Calories, food and metabolism…the never ending dilemma
28 November 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Metabolism is a moving, shifting target; never finite or fixed in time and space, metabolism, like hope, floats. Here is the deal: to stay the same (another myth: organisms never stay the exact same) we need to take in about approximately as many calories as we burn during the course of the day. Take in too few calories and we won’t recover from the savage training we continually subject ourselves to. I assume your workouts are savage. Unless we train really hard and attempt to match or exceed our limit (and “limit” is another shifting target) nothing of any real physiological significance is going to happen. So we need to consume enough food to facilitate recovery and growth. On the other hand if you consume too many calories, body fat will be manufactured and added to existing fat storage sites. The goal is to drain down fat deposits. On the one hand we need enough calories to fuel growth but take in too many of the wrong type of calories and new body fat is manufactured. The solution to draining off the swamp that is stored body fat is to operate at a slight caloric deficit. Settle in with hard workouts backed up with quality calories and operate at a slight caloric deficit and fat will melt. Subcutaneous and intracellular body fat is semi-hard like Crisco lard. The proper combo of exercise and eating used for a protracted period causes fat to mobilize and turn into trans-fatty acid. In this liquefied form it can be used for energy. By deftly handling the delicate balance between activity generated and calories ingested you lose body fat in a healthy sane fashion. Spare muscle tissue by eating amino-laden lean protein. Exercise hard and intensely. This is the optimal way to revamp the body.
Take in a goodly amount of protein, weight train, hit cardio in a systematic fashion. This enables the athlete to retain muscle mass in the face of a caloric deficit. But where exactly is this elusive caloric breakeven point? What is the metabolic tipping point? Everybody has a different metabolic burn rate and this shifts at any given point in time. What is it? Who knows for certain? How could you know with any accuracy your exact current metabolic burn rate without traveling around with sophisticated scientific devices? If you had continual access to metabolic monitoring apparatus you’d see that the basal metabolic rate is a shifting target, continually moving based on a variety of variables. Think of the metabolic set-point as a caloric range as opposed to a single finite number. Metabolism increases and decreases throughout the day, depending on activity level and circumstance. Metabolic burn rate undergoes a gradual and continual slowdown as we age – unless we do something to counteract the natural occurrence. Over time we become efficient at utilizing available energy. The metabolism can be made sluggish: no exercise, sedentary lifestyle, poor calorie selection and a preponderance of body fat can cause the human body to become very efficient at calorie expenditure. This explains why a sedentary, obese 400-pound person cursed with a sluggish metabolism can survive on a mere 800 calories per day and not lose weight. When the sedentary obese person with a sluggish metabolic rate binges in the slightest they gain an inordinate amount of body fat.
Contrast the plight of the obese with the super-fit professional athlete. A 200-pound guy with 8% body fat can wolf down 8,000 calories a day and not gain an ounce. This guy can “cut back” to 4,000 calories a day and get ripped! I’ve seen the phenomena manifest hundreds of times in a variety of athletic types – they eat like a starving colt to maintain bodyweight and cutting back calories in the slightest causes them to lose body fat. The lean champion athlete has a metabolism like the proverbial blast furnace. A high metabolism means we’re wildly inefficient at using our food-fuel. As a direct result of continual and intense physical activity, activity that requires calories, the body burns more calories and becomes incredibly efficient at processing nutrients. How do you acquire a blast furnace metabolism? My friend and nutritional mentor, John Parrillo, has long championed the idea that by combining intense exercise with a strict, high-calorie/low fat eating you “build the metabolism.” A specific confluence of procedures turns up the human thermostat. A sedentary lifestyle combined with excessive calories of the wrong types (saturated fat, refined carbs, sugar-laden calories) causes the metabolism to slow to a crawl…an extremely efficient crawl where body fat stores are easily added to. The conscientious fitness devotee performs high-intensity weight training along with consistent cardio and this replicates the intense physical activity of the pro athlete, albeit to a lesser degree. We need to turn up the metabolic thermostat.
Exercise hard. Eat a series of balanced precise meals or feedings spaced at even intervals throughout the day. The optimal meal is composed of a low fat/high protein portion and includes a fibrous and starchy carbohydrate. The Parrillo approach uses three food meals and 2-3 supplement meals. A supplement meal would typically consist of a protein shake or a meal replacement pack or perhaps a Sport Nutrition bar. 5-6 times each day calories are ingested. Over time the metabolism becomes adept at processing food: the body becomes extremely practiced at digesting and distributing food as 35 to 42 (5-6 times day) times a week the body breaks down quality calories. Obviously avoid foods that are easily converted into body fat and eliminate sugar and alcohol. Irrefutable empirical logic points towards the soundness of this approach: lift weights, hit cardio, eat sensible, eat clean and often. Don’t starve or stuff. Do so consistently and continually and over time the caloric cost of doing business increases dramatically. Don’t become the stereotypical couch potato or you’ll end up slamming the brakes on whatever metabolism you have left. Nothing wrong with chill time but if chill time is all the time you’re in metabolic trouble and you’ll pack on the pork. Speed up the metabolic process by getting active, speed up the metabolic process by lifting weights, speed up the metabolism by blasting away at cardio, speed up the metabolism by cleaning up the food selections. Multiple meals are critical and build the metabolism. Obviously a body in motion burns more calories than a body at rest so get in motion. Be active and be vital.
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