shameless manner.

Here is a selection of some of the superstars on this list:

Regarding this list, it is worth noting that apart from spinach, you have to go down to number 17 on the list until you find peppers, a vegetable that most people eat regularly. You have to go down to number 20 to find the first fruit (pumpkin) and the next fruit doesn't appear until number 30 (strawberries).

Even though this list is of limited value as it only addresses fruits and vegetables, it has definitely made me change my eating habits. Instead of relying primarily on the various "more familiar" vegetables that are at the bottom of the list, I've started eating the weirder and often less tasty members of the top 20 vegetables on the list. Hey, good nutrition is not for sissies.

There's another list that sees the value of meat, doesn't avoid silly things like fat and cholesterol, and doesn't consider fiber an essential nutrient.

"A Liver a Day Keeps the Doctor Away"

Nutritionist Mat Lalonde looked at all the definitions of nutrient density and found the same problems I did, so he decided to compile his own list. Unlike other systems, he basically took nutrients per serving and divided it by weight per serving so that foods are on a level playing field when compared to each other.

He then defined "essential" by listing the things that are really important for human health. This list includes essential fatty acids, amino acids and a variety of important vitamins and minerals. After compiling and calculating the values, organ meats and especially liver were at the top of the list.

Surprisingly, more "primitive" societies have long recognized liver and other organs as the perfect foods with high nutrient density. Liver, for example, is so packed with good stuff that the Inuit classify liver as both a meat and a vegetable. Native American tribes in continental America feed the muscle meat of hunted animals to their dogs, while they themselves eat the much more nutrient-dense organ meat.

In this context, I should perhaps mention that an apple contains 7 mg of vitamin C per 100 grams, while 100 grams of liver provides 27 mg. Or consider vitamin B12. An apple contains no vitamin B12, red meat contains 1.84 mcg per 100 grams and liver provides a whopping 111.3 mcg of vitamin B12 per 100 grams.

And it doesn't look much different when you consider the content of liver (or organ meats in general) in nutrients like phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, zinc, iron, copper, vitamins A, D and E, thiamine, riboflavin, pantothenic acid or virtually any other nutrient on Lalonde's list.

Liver and other organ meats may be the most nutritionally complete foods ever, and the fact that we don't eat many of them here in the U.S. may correlate with many of the degenerative diseases that plague us.

Surprisingly, herbs and spices rival organ meats on Lalonde's list. The only downside with these is that it's hard to flavor your food with nutritionally significant amounts of cilantro, basil, spearmint, parsley, oregano or thyme without giving your taste buds a seizure. Of course, if you use spices as frequently and as liberally as your taste buds will allow, you can still significantly improve your nutritional status in the long run.

Other interesting observations:

• Nuts and seeds are high up on the list, with Brazil nuts, hazelnuts and coconut leading the pack.
• Fruit is surprisingly low on the list, with apples and watermelon bringing up the rear.
• The common potato beats the sweet potato, apart from its vitamin A content.
• Pork is really high on the list and bacon almost reaches superstar status.
• Eggs are at the top of the list, but for goodness sake eat the yolks too.
• Exotic meats like emu and ostrich are high on the list, but duck is near the bottom.
• Kale and seaweed are very high on the list.
• Legumes are at the bottom of the list.
• Grains are near the bottom (raw grains are near the top according to Lalonde, but they are indigestible in this form).
• Beef and pork are higher on the list than vegetables.

Here are the approximate values for nutrient density according to Lalonde. Don't be put off by the negative values. These simply mean that foods are rich in certain nutrients, but may be low or completely lacking in other nutrients. All in all, there are very few foods like organ meats that contain everything, which is why a good diet requires a variety of foods with high nutrient density.

Lalonde values for nutrient density:

If this list has a drawback, it is that it does not take phytonutrients into account. This probably has something to do with the fact that the science of phytonutrients is still in its infancy. We don't know which phytonutrients are important, what amounts are important and whether they act interactively rather than independently.

Of course, this probably doesn't matter. We should all know that fruit and vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet and we should eat a wide variety of them, which in turn should ensure a high intake of phytonutrients.

How do we use this information?

Let's say you're planning a meal. You manage to overcome your aversion to liver and prepare some liver in a pan with some olive oil. Since liver is so nutritionally complete, you don't have to worry much about what else you eat.

However, let's say you eat some turkey breast. Turkey breast is an excellent source of protein, but it's not even close to liver in terms of nutrient density, so you could supplement your turkey meal with some raw green vegetables to get an equivalent amount of nutrients as a meal with liver.

Or say you cook up some black beans. These contain some nutrients and a few amino acids, but not all of them. So you could put on a flannel shirt and make a lumberjack meal of cooked beans with bacon, which is high in protein (and a number of important nutrients). You could also add a few herbs to spice up the flavor and nutritional profile of the meal.

Similarly, you could add a portion of a Greens Superfood product to anything you eat. These supplements don't fall into the conventional category of nutrient-dense foods (they often contain no measurable calories or macronutrients), but usually include large amounts of phytonutrients and a significant amount of antioxidants, allowing you to enhance any meal you prepare.

Forget the calories, think about the nutrition

Maybe the list doesn't tell you that much you didn't know before. In the end, regardless of your knowledge of nutrition, you will probably be aware that vegetables and fruit and seafood and meat are good for you, while ready-made cakes from the supermarket probably are not.

However, it is good for the body if you start to think about how foods can complement each other and a balanced diet is really nothing more than an intricate mix of a variety of food groups and doesn't just include the 15 typical foods that most athletes and bodybuilders eat week in week out.

It's as simple as this: if we follow a balanced diet consisting of foods with a high nutrient density, then we achieve the following:

• We can forget about counting calories.
• If you only eat foods with high values, it is almost impossible to consume too many calories.
• If you optimize your diet for high values, the calories take care of themselves.

And most importantly, we create lean bodies that are as healthy on the inside as they look on the outside.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/eat-as-much-as-you-want-diet

From TC Luoma | 10/23/14

Adding carbohydrates to a post-workout supplement has no additional effect on increasing muscle mass, abdominal fat loss or total body fat loss, according to a study from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

Untrained men participating in a 12-week weight training program were given a supplement containing either 30 grams of whey protein, protein and carbohydrates or carbohydrates only. The drinks were consumed directly after training. Training with weights increased lean mass, muscle size and strength. The whey protein group showed the greatest reduction in abdominal fat and the greatest increase in lean body mass. None of the supplements produced significant changes in body composition, but whey protein alone had the greatest effects on abdominal fat and lean mass.

It may be that these results are not transferable to intensively training strength athletes or bodybuilders.

(Journal International Society Sports Nutrition, 12: 48, 2015)