BuffedWildCat’s BodyBlog

Back on about Feb 15th I started my official cut for the summer to try and get as lean as I can.  I just realized some things tonight…
On Feb 15th I weighed 138 lbs at 19.5% body fat.  At the time I was taking in 2250 calories, about 245P/145C/75F.  Since then I have cut my calories down to 1800 at about 160P/85C/95F.  Check it out…

Initially I dropped down to 132 lbs for ONE day.  Ever since then, my body weight has slowly been creeping back up despite the fact that I’m still doing the SAME diet (as I posted in the previous blog entry)!  So now I’m MAINTAINING the SAME WEIGHT as when I first started cutting but on LOWER calories!  Hmmm, I don’t think I like that!  But I am leaner (I’m now 17.6% and STUCK) so I’d HAVE to be gaining muscle to be at the same weight I was when I first started cutting!  But I just don’t see how that’s possible since I’m eating below my maintenance, but then again, I guess technically I’m NOT anymore since I’m maintaining my weight.  Well, as I’ve pointed out before, it just seems to be easier for me to gain muscle than it is for me to lose fat.

I tell ya what though, my body REALLY likes to stay closer to 140 lbs, no doubt about that.  What I have learned is that even if I decrease my calories and keep them lower, my body STILL manages to slowly make its way back up to 140 lbs, or very close!  This has been happening to me for the whole doggone 7 years I’ve been lifting.  No matter what I have done diet-wise, my body always ends up right back up at 140 lbs, is that weird or what?  I guess it just goes to show you how powerful genetics are.  I guess I was just made to be a big mofo, bwahaha!  Well, at least I feel thick and I think the same thing when I see pics of myself.

But anyway, I am speechless, astonished even, at what my body has done.  I’ve been CUTTING, I mean I’m freaking HUNGRY ALL THE TIME but I’ve STILL GAINED MUSCLE????  How is this possible?  Okay, this is just really nutty.  Tell me again, I’ve gotta be some kind of freak, LOL!!  I just cannot believe how incredibly stubborn my body is to want to stay at about 140 lbs!!  I weighed 132 lbs when I first started lifting back in March 2000 and within about 2 months of lifting, I gained that 8 lbs to put me at 140 lbs and that has NOT CHANGED ever since I’ve been doing this!  (Except of course when I was pregnant).  Isn’t that crazy??!!

If anyone out there reading this has experienced the same thing, please talk to me!  I’d really like to know if this is typical or normal or am I just a freak?  LOL.

And then dang, that puts a whole new spin on things as far as what to do for over the wintertime in terms of my diet.  I mean if I’m gaining muscle on 1800 calories, then should I even increase them at all?  Well, I think I’m gonna have to in order to keep my sanity cause I sure am sick of being hungry all the time!  Heh, anyhoo…  I’m definitely gonna have to think about this one!  Here’s me, the gal with the powerlifter genes, more and more I’m beginning to think that!

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z267/KryptoAllez/24JulyMeals.jpg

I’ve gotten quite a few requests for my diet lately, so for everyone who has asked, here it is.  I’ve been on this diet (or at least pretty darn close to it, with only a few minor exceptions) since the beginning of April.  I do refeed/cheat days anywhere from every 4-8 days, depends on how I feel and what’s going on.  I try to schedule my refeed days with events that are happening in my life, like a picnic for example.  I will be sticking with this diet until mid-October then I’ll be going to a 2000 calorie diet, basically slowly increasing my calories back up eventually to maintenance.  That’s the plan anyway.  I may change my mind and start increasing my calories sooner, we shall see…

The average American eats 142 pounds of sugar a year, or about 2.5 pounds each week.That’s a 23 percent increase over the last 25 years, and it is a major cause of the currently soaring rates of obesity and diabetes.

Dr. David Ludwig, who treats childhood obesity at Boston Children’s Hospital, says that one of the problems is the fact that the average convenience store is a nutritional disaster area.

Ludwig says that highly processed carbohydrates and refined sugars are causing hormonal changes that "drive hunger, cause overeating, and increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease."

Sugar in some form is present in nearly every packaged product in a grocery store, including spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, peanut butter, mayonnaise and ketchup.  CBS News June 17, 2007

Dr. Mercola’s Comment:

Related Articles:

The Scientific Definition of Obesity and its Dangers

Is Obesity in Your Future?

How Children Can Beat Obesity

© Copyright 2005 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.

Drinking high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the main ingredient in most soft drinks throughout the world, increases your triglyceride levels and your LDL (bad) cholesterol. These effects only occurred in the study participants who drank fructose — not glucose.

Consumption of beverages containing fructose rose 135 percent between 1977 and 2001. Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only cheaper to make, it was also much sweeter (processed fructose is nearly 20 times sweeter than table sugar), a switch that has drastically altered the American diet.

In 1966, sucrose made up 86 percent of sweeteners. Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used are made from corn.

Medscape July 5, 2007 (Registration Required)

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

In case you forgot, or never knew in the first place, the number one source of calories in the US is high fructose corn syrup.  Let me say that in different words so you more fully appreciate the impact of this fact.  Remember that fat has 250% more calories than sugar, but even with this major disadvantage, the food that most people get MOST of their calories from is sugar from corn, primarily in the form of soft drinks.

Even though I have known this for years, it is still shocking to me every time I reflect on the enormity of this truth.  But, like W. Clement Stone, I believe that there is a nugget of good in this horrible fact. The good is that stopping this pernicious habit is one of the easiest things to do. Since this is such a pervasive problem in the US, we could make radically outrageous improvements in our health as a culture if we just simply stopped everyone from drinking soda.

I am HIGHLY confident that the health improvement would be FAR more profound than if everyone stopped smoking because elevated insulin levels are the foundation of nearly every chronic disease known to man, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, aging, arthritis, osteoporosis, you name it, and you will find elevated insulin levels as a primary factor.
This evidence of an increase in triglyceride levels and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels is just the latest among countless findings pointing to the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).

Part of what makes HFCS such an unhealthy product is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar, and, because most fructose is consumed in liquid form, its negative metabolic effects are significantly magnified.

HFCS has also been linked to:

• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Metabolic Syndrome

The delusion that fructose is an acceptable form of sugar is quite prevalent in many nutritional circles. In fact, nearly all simple sugars are metabolized quickly and disrupt insulin levels, which contributes to most chronic illness. Eating small amounts of whole fruit will not provide tremendous amounts of fructose and should not be a problem for most people, unless diabetes or obesity is an issue but fruit juices, sodas and other beverages sweetened with fructose should be avoided.

To add insult to injury, the corn that the high fructose corn syrup is metabolized from nearly all comes from genetically modified corn which is fraught with its own well documented side effects and health concerns.
High fructose corn syrup is is not something that should be in your diet at all. But HFCS is the primary caloric sweetener in U.S. soft drinks. Researchers estimate that most Americans eat 132 calories of HFCS per day, while the top 20 percent of sweetener consumers eat over 300. And some, they say, eat as much as 700 calories per day of HFCS.

Sodas, of course, are not the only source of HFCS (though they represent one of the main ones). This dangerous sweetener is also in many processed foods and fruit juices, so to avoid it you need to focus your diet on whole foods and, if you do purchase packaged foods, become an avid label reader.

<strong class=”RatedArticles”>Related Articles:

  Six Reasons Why Corn is Making You Fat

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© Copyright 2005 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.

This is one of the most important posts I have written on health so I want you to carefully read this.

My site has been around for over 10 years and from day one I have been extolling the importance of insulin in nearly all chronic degenerative diseases. Well now we have a landmark study confirming that insulin is the central part of the weight-loss equation.

There are over 200 million Americans who are overweight, and collectively they are carrying around an extra 5 BILLION pounds of excess fat.

What the Boston researchers specifically found was that those who secreted high insulin levels had a far more difficult time losing weight than those who secreted low levels of insulin.

I am very grateful that these researchers produced this landmark confirmation of insulin truth. Unfortunately, they completely blew the interpretation of what they found. So let me help you sort through the researchers’ confusion.

Like most scientists they want to attribute the problem to your genes. They want you to believe that 200 million Americans are heavy because they have flawed genetics that make them hypersecrete insulin.

Folks, nothing could be further from the truth.

The reason 200 million Americans are overweight is not because of flawed genetics that cause them to make excessive insulin. Hypersecretion of insulin is an effect — NOT the cause. The reason 200 million are overweight is because they have impaired insulin receptor sensitivity.

Impaired Insulin Receptor Sensitivity

How do your insulin receptors stop working effectively?

Very simple.

This is a natural consequence that occurs when you don’t exercise and move the way you were designed to. Your body dynamically makes this adjustment because the receptors are not being used. This is very similar to what happens if you lie in bed for a few weeks; your muscles start to atrophy. Some have called this the “use it or lose it” phenomena.

So when your insulin receptors become desensitized the only way your body can adjust is to make MORE insulin. You become an insulin hypersecretor.

Why Is This Important?

Once your body releases insulin it immediately starts to inhibit your fat-burning hormone called hormone-sensitive lipase. This hormone is responsible for releasing fat into your bloodstream to be utilized as fuel. Once this enzyme is inhibited, your body is unable to burn fat and will then begin utilizing amino acids from your muscle and carbohydrates as fuel.

This will cause you to become abnormally hungry, which further feeds this vicious cycle.

The key is to have LOW levels of insulin so your body can produce large amounts of hormone-sensitive lipase and burn fat all day so you can look thin and slim.

You might want to pick up the paper edition of this week’s Time magazine as the online version of How the World Eats only shows one of the pictures from Japan, which for the most part is really healthy food. No wonder they live over 80 years. They show a picture of a family from Chad, which is virtually no food, and then a picture of food for a typical U.S. family.

This is one of the most powerful graphic illustrations as to why the United States has an obesity epidemic. Nearly all of the U.S. food (over 90 percent) was highly processed junk food. Of course, if you shop at a grocery store you probably see this all the time. It is shocking what people are putting into their bodies.

Processed junk foods will absolutely impair your insulin receptor sensitivity.

So What Can You Do?

The bottom line is very simple here, folks. Keep your insulin levels low, very low. You can measure this with an inexpensive blood test that nearly any doctor can draw for you. Your level should be about 2 or 3. The way you lower it to these levels is by exercising, avoiding processed foods and refined carbs, and by eating the appropriate amounts of carbs for your nutritional type.

This is NOT rocket science. If you apply these simple principles you will see dramatic and remarkable improvements not only in your ability to achieve your ideal weight but also in just about every other chronic degenerative disease.

Personally, I think it is criminal malpractice that fasting insulin levels are not aggressively monitored in all cases of cancer and heart disease, because they are central to the causes of both of these diseases.

We hope to offer a weight loss coaching program later this year but in the meantime you can use krill oil and fucoTHIN to help support your weight loss efforts.

Time Magazine June 11, 2007

The Journal of the American Medical Association May 16, 2007; 297:2092-2102
Related Articles:

Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects

Insulin Receptors in Brain Tied to Appetite and Weight Gain

Insulin May Raise Homocysteine

© Copyright 2005 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.

A new study suggests that calcium from food sources may be more effective than calcium from supplements. It found that women who get most of their daily calcium from food sources have healthier bones and greater bone density, even though those who took more supplements tended to have higher average levels of calcium.

Researchers asked 183 postmenopausal women to document their diet over the course of a week, after which their bone mineral density and estrogen were tested. Women who got at least 70 percent of their daily calcium from food sources instead of supplements took in the least calcium (830 milligrams per day, on average), but higher spine and hip bone density than women consuming 1,030 milligrams of calcium per day primarily from supplement sources.

Women who got calcium in relatively even amounts from both food and supplemental sources had both the highest bone mineral density and the highest calcium intake (1,620 milligrams per day).

Calcium from dietary sources is usually more completely absorbed than calcium from supplements, which could explain the difference. Women who got getting calcium from foods also had higher estrogen levels; estrogen is needed to maintain bone mineral density. The connection between dietary calcium and estrogen is as yet unknown, although it could be the result of eating plant sources containing the hormone.

Those who got calcium from food sources might have also taken in more vitamin D, which would aid in calcium absorption.

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition May 2007, Vol. 85, No. 5, 1428-1433

Yahoo News June 27, 2007

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

This study bears out what common sense would tell you: getting calcium from food is far better than getting it from a pill. But for many of us common sense is not very common and we seek to maximize our convenience and swallow our vitamins and minerals conveniently rather than focus on receiving them from high quality supplements.

Ah, if life were just that easy that simply swallowing a few pills would solve our nutritional needs. While supplements of course can be useful, they should be viewed just as that, supplements to a high quality diet that is used in addition to not in place of a high quality diet.

As often happens when it comes to food, quality is more important than quantity; even though the women taking supplements had higher average levels of calcium, the women who got their calcium from food had stronger bones. Calcium from food is simply better absorbed and utilized by your body than synthetic calcium from a pill.

The best food source of calcium out there is that from raw milk (NOT conventional, pasteurized milk) and other raw dairy products. Dark green, leafy vegetables is another great source of calcium. Of course, it’s not just calcium that you’re better off getting from whole foods, it’s all nutrients. Your best choice is always to favor getting nutrients the way nature intended.<em />

Vitamin D is also important for calcium absorption, so along with your raw milk and vegetables, make sure that you are getting plenty of safe sun exposure this summer. Because of this, adequate vitamin D levels help to prevent osteoporosis and hip fractures.

You should also remember that, just as exercise and diet work in tandem to beat obesity, the same can be said for osteoporosis. Strengthening bone mass, especially during puberty, can build a good foundation that can last a lifetime. In fact, there is a stronger connection between exercise and improved bone density among teens than taking calcium.Finally, make sure your diet contains healthy levels of omega-3 fats, which are the stealth dietary weapon in preserving your bone density. Even many nutritionists are not aware of the important relationship between healthy bones and optimal fat intake.

<strong class=”RatedArticles”>Related Articles:

  Calcium May Help Those Trying To Lose Weight

  Low-Fat, High-Fiber Diet May Lower Calcium Absorption

  Calcium Supplements Not Equally Effective

© Copyright 2005 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.

Posted in Nutrition