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How does the body fuel itself?

System
System Posts: 1,899 MFP Staff
edited June 2018 in Debate Club
This discussion was created from replies split from: brain fog & dieting. Here are the posts that got the whole things started:

[quote="bustercrabby;c-42124280"][quote="nardo1kr;d-10672924"]For the past three weeks, I’ve been on a health kick, tracking calories and doing cardio & strength training 4x a week. I eat a pretty balanced diet, lots of vegetables, some eggs & fish & tofu, some dairy & whole grains. But the past two weeks I have had severe brain fog. I am always zoned out, I sleep 8 hours and still feel tired. I eat 200-500 calories under maintenance, however I haven’t been losing much weight. I would understand brain fog from cutting too much, but I’m barely cutting, just eating a lot healthier. I was wondering if anybody has experienced this and ways to make it better? I do find eating helps somewhat but I haven’t been fully myself in a couple weeks. [/quote]

Sounds like you may not be getting enough fat, which is what fuels the brain.

A lot of water will indeed flush all sorts of nutrients. However, I would not take my advice nor anyone else's because it sounds like you have a lot of issues, a lot of things of which you are not sure. You might consider starting with some blood work, so that you have a benchmark. You say "I eat 200-500 calories under maintenance". What does that mean? Males should be eating [i]at least[/i] 1200 cals/day. Weight trainers should probably be up around 1600 - 2000 cals/day. [i]Or[/i], you could just stop what you started three weeks ago and see if the fog lifts. If it does, that will be a sure sign that some part of what you are doing is wrong.

You should know exactly what your nutrient/macro counts are because you're tracking it here. If you increase salt intake, make sure you use only sea salt because the minerals have not been processed out. These minerals help regulate your heart.

On top of all this, you are weight training quite a bit, which means you have to pay particular attention to your protein intake.

I am not a dietician, nor do I pretend to be.

[/quote]

[quote="AnvilHead;c-42124309"][quote="bustercrabby;c-42124280"]Sounds like you may not be getting enough fat, which is what fuels the brain...
[/quote]

This is false. Fat does not fuel the brain. The brain is fueled exclusively by glucose.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22436/

[i]"[b]Glucose is virtually the sole fuel for the human brain, except during prolonged starvation. The brain lacks fuel stores and hence requires a continuous supply of glucose.[/b] It consumes about 120 g daily, which corresponds to an energy input of about 420 kcal (1760 kJ), accounting for some 60% of the utilization of glucose by the whole body in the resting state...

...[b]Fatty acids do not serve as fuel for the brain[/b], because they are bound to albumin in plasma and so do not traverse the blood-brain barrier. In starvation, ketone bodies generated by the liver partly replace glucose as fuel for the brain."[/i][/quote]

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