I finally did it. I finally finished my first book, much of which had been sitting on my hard drive for almost two years. Its called “Low Carb Lifestyle & Weight Loss Made Simple”. One of the main reasons I hadn’t finished it was because I wanted to somehow make it different from all of the other low carb diet…
Its not uncommon to hear people talk about carbing up before a workout. This is at typical practice with distance runners or cyclists and weight lifters and it certainly helps with performance. However, if your primary reason for working out is weight loss then carbing up probably isn’t going to help you. You will certainly have a stronger workout but…
Why is my dietary advice so different from the mainstream health authorities? That’s a great question. Why aren’t they paying attention to what the more progressive MD’s and PhD’s are saying and showing in their research? In 1994, the American Diabetes Association ( I called them the American Dietetics Association in the video, Whoops) recommended a diet of 60-70% carbohydrates,…
Unless you’re diabetic, you probably haven’t taken your blood sugar with a glucose meter. Taking your blood sugar, or having your doctor do it, could help you determine if you have some insulin resistance. If you’re carrying more than 30lbs of excess fat and having trouble getting the weight to come off with a healthy diet and exercise, then you MAY have some insulin resistance.
Just because your goal is to lose weight, don’t think you avoid lifting weights. One of the greatest benefits of resistance training is insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity means that your muscles are receptive to insulin bringing fuel to be stored in the muscle- NO, this does not make you bulky. It actually provides energy for when you move those muscles.
The opposite of insulin sensitivity is insulin resistance which means that your muscles don’t respond to insulin so the fuel is diverted to your FAT CELLS for storage. Increased insulin resistance leads to, not only fat gain, but also diabetes.
The theory of “Calories In, Calories Out” really doesn’t work, primarily because we are not machines with a single fuel source and only one way to store and burn fuel. Our bodies are hormonal and those hormones have a tremendous effect on how we burn and store fuel, both glycogen and fat.
How many times have we heard that a calorie is a calorie? This is beyond an over simplification. It just isn’t true. Our bodies store and burn primarily two different types of fuel- fat and glycogen. We have two different metabolic systems- aerobic, being fat burning and anaerobic which burns glycogen.
Have you ever felt sluggish a couple hours after a starchy meal? Of course you have. And your first instinct, since taking a nap may not be practical at the moment, is to eat again to try to regain some energy. Generally the choice, or craving, will be for another starchy food to get your blood sugar back up.
Insulin sensitivity is important to allow our bodies to store fuel in muscle cells- otherwise all fuel is shuttled to our fat cells to be stored as fat. Resistance training is a great way to improve insulin sensitivity because it drains the glycogen stores in our muscles and creates a demand on our bodies to refuel them, either from the food that we eat or from fat cells.