Challenging current nutritional notions

[yorik]

More than you ever wanted to know about the structure of fats, probably even more than T-Mag’s “Fat Roundtable”, can be found at:

http://www.westonaprice.org/know_your_fats/skinny.html

and probably other places.

Nice short post, right?

[Buff_Bastard]

Good stuff, good stuff! But hitting the boundary of my limited knowledge.

yorik wrote:

I left out gluconeogenesis, which is the breakdown of protein to form glucose. You might consider this a step 7 when lipolysis simply cannot occur fast enough. If insulin is really high and you’re not responding to insulin due to resistance, lipolysis cannot occur. Insulin suppresses glucagon which is necessary for fat release. You might be breaking down muscle protein if you can’t release the fat fast enough.

High insulin levels ought to decrease gluconeogenesis, but perhaps if the resistance is big enough, gluconeogenesis can occur.

Remember that the storage process is somewhat independent from the utilization process with insulin. They all occur at the same time (depending upon other undiscussed hormones which are out of my limited expertise), so some small amount of fat might be stored in response to insulin. It depends on which mechanism works the fastest. Even ol’ Berardi himself backs off somewhat from his recommendation for an insulin spike when obese people are involved.

Yeah, something like this (how much glucose is stored as fat when insulin is high and glycogen stores are not topped) is probably highly individual.

Actually, insulin resistance affects first the liver, then muscles cells and very late in the game, adipocytes (fat cells.)

Ain’t that a bitch?

That’s what is supposed to happen when you are young and healthy. Continual “dirty” eating, after several years, will affect the liver as it tries to process the saturated fat and trans fats, plus it loses sensitivity to blood glucose levels itself. Eventually, it doesn’t respond to the triggers to produce glucagon.

So would one just run out of ‘fuel’ when exercising and lipolysis doesn’t occur fast enough?

So instead let’s examine some examples from “dirty” eating. Usually “dirty” is associated with high saturated fat, high trans-fat and high insulinemic carbs, your average Krispy Kreme for example. Besides causing long-term insulin resistance, high insulin suppresses glucagon (fat releasing hormone) and growth hormone, prevents magnesium storage and interferes with nitric oxide (meaning high blood pressure and no erections if it gets out of hand in the long term.) The saturated fats are implicated in insulin resistance.

I’m beginning to be more convinced of the necessity of eating (mostly) clean, certainly for longterm health and maybe better muscle sparing properties. Although i’m not convinced ‘calories in vs. calories out’ doesn’t still apply to a healthy individual. Maybe i’ll just have to experiment for myself if i loose fat faster on a totally clean diet.

A significant problem is the lack of the omega-3 fats in an “dirty” diet. The benefits of omega-3s include an increase in fat oxidizing enzymes, improved cell membrane lipid profiles and more glucose transporters (better insulin sensitvity) and the inhibition of acetyl CoA, which is used for fat synthesis. In order to get the omega-3s and reduce the transfats, you almost have to eat “clean.”

Omega-3 can easily be supplemented while eating Krispy Kremes. But, agreed, what would be pretty lame to say the least.

The bottom line is this: occasionally eating “dirty” won’t hurt you.

But what is occasionally? Once a day? Once a week? My guess is that it is very individual. I guess everybody has to figure out for themselves how much “dirty” eating they can do and still look good naked. Although it would be harder to predict longterm effect, indeed.

[andersons]

As yorik explained, muscle breakdown is a potential consequence of a hypocaloric diet. This is one reason why diets have to be designed carefully, not just simply hypocaloric, to manipulate body composition to preserve muscle and burn fat. You don’t simply want to use more calories than you take in; you want the calories you eat to feed muscle preferentially instead of fat.

In your earlier posts, Buff, it was not clear to me whether you were making this distinction between losing weight versus losing only fat. If you want to lose weight and you don’t care whether it’s fat or muscle, sure, just make sure your diet’s hypocaloric and eat anything you want. Especially if you have quite a bit of excess fat and are in the early stages of losing weight. If you want to lose only fat and keep as much muscle as possible, you have to be much more careful. And if you want to become very lean (not just fit the classic height-weight chart), you also have to be more careful. This is why Berardi (and others!) design diets on this site, to manipulate body composition.

Even if you just want to lose weight, it’s just not so simple as calories in, calories out. Because, in a hypocaloric situation, your body manipulates calories out. One of the ways is by breaking down muscle, as yorik mentioned, but also, the body down-regulates metabolism in additional ways (e.g., thyroid). Exercise cannot prevent this from happening, and too much exercise can be additionally catabolic. You have to keep decreasing and decreasing calories to maintain a caloric deficit. I have seen people on 800 kcal/day, not losing weight.

If it were just as simple as calories in, calories out, then the person who could eat the least amount of food would be leanest. Eat nothing, and you’d be shredded. My anorexic friend’s extreme hypocaloric diet proves this is not true. She has lost a ton of LBM (including bone mass as well as muscle!) and her metabolism is so low that she feels ice-cold to the touch.

We already know that protein doesn’t behave the same as carbs (i.e., thermic effect). And certain fats (monounsaturates, EPA, DHA) have been shown to have wildly different effects from other fats. (Monos, EPA, DHA, and other omega 3s are less likely to get stored as fat.) It’s not such a stretch, then, to believe that different carbs such as broccoli and Krispy Kremes are gonna have different effects too. In fact, Berardi did present evidence for this (COMMUNITY - T NATION - The World's Trusted Community for Elite Fitness).

I agree with your original question, in that I’d like to learn more about the mechanisms, such as insulin, that explain these effects. But the basic idea that a calorie is not a calorie, a carb is not a carb, and a fat is not a fat is well supported.

Buff wrote:

Yeah, something like this (how much glucose is stored as fat when insulin is high and glycogen stores are not topped) is probably highly individual.

Exactly. Berardi has, in fact, written extensively about this difference and how to measure it specifically: it’s called insulin sensitivity, the inverse of insulin resistance. See Massive Eating Part II (COMMUNITY - T NATION - The World's Trusted Community for Elite Fitness).

yorik wrote:

Besides causing long-term insulin resistance, high insulin suppresses glucagon (fat releasing hormone) and growth hormone. . .saturated fats are implicated in insulin resistance.

yorik, thanks for the details. It is interesting that type of fat as well as type of carbs is implicated in insulin resistance. I keep reading about how nuts aren’t as fattening as equal calories of other foods.

Buff wrote:

I’m beginning to be more convinced of the necessity of eating (mostly) clean…Although i’m not convinced ‘calories in vs. calories out’ doesn’t still apply to a healthy individual. Maybe i’ll just have to experiment for myself if i loose fat faster on a totally clean diet.

Buff, it would be great to try this experiment. I believe someone else recommended it as well. You’ll never prove anything for sure, but you may find that, even if your insulin resistance is now good, that you will need to be more and more strict as your body fat decreases, and/or as you get older. I have convinced myself of this in my own diet. If I add the fat and carbs from a Krispy Kreme (hey, they sell them right in my building) to my chicken breast, I just don’t do as well as when I add equal calories of broccoli, beans, and olive oil.

And perhaps the most compelling reason to eat “clean” carbs and reduce the bad ones is the long-term effect of insulin resistance.

Buff wrote:

Omega-3 can easily be supplemented while eating Krispy Kremes.

Maybe, but maybe not so “easily.” Nutrients appear to interact with other nutrients. The effects of each one separately don’t just sum up. For example, Sears claims that the benefits of omega-3s are blunted by a high-insulin diet.

Buff wrote:

But what is occasionally? Once a day? Once a week? My guess is that it is very individual. I guess everybody has to figure out for themselves how much “dirty” eating they can do and still look good naked.

There is a thread that pertains to this question. I think it is called “refeeds” posted by Tampa-Terry. People experiment to find out how much “cheating” they can do on an otherwise-clean diet. I tried to feel this out with my “Consistently lean?” thread too.

Buff, you must be young. Enjoy it while you can! As a great lover of “bad” carbs-saturated fat combination foods, I sincerely mean that.

PS - Before I get the nickname “Krispy Kreme,” lemmee just say I’ll take Haagen-Dazs ANY DAY over a Krispy Kreme. But KKs are popular here in southern CA, and since T-mag named donuts the most evil food, KK is a handy example.

[Sturat]

I’m half using this reply to bump this thread, I’ve found it quite interesting.

As far as I am aware weight loss (not fat loss per se) is simply a question of calories in VS. calories out.

Now, before anyone jumps down my throat here there are a couple of things you need to be aware of:

I did not just call a calorie a calorie, afterall TEF needs to be considered under the calorie out heading. Plus of course one needs to realize that I spoke of weight loss, not fat loss.

For fat loss we need to concern ourselves with muscle sparing contributions from food on top of caloric balance. These contributions are of course heightened through high protein intake as well as ketogenic (possibly) diets vs. those higher in carbs.

But to try and address BB’s original query I really don’t think from a pure fatloss standpoint it’s going to make one whit of difference if you:

a) Combine foods in the P+F, P+C combinations.
b) Choose to get your carbs from high GI sources rather than low GI sources

Those of course assume that there are no changes in macronutrient breakdown and that your intake remains within your caloric limit.

Now of course you’re going to suffer due to lack of phytochemicals, fiber, etc but from a pure fat loss standpoint I really don’t think it’ll matter if you get your carbs from a plate of brocolli or a can of pop.

STU