I've been getting increasingly tired and frustrated from hearing things and rules served as ultimate truths over the last few years. They are usually referred to as "myths", although in truth I wouldn't always call them that. I believe that all they are is partial truths, or opinions/beliefs based on partial truths. The funny part about partial truths is that they can even seemingly contradict to each other and still be valid to a point. Partial point, that is. A few simple examples:
- "To build muscle you should eat plenty of protein, otherwise you body will not grow". It certainly makes sense, since protein is a critical tissue building component, however the key questions to ask are "How much is 'plenty'?", "How much is 'too little'?" and "How much is 'too much'?". I remember seeing studies where much smaller amounts of protein intake than those widely accepted in bodybuilding community (1 g per lb) were found sufficient to sustain muscle and stimulate growth.
- "When you're hungry - your body is already losing muscle". Although it is true that long periods of fasting may indeed lead to some muscle proteins being metabolized for energy, there is sufficient evidence that such breakdown does not happen until after 24-48 hours of fasting.
- "To burn fat you need to do lots of cardio". This has been around for years as well. It too makes certain sense and is based on a well supported claim that low-to-moderate intensity aerobic exercise indeed uses fat as fuel in a higher degree than higher intensity (anaerobic) exercises. That doesn't mean though that, say, resistance training is totally useless for fat burning purposes. There is also evidence that high intensity exercise triggers certain hormonal response that raises metabolic rate for up to 24 hours, which means that the body tends to use more energy in post-exercise period. That's why interval training has become very popular in the recent years.
- "You have to work your body at least 3 times a week, otherwise you start losing muscle". This rule caused me a lot of grief. As obsessed as I was overtraining almost became my constant companion for years. I realize that for an average person three times a week with fairly light weights might be a good enough starting point. But I was never able to maintain heavy workouts three times a week for any extensive periods of time. After a few weeks fatigue would start setting in and I remember cutting my training short simply because I couldn't maintain the intensity I thought I needed to maintain. There is evidence of people working out twice or even once a week (for some HIT supporters, for instance) and still growing muscle and getting amazing results.
- "Free weights are the way to go. Machines are for wussies." vs "Machines allow you to hit your muscles from various angles better than free weights can." Both ar partial truths and/or opinions.
So why was I getting tired of those? Because, like many of us, I, too, had been conditioned to following the rules. There was always some authority figure (parent, teacher, government, supervisor, fitness guru) to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing - what to eat, how to study, who to marry. And of course how to exercise. I was religiously following advices abundantly given away in many bodybuilding and fitness books. Listening to my own body wasn't really one of them. So I kept ignoring my body's cry for help until I could no longer ignore it. Linear mindset made me keep pushing. "The more - the better", "The harder the better", "No pain - no gain". I thought the reason I wasn't getting results was because I wasn't trying hard enough, so I kept pushing and pushing and pushing. Until one day I finally realized that years of pushing and following different advices didn't really get me any closer to the body of my dreams. Fatigue and frustration seemed to be the only things that I was left with at the end of the day - after 20 years of trying. Time came to face a painful question: WHAT TO DO NOW?
Why can't I get the body I want? By that time I pretty much realized that systems and approaches I had used didn't yield the results I wanted. Not because they didn't work in general. Most of them had some partial truths behind them. But because they didn't work for me. So it was time to start my own quest...
That's some long intro now, isn't it? :-))
Now back to Ori's book. He's a big supporter of what is now known as Intermittent Fasting (IF). I read his "The Warrior Diet" before and it makes a lot of sense to me. The main idea that really appeals to me is that there is cycle to any physiological process in our body. We sleep - we are awake, we feel full - we feel hungry, we feel tired - we feel rested, and so on. Everything fluctuates in our bodies, pretty much like in all of nature. Heart beat, blood pressure, hormonal levels, etc. What if linearity is not inherent to our bodies? Would it make sense that body loses fat and builds muscle in cycles rather than at a steady pace?
What if the fact that many women fail to drop weight despite very restricted daily calories (sometimes down to 800-1000) has something to do with this "linearity issue"? What if body simply adjusts to living off a very "fixed income"? Think about it. Let's say you live in a big house with a wife, two kids, two dogs and two cars. You make $5000 a month between you and your spouse. Then all of a sudden she loses her job. You income drops to, say, $3500 a month. What do you do? Well for the first couple of weeks you may try to maintain the same lifestyle. However, after a while you realize that something has to change. What? Well, first you cut back on some expenditures. Most likely you won't go cutting grocery list - not in the first place anyway. First to go will likely be your son's soccer class, your daughter's dance studio, and your weekly dining at a local steak house. Along follows high-speed internet (you switch to "light"), second phone line and 1000 channels satelite package (you can get away with "basic" plan). Then you switch to lower premiums on your second car and your wife starts using email instead of spending hours on the phone with her girlfriend in Europe. Then your Hawaiian vacation may be put on hold. But even now, you still live in the same house, you don't give up on your kids or your dogs. You don't go renting out your wife either (just joking). You don't cut back on food or health - at least not for awhile and not until it gets worse. Well, you get the picture.
So in comes premise #1. I suspect that something like that happens to our body when put under caloric restriction. It strives to live on reduced "income" while maintaining as much of its functionality as it can.
Premise #2. Non-linearity. The book contains some indication that fat-burning (lipolytic) and muscle-building (anabolic) processes do not occur simultaneously. In fact they seem to be almost antagonistic in nature. For instance, insulin - known as an anabolic precursor - is also known to severely reduce lipolysis (the main fat-burning process). In other words, when insulin level raises (usually after food, especially rich in carbohydrates) it effectively shuts down the fat burning factory. And it makes sense if you think about it. Carbs appear to be the "fastest" fuel for the body to metabolize because they require fewer steps to convert them into energy compared to proteins or lipids. So body prefers them whenever they become available. However (fortunately or unfortunately) body can only store this much glycogen (up to 400 g on average) which doesn't last very long. When the body runs low of glycogene it is forced to switch to two of the other sources: stored fat and proteins. This is apparently where the fat-burning furnace gets to work. I am not 100% sure how exactly body decides which source to use when it runs out of glycogen. There is some evidence that when subjected to low-to-moderate intensity exercise body uses fat acids as a primary source (when glycogen is not available), whereas under a heavy load more protein starts breaking down for energy.
The important part is that in order to make the body switch from glycogen to fat acids as a primary source of energy (which seems to be the main process behind fat loss) it is reasonable to suggest that two conditions must be met:
- Glycogene pool must be depleted (at least to some degree)
- Exercise (if any) has to be kept at low-to-moderate intensity (to minimize muscle breakdown)
So, in theory, if you engage in low-to-moderate intensity exercise when your body is in the fasting or near-fasting state (glycogene depleted) it will be forced to burn fat for fuel as a primary source.
But if that's the case then let's take it to the extreme and ask ourselves: why can't we simply stop eating for a week and go on a treadmill for 3 hours a day and burn 7 lbs of fat in a week - clean and simple?
Here's my take on it. Aforementioned conditions must be met but it's not enough. I suspect that two things prevent it from happening. First, it seems like fat cells in our body are not only used as a convenient energy deposit boxes but also as containers for toxins. When toxins enter our body and when it can't neutralize and dispose of them immediately it will wrap them in fat and put them away. Much like criminals frozen in cryocells in futuristic movies. When a fat cell gets pulled off the shelf and broken down for energy it may also release toxins into the blood stream. Too many of those can overwhelm the immune system and cause mild-to-severe poisoning (symptoms of poisoning occurring after 3-4 days of fasting are very well documented - I actually experienced it myself about 20 years ago) so the body will try to wrap them back in fat in a desperate attempt to keep the system clean. At which time I would assume it would trigger some mechanism that would start breaking down more and more of muscle protein to provide energy.
Secondly, it appears, that there's some kind of regulatory mechanism that is dependent on a level of ketones in the blood...
Therefore, timing-wise it makes sense to separate those two processes - building muscle and cutting fat. So the idea of cycles makes a lot of sense to me. Or I should mini-cycles...
(to be continued)
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