Hardness23’s BodyBlog

Left over rice Pilaf, in a 6 egg omelet with black beans, salsa, cottage cheese and brocolli.  Yummy!!!

Next week we are delving into the metabolizing of fats, I can hardly wait and I’ll post any good stuff I learn as it pertains to bodybuilding and dieting.  It is so great learning the stuff at a molecular level so I can read through the fluff, and get buff and tough. lol I should be a poet.
Anyways, I was thinking how great it must be to be a doctor and know everything about the human body and how it works.  I wonder if they share their secrets.  I wonder how much they know that they don’t tell us.  Why do they let us believe so much crap??  Can you believe people spend so much money on amino acid supplements?  Alinine, glutamine, arginine, anything "ine" is ALL IS MEAT!! That’s why meat is a complete protein- because it’s complete with all the essential amino acids!  Why not go spend some money on some chicken instead of taking more pills than your 40 year old grandma!!  For the record it is important to take vitamins obviously and chromium picolinate which is emerging as one of the most important supplement everyone should be taking due to its effect on insulin receptors.  Other than that, GNC and these magazines are hustling all the naive bodybuilders out there who will by anything if it promises getting bigger.  Keep in mind too that unless a bottle/supplement is FDA approved, they can write ANYTHING yes ANYTHING on the bottle.  They can literally put a dog turd in a bottle and call  say "This will make you Incredible Hulk"  and people will believe it.  They throw a few pictures of mitochondria and some chicks on there and make millions.

After talking with my Biochemisty professor (University of Arizona) today some things were brought to my attention from a scientific perspective.  First of all, taking glutamine supplements are not that beneficial.  It’s not even as good at synthesizing gluecose for the muscles as alanine is because it has to go through the citric acid cycle and get made into oxaloacetate before it can even enter the gluconeogetic process.  Alinine at least gets transfered right to pyruvate which leads to faster synthesis of gluecose.  So if we were to take any amino acid supplement it should be alinine but as my prof said it’s not even needed if you are on a high protein diet and won’t do any good.  He said he’s sick of all the lies in the bodybuilding community too.   All  it does is make it harder on the kidneys to filter out all the excess nitrate from the digestion of the amino acids.  And glutamine is harder on the kidney than alinine is because it has an extra NH2 group.

Also,  every one freaks out about the body eating muscle tissue for energy.  The ONLY WAY, as was told to me today by my professor who actually worked with Dr. Krebb (as in Krebbs Cycle) in his PhD studies, that the body breaks down muscle for energy is if you go more than ten hours without eating and enter the pre-starvation state.  This is when you have used up all of your liver glycogen (which is your carb stoarge that lasts 10 hours after your last meal) and only then do you start eating into the muscle.  The body uses a glugagon like peptide to turn protein into glucose when you are low carb dieting so even if you have had no carbs, you will not break down muscle unless you are STARVED more than 10 hours without food.  But as long as you are eating sufficient protein you are providing your muscles with the source of muscle glycogen that they need to function.  So basically the point is and he said this directly, is that you can knock carbs out completely and in terms of muscle you will NOT break it down assuming you are on a high protein diet because your body adapts and uses the protein for what it needs.  The only thing he said that can be harmful from a high protein/low carb diet is that it is a little much on the kidneys which need to filter out all the excess nitrates from the breakdown of the protein and over time this can be harmful.  Take it for what it’s worth.  This at least answers some questions I’ve had in the past especially after talking to some women who have said they don’t eat carbs year around because carbs make them feel like crap (same here) and just eat high protein diets with some fruit here and there for the nutritional values.  They are still able to put on lots of muscle and stay lean because there are no excess carbs (which is really just a form of sugar) getting transferred to fat.

So this weekend I got a new insight to things after talking with some very successful people.  What does a first place trophy do for somebody?  Well for me mine is going to sit on my wall, I’ll get to show it to my kids and grandkids someday, it gives me an intrinsic feeling of success.  But you know what?  I don’t know right now if I feel the need to keep going and going in figure when I can market myself actually making money for the hard work I do to keep in shape.  This is why I was thinking about straying from figure for a little while and focusing on fitness modeling.  I mean, I’m going to get to a point professionally in figure when I feel it’s going to come down to taking "stuff" and getting implants as being the line between winning and losing.  Then I’ll realize I’ve just wasted my time??  Need to think about this for awhile…..

So tomorrow is Americas Fittest Model contest and I’m eating small portions of salmon and organic chicken breast (non-injected).  Salmon with sugar free-maple syrup is DELICIOUS.  An old restaurant I worked for in Wisconsin had maple grilled salmon with asparagus and that’s where I got the idea.  It’s one of those salty-sweet things that tastes good together.  I’m cutting carbs for this and will probably just eat about 30 g tomorrow morning for energy.

I have decided to do the America’s Fittest Model contest in Phoenix next weekend.  I think it will be a good time, I’m not going to try to drop weight or anything I think I’m good where I’m at even though I’ve put on some weight.  I think I look more attractive now anyways than when I was ripped.  I’ve never done a competition like this so I have no idea what it’s going to be like.