Shannan’s Journey

I hate training calves….  I hate it with a passion !!!!

I don’t like the feeling during training them much the same way that I hate doing heavy barbell curls.  The burn is unlike any other burn that I experience in other bodyparts.  But, at the same time I hate my calves… I think they are puny and are in desperate need of help. 

Therefore, I go through these moments of really hitting them hard and seeing them grow, and loving it… and then the rest of the year I almost pay no attention to them.  You could say it’s because I just don’t care enough about seeing them change or, I would probably say it’s just that I don’t get any enjoyment out of training them.  What is it that makes me so dedicated to training EVERY other body part with intensity and vigor, but when it comes to my darn calves I just seem to say, "oh I’ll do it tomorrow"…??

I am ashamed to admit this but I am ready to try and fix it.  Any suggestions ???

All that may be confusing, but now you know why some people can eat 500 grams of carbs daily, do no cardio, and still lose fat. Their adrenaline is higher, their metabolic rate is higher, they’re easily accessing stored fat for energy, and insulin doesn’t prevent them from doing so to as great of a degree as others.

For the rest of us, in order to stimulate round-the-clock fat burning, we’ll want to either increase adrenaline, or our sensitivity to it. There are three ways to do that:

1) Exercise intensely. Exercise is a very potent stimulator of adrenaline. The more intense the activity, the better. This doesn’t mean you should go out and do intense full body workouts and HIT cardio seven days a week, but if you can recover from it, more intense activity has better fat burning and nutrient partitioning benefits.

If you routinely like to do a mix of low and high intensity exercise, a good rule of thumb is to start your workouts off with more intense variations (weight training and HIT cardio) to boost adrenaline and free up a lot of fatty acids, and end it with low-intensity stuff to burn off more of the mobilized fat stores. A 30-minute session of leisurely cardio will be more effective if it’s preceded by an intense weight training workout.

2) Lower your insulin. Lowering your insulin allows easier fat mobilization. Performing fat burning exercise in a state of lower insulin allows adrenaline to immediately begin mobilizing fat. That means doing your normal cardio preceded by a low-carb meal, after weight training or on a low carb day (when your blood sugar and insulin are lower).  This is a superior way to do it rather than coming home and eating a couple of bowls of Cap’n Crunch, and we all know that one

I’m personally am a big fan of totally fasted early morning cardio, but provided you have a protein drink or some BCAAs, it does have utility for this purpose.

3) Supplement wisely. Supplements like coffee and even green tea all have positive effects on elevating adrenaline. A good stimulant stack can increase your metabolic rate by up to 15%, largely due to increases in adrenaline.

Be judicious about your use of the stronger stimulants though. They are effective, but they work best if cycled off 1-2 days per week. Furthermore, you shouldn’t use them if you suffer from burnout or adrenal fatigue.  Never do anything supplement consistantly without a break.  L-tyrosine increases noradrenaline, is perfectly natural, and can be used anytime.

Stimulants blunt insulin sensitivity in both fat and muscle cells, which, in addition to raising that threshold where insulin shuts off fat burning mentioned above, means less nutrient uptake in both fat and muscle cells. This means your body doesn’t store fat as easily, but it also struggles a bit to replenish muscular glycogen and send amino acids into your muscles.

However, as long as you exercise, you can selectively increase muscle’s insulin sensitivity. Combine stimulants and smart training, and you’ll get less nutrient uptake into fat cells and, relatively normal nutrient uptake into muscle cells, so more of the food you eat ends up in your muscles.

“Can’t I just have some coffee and donuts, and go watch TV?”

Whatever you do, don’t do that! One of the problems with using artificial stimulants to boost adrenaline is that adrenaline frees up energy stores and inhibits energy uptake in the muscles (and fat) to make more energy available to the brain.

That’s not a bad thing, as long as you burn off the freed up energy stores, which you do when you exercise. However, when you combine a sedentary lifestyle, along with excessive nutrition and artificially high adrenaline, you’re pouring a lot of nutrients in your bloodstream (from your crappy diet), and you also have adrenaline breaking down lots of fatty acids in the blood stream that don’t get burned off.  So instead of getting burned off, all this fat and glucose sits in the bloodstream with nowhere to go but your butt or your gut. This is the bane of the Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, and the couch potato crowd.

Over time this can lead to symptoms of metabolic syndrome — insulin resistance, high blood pressure, and increased visceral fat. The take home point here is that stimulants can be an asset unless you’re taking in well over your maintenance calorie level, and sitting on your butt. In that case, all the above benefits are totally negated.

Insulin and adrenaline play a game of tug of war on fat cells. Lowering insulin or increasing adrenaline leads to easier fat loss. Increasing insulin or decreasing adrenaline leads to easier fat deposition. The more adrenaline you produce, the higher your metabolism, and the more carbs you can eat while still burning fat.

By taking steps to optimize the adrenaline/insulin ratio, you use more fat for fuel around the clock. Since you’re burning more fat for energy and storing less of it, more of the calories you ingest can be directed to your muscles instead of fat.

This allows you to shift body composition toward a leaner and harder side. You can also maintain muscle better when in a strict cutting phase, and stay much leaner when in a muscle building phase.

Now I know it’s all easier said than done but, that doesn’t mean we all can’t start tomorrow

Adrenaline and noradrenaline serve to increase the metabolic rate, and are also the body’s most powerful stimulators for fat breakdown. Through adrenaline and noradrenaline, the nervous system significantly impacts the rate at which you burn calories.

This works a lot like the idle on a vehicle: the higher the idle, the more gas the vehicle uses at rest. The higher the levels of the catecholamines, the more calories you burn every day. Not only do they affect the number of calories you burn, they also affect the type of energy you burn.

Adrenaline is released in response to any stress including exercise. The greater the exercise stress, the greater the adrenaline release. Increasing adrenaline helps explain why HIT cardio tends to be more effective for fat loss than low intensity cardio. The more effort you put into exercise, the greater the subsequent adrenaline release.

Drugs like ephedrine, caffeine, and clenbuterol also mediate their fat-burning effects through increasing adrenaline and noradrenaline. It should also be noted that the same things that boost adrenaline also boost growth hormone, and they work by many of the same mechanisms.

How adrenaline breaks down fat:

Adrenaline latches onto receptors called adrenoreceptors located on fat cells and generates a metabolite called cyclic adenosine monophosphate, or CAMP. CAMP activates an enzyme called hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL). HSL then breaks down stored body fat into free fatty acids (FFAs). The FFAs then leave the fat cell and are carried by the blood to the muscles, where they are burned for energy.

You always have some adrenaline floating around in the bloodstream. The magnitude of resting adrenaline levels and your sensitivity to it is one of the biggest factors determining how easily you gain or lose fat.

With elevated blood adrenaline (or increased sensitivity), you not only have a higher metabolic rate, but also easily pull fat out of storage to be burned. With lower blood adrenaline you have to work a bit harder, which means dropping insulin, reducing calories, and taking steps to elevate blood adrenaline (more exercise).

One of the main reasons men tend to have an easier time shedding fat than women is because the lipolytic (breaking down of fat) impact of adrenaline tends to be greater in men, particularly younger men, as testosterone increases the density of adrenaline receptors in fat cells.

Insulin and adrenaline:

Recall that insulin blocks HSL from breaking down fat, and that adrenaline boosts HSL. So basically, insulin and adrenaline play a game of tug of war on the fat. The extent to which insulin interferes with fat burning depends on a few things.

If you’re eating a lot of carbs and both insulin and adrenaline are high, insulin tends to win the battle and will suppress lipolysis. Now, which one comes out ahead under real world conditions is somewhat variable and depends on circulating levels of insulin, circulating levels of adrenaline, and your individual sensitivity to them.

Increased insulin sensitivity is a predictor of weight gain. Here’s why:

• Insulin inhibits fat burning by antagonizing HSL in the fat cell.

• Having better insulin sensitivity means it takes less insulin to get into the fat cell and negate HSL: thus fat burning is shut down at lower levels of insulin/carb intake. This partially explains why it gets harder to drop those last few pounds of fat: insulin sensitivity improves with fat loss.

• Having worse insulin sensitivity means it takes more insulin to deactivate HSL. Thus, fat burning continues even with higher levels of insulin/carbs. This explains why sedentary/overweight people (who are often somewhat insulin resistant) often notice such dramatic physical changes when they begin exercising, even on less than optimal diets.

• Elevated adrenaline increases fat burning both by increasing HSL, and acutely reducing insulin sensitivity. The reduction in insulin sensitivity isn’t a diabetic type reduction, but it’s enough to make it harder on insulin to inhibit HSL and shut down fat burning. This is another reason it gets harder to drop fat as you get leaner — natural levels of adrenaline decline, resulting in an increase of the anti-fat releasing effect insulin has on HSL…..

The importance of insulin and glucagon is that they are highly influenced by diet and we can manipulate the ratio to get the desired anabolic and fat burning effects we want. Our goals are to keep our food intake up, and to manipulate body composition via macronutrient selection, timing, exercise, and supplementation.

Glucagon:

Glucagon does the opposite of insulin. Its job is to raise blood sugar by stimulating the breakdown of glycogen and fatty acid. When insulin is higher, you’re storing more nutrients. This is anabolism. When glucagon is higher you’re breaking down more nutrients. This is catabolism.

For all practical purposes, the insulin-to-glucagon ratio is mainly determined by your carb intake. The more carbohydrate you eat, the more insulin you produce, and the less carbohydrate, the more glucagon. Fat doesn’t have a lot of impact either way, so a simple way to determine the insulin to glucagon ratio is simply by looking at your daily carb to protein ratio.

Assume 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Over the course of the day, a 2 to 1 carb to protein ratio is fairly insulinogenic for most people. A 1 to 1 ratio is about even. A 2 to 1 protein to carb ratio is more on the glucagon side.

** Of course food choices will have some influence (pop tarts are more insulinogenic than oatmeal), this is just a simple way of looking at it.

You can shift back and forth between anabolism and catabolism on a meal to meal or day to day basis, depending on what time frame you’re looking at.  If you’re restricting carbs throughout the day but you have a good sized insulin inducing post-workout meal you’d be anabolic for a few hours each day and mostly catabolic the rest of the time.  If you’re eating fairly free throughout the day and restricting carbs at nighttime, you’d be anabolic all day and catabolic at night.

The basis of it is that you’d want to set up your diet to optimally coincide with your goals. Why is this important?

Well, if we were to compare two diets, you could drop fat on a 3 to 1 carb to protein ratio Slim-Fast diet, but you’d probably have to greatly restrict calories and you’d likely lose muscle in the process.  Dieting on a 2:1 protein to carb ratio would increase the overall efficiency of your diet, which would afford you the opportunity to eat more calories and better feed your muscles in the process.

At the end of the day there would be a huge difference in the final results. One would leave you looking like a string bean, and the other would have you looking like an athlete. So you decide, do you want to look like a string bean or athlete: your protein-to-carb ratio will determine which one you look like.

You’ll want to be more anabolic when you want to take advantage of insulin and build muscle (as well as satisfy your taste-buds), catabolic when you primarily want to mobilize fat, and somewhere in the middle when you want to maintain.

Our main interest in raising glucagons or lowering insulin is increasing fat burning. To better understand this, let’s take a deeper look at the entire fat burning process.

How Fat Burning Works:

Body fat is stored in the form of triglycerides. Triglycerides consist of a glycerol backbone with three free fatty acids attached.

Before your body can use them for energy, triglycerides must be broken down into fatty acids and carried through the bloodstream where they are transported into the muscle mitochondria to be used for energy. When insulin is high, it’s more difficult to get the fat out of storage.

The breakdown of triglyceride occurs due to HSL (hormone sensitive lipase) which is inhibited by insulin, and stimulated by glucagon and the catecholamines, adrenaline and noradrenaline. Glucagon has some effect in boosting HSL but by far the most powerful booster of HSL is adrenaline.

Just remember:

More HSL = More fat release
More adrenaline = More HSL
More insulin = Less HSL

When our glucagon is higher and we exercise, we’re really able to boost adrenaline and get after the fat. In my opinion, factors related to circulating adrenaline are primarily what determines ease in fat loss or gain.

Adrenaline:

Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, is one of the catecholamines, a class of aromatic amines that also includes the neurotransmitters noradrenaline (norepinephrine) and dopamine.

The standard Western diet is sadly lacking in omega-3 fats. Most of the recommendations we hear are to increase our
intake of omega-3s by eating fish a few times per week. Most people who do eat fish eat tuna, the most readily available fish around that contains a halfway decent level of omega-3 fats.

But news reports over the past several years have put a lot of us off of tuna, at least the canned variety, with reports of how much mercury such tuna contains. I have opted to get my tuna as sushi grade tuna that I get either at Japanese restaurants or by purchasing it at a natural foods grocer and making my own sashimi. Now comes a report that gives us pause.

The International Herald Tribune published an article story showing that even sushi-grade tuna is crawling with mercury, which makes fish eating now a Faustian bargain. We can get the omega-3s, but at the expense of a ton of mercury.

Recent laboratory tests found so much mercury in tuna sushi from 20 Manhattan stores and restaurants that at most of them, a regular diet of six pieces a week would exceed the levels considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Sushi from 5 of the 20 places had mercury levels so high that the Food and Drug Administration could take legal
action to remove the fish from the market. The sushi was bought by The New York Times in October.

But maybe this is just a freaky sample. I’m not so sure. And the article goes on to state that the more expensive the tuna, the greater the contamination.

These findings reinforce results in other studies showing that more expensive tuna usually contains more mercury because it is more likely to come from a larger species, which accumulates mercury from the fish it eats. Mercury enters the environment as an industrial pollutant.

Now, I love sushi and I almost always opt for sashimi, which is the raw fish without the sticky rice, as shown in the photo above, but I’m not really willing to sacrifice my health for it.  I get most of my omega-3 fat from the krill oil that I take daily.

Krill are tiny shrimplike creatures that are at the bottom of the food chain, and, thus, don’t concentrate mercury in the same way that fish do. And krill have a unique phospholipid structure to their fatty acid bonds that makes them much more absorbable, preventing the fishy smelling belching that fish oil capsules sometimes cause. If you want to get your omega-3s as tastelessly and painlessly as possible - and without the risk of mercury toxicity - you can’t go wrong with krill oil.  Even a few years ago krill oil wasn’t readily available, but now you can find it all over the place.  And it’s not all that expensive.   So, to get your daily dose of omega-3, down a krill oil gelcap or two and forget the recommendation to eat fish several times per week.

Go get your fish oil in supplement form now… don’t rely on the fish on your plate to give you the optimal amounts.

Shannan

Bodybuilding.com sells it—

Neptune Krill Oil (NKO) is known for its unique fatty acid (FA) pro-file, as well as for its rich antioxidant content. NKO’s balanced fatty acid content includes not only EPA and DHA, the crucial omega-3 FA’s, but Omega-9 FA’s and phospholipids, as well. NKO is a rich source of Astaxanthin, a powder immune-supporting antioxidant. Clinical studies have shown the NKO can support joint comfort and healthy blood lipid levels.

• Neptune
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Olympian Labs’ Krill Oil provides nutrients for a healthy mind and body. Krill Oil contains natural antioxidants including vitamin A and vitamn E, astaxanthin, and canthaxanithin. These antioxidants are more powerful than beta carotene, lycopene and lutein. Our Krill oil is collected in deep sea water and processed using a cold extraction method. It contains a natural blend of phospholipids, omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants which bonded together, keep our krill oil safe from oxidation. Olympian Labs’ Krill Oil is free from detectable amounts of lead, mercury, arsenic, cadium, PCB’s, dioxins and pesticides, and does not contain trans fatty acids.

The glycemic index is overrated.

We all should be paying more attention to the glycemic load. There’s a big difference. Here’s the scoop:

Glycemic index is a way of measuring the impact a given amount of carbohydrate has on your blood sugar, something you definitely want to know. But to do a fair comparison, they have to use a fixed amount. In the case of the glycemic index, it’s a standard 50 grams of carbohydrate.

Problem is, very few carbohydrate foods in real life are 50-gram portions.

See, if you go to a store to buy spices and there’s a spice that’s $500 a pound, that sure sounds like a lot of money. But if you’re only buying a half-teaspoon of the stuff, it’s pretty irrelevant. You want to know what you’re going to pay at the register, not necessarily what you’d pay if you bought a pound.

Similarly, you really don’t care what the impact of 50 grams is on your blood sugar; you care what the impact of the actual amount you’re eating is.

Glycemic load is a more sophisticated formula that takes into account the actual grams of carbs you’re eating– the portion size.  The glycemic index of carrots is high according to the index, leading a lot of people to think you should never eat carrots, which is a dumb conclusion. The fact is, the average carrot has 3 grams of carbs.  You’d have to eat like a giant rabbit to have a significant impact on your blood sugar.

The glycemic load of a carrot, on the other hand, is only 3, making it an extremely low-glycemic food — unless you’re drinking pure carrot juice or eating 13 carrots at a sitting.

Pasta, on the other hand, has a moderate glycemic index, but is almost never eaten in 50-gram portions. Factor in the portion size at a typical restaurant such as The Olive Garden and your blood sugar will be beyond the roof, and stay there for a week. Not surprisingly, the glycemic load of pasta is very high.

The technical formula for glycemic load is GI (glycemic index), multiplied by the number of grams of carbohydrates in the portion, then divided by 100. Low glycemic load is between 1 and 8, medium is between 10 and 18, and anything over 20 is very high.

That said, remember that both glycemic index and glycemic load only refer to the food eaten alone. Add some fat or protein and the total impact goes down. And plenty of high-glycemic foods are good for you (say, carrot juice) while plenty of low-glycemic foods (fried donut holes) are not good for you.

So take glycemic load into account, but don’t be a slave to it.  It’s just one measurement to consider when planning a diet or making food choices but it’s not the only one.

Incidentally, athletes in training actually can benefit from high-glycemic foods, especially when they’re training twice a day. But…. Mrs. Smith with Metabolic Syndrome… not so much!  She and people like her would be the ones who need to watch it more carefully.

Make wise choices and your body will respond positively–

The active ingredient in turmeric is curcumin, a member of a class of plant chemicals called curcuminoids. Curcumin has anti-cancer properties. Even the very conservative American Cancer Society says on its website that curcumin has "demonstrated some anti-cancer effects."

Several types of cancer cells are inhibited by curcumin in the lab, and it’s slowed the spread of cancer in some animal studies. It’s also a powerful antioxidant and highly anti-inflammatory as well, and since inflammation is a component of virtually every degenerative disease on the planet, that’s a very powerful resume.

And if that weren’t enough, curcumin (or turmeric) is one of the most liver-friendly compounds on the planet, which is why you almost always see curcumin in liver-detox supplements.