Tag Archives: calories proper

Eating in the absence of hunger

Posted on March 4, 2017 | 20 comments

Good idea? Bad idea? … a bit of a rant

Some gurus swear by the “only eat when hungry” mantra. I’m neutral on the issue. In my opinion, it can work for people who are good planners because if you wait until you’re hungry and haven’t planned or prepared a meal yet, then it might be a while until you finally get to eat. Maybe you’re an hour from home: unlucky => by the time you start cooking, you’re famished and end up overeating. So you try to repent by skipping breakfast the following morning but fall into the same trap. Of course, however, it’s not gonna be like this for everyone.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength, TPMC

Tagged calories, calories proper, carbs, circadian rhythm, diet, energy expenditure, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, ketosis, melatonin, protein

A timeline of ketoadaptation

Posted on February 26, 2017 | 5 comments

This is how ketoadaptation works (when it works), chronologically, on physical performance (I think):

Dark grey line: the gradual increase in performance for someone training on a regular diet.

Red line: performance declines on keto initially, but is back to baseline (light blue line) by week 3.

Light grey line: as long as ketoadaptation doesn’t impair performance, similar gradual increase in performance for someone training on a regular diet. Parallel to the dark grey line. May even catch up to the dark grey line. I don’t know, but probably not as per FASTER – long-term LC athletes were not superior to their LF counterparts.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, muscle, nutrition, protein

Protein, ketosis, and lean mass

Posted on February 7, 2017 | 24 comments

Most people make a big deal about protein. I do, too. Low carb diets aren’t muscle-sparing. Again.

Comparison of a Low-Fat Diet to a Low-Carbohydrate Diet on Weight Loss, Body Composition, and Risk Factors for Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease in Free-Living, Overweight Men and Women (Meckling et al., 2004)

Part 1. Hunger Free Diet(s)

Focus on what they’re eliminating:

LC diet: “limit intake of breads, pastas, rice, and desserts, eliminating intake of deep-fried foods, dried fruit, candy, sweetened soft drinks, and sugar, and increased consumption of vegetables, lean meats, eggs, and nuts”

LF diet: “eliminate high-fat dairy products and substitute with no-fat or LF alternatives, to increase intake of fruits, vegetables, whole-grain breads, and pastas and to eliminate fried foods, cream sauces, and high-fat/sugar cakes, pastries, chocolate, and candy. They were also asked to reduce use of oil products in cooking. As with LC subjects, LF subjects were encouraged to consume lean meats as alternatives to high-fat meat products.”

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, insulin, ketogenic, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, Paleo, protein

LCHF negates performance benefit of training. O_o

Posted on January 8, 2017 | 16 comments

It takes about 3 weeks to become fully ketoadapted and you don’t really get more ketoadapted thereafter, at least as per max fat oxidation rates (which seems a pretty good surrogate, imo).

Important point: “Athletes who drop carbs cold turkey suddenly suck.” And performance usually recovers by around week 3. This has been confirmed in nearly every proper study on the subject, in a variety of contexts.

Which brings me to the latest alleged slam on keto & physical performance:

Low carbohydrate, high fat diet impairs exercise economy and negates the performance benefit of intensified training in elite race walkers (Burke et al., 2016)

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength, TPMC

Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, energy expenditure, exercise, fat, insulin, ketogenic, ketosis, nutrition

HANGRY! (part deux)

Posted on December 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

Effects of diet composition on postprandial energy availability during weight loss maintenance (Walsh et al., 2013)

Now, we’re getting somewhere!

3 diets (carbs 10%, 40% or 60%; protein was higher in the lowest carb group). Four weeks. CROSSOVER.

Then a test meal which approximated the diet assignment. Total “energy availability” in the blood was approximated by measuring the calories in blood glucose, free fatty acids, and ketones.

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These dudes ate a ton of sat fats and nothing bad happened

Posted on December 20, 2016 | 16 comments

Study: 12 weeks, obese men, very high fat low carb (VHFLC) vs. low fat high carb (LFHC) (Veum et al., 2016) #FATFUNC

Pictorially:

It wasn’t explicitly AD LIB, but pretty close. I say this because that is the magnitude of appetite decline we might expect when people go on The Hunger Free Diet(s), eg,

^^^ GOOD IDEA

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, Sugar, TPMC

Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, insulin, ketosis, nutrition, processed food, protein, soda

The poor, misunderstood autophagy

Posted on November 19, 2016 | 16 comments

Autophagy isn’t a big deal in the way some Internet Bro’s think it is. Yes, Dr Ohsumi received a Nobel Prize for cracking deeply into this nut, but that in no way means “intermittent fasting is awesome because autophagy.” Autophagy isn’t awesome like that.

Alternate title: The dark side of autophagy.

For example: Autophagy contributes to muscle wasting in cancer cachexia (Penna et al., 2013)

Cachexia (muscle wasting) is one of the leading contributors to poor quality of life in cancer patients. Thanks, autophagy.

“Autophagy is the major process for degradation of cellular constituents, its rate being enhanced under stress conditions leading to organelle damage…”

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Exercise, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, TPMC

Tagged calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, exercise, fat, nutrition

The Hunger-Free Diet(s)

Posted on November 13, 2016 | 17 comments

It started out as “lose weight without hunger on LCHF” and went all the way to “effortless fasting on keto.” Works for some and it might be true, but the same can be said for low fat diets! The key, I think, in both contexts, is simple: fewer processed & refined foods… something the Paleo movement got right, imo (although I still think many low-calorie sweeteners are way less unhealthy than HFCS & sugar).

The logic:

1) add “good calories” like almonds to your diet and appetite spontaneously compensates by eating less other stuff: energy neutral

2) you don’t compensate for added “bad calories” like sugar-sweetened beverages: positive energy balance

3) remove bad calories from your diet and you don’t compensate by eating more other stuff: negative energy balance

Book: Good Calories, Bad Calories

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diabetes, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, fiber, gluten, insulin, muscle, Protein, sleep, TPMC, Trans fat

Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fat, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, ketosis, muscle, nutrition, obesity, Paleo, processed food, protein, soda, sugar, trans fat

Non sequiter dietary fats

Posted on November 1, 2016 | 18 comments

Tl;dr: SFA and DHA

Essential fatty acids? Well, there’s really only one, DHA, and we really only need a gram or two. In other words, our entire requirement for dietary fat can be met by about 2% of total calories (plus a few extra grams to accommodate fat-soluble vitamins) (plus DHA is never the sole fat in a food, so you’d be getting a few more grams of other fats, too). But still, a very low fat diet! But impractical and probably not very palatable or healthy.

On average, dietary fat comprises about a third of calories, roughly equally divided between SFA, MUFA, and PUFA (slightly less PUFA).

Major sources of SFA are pizza and desserts – no wonder SFA gets a bad rap!

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, fat, Fish, TPMC, Trans fat

Tagged Atkins, calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, fat, nutrition, obesity, Paleo, trans fat

Autophagy

Posted on October 26, 2016 | 51 comments

Caloric restriction (CR) activates autophagy. Intermittent fasting (IF) is basically kind-of-like the opposite of CR. I’m not knocking IF. The animal studies of autophagy, based on “chronic nutrition depletion,” more accurately reflect CR which results in decreased body weight or metabolic rate. IF generally includes refeeds, resulting in weight maintenance. Also, in the few human studies on it, weight loss (CR) but not fasting (IF) has been shown to induce autophagy.

If you’re actually losing weight over the long-term with an IF protocol, and thus are CR by definition, then I suspect you may be autophaging, too (yeah yeah, I know, that’s not really how autophagy works, but you get the picture).

Disclaimer: I’m relatively autophagy-agnostic; not really confident racing to maximize it is a great thing based on Human Studies.

Book: Autophagy in Health and Disease

Exhibit A: autophagy in skeletal muscle

Tl;dr: “a little exercise is a better than a lot of fasting”

A1) Physical exercise increases autophagic signaling through ULK1 in human skeletal muscle (Moller et al., 2015)

The protocol: participants either fasted for 36 hours or received a glucose infusion before and during exercise (cycling at 50% max for an hour).

“In the present study, we demonstrate that short-term aerobic exercise activates autophagic signaling through ULK1 in human skeletal muscle, independently of nutrient background.”

They really should’ve stressed that the deck was stacked to show fasting activated autophagy… 36 hours of fasting is pretty long but it had no effect.

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51 Comments

Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, endurance, Exercise, insulin, liver, muscle

Tagged calories, calories proper, diet, energy balance, energy expenditure, exercise, insulin, nutrition

Tag Archives: calories proper

Eating in the absence of hunger

A timeline of ketoadaptation

Protein, ketosis, and lean mass

LCHF negates performance benefit of training. O_o

HANGRY! (part deux)

These dudes ate a ton of sat fats and nothing bad happened

The poor, misunderstood autophagy

The Hunger-Free Diet(s)

Non sequiter dietary fats

Autophagy

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