Repairing your broken furnace (Metabolism)

How's Your METABOLISM?


This article by Terry Christian will hopefully eliminate any confusion you might have about your nurtrition plans.




The Metabolism Repair Plan

Not a "no carbs" plan,

but a know carbs plan.


by Terry Christian



We hate to tell you this, but there's a good chance your furnace is broken. No, we're not talking about the furnace in your basement, but your metabolic furnace. It's not releasing heat and all your "fuel" is being stored as body fat.


Modern lifestyles, modern food choices, and old-school diets have caused your "furnace" to malfunction, but it can definitely be fixed. And we're not talking a short-term fix, either. The repair we propose will keep your metabolic furnace generating heat for the rest of your life so you can have the body you were supposed to have before your furnace malfunctioned.


Before we describe our straightforward plan, we really need to spend a little time talking about insulin.


In case you're not familiar with it, insulin is a hormone that controls how our body handles carbohydrates, which are essentially sugars. Examples of carbohydrates are foods like bread or potatoes. Anyhow, insulin "disposes" of these carbohydrates by "feeding" them to your muscles or putting them in storage as body fat. Nice little system.


Unfortunately, man has inadvertently thwarted the system. Back in the old days, the bread we ate was coarse. The crackers we ate were coarse. Very little was done to grain products before they reached your pantry. When you ate these coarse, relatively unprocessed products, they digested rather slowly, in turn causing a slow, gradual insulin release.


Enter modern times. Fast speed mills grind up flour so fine that some of it actually floats away in the air. The thousands of products (snack foods) made from these flours are practically atomized by your teeth. When they get to the stomach and digestive system, the body quickly absorbs them. This means the sugars get into the bloodstream very quickly, causing your body to release waves of insulin to dispose of the large influx of sugar.


These surges of insulin, repeated over and over again, lead to a condition called insulin resistance. The cells that normally respond to insulin get desensitized. The pancreas – which produces insulin – has to "shout" louder and louder for the cells that handle insulin to "hear." The pancreas has to produce more and more insulin to metabolize all that rapidly assimilated carbohydrate. Furthermore, these large surges of insulin tend to overshoot the mark. In other words, more insulin is released than is needed. As such, it causes temporary low-blood sugar, which sends your brain a signal that it's time to eat again.


If the body gets that signal enough times, hyperinsulinemia develops. In short, that means your body has higher-than-normal levels of insulin flowing through it. This condition is related to high cholesterol, fatigue, anxiety, heart disease, cirrhosis, kidney problems, depression, and immune suppression, along with increased body fat storage and reduced burning of body fat. In short, in addition to ruining your health, these repeated surges of insulin ruin your metabolism.


Do you find yourself getting sleepy after a carbohydrate-based lunch or suffering a midafternoon crash? It's quite likely that you suffer from a good degree of insulin resistance. Of course, an easier way to tell is by weighing yourself or looking at yourself in the mirror. Insulin resistant people usually carry too much fat.


Clearly, carbohydrate control is definitely in order, and that involves knowing which carbs to eat and at what times (more on this later).


It's tough but doable. Simply ditching refined carbohydrates (most often those that are found in processed foods and are packaged in boxes) and starches like white bread and pasta will almost always cause you to lose fat.


Of course, we try to stay mindful of data that show that we need about one gram of carbohydrate per pound of body weight for normal brain and muscle function. Zero-carb diets like Atkins have you avoid all carbs, but that isn't necessary. Eliminating carbs from your diet makes your body sluggish, your mind foggy, and is plain unhealthy. Too few grams of carbohydrate can lead to mood swings, uncontrollable cravings, and the loss of muscle tissue. In turn, this loss of muscle leads to a drop in metabolism. If unchecked, this can cause a person to actually gain weight while eating a very-low number of calories and very-few grams of carbs. What a mess!


Besides, it's plain unrealistic to continue with a zero-carb diet for a long time. And, when you eventually come off diets like Atkins and resume eating like a normal human, the pounds come back with revenge.


The Metabolism Repair Plan advocates low to moderate carb intake in conjunction with resistance training. But beyond that, we need to do something else. We need to focus on the timing of carbohydrate intake.



Controlling Insulin: It's All a Matter of Timing


We can't escape the clock because as the levels of hormones like insulin and other blood constituents change throughout the day, so too does the way our body handles glucose, or sugar. In fact our body handles carbohydrates so poorly in the evening that researchers have compared it to Type II diabetes! To put it even more succinctly, eating carbohydrates at night makes most people fat, even if they don't have any particular problems handling carbohydrates in general. Not good.


Eating fat early in the day isn't a good idea, either, just as eating carbohydrates at night isn't a good idea. Fats, or more specifically, Free Fatty Acids (FFA) in the blood can themselves have a relationship with less efficient carbohydrate metabolism.


As such, eating fats and carbohydrates together isn't the best idea. Having FFA in the bloodstream is like supplying bricks to a bricklayer, only in this case the FFA are the bricks and the bricklayer – insulin – is building a house of fat! High insulin levels, courtesy of rapidly digested carbohydrates, store FFA in the blood as fat whereas normally the body might utilize them as energy.


So why not ditch the fat and focus upon breakfast carbohydrates at a time when our hormonal makeup and our increased muscular activity will induce its uptake anyway? In short, eat carbohydrates in the morning, and fats later on in the day, but never together.


Clearly then, breakfast – and a "second breakfast" a few hours later – consisting of low fat, higher carbohydrate feedings and protein are important. It's at this time of day that FFA concentrations are lower and our muscle's ability to take up blood glucose is best. We want to get carbohydrates into muscles where they belong so we can maintain our furnaces and keep on burning up calories.


You can see the evidence starting to mount that the adage "morning carbs and evening fat" makes sense.


"But why even eat fat?" is what you might be asking. Why not avoid it entirely? Eating fat makes you fat, right? The truth is, "healthy" fats like fish oil, olive oil, flax, and those found in avocadoes and nuts elevate your metabolism. That's right, eating healthy fats in moderation can help you burn fat. They make you less insulin resistant, not to mention improving things like cardiovascular health, mental and physical performance, and even immunity.



The Importance of Protein


While we've stressed that it's best to eat carbohydrates and carbohydrate meals in the first part of the day and eat healthy fats in the latter part of the day, we'd like you to eat protein with every meal. This is extremely important. (Examples of protein foods include all meats and fish, in addition to things like cottage cheese and milk.)


Just eating protein elevates your metabolism. Your body has to work harder to metabolize protein than it does metabolizing fat or carbohydrate. Additionally, eating protein preserves or even builds muscle and simply having more muscle burns calories!


And while the carbohydrates you ingest with your protein meal can raise insulin levels, it's okay in this instance. Why? Because most of the time this elevated insulin will take protein's constituents and literally drive them into muscle, and that's okay because muscle helps dispose of blood sugar, even without help from insulin.


Hopefully we've done a good job in explaining the science behind the Metabolism Repair Plan. Now it's time to describe the actual plan.



The Big, Hot Ten


The Metabolism Repair Plan consists of 10 basic tenets.


Here they are:


1.Set a Fitness/Nutrition goal for yourself...and WRITE IT DOWN, and keep it in a place where you will be reminded of that goal.


2. Don't let yourself get hungry. Never go too long without food – not more than 3-4 waking hours. Starvation is not the way to lose fat. They have a term for dieters who practice complete food deprivation: fat people. Eating after too long a fast (even a fast of 5-6 hours) can cause a huge surge of insulin (there it is again!), leading to fat storage instead of fat loss. A good rule of thumb is to eat small meals every 3 hours or so.


3. Try not to eat things that come out of a box, with the exception of certain quality foods (oatmeal, high-fiber cereals, etc.). Practically anything that comes in a box contains highly processed grains, and the body absorbs highly processed grains extremely quickly, again leading to a surge of insulin.


4. Combine the right foods. Don't eat protein-only meals, or carbohydrate-only meals. Instead, have protein/carbohydrate meals or protein/fat meals. Again, combining protein with carbohydrate or protein with healthy fats helps control insulin levels. Whatever you do, don't eat carbohydrate/fat foods (like muffins, pastries, etc.).


Eat your protein/carbohydrate meals during the first half of the day (before 1 PM) and your protein/fat meals during the second half of the day. It has to do with . . . you guessed it, managing insulin.


5. Instead of counting calories, practice portion control. When eating your first two or three meals of the day (protein/carb), don't eat a portion of carbohydrates that's bigger than the palm of your hand. Try to eat portions of protein that are at least as big as your clenched fist.


If you're ambitious and want to count grams of food, try to get roughly one to two grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. The same goes for carbohydrate intake.


If you prefer to count calories, don't restrict calories too severely. If you must count calories, figure your minimum calories per day by multiplying your body weight by 9 (11 if you're male). For example, if you weigh 200 pounds, multiplying your body weight by 9 gives you 1800 calories per day. This caloric intake will give you the quickest fat loss without causing you to lose a measurable amount of lean mass, or muscle.


6. Vegetables are "free." In other words, eat as many fibrous vegetables as you want with any meal. Remember, health is important! Exclusions to this include starchy vegetables like potatoes, squashes, carrots, or corn. As far as fruits are concerned, eat them only in the morning and combined with protein. Try to avoid juices at any time of day, though.


7. Eat "healthy" fats. Despite what the lay media's been beating into your head for the last ten years, certain fats are really, really, good for you. Examples include the fats found in fish, avocados, and nuts, along with specific oils like flaxseed oil and olive oil. Don't be afraid to eat these types of fats. They'll help your burn fat, allow your body to handle insulin much better, and help you in other ways too numerous to mention here. However, eat these fats only in the afternoon and evening and only when combined with protein.


You can pour flax seed oil or olive oil over your salad, or ingest fish oil capsules with your meal. Try to get at least 30 grams (roughly two tablespoons) of healthy fats a day.


8. Keep a food log or food diary. It's an excellent motivational tool. It also helps keep you "honest," along with allowing you to track potential problems or mistakes. For tips on keeping a food log, go to t-lean.com, or MYFITNESSPAL.com .


9. Stay Active. And believe it or not, we're not talking about aerobic activity here! Sure, vigorous activity stimulates the metabolism, but if you overdo it by taking aerobics classes or running several miles a week, you could actually hinder your results!


Why? Because excess aerobic activity burns up muscle at the expense of fat. That's bad news because you want to retain muscle; muscle is metabolically active and burns calories even if you're just sitting there. We'd prefer that you walk, work on your garden, do housework, or engage in any other activity that doesn't leave you panting.


Of course, there is one type of vigorous exercise that we'd like you to practice regularly...


10. Weight training is an excellent way to fix your metabolic furnace. Building muscle through weight lifting creates more muscle and muscle is more metabolically active than other body tissues. That means that you'll burn more calories just sitting there than you would otherwise. - Terry Christian

This article was sent to me by a friend. I would like to share this article to maybe help clear up some questions that some might have about how and when to eat certain foods and why it is helpful.

Hope this helps in your quest to get fit, and loose weight.

"The" Nerveracker - Dave

"Your goals are your own. It is your attitude, sacrifices, determination, motivation, and just plain old elbow grease that will make it all happen!" -Me


The Reason Most People Fail Instead of Succeed is that they trade what they want the MOST for what they want at the MOMENT!!!

Motivation- It is not strength but desire that moves us, Dream, Dare, Do!