How Accurate Are Cardio Machines' Calorie Burn Displays?

What you don't know could be hurting your workout and your waistline

BY ASHLEY OERMAN

The question: "I just exercised on a cardio machine. Did I really burn as many calories as the machine says I did?"

The expert: Greg Justice, an exercise physiologist and author of Mind Over Fatter

The answer: In a word, no, says Justice. Most cardio machines use your weight and age to calculate the calorie burn for the average person meeting those two conditions. What it's not always accounting for: your gender, height, body fat percentage, and fitness level. All of those things determine how many calories you're actually burning. So if two women both weigh 135 pounds but one has 20 percent body fat and the other has 35 percent body fat, for example, they're not going to burn the same number of calories when they do the same exact workout, says Justice.

A machine’s calorie count could also be impacted by the kind of machine it is. In an experiment done by the University of California, San Francisco's Human Performance Center for Good Morning America in 2010, treadmills overestimated calorie burn by 13 percent, stair climbers by 12 percent, and stationary bikes by seven percent. The worst offender? The elliptical, which overestimated calorie burn by 42 percent. Yikes!

Bummer, right? But the problem here is not only the misdirected ego boost you feel as that number climbs higher—the erroneous blinking screen could also wreak havoc on your waistline and your endurance. "Problem with taking that number literally," says Justice, "is that someone thinks they burned 1,000 calories, then thinks they can eat 1,000 calories' worth of food." Plus, says Justice, a person might be tempted to do a slow and steady workout instead of an intense, fast sweat session—which, he says, helps you burn more calories post-workout—since the calorie counter looks higher after 40 minutes rather than 15. The point is, even if the number on the screen is higher after a long, moderate workout, your metabolism isn't as revved up as it would be after a speedy, hard workout.

But before you swear off indoor equipment forever, Justice says there is a very valuable purpose for those calorie counters: Instead of taking the counts literally, you can use them to gauge how hard you're working. Try this method: Write down what your screen says after a cardio machine workout. Then, try and top it each gym visit in the same amount of time.

And if you still want to keep track of the calories you're torching, Justice recommends using this formula from a 2005 study in the Journal of Sports Sciences: Calories Burned = [(Age x 0.074) - (Weight x 0.05741) + (Heart Rate during exercise x 0.4472) - 20.4022] x Time / 4.184. (Easy, right? Hah!) Though, he says, there's no perfect way to measure calorie burn because there are so many variables involved.

Comments:
The most accurate way to measure calories burned is the room calorimeter where the subject remains for a few days. The walls of the room absorb heat produced by the subject. There are calculations to take account for heat produced by machinery (eg gym machines) and hot food. (This is quite expensive).

I always am looking at gym machines and thinking how come I have not burned a single calorie yet - I have moved a great deal already. We really are very efficient.

What is life like as a 'strongman'?

They cram themselves into small hatchbacks, spill over airline seats and travel the world on their own money for acclaim and camaraderie. Chris Stokel-Walker meets those competing to be the world's strongest man.

Standing 6ft 4in (1.93m) tall, weighing 21 stone (133kg) and with 22-inch biceps rippling out of his red t-shirt, Mark Felix is an immovable man mountain.

Felix was one of 12 men who competed at Gateshead's International Stadium for the right to attend the final of this month's World's Strongest Man competition in China.

The soft-spoken Grenadian, who lives near Accrington, is a seven-time World's Strongest Man competitor. At 47, he is older than many strongmen.

"With strongman training you need to get everything involved - from power lifting, to Olympic lifting, to general bodybuilding training," he explains.

A strongman event can see competitors loading a vehicle with heavy items, the yoke, where they carry 1,000lbs (454kg) 30m in 60 seconds, the deadlift, the shield carry, repetition lifting of a log, and the distinctive Atlas stones event.

A tweeted picture from Felix of a tuck box he had prepared for the contest shows a collection of almonds, chocolate, blueberries and oat flapjacks, alongside energy drinks.

"We have nuts and plenty of fruits and veg," he says. Felix's daily diet consists of six meals a day, accumulating 7,500 calories in all.

There's a lot of waiting around, he explains, in airports, hotels and motorway service stations on the way to and from competitions.

Though Felix is one of the best-known names in the UK sport, he sometimes works odd jobs as a plasterer when he takes time away from competitions to let his body recover.

Fellow competitor Lloyd Renals is an NHS physio. With a bald head, large beard and calves as big as many people's thighs, Renals looks rather like the stereotype of a lumberjack.

When Renals taps out a text on his mobile phone, it looks tiny in his hands.

Source

Comments:
Strong men are amazing athletes. To accumulate so much muscle and maintain it requires many calories. (Some strong men have to keep eating otherwise they can lose muscle mass).

When the emphasis is on strength and a little on stamina there is little interest in cutting.

5 Signs You May Be Consuming Too Much Fiber

Too much fiber can be just as troublesome as not enough, so it’s good to know the signs of taking it too far. While it may be better to err on the side of too much rather than too little, we’re after the Goldilocks of fiber intake, and getting it “just right” is the only way to go.

1. Gas and Bloating

Even though there are several benefits of getting enough fiber, taking in too much can leave you bloated and gassy. Ironically, when you get your fiber intake right you should experience far less gas and bloating than you did before increasing your fiber.

Finding the right amount of fiber to keep your digestive system balanced is key. You don’t need to be overzealous and overcompensate for a lack of fiber by eating more than is necessary.

Your body thrives on moderation and variety, so don’t rely on any one food item to bring you all the fiber you need. Make it a group effort from fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts.

What causes it: Insoluble fiber moves through the body without being digested, and there are certain foods that are high in fiber that are known for increasing the amount of gas in your system. Broccoli is one high-fiber vegetable known for causing digestive difficulties. Beans are another notorious food for the gas they can produce, as well as the fiber they contain.

2. Loose Stools

Too much fiber can lead to loose stools and diarrhea if you’re not careful. Loose stools are a sign that the food didn’t spend enough time in the digestive tract, and is a signal that you may want to slow your fiber intake.

Eating a balanced meal is one way to insure that you’re getting enough fiber, as well as other foods that aren’t so fiber-laden. Combining a protein with a high-fiber food as well as a carbohydrate will help you feel full longer while making sure you don’t take in so much fiber at once. For example, a chicken breast served with a spinach salad and a baked sweet potato gives you plenty of fiber, vitamins, minerals, but not too much fiber since the chicken contains zero fiber.

What causes it: Foods need time to be digested, and loading up on fiber can push them through before they’re ready. When you are getting the right amount of fiber you’ll know it because your stools will have bulk, will be easy to pass, and will stick together in the toilet after you pass them.

3. Constipation

It seems counterintuitive that fiber could cause constipation, as its usually recommended as a preventive measure or reliever. But because fiber soaks up water it can result in stools that are hard to pass and spend too long in the digestive tract.

If you are trying to get more fiber in your diet, make sure that you’re also getting enough water. If you were previously dehydrated, a common problem in America, and increased your fiber intake, you may have noticed that it didn’t help matters. Gradually increase your water intake as you increase your fiber. It’s the only way to experience the benefits of proper fiber intake.

What causes it: The right amount of fiber reduces the chances of constipation, while too much can cause it. This happens because of the water that fiber needs in order to do its job. Getting more fiber without increasing your water intake can result in constipation.

4. Dehydration

Keeping your water intake the same while increasing your fiber will likely lead to dehydration. This is because fiber uses up a lot of water in your system, and can leave your internal organs deprived of what they need. Every organ benefits from getting enough water, and as a result your body suffers when there isn’t enough water to go around.

This of course can be caused by drinking too little water rather than taking in too much fiber. If you notice that you are drinking plenty of water and still feeling the side effects of being dehydrated, it’s time to check your fiber intake.

What causes it: Not drinking enough water while taking in too much fiber can leader to faster dehydration. The fiber will soak up the available water, leaving your body dehydrated. Be sure to increase your water when you increase your fiber, and don’t exceed your daily recommended fiber grams.

5. Weight Gain

If you’re increasing your fiber to help slim down to your optimal healthy weight, you might be perturbed to find that you’ve actually gained weight. But this is exactly what some dieters have reported when they attempt to get on the fiber train.

Take it easy when you attempt to increase your fiber. The body doesn’t respond well to drastic changes, and it isn’t going to do any good to try and correct the problem overnight. If you only got an average of 10 grams of fiber a day and are trying to get 30 grams or more, that’s quite a shock to the system. Try getting 15 grams a day for a week, 20 grams the following week, and keep increasing by 5 grams every week so you can ease your body into this new way of eating.

What causes it: Most reports of weight gain from too much fiber are anecdotal, and there isn’t a lot of explanation as to why this occurs in some individuals. It may be due to the fiber soaking up water in the body and retaining it from being constipated. It is usually a temporary condition, but something that you should be aware of and a sign that you may be getting too much of a good thing.

Black tea soothes away stress

Daily cups of tea can help you recover more quickly from the stresses of everyday life, according to a new study by UCL (University College London) researchers. New scientific evidence shows that black tea has an effect on stress hormone levels in the body.

The study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, found that people who drank tea were able to de-stress more quickly than those who drank a fake tea substitute. Furthermore, the study participants – who drank a black tea concoction four times a day for six weeks – were found to have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood after a stressful event, compared with a control group who drank the fake or placebo tea for the same period of time.

In the study, 75 young male regular tea drinkers were split into two groups and monitored for six weeks. They all gave up their normal tea, coffee and caffeinated beverages, then one group was given a fruit-flavoured caffeinated tea mixture made up of the constituents of an average cup of black tea. The other group – the control group – was given a caffeinated placebo identical in taste, but devoid of the active tea ingredients. All drinks were tea-coloured, but were designed to mask some of the normal sensory cues associated with tea drinking (such as smell, taste and familiarity of the brew), to eliminate confounding factors such as the ‘comforting’ effect of drinking a cup of tea.

Both groups were subjected to challenging tasks, while their cortisol, blood pressure, blood platelet and self-rated levels of stress were measured. In one task, volunteers were exposed to one of three stressful situations (threat of unemployment, a shop lifting accusation or an incident in a nursing home), where they had to prepare a verbal response and argue their case in front of a camera.

The tasks triggered substantial increases in blood pressure, heart rate and subjective stress ratings in both of the groups. In other words, similar stress levels were induced in both groups. However, 50 minutes after the task, cortisol levels had dropped by an average of 47 per cent in the tea drinking group compared with 27 per cent in the fake tea group.

UCL researchers also found that blood platelet activation – linked to blood clotting and the risk of heart attacks – was lower in the tea drinkers, and that this group reported a greater degree of relaxation in the recovery period after the task.

Professor Andrew Steptoe, UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, says: “Drinking tea has traditionally been associated with stress relief, and many people believe that drinking tea helps them relax after facing the stresses of everyday life. However, scientific evidence for the relaxing properties of tea is quite limited. This is one of the first studies to assess tea in a double-blind placebo controlled design – that is, neither we nor the participants knew whether they were drinking real or fake tea. This means that any differences were due to the biological ingredients of tea, and not to the relaxing situations in which people might drink tea, whether they were familiar with the taste and liked it, and so on.

“We do not know what ingredients of tea were responsible for these effects on stress recovery and relaxation. Tea is chemically very complex, with many different ingredients. Ingredients such as catechins, polyphenols, flavonoids and amino acids have been found to have effects on neurotransmitters in the brain, but we cannot tell from this research which ones produced the differences.

“Nevertheless, our study suggests that drinking black tea may speed up our recovery from the daily stresses in life. Although it does not appear to reduce the actual levels of stress we experience, tea does seem to have a greater effect in bringing stress hormone levels back to normal. This has important health implications, because slow recovery following acute stress has been associated with a greater risk of chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease.”

Source

Comments: I've always known tea to be soothing especially when drunk slowly. You can even focus on the flavour developing as the flavour is slowly released from the tea bag/leaves. As you drink it the flavour slowly becomes more concentrated. (This is best done with many cups and with the tea in a separate pot. You simply pour a small amount out as the tea releases its flavours. The taste at 1 minute is different to the taste at 5 minutes of brewing time.)

Back to the study above, you can see that even without tea people became more relaxed after a drink. If this is the placebo effect then it is still very effective. But the tea was superior. 

Now, if you are someone that likes to just eat all the time it is true that junk food is very comforting. (In some cases food is an amazing comfort after something very stressful has happened.) But say if you can replace it with something else like drinking tea then that reduces any stress you feel therefore you can control appetite better.

Even if the above does not apply so much to you reducing stress is very desirable with our overly stressed out lives. A large abundance of the hormone cortisol can cause muscle breakdown. Add high insulin conditions and you also have fat storage. If a simple cup of tea (which is extremely cheap) can help you take the edge off stress then it is definitely worth it. (The other alternatives are much worse for instance smoking and over training in the gym).

Above all manage the source of the stress. (Chronic stress is not something that kills you straight away but it is like a rot that damages you over time. Its effects have been underestimated but it contributes to disease (mental and physical), worsening life quality and is known to shorten life expectancy.)

(From a nutritional stand point green, black, red and white teas are a good source of polyphenols. These are antioxidants that protect the body from free radical damage. There have been some reports of tea containing compounds that absorb minerals but this is usually a very small effect.)

GLUTEN SENSITIVITY

Gluten sensitivity is a condition with symptoms similar to those of celiac disease that improve when gluten is eliminated from the diet.

People with  gluten sensitivity can experience symptoms such as “foggy mind”, depression, ADHD-like behavior, abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, headaches, bone or joint pain, and chronic fatigue when they have gluten in their diet, but other symptoms are also possible. While these are common symptoms of celiac disease, these individuals do not test positive for celiac disease or for a wheat allergy.

Individuals who have been diagnosed with gluten sensitivity do not experience the small intestine damage or develop the tissue transglutaminase (tTG) antibodies found in celiac disease.

Since there is currently no blood test for gluten sensitivity, the only way to be diagnosed is to undergo the screening and diagnostic tests required to confirm celiac disease. A diagnosis of gluten sensitivity is confirmed when you are not diagnosed with celiac disease or wheat allergy, and your symptoms diminish after starting a gluten-free diet, followed by a return of symptoms when gluten is reintroduced into your diet.

There is no cure for gluten sensitivity, and the only treatment is to follow a gluten-free diet.

Comments:

Gluten is a protein found in wheat based foods. Foods that are processed on the same machinery as wheat can also be contaminated with wheat powder and therefore contain gluten. An example of a well known product are oats. (Look at the label to determine if the product is manufactured in wheat processing facilities).

At this moment there seems to be a small proportion of people who are gluten intolerant. Certainly, any one suffering celiac disease or wheat allergy should avoid wheat and wheat containing flours.

But it should be noted the message put out by gluten free food manufacturers is very loud and bold. It can seem like everyone has problems with wheat and gluten. However, there is also a great deal of evidence to suggest that the placebo effect can occur where people who are told that wheat is bad enough times can find themselves suffering. This would then be a psychological effect.

(I remember at one time being told if I ate 2 eggs a day the cholesterol that added would clog up my arteries. That all cholesterol was bad, that the cholesterol I ate would add onto the cholesterol my body naturally made. Not once did I question why cholesterol was essential to life. If it was such bad stuff then surely the body should not make any of it - as it turns out the body still makes it when you are fasting.). For many years, I felt bad about even having 2 eggs a week because it was going to kill me. Then further research came through to show that most cholesterol was made by the body and did not come from diet directly. (Even a cholesterol free diet that had too much glucose and fructose caused cholesterol to rise.) But no one ever apologised for putting out extreme research in the first place to cut egg consumption to 3 or 4 a week. This was probably more an anti-egg campaign than a factual one.

As with wheat there is conflicting research even from the same professors who once said it was evil and then saying at a later date some of the reports were overblown and some of the effects (for sensitivity) are likely to be placebo - adding it is not clear whether the sensitivity is psychological or physiological. Or both.

If you always had wheat and have not have a problem before, stopped for a month then restarted with no problems that would indicate that you are not allergic to wheat or have gluten intolerance. But if after reading a report you start to feel ill, this is most likely a psychological factor than a physiological one.

On the other hand if you ask a friend to prepare meals for you with or without wheat so that you can't possibly know and will say how you felt afterwards as fair test you can determine more clearly if it is placebo or not. Do this for a few weeks where the friend keeps note of when wheat is added and when it isn't. Discuss the results after all the meals have been had. If you have had problems with the wheat containing meals then it is highly likely you have a problem with wheat.

PS: I absolutely apologise if you have celiac disease or wheat allergy because the symptoms can be very unpleasant and last for many days in extreme cases. This article is aimed more at people who may or may not have a sensitivity to wheat or gluten.

Counting Calories Is Flawed. But Here's Why I Still Do It

BY YONI FREEDHOFF

First, a confession.

I count calories. Haven’t missed an entry since May 7th, 2011.

No, I don’t have an eating disorder. Yes, some days my calories counts are stupidly high (Could someone please invent some low calorie chicken wings and ribs?).

With that off my chest, let’s get into some unfortunate truths about people, weight, and calories.

You Aren’t a Walking Math Formula

Public health authorities often tell us that 3,500 calories one way or the other will lead to a pound of gain or loss, but unfortunately many of our bodies missed that memo. Both over- and under- feeding experiments have demonstrated that people gain weight at different rates despite equivalent degrees of caloric excess or restriction. In one now-famous experiment, researchers overfed sixteen young men and women by 1,000 calories a day for eight weeks in tightly controlled conditions. The expectation, of course, was that everyone ought to gain 16 pounds, as would be predicted by a 56,000-calorie eight-week excess divided by 3,500 calories per pound. Yet only one person gained that much. The average weight gain was just over 10 pounds, and one individual (likely the guy we all know and hate who can eat whatever he wants and not gain weight) only gained three.

You can think of it a bit like fuel economy in cars. Some of us are walking around driving Humvees while others drive hybrids. The Humvee drivers are the folks who get virtually no fuel economy for their energy stores and consumption. Humvee drivers are like that study subject who barely gained weight despite eight weeks of over feeding, eating whatever they want without having to worry about their waists. The hybrid drivers are the folks who can look at an indulgence and gain weight, and while their incredibly efficient metabolisms may well see them surviving the zombie apocalypse, in our current Willy Wonkian wonderland of calories, they gain weight almost effortlessly.

The Quality of Calories Matters

Consider some incredibly cool data from an experiment published in the journal Food and Nutrition Research a few years back  . Researchers compared the “thermic effect of food” (TEF, or the energy your body uses to actually process and absorb what you're eating) following the consumption of a whole food grilled cheese sandwich (multigrain bread with whole grain and intact sunflower seeds along with cheddar cheese) versus a processed food grilled cheese sandwich (white bread and Kraft singles).

Generally a person's TEF is thought to account for 10 percent of their day’s total calorie burn. What this experiment found was that the whole food grilled cheese, while equal in calories as well as in protein, carb, and fat ratios, required nearly 50 percent more energy to absorb than its highly processed counterpart. This means the calories available to your body for storage can be much higher when they come from processed foods versus whole.

The Types of Calories Matter

I’m not here to debate carbs, proteins, or fats, but in my opinion, they matter. They matter in terms of that thermic effect of food I was talking about before, but they also matter in terms of satiety or fullness. If you eat 500 calories of refined carbohydrates, they’ll likely leave you far less full than 500 calories of fat and protein. And while tightly controlled experiments demonstrate that regardless of whether or not calories come from carbs, fats, or protein, in those strict laboratory settings, weight is gained or lost simply according to total calories. But we (hopefully) don't live in a metabolic ward. Instead, we free-range humans enjoy the luxury of eating in response to and in accordance with our many needs and desires and use food not simply for fuel, but also for comfort and celebration.

That said, at the top of the heap of eating needs and desires is hunger. If you’re less full because of the types of foods you’re eating, you’re likely to eat more. It’s also worth noting that the qualities of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats you consume will vary, and that as far as the impact of diet on chronic disease, whole grains trump refined, fish trumps cow, and unsaturated fats trump all others  .

To sum it up: People have different fuel efficiencies, whereby two people eating the same number of calories may see markedly different impacts of those calories upon their weights; the more processed a food the more calories it’ll effectively make available to your body; and some foods will leave you hungrier and in turn (given our caloric modern day wonderland) lead you to eat more.

Why, then, would I ever count calories?

8 Reasons Why I Still Choose to Count Calories

I count because none of the aforementioned caloric shortcomings gets past these three truths.

1. People do obey the laws of physics (albeit in accordance with their own internal energy efficiencies). Regardless of your personal internal equations, if you consistently eat more calories than you burn, you’ll tend to gain weight. Some people may gain incredibly quickly, some incredibly slowly, but we live in a universe governed by unbreakable physical laws, and that one about conservation of energy is going to matter (energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes form). Putting this more plainly, if you happen to have one of those bodies that’s demonstrated itself to be truly efficient at gaining weight, and you happen to regularly consume more energy than your body burns, your body will dutifully store some of that energy for the future. It’s also true that the types of foods you eat will undoubtedly affect the total calories you consume, but that still doesn’t change the fact that energy balance does affect your weight.

2. There’s no more readily available source of energy information than calories. It would be wonderful if there were more accurate numbers to track—if for instance there were what might be described as “bioavailable” calories listed on packages and menus. (“Bioavailable” would reflect the impact that processing and macronutrient ratios might have on the calories a food might possess that are actually available to your body.). Unfortunately, no such measure exists. So for now, we’re stuck with calories.

3. Food diaries are far and away the most efficient means to maximize weight loss. Food diarizing has been shown to lead practitioners to lose twice as much weight as those not tracking, and when you’re good at it (which may take a month or two), it’ll take you less than three minutes a day to do one. And while some might feel those results are just a coincidence when paired with caloric knowledge, I don’t.

Sure, it’s nice to have a rough idea of what your energy intake looks like, but more valuable than numbers is the actual act of tracking food intake. It’s a behavior that truly takes seconds to minutes a day to do, but each and every time you pull out your app or diary, you remind yourself of your healthy living desires and strategies. It’s through regular and conscious efforts and reminders that new habits are formed, and any behavior that helps you to keep your goals and intentions at the forefront of your busy mind is a good one.

What I don’t like about food diarizing is when it becomes punitive or judgmental. Food diaries aren’t there to tell you what you are or aren’t allowed. A food diary is simply a source of information to help inform your decisions, as well as an incredibly powerful habit-building tool. Sure, you can diarize anything and get the habit-building benefits, but think of calories as the currency of weight: If weight’s your concern, tracking its currency is likely to be a good bet. That said, don’t forget that with calories as currency, the exchange rate varies constantly. Not knowing the exchange rate doesn’t mean that price tags don’t matter, just that some will do more and less damage than you might have imagined at point of purchase.

Should I Keep a Food Diary?

Why fix what isn’t broken? If you’ve found a pattern of eating that leaves you happily satisfied with your weight, your health, and your lifestyle, it’s doubtful a food diary or calorie counts will bring much to your table.

On the other hand, if you aren’t satisfied with your weight, health, or lifestyle, I’d encourage you to consider a one-month trial of tracking. Food diary apps are plentiful, and once you’ve entered in your usual foods, record keeping takes all of one or two minutes at most a day.

Diarizing isn’t meant to replace your dietary strategy; it’s there to supplement it. Whether you’re intermittently fasting, following a Paleo or low-carb plan, or even just doing your own thing, calorie tracking and food diaryzing, regardless of their imperfections, oversights, and shortcomings, may be just the thing you need to figure out why you might be stuck.

Comments:

Calorie counting is not 100% accurate but is a good guide. The chances are the individual that only gained 3lbs did not need to go on a diet and would not have bothered to count calories anyway.

The majority of people gained weight closer towards the projected value than near the lower end value. So in this respect calorie counting is still useful to them. The correlation is much better and perhaps multiplying it by a factor gives them a better indication of how many extra calories they need to lose weight.

The one unlucky person that gained the theoretical weight so the correlation was perfect calorie counting could be very useful in estimating how many fewer calories they need to consume.

I find that counting calories improves my awareness of food. For instance, I can look at a cup of boiled rice and know there is about 200C there. This helps. I also look at the macros, for instance how much protein is in there. Being more aware helps to keep weight down even if it is not the most accurate way.

But I ask you why thrown away a resource if you can use it to help you? So what if the correlation is not perfect. If it is out by 20% then add about 20% more calories to see what happens. Really get to know your body better. (The calorie counting is useful for most people and most useful for people that really struggle with losing weight. Of course there will be some exceptions but why compare yourself to someone who has never had a problem with their weight? Now, I would be troubled if the person that gained 3 lbs had lost 3 lbs instead by increasing calories. That would probably destroy calorie counting.)

For macro nutrients, it is known that protein uses the most energy to digest and converting it to glucose is also a energy intensive process.  A high protein, low fat, low carb diet - where the person is mainly eating egg whites, purified protein shakes, green vegetables and little else calorie counting would be very inaccurate. This is a very rare scenario and should not be used to say don't calorie count. Can you imagine someone living like this? It would be a very boring life.

DO LOW-CARB DIETS CAUSE MUSCLE LOSS?

by Carlon Colker, M.D., F.A.C.N.

So many people still ask me that question. For those scratching their heads in disbelief, as FLEX magazine’s Chief Medical Muscle Monger, I’ve been saying for years that low-carbohydrate diets most certainly do not dull your anabolic response to weight training. Now we’ve got the science to prove it.

First of, carbohydrates are sugars. They have traditionally been viewed as the fuel for most body functions. Over the years 
this misperception has been thoroughly reinforced by everyone, from sport drink marketers who say you have to constantly suck down their sugar swill just to get your bony ass of the bench; to misguided school-lunch dietitians who, for years, made carbs a staple of crappy school lunches and thus to the chubby-child epidemic; to even the federal government, whose old Food Guide Pyramid with its moronic message of recommending 6–11 servings of carbohydrates daily created generations of type-2 diabetics.

In truth, your body can make all the carbohydrates it needs in the form of glucose from the fat and protein you take in. Your body requires no orally ingested carbohydrates for this function. This is a medical fact that countless professional and non-professionals continually ignore. Perhaps this misperceived “need” for orally ingested carbohydrates comes from the fact that at the cellular level the body certainly does require glucose for energy (the simplest form of the carbohydrate sugar molecule). But that doesn’t mean you have to EAT IT!

Glucose marks the beginning of the energy utilizing pathway known as glycolysis, which yields a molecule called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. ATP is the true currency of energy in the human body. Every cell in your body runs on a steady supply of it to function. Without ATP, nothing happens. This is especially true for muscular contraction. When you are working out hard and your muscles are pumped, ATP is consumed. Since this energy cycle begins with a molecule of glucose, it comes as no surprise that carbohydrates have mistakenly become the star of the show in terms of the traditional scientific and textbook definitions of our dietary source of energy. The truth is that dietary fat is a far more efficient feeder of this pathway of energy production, but not if your body is too used to carbohydrate ingestion. The longer you have ignored and bypassed this path, the more atrophied and inefficient it becomes. The body can become so used to an unnatural steady sugar intake that our physiology can “forget” about the dusty path of using dietary fat for energy. Still need more convincing? Well, just look at the state of our health as a society ravaged by the toxic effect of a sustained elevation of insulin in response to the steady stream of carbohydrates being fed to us. The result is epidemic obesity and diabetes (obesity being the leading risk factor for type-2 diabetes).

THE ONLY REASON DIETARY CARBOHYDRATES HAVE BECOME SO IMPORTANT IS BECAUSE SOCIETY, NOT THE LATEST SCIENCE AND OUR OWN PREREQUISITE KNOWLEDGE, HAS MADE IT SO.

Although orally ingested carbohydrates have classically been touted as the major fuel source of human energy, this could not be further from the truth as to how our body should be working when we are treating it properly. Bodybuilders know that, yet some of the vast misperceptions of the rest of humanity still seem to seep their way into the minds of my brethren in iron. These imbeciles make us doubt ourselves and start cracking open the pre-workout carbohydrate drinks as we convince ourselves that without this poison we’ll lose muscle. To them I say we must remind ourselves that the only reason dietary carbohydrates have become so important is because society, not the latest science and our own prerequisite knowledge, has made it so. Remember that orally ingested carbohydrates are not “essential,” because your body can make all the cellular sugar it needs from the fat and protein you ingest. Protein, on the other hand, is absolutely essential. Without eating certain essential amino acids you can’t efficiently build muscle. While some fats are harmful, certain fats—
like essential fatty acids—are critical and must not be neglected in the diet. It is only carbohydrates that have no essential character. Good bodybuilders have known that dietary carbohydrates were the problem all along. It’s just the rest of the world that still needs to catch up.

Of course, for those bodybuilders that are still stuck in the dark ages or have been sucked back into the misguided perceptions that they need a big carbohydrate bolus otherwise muscle disappears, finally the published medical research has caught up and proven that low-carbohydrate intake does not reduce the amount of muscle you have in response to training. Specifically a study performed by the School of Medical Sciences, RMIT University, in Melbourne, Australia, determined the effect of muscle glycogen concentration on muscle growth after weight training. Muscle biopsies confirmed glycogen concentration was higher in the control group verses the low-glycogen group at all times, yet they showed that commencing high-intensity exercise with low muscle glycogen did not compromise the anabolic signal and/or performance results.

Perhaps even more shocking, and most certainly not what the rest of the world is ready to comprehend, these facts also hold true for endurance athletes as well. But even more surprisingly, their performance may even benefit from reducing dietary carbohydrates and relying on structured amino acid solutions and healthy fats instead! In fact, it’s now been shown that endurance athletes increase the maximal activities of several oxidative enzymes that promote endurance to a greater extent when they have lower glycogen levels. So much for carbohydrate-loading with that big pasta dinner before 
the race or squeezing that sugar goop at the halfway point of your road race. Furthermore it has also been credibly demonstrated through muscle biopsy study that skeletal muscle responses to high-intensity endurance training result in molecular muscular signaling that remains unchanged despite lower muscle glycogen. These results may amaze some, confuse others, and down-right piss of many athletes, trainers, coaches, and nutrition gurus that thought they had it right all along and stuck to these older dogmas with religious fervor.

LOW CARBOHYDRATE DOES 
NOT MEAN NO CARBOHYDRATE


Of course that doesn’t mean that I’m advocating a zero-carbohydrate diet for bodybuilders or any other athletes. Keep
in mind that “low carbohydrate” does not mean “no carbohydrate.” But rather than carbohydrate-based foods, I tend to favor fiber-based foods like vegetables and some fruits that happen to have what I call “incidental” carbohydrates, because the amount of sugar is relatively low. Fiber is crucial for good health and a strong body.

There are basically two types of fibers: soluble and insoluble. Soluble fibers like those in oatmeal are able to dissolve in water and become gummy, or viscous. Soluble fibers help lower blood cholesterol levels and help regulate the body’s use of sugars. So some small amount of soluble fiber is a good thing in the diet, even though a few carbohydrates come along with it. For the bodybuilder looking to gain lean mass while keeping body fat down, insoluble fiber like that found in salad roughage is particularly beneficial. 
In addition to being loaded with naturally occurring minerals, trace minerals, and ultra-trace minerals, insoluble fiber foods are also powerful cancer-fighting anticarcinogens and digestive aids. Because “high-protein, low-carbohydrate” diets tend to cause constipation, adding this type of fiber is
also critical for regular bowel movements. Another nice thing about insoluble fiber is, unlike soluble fiber, it is not calorie-dense. Therefore you can and should have relatively large helpings of insoluble fiber. Veggies like lettuce, kale, cabbage, collard greens, celery, peppers, spinach, squash, onions, cucumber, asparagus, green beans, snap peas, Brussels sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, etc., are just some examples of healthy fiber-based choices and should be a significant part of any athlete’s diet, not just a bodybuilder’s.

Finally, I know I’m still going to hear a landslide of objections from die-hard proponents of a moderate- to high-carbohydrate diet for muscle building. The legions of detractors would point to the fact that insulin is, by itself, an anabolic hormone. But while this is true, high insulin levels are dangerous because it creates insulin resistance and diabetes. In addition, excess levels turn on lipogenesis (the process of making fat in the body) in order to dump the high-sugar loads out of the bloodstream.

What they didn’t realize back then was that we can get the benefits of insulin without using carbohydrates. The fact is that arginine, alanine, and the branched-chain amino acids (isoleucine, leucine, and valine), as well as glutamine found in whey protein are reasonably insulin-producing or “insulinogenic” without adding excess sugar calories. In addition, the insulin response to these amino acid proteins is far different and far better than the insulin response to sugar. Insulinogenic amino acids produce a much softer and more physiologic rise in insulin, in sharp contrast to the high insulin spike seen in response to the “toxic” presence of excess carbohydrate. This vigorous insulin response to sugar is an unnatural reflexive dumping pathway by which your body purges itself of what the physiology interprets as somewhat of a poison (i.e., too much blood sugar). Do it too many times and the body shuts down and you end up resistant to any effect insulin might have to either bring down blood sugar or stimulate muscle growth. As long as you are eating plenty of high-quality protein, you don’t have worry about losing out on the anabolic benefits a small amount of insulin might provide. Your body will still produce an ample supply if it needs to, just not an excessive supply in reactive response to a high blood sugar.
So, carbohydrates are in no way essential to the diet, be it for general health or for gaining muscle mass. So train hard, eat smart, and grow big!

Comments:
Fibre is also counted as carb. So on a ketogenic diet you can deduct fibre from total carbs to get net carbs starch and sugars. (Carbs are not all equal in what they come with. For instance green leafy vegetables contain minerals and vitamins. Pure sugar and starch offer very little in microminerals and essential fatty acids.)

After training very hard a high insulin response is desirable. If you took the insulinogenic amino acids and net carbs you would really help those muscles recover. So carbs can be timed to help you recover faster than without them. (Use net carb intake to your advantage).