The Gym's All Things Nutrition Thread
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Can Carbs Fit Into A Healthy Diet?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/...-bad_n_6678474.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/...-bad_n_6678474.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
Hybrinetics
Banned
Just ate 5 cups of brown rice (cooked) and Im still hungry
Is Constant Ketosis Necessary – Or Even Desirable?
Every day, I get links to interesting papers. It’s hard not to when thousands of new studies are published every day and thousands of readers deliver the best ones to my inbox. And while I enjoy thumbing through the links simply for curiosity’s sake, they can also seed new ideas that lead to research rabbit holes and full-fledged posts. It’s probably the favorite part of my day: research and synthesis and the gestation of future blogs. The hard part is collecting, collating, and then transcribing the ideas swirling around inside my brain into readable prose and hopefully getting an article out of it that I can share with you.
Last Sunday, I briefly mentioned a paper concerning a ketone metabolite known as beta-hydroxybutyrate, or BHB, and its ability to block the activity of a set of inflammatory genes. This particular set of genes, known as the NLRP3 inflammasome, has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, and age-related macular degeneration. In other words, it’s in our best interest to avoid its chronic, pathogenic activation, and it looks like going into ketosis can probably help in that respect.
One thing led to another, and this paper got me thinking: once we “go into ketosis,” how long should we stay? If some is good, is more better? Is there a point where the benefits slow and the downsides accrue?
We absolutely know that ketones, particularly BHB, do lots of cool things for us. There’s the NLRP3 inflammasome inhibition, for one. There’s also the effect it has on brain health and function, particularly in the context of neurodegenerative diseases and other brain conditions.
Brain aging:
It’s quite clear why constant ketosis is attractive to people who read about (and experience for themselves) the benefits of BHB and ketosis in general: There don’t appear to be many downsides. Improved brain health? Increased antioxidant capacity? Inhibition of an inflammatory set of genes involved in the worst kinds of degenerative diseases? What’s not to love? Why wouldn’t someone remain indefinitely ketogenic?
Ketosis also activates the NRF2 pathway — a set of genes that regulate the body’s detoxification, antioxidant, and stress response systems — by initially increasing systemic oxidative stress. If that sounds a bit like hormesis, you’d be right. Ketosis, at least in the early stages, exerts some of its beneficial effects via hormetic stress. Various other stressors also activate NRF2, like plant polyphenols from foods like blueberries and green tea, potent spices like turmeric, intense exercise, and intermittent fasting. These all improve our health by triggering our stress resistance pathways and making us grow stronger for it, but they can also be taken to an extreme and become negative stressors.
Consider intermittent fasting and exercise. While the most famous way to increase BHB is to go on a ketogenic diet, it’s not the only way. Both fasting and exercise also do the trick:
These are both transient states that grow problematic when extended indefinitely.
You can’t fast forever. That’s called starvation. And, eventually, dying.
Instead, you fast for 12, 16, 24, or on the very rare occasion 36 hours, and resume your normal diet after the fasting period has ended. You introduce an acute bout of food deprivation to upregulate your fat burning, trigger cellular autophagy, and generate ketone bodies.
You can’t train every waking hour. That’s called working in a forced labor camp, and it too leads to very poor health.
Instead of training 12 hours a day, you sprint, or lift weights, swing a kettlebell really intensely, or any other type of training two or three times a week. Then, you rest and recover and eat, and grow stronger, more fit, and faster in the interim.
Ketosis isn’t fasting. It’s not starvation. You’re still eating, although your appetite may be reduced (which is why many people lose weight from ketogenic diets). You’re still taking in nutrients, even if glucose isn’t among them. And ketosis isn’t anywhere near as acutely stressful as a strong training session. But I think the principle stands: these are all stressors that exert benefits, at least in part, along the hormetic pathway. And when it comes to hormetic stressors, too much of a good thing usually isn’t very good.
What does this mean for indefinite, long term ketogenic dieting?
If you’ve got a legitimate health condition that responds well to ketosis, all bets are off. There’s evidence that people can thrive on good ketogenic diets for at least five years without incurring any serious side effects. For controlling epilepsy, there’s nothing better than a strict ketogenic diet maintained long term to quell the overexcited brain. For any of the neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, ketogenic diets look very promising and are worth trying. It even looks promising for bipolar disorder. If you’ve got a problem that ketosis helps or fixes, go for it. It’s helping you, and there’s no mistaking that.
My personal hunch (and I’ve said this for as long as I can remember) is that indefinite ketosis is unnecessary and perhaps even undesirable for most healthy people, and that occasional, even regular dips into ketosis (through fasting, very low-carb cycles, intense exercise) are preferable and sufficient. That way, you get the benefits of cyclical infusions of BHB and other ketones without running afoul of any potential unforeseen negative effects.
Plus, cycling your ketosis means you can eat berries and stone fruits when in season, and enjoy those otherworldly-delicious purple sweet potatoes without worrying. Personally, I like food too much to go full-on keto. You may not, and that’s okay.
If you’re thriving on a ketogenic diet, and have been for some time, keep it up. No one can take that away from you, and the studies indicate it should be safe.
But if you don’t have to remain in ketosis to resolve or stave off a health condition, if you’re just doing it to do it or for yet-to-be-realized benefits, consider rethinking your stance. And if ketosis doesn’t agree with your health or your personal performance goals, then don’t do it. It’s certainly not necessary for optimal health (if such a thing even exists!).
What about you? If anyone’s been on a long-term ketogenic diet, I’d love to hear how it’s worked for you in the comments below. Thanks for reading!
Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for instant access to all past, present and future episodes here.
Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-constant-ketosis-necessary-or-even-desirable/#ixzz3Tc9cTsbt
Last Sunday, I briefly mentioned a paper concerning a ketone metabolite known as beta-hydroxybutyrate, or BHB, and its ability to block the activity of a set of inflammatory genes. This particular set of genes, known as the NLRP3 inflammasome, has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, and age-related macular degeneration. In other words, it’s in our best interest to avoid its chronic, pathogenic activation, and it looks like going into ketosis can probably help in that respect.
One thing led to another, and this paper got me thinking: once we “go into ketosis,” how long should we stay? If some is good, is more better? Is there a point where the benefits slow and the downsides accrue?
We absolutely know that ketones, particularly BHB, do lots of cool things for us. There’s the NLRP3 inflammasome inhibition, for one. There’s also the effect it has on brain health and function, particularly in the context of neurodegenerative diseases and other brain conditions.
Brain aging:
- Whether it’s severe hypoglycemia in a live rat or direct glucose deprivation of cortical cells in a petri dish, the addition of BHB protects against neuronal death, preserves energy levels, and lowers reactive oxygen species.
- In an animal model of Cockayne syndrome, a condition characterized by premature aging, short stature, and early death (about age 10 in most human children with it), increasing BHB through ketosis postpones brain aging.
- Ketogenic diets are classic therapies for epilepsy, with BHB being the most important ketone for preventing seizures. The degree of seizure control tracks almost lockstep with rising BHB levels.
- There’s also evidence that patients with bipolar — a disorder sharing certain neurobiological pathways and effective therapies with epilepsy — can also benefit from ketosis. Recent case studies show complete remission of symptoms in two patients as long as they adhered to their diets (which were fairly Primal-friendly, for what it’s worth).
- Parkinson’s disease patients who adhered to a ketogenic diet saw improvements in their Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale scores.
- Type 1 diabetics who experience reduced cognitive function because of low blood sugar see those deficits erased by increasing BHB through dietary medium chain triglycerides (the same fats found in coconut oil).
- In memory impaired adults, some with Alzheimer’s, BHB improved cognition. Scores improved in (rough) parallel with rising ketones.
- A ketone-elevating agent (purified medium chain triglycerides) improved cognition in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s.
- A very low-carb diet improved memory in older adults. Again, ketones tracked with improvements.
It’s quite clear why constant ketosis is attractive to people who read about (and experience for themselves) the benefits of BHB and ketosis in general: There don’t appear to be many downsides. Improved brain health? Increased antioxidant capacity? Inhibition of an inflammatory set of genes involved in the worst kinds of degenerative diseases? What’s not to love? Why wouldn’t someone remain indefinitely ketogenic?
Ketosis also activates the NRF2 pathway — a set of genes that regulate the body’s detoxification, antioxidant, and stress response systems — by initially increasing systemic oxidative stress. If that sounds a bit like hormesis, you’d be right. Ketosis, at least in the early stages, exerts some of its beneficial effects via hormetic stress. Various other stressors also activate NRF2, like plant polyphenols from foods like blueberries and green tea, potent spices like turmeric, intense exercise, and intermittent fasting. These all improve our health by triggering our stress resistance pathways and making us grow stronger for it, but they can also be taken to an extreme and become negative stressors.
Consider intermittent fasting and exercise. While the most famous way to increase BHB is to go on a ketogenic diet, it’s not the only way. Both fasting and exercise also do the trick:
- A properly-executed fast puts you into full-blown ketosis. In healthy adults, two days of fasting increases brain BHB almost 12-fold (and almost 20-fold after 3 days). Even just an eight hour fast, AKA a good night’s sleep, will put you into ketosis and increase BHB (PDF) if you have strong metabolic health.
- Exercise-mediated increases of BHB are a good barometer for the amount of fat a person will lose during a workout program. The more body fat you carry, the greater the elevation in BHB and the more weight you’ll lose.
These are both transient states that grow problematic when extended indefinitely.
You can’t fast forever. That’s called starvation. And, eventually, dying.
Instead, you fast for 12, 16, 24, or on the very rare occasion 36 hours, and resume your normal diet after the fasting period has ended. You introduce an acute bout of food deprivation to upregulate your fat burning, trigger cellular autophagy, and generate ketone bodies.
You can’t train every waking hour. That’s called working in a forced labor camp, and it too leads to very poor health.
Instead of training 12 hours a day, you sprint, or lift weights, swing a kettlebell really intensely, or any other type of training two or three times a week. Then, you rest and recover and eat, and grow stronger, more fit, and faster in the interim.
Ketosis isn’t fasting. It’s not starvation. You’re still eating, although your appetite may be reduced (which is why many people lose weight from ketogenic diets). You’re still taking in nutrients, even if glucose isn’t among them. And ketosis isn’t anywhere near as acutely stressful as a strong training session. But I think the principle stands: these are all stressors that exert benefits, at least in part, along the hormetic pathway. And when it comes to hormetic stressors, too much of a good thing usually isn’t very good.
What does this mean for indefinite, long term ketogenic dieting?
If you’ve got a legitimate health condition that responds well to ketosis, all bets are off. There’s evidence that people can thrive on good ketogenic diets for at least five years without incurring any serious side effects. For controlling epilepsy, there’s nothing better than a strict ketogenic diet maintained long term to quell the overexcited brain. For any of the neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, ketogenic diets look very promising and are worth trying. It even looks promising for bipolar disorder. If you’ve got a problem that ketosis helps or fixes, go for it. It’s helping you, and there’s no mistaking that.
My personal hunch (and I’ve said this for as long as I can remember) is that indefinite ketosis is unnecessary and perhaps even undesirable for most healthy people, and that occasional, even regular dips into ketosis (through fasting, very low-carb cycles, intense exercise) are preferable and sufficient. That way, you get the benefits of cyclical infusions of BHB and other ketones without running afoul of any potential unforeseen negative effects.
Plus, cycling your ketosis means you can eat berries and stone fruits when in season, and enjoy those otherworldly-delicious purple sweet potatoes without worrying. Personally, I like food too much to go full-on keto. You may not, and that’s okay.
If you’re thriving on a ketogenic diet, and have been for some time, keep it up. No one can take that away from you, and the studies indicate it should be safe.
But if you don’t have to remain in ketosis to resolve or stave off a health condition, if you’re just doing it to do it or for yet-to-be-realized benefits, consider rethinking your stance. And if ketosis doesn’t agree with your health or your personal performance goals, then don’t do it. It’s certainly not necessary for optimal health (if such a thing even exists!).
What about you? If anyone’s been on a long-term ketogenic diet, I’d love to hear how it’s worked for you in the comments below. Thanks for reading!
Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for instant access to all past, present and future episodes here.
Read more: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/is-constant-ketosis-necessary-or-even-desirable/#ixzz3Tc9cTsbt
What is that?
http://body.io/fast-food-everybody-including-athletes/
Hi my name’s Kiefer and I have a weakness for fast food.
I’m lying. I have a penchant for fast food. What did you expect? I grew up as a fat kid in the Midwest where my parents took me to McDonalds, or a now-forgotten fast food chain called Burger Chef as a reward. To this day, when I smell McDonalds, I experience the nostalgia of family dinners, mini-celebrations and of an escape from the doldrums of a tiny town isolated in an ocean of cornfields (getting away from the smell of the hog farm down the street didn’t hurt either).
Now, at 40, I still enjoy the taste of a Filet-O-Fish, or a sack of them. I’ll sometimes eat four before even leaving the parking lot. I enjoy a diet where once every two or three months (and sometimes more often) I can satisfy my inner fat kid without consequence. That’s why I say that on Carb Nite or Carb Backloading, there is no food that you can’t eat…once you understand how your body works.
This principle defines a key component of health: resiliency. Such excursions should either cause no harm or be beneficial. Health experts who complain about explosive diarrhea after being maliciously assaulted with sponge cake, or the miraculous formation of moobs after drinking a single cup of mycotoxin infected Starbuck’s don’t seem very healthy, and they sure don’t conjure images of bulletproof. Sure, they may do okay if society suddenly blows up, but in their current natural environment, day to day life is a struggle.
If you cannot thrive easily in your environment, you are less healthy than those who do.
In other words: why live like a caveman when you can be an alpha predator in the modern world? Isn’t that why we train? Cavemen didn’t have squat racks or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. We train to be better adapted to the modern world. This begs the question then…
How Does Fast Food Fit Into the Modern Athlete’s Diet?
I used to struggle with this question, but after developing CBL, I found a simple answer: it fits at night. Is it dark outside? Have you trained today? If both are true, then fast food is safer than it normally is, assuming you don’t live above the Arctic Circle where you might experience 30 days of night. I explain why you can eat more junky foods at night in CBL and I’ll expand and elaborate in CBL2.
For a fit athlete, fast food should make little difference if eaten in moderation and sometimes, depending on the lean mass of the individual, even when eaten to excess. An athlete’s body differs significantly from that of even a healthy person who doesn’t train; the gulf widens when considering unhealthy individuals. We should assume that the athlete’s body handles swings in food quality and composition better than most.
Macronutrient Invariance
The first thing one might guess is that athletic individuals perform identically on diets of varying macronutrient composition, given all other things equal. In other words, if athletes use the naïve diet planning method of making each meal roughly the same macronutrient composition, the difference in macronutrient percentages between fat, protein and carbohydrates should not make a big difference.
Brown and colleagues demonstrated this to a certain degree in endurance athletes[1]. Over a three month period of training, half of a group of 32 cyclists shifted calories from 69% carbohydrate and 15% fat to 37% carbohydrate and 50% fat; the other half did not. After three months, no differences in body composition occurred between groups. Although this trial lasted only a short time, we see this phenomenon in real life. Athletes enjoy greater flexibility in what they eat.
Now we can understand why fitness gurus who only deal with athletic clients might assume that nothing matters but calories, not the macronutrient makeup. These observations, both in the lab and in the gym, unfortunately reinforce this myopic concept of calories-in, calories-out. (This, of course, is false—you can listen here for an explanation).
Food Quality Tolerance
Many people mistakenly assume that what holds true for an athletic individual must hold true for every individual. We know this is not true. It is also a mistake to assume that what holds true for a metabolically deranged person must hold true for everyone.
Researchers showed that for metabolically deranged people, food quality can make a big difference[2]. The difference in endocrine response (specifically the magnitude of the insulin response) from the two meals—one fast food and the other a gourmet alternative, both equivalent in macronutrients—varies according to body fat content: the more healthy the participant, the smaller the effect of food quality.
For athletes, even during critical feeding periods, I would hypothesize that short lived deviations from ideal dietary conditions should make little difference. This is an important hypothesis because the answer helps to consolidate information we already know. Otherwise we might make a naïve response to this article that tested the premise[3], calling it pointless, worthless or as someone recently commented, “This is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.”
In the paper, Cramer and colleagues tested two post training meal protocols, one made from sports supplements (Peanut Butter, Gatorade, Cliff Shots, Powerbars and Cytomax) and one made up of pancakes, hashbrowns and burgers, fries and a Coke.
Granted, both meals contain primarily junk, but in the public eye, Gatorade, Cytomax and so on, are seen as pillars of a healthy, performance-enhancing diet. Even one of the worst protein shakes ever made, in my opinion, Muscle Milk, occupies shelf space in convenience stores across the United States. The vast majority of athletes would avoid the burger and fries, and shout expletives at the thought of drinking a Coke after a workout. Cramer’s paper, however, says they’re wrong to do so.
The results show that no observable difference occurred between groups. The two diets were composed, as much as possible, of the same macronutrient profiles. Even with the short duration of the study (about three and half hours performed twice, one week apart), this provides us valuable information. Small deviations in diet will not hinder performance. I would argue that they actually help.
The Ramifications
The current article testing food quality on athletes, unfortunately, considered endurance athletes and defined recovery in terms of glycogen repletion. Endurance athletes possess a hyped up enzymatic and epigenetic environment allowing them to get what they need from the meal they eat, quality be damned.
Resistance training, however, is still an open question where recovery depends on both meeting glycogen needs and protein turnover needs. People naïve enough to assume there’s no difference between trained and untrained individuals might mix studies and come to the conclusion that protein type and quantity don’t matter, as the authors of these papers mistakenly did[4,5]. With the right insight, we would know that mixing this type of data should give counterintuitive, or null results—i.e. such reviews tell us nothing at all.
I would again guess that a well-trained athlete exists in a supercharged state allowing them to meet their nutritional needs regardless of food quality and, to a certain degree, timing (assuming the diets use the standard protocol of mixed meals throughout the day). This needs to be studied.
Until we have more solid results, we can glean evidence from experience. Strict religious-like adherence to six meals per day of specifically calculated macros and food sources can be relaxed from time to time. In other words, on the right diet, and with training, you thrive easily in the modern world.
I wish I had known this when I was trying to consume seven meals per day, scared to go on vacations or take road trips because I’d be without my precious post-workout shake or my storage containers of chicken, rice and broccoli. The health of my body far exceeded the health of my psychology.
If It Fits Your Macros
Of course, if If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) adherents take naiveté to new levels and if they haven’t already, it won’t be long before they parade this article around as proof that food type doesn’t matter, only macros, recommending Twinkies, Slim Jims and Poptarts at every meal while Dr. Joel Fuhrman—the die-hard vegan—spins in his grave*.
That’s not what these papers say or suggest. The researchers demonstrated that a small deviation (two meals distanced by a week and multiple training sessions) makes little difference. Don’t take these results to mean that consuming junk all the time is without drawbacks or that it won’t impact your training.
There are many reasons we could expect the results found in this research independent of food type: the participants were athletes, they were in an altered thermodynamic and metabolic state and they consumed meals in the first phase of the two-phase process of glycogen recompensation, which is crucial for endurance athletes, like the participants in this study (I’ll delve deeper into the two-phase process, but not until CBL2 is released).
Over longer periods, particularly throughout our life and definitely in our youth, food quality significantly matters. Dr. Bruce Ames talks at length about his triage theory of aging and even demonstrated the theory in action (which is what makes it a theory—he found proof)[7-9].
I won’t discuss the lengthy topic of triage theory here, but at its core, it says that mitochondrial damage from a lack of micronutrients over time predisposes the body to complications of aging and exacerbates others. At all stages of our lives, we should be concerned about the quality of food we eat and the supplementation we take.
Now, in the present, sick mitochondria will degrade your performance over time. If you have any serious long term athletic goals, combine them with serious dietary goals.
In Conclusion
Context is everything. Yes, I eat fast food without consequence. You probably can too. You just need to know how your body works in a way that allows you to do so in a healthy way. If you’re athletic, you definitely can.
And sure, IIFYM may not cause problems or even slow progress in the gym for a few months or even a year, but if you choose to adopt this philosophy then when I’m 60, I’ll have the pleasure of saying “I told you so”, as I carry your walker while helping your prematurely aging 40 year-old body up the steps.
*No, Dr. Joel Fuhrman isn’t dead, he just looks like death.
Hi my name’s Kiefer and I have a weakness for fast food.
I’m lying. I have a penchant for fast food. What did you expect? I grew up as a fat kid in the Midwest where my parents took me to McDonalds, or a now-forgotten fast food chain called Burger Chef as a reward. To this day, when I smell McDonalds, I experience the nostalgia of family dinners, mini-celebrations and of an escape from the doldrums of a tiny town isolated in an ocean of cornfields (getting away from the smell of the hog farm down the street didn’t hurt either).
Now, at 40, I still enjoy the taste of a Filet-O-Fish, or a sack of them. I’ll sometimes eat four before even leaving the parking lot. I enjoy a diet where once every two or three months (and sometimes more often) I can satisfy my inner fat kid without consequence. That’s why I say that on Carb Nite or Carb Backloading, there is no food that you can’t eat…once you understand how your body works.
This principle defines a key component of health: resiliency. Such excursions should either cause no harm or be beneficial. Health experts who complain about explosive diarrhea after being maliciously assaulted with sponge cake, or the miraculous formation of moobs after drinking a single cup of mycotoxin infected Starbuck’s don’t seem very healthy, and they sure don’t conjure images of bulletproof. Sure, they may do okay if society suddenly blows up, but in their current natural environment, day to day life is a struggle.
If you cannot thrive easily in your environment, you are less healthy than those who do.
In other words: why live like a caveman when you can be an alpha predator in the modern world? Isn’t that why we train? Cavemen didn’t have squat racks or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. We train to be better adapted to the modern world. This begs the question then…
How Does Fast Food Fit Into the Modern Athlete’s Diet?
I used to struggle with this question, but after developing CBL, I found a simple answer: it fits at night. Is it dark outside? Have you trained today? If both are true, then fast food is safer than it normally is, assuming you don’t live above the Arctic Circle where you might experience 30 days of night. I explain why you can eat more junky foods at night in CBL and I’ll expand and elaborate in CBL2.
For a fit athlete, fast food should make little difference if eaten in moderation and sometimes, depending on the lean mass of the individual, even when eaten to excess. An athlete’s body differs significantly from that of even a healthy person who doesn’t train; the gulf widens when considering unhealthy individuals. We should assume that the athlete’s body handles swings in food quality and composition better than most.
Macronutrient Invariance
The first thing one might guess is that athletic individuals perform identically on diets of varying macronutrient composition, given all other things equal. In other words, if athletes use the naïve diet planning method of making each meal roughly the same macronutrient composition, the difference in macronutrient percentages between fat, protein and carbohydrates should not make a big difference.
Brown and colleagues demonstrated this to a certain degree in endurance athletes[1]. Over a three month period of training, half of a group of 32 cyclists shifted calories from 69% carbohydrate and 15% fat to 37% carbohydrate and 50% fat; the other half did not. After three months, no differences in body composition occurred between groups. Although this trial lasted only a short time, we see this phenomenon in real life. Athletes enjoy greater flexibility in what they eat.
Now we can understand why fitness gurus who only deal with athletic clients might assume that nothing matters but calories, not the macronutrient makeup. These observations, both in the lab and in the gym, unfortunately reinforce this myopic concept of calories-in, calories-out. (This, of course, is false—you can listen here for an explanation).
Food Quality Tolerance
Many people mistakenly assume that what holds true for an athletic individual must hold true for every individual. We know this is not true. It is also a mistake to assume that what holds true for a metabolically deranged person must hold true for everyone.
Researchers showed that for metabolically deranged people, food quality can make a big difference[2]. The difference in endocrine response (specifically the magnitude of the insulin response) from the two meals—one fast food and the other a gourmet alternative, both equivalent in macronutrients—varies according to body fat content: the more healthy the participant, the smaller the effect of food quality.
For athletes, even during critical feeding periods, I would hypothesize that short lived deviations from ideal dietary conditions should make little difference. This is an important hypothesis because the answer helps to consolidate information we already know. Otherwise we might make a naïve response to this article that tested the premise[3], calling it pointless, worthless or as someone recently commented, “This is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever read.”
In the paper, Cramer and colleagues tested two post training meal protocols, one made from sports supplements (Peanut Butter, Gatorade, Cliff Shots, Powerbars and Cytomax) and one made up of pancakes, hashbrowns and burgers, fries and a Coke.
Granted, both meals contain primarily junk, but in the public eye, Gatorade, Cytomax and so on, are seen as pillars of a healthy, performance-enhancing diet. Even one of the worst protein shakes ever made, in my opinion, Muscle Milk, occupies shelf space in convenience stores across the United States. The vast majority of athletes would avoid the burger and fries, and shout expletives at the thought of drinking a Coke after a workout. Cramer’s paper, however, says they’re wrong to do so.
The results show that no observable difference occurred between groups. The two diets were composed, as much as possible, of the same macronutrient profiles. Even with the short duration of the study (about three and half hours performed twice, one week apart), this provides us valuable information. Small deviations in diet will not hinder performance. I would argue that they actually help.
The Ramifications
The current article testing food quality on athletes, unfortunately, considered endurance athletes and defined recovery in terms of glycogen repletion. Endurance athletes possess a hyped up enzymatic and epigenetic environment allowing them to get what they need from the meal they eat, quality be damned.
Resistance training, however, is still an open question where recovery depends on both meeting glycogen needs and protein turnover needs. People naïve enough to assume there’s no difference between trained and untrained individuals might mix studies and come to the conclusion that protein type and quantity don’t matter, as the authors of these papers mistakenly did[4,5]. With the right insight, we would know that mixing this type of data should give counterintuitive, or null results—i.e. such reviews tell us nothing at all.
I would again guess that a well-trained athlete exists in a supercharged state allowing them to meet their nutritional needs regardless of food quality and, to a certain degree, timing (assuming the diets use the standard protocol of mixed meals throughout the day). This needs to be studied.
Until we have more solid results, we can glean evidence from experience. Strict religious-like adherence to six meals per day of specifically calculated macros and food sources can be relaxed from time to time. In other words, on the right diet, and with training, you thrive easily in the modern world.
I wish I had known this when I was trying to consume seven meals per day, scared to go on vacations or take road trips because I’d be without my precious post-workout shake or my storage containers of chicken, rice and broccoli. The health of my body far exceeded the health of my psychology.
If It Fits Your Macros
Of course, if If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) adherents take naiveté to new levels and if they haven’t already, it won’t be long before they parade this article around as proof that food type doesn’t matter, only macros, recommending Twinkies, Slim Jims and Poptarts at every meal while Dr. Joel Fuhrman—the die-hard vegan—spins in his grave*.
That’s not what these papers say or suggest. The researchers demonstrated that a small deviation (two meals distanced by a week and multiple training sessions) makes little difference. Don’t take these results to mean that consuming junk all the time is without drawbacks or that it won’t impact your training.
There are many reasons we could expect the results found in this research independent of food type: the participants were athletes, they were in an altered thermodynamic and metabolic state and they consumed meals in the first phase of the two-phase process of glycogen recompensation, which is crucial for endurance athletes, like the participants in this study (I’ll delve deeper into the two-phase process, but not until CBL2 is released).
Over longer periods, particularly throughout our life and definitely in our youth, food quality significantly matters. Dr. Bruce Ames talks at length about his triage theory of aging and even demonstrated the theory in action (which is what makes it a theory—he found proof)[7-9].
I won’t discuss the lengthy topic of triage theory here, but at its core, it says that mitochondrial damage from a lack of micronutrients over time predisposes the body to complications of aging and exacerbates others. At all stages of our lives, we should be concerned about the quality of food we eat and the supplementation we take.
Now, in the present, sick mitochondria will degrade your performance over time. If you have any serious long term athletic goals, combine them with serious dietary goals.
In Conclusion
Context is everything. Yes, I eat fast food without consequence. You probably can too. You just need to know how your body works in a way that allows you to do so in a healthy way. If you’re athletic, you definitely can.
And sure, IIFYM may not cause problems or even slow progress in the gym for a few months or even a year, but if you choose to adopt this philosophy then when I’m 60, I’ll have the pleasure of saying “I told you so”, as I carry your walker while helping your prematurely aging 40 year-old body up the steps.
*No, Dr. Joel Fuhrman isn’t dead, he just looks like death.
Gains in the bag and getting it in the house.
Always hated oatmeal
Just ate 5 cups of brown rice (cooked) and Im still hungry
