Learning to Use Fat

I was looking for more detail on Bradley Wiggins' diet and it seems that nutrition in cycling has undergone some quite dramatic changes in recent years.  One of the leading nutritionists is  Bob Seebohar.  I subsequently found this piece on PezCyclingNews called Cutting Edge Nutrition Strategies,

• "According to Seebohar the process of actually changing your metabolic efficiency takes a couple of focused efforts. First you have to change your nutrition, then you have to change your training. The change in nutrition requires you to dramatically cut the starches and whole grain carbohydrate load in your diet. This is no small feat for endurance athletes and may require up to four or more weeks to accomplish. In addition to changing the total CHO load it is advised that the athlete change their CHO utilization prior to, and during training. In essence you want to avoid dumping a bunch of carbohydrate into your bloodstream in the hour before you start training. This will help manage the insulin response and allow your body to begin using fat more efficiently."

Paleo Diet for Wiggins?

History beckons for Bradley Wiggins.  Today he became the first Briton to wear the Yellow Jersey for the seventh day.  There is a great likelihood of him winning the Tour De France. 

The French are suspicious of British economics, British Food and British alcohol, but it seems they have a soft spot for our cyclists.  I wonder what they'd make of his diet?

The Sunday Times today reports that Wiggins has shed several kilograms in preparation for this year's Tour De France (being lighter helps in the moutain stages)! 

Wiggins (6ft 3in), has gone from the 82kg (180lb) he was when he won two golds at the Beijing Olympics, to just under 73kg today.  His training has gone from a 'peak power' emphasis to the 'maximum amount of power he can sustain over time'.

Nigel Mitchell, nutritionist with British Cycling looked to fuel Wiggins training but limited certain foods - as the Sunday Times reports,

• "With Bradley we looked at the minimum amount of food he needed to do the training and get the recovery, but also looked at the structure of the food he was eating so there was no waste".

So we seem to looking at some form of calorie restriction.  The Sunday Times goes on,

• "In layman's terms, there were no junk calories, so carbohydrates were restricted and white sugar was out."

Makes you wonder what foods would have constituted 'junk calories' in our evolutionary past. We can guess why we'd choose to engineer food that qualifies as 'junk calories'; profit. What I can't fathom is why anyone would want to eat such fare.

So what was 'in'?

• "'It's not rocket science.' said Mitchell. 'It's simple stuff'.  On the Tour, Bradley will eat porridge in the morning or rice and an omelette.  On the bike he's taking in 60-90g of carbs per hour in rice cakes, energy gels or sports drinks.  The evening meal is carefully planned so there's protein for recovery and carbs for energy.'
  
  A rider's calorie intake on the Tour ranges from 4000 to 9000 calories per stage."

This is an approach that looks every bit compliant with The Paleo Diet for Athletes.

Fat Kids

Here is a story I just have to bring to your attention. Obesity in kids is 'set' before the age of five and according to Lead researcher Professor Terry Wilkin, of the Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth,

• "What is causing it is very difficult to know."

The article notes that "...there must be a factor now that was not there 25 years ago which is making today's children obese." He is getting warmer....we live in a low-fat and high (refined) carbohydrate environment now. There is definitely more refined carbohydrate and other processed foodstuffs like HFCS in our diets now.

With no development of this idea he falls back on the traditional line,

• "It is entirely possible that the calorie density of food and portion sizes could be higher."

Unless he gets a copy of 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' in his stocking this Christmas, there a lot of kids out there who will be looking at a low fat, complex carb and fat future of failure.

As a paleo eater who chows down without restriction on lots of fat, meat and vegetables and takes part in only episodic strenuous exercise, I can only imagine how hard the future of these kids will be. They will be encouraged to eat a lot less than me, and probably be forced to do more.

Crackers.

Here is the Next New Pill Craze

I shouldn't get in to the habit of posting an opinion about every 'health story' posted by the BBC, but they really are too tempting at times.

This story covers vitamin B3 which,

• "may help protect the brain from Alzheimer's disease - and even boost memory in healthy people."

And guess where it is found?

• "A vitamin found in meat, fish and potatoes."

But there is more,

• "The vitamin, also called nicotinamide by scientists, is sold in UK pharmacies and health food shops. It has already been shown to help people suffering from diabetes complications and has some anti-inflammatory qualities."

So let's get this straight - a vitamin found in meat and fish ('two out of three ain't bad!"), that benefits those with diabetes complications and has some anti-inflammatory qualities......you know, I am sure there is a diet that ticks all these boxes...if I could just remember what it is called.

Before we all rush off to buy these pill, there are still some ongoing trials and the article points out that,

• "people should be wary about changing their diet or taking supplements. In high doses vitamin B3 can be toxic."

I Imagine the body can manage B3 from a dietary source. So once again the plaeo way would seem to be just a little bit ahead of the curve!

Trick or Treat

And so it goes on....

The BBC reports that a new drug has been discovered that will trick the body in to losing weight:

• French scientists say they have found a drug that tricks the body into burning off fat even when on a high-fat diet.

Did you get all that? Let me emphasise that this drug works "EVEN WHEN ON A HIGH FAT DIET!"

Now the only other way I can think of to invoke 'fat-burning' other than using this drug 'even on a high fat diet' is to ignore the drug altogether and erm....eat a diet high in animal fat and low in refined carbohydrate with 50% by volume of quality meat and fresh vegetables.

Maybe the headline should actually read something like this:

• "Natural Messiah says he has found a high-fat diet that tricks the body into burning off fat even when on a drug."

What is it with this mentality of 'treating the symptoms'? Why do we as a society seek to 'run to the pills'?

Sugar & Cancer

I stumbled across a rather interesting article on the Irish Times website that you can read here. Sugar and sugar variants are seemingly reliable indicators of cancer:

"Cancer cells also use sugars to hide from the body's immune system so that they can travel from the primary site to seed new cancers in other organs, a process called metastasis. This means that the levels and types of sugars produced can also be used to monitor disease progression and how the patient is responding to therapy"

I wonder if and when the relationship between sugars and the cause of cancer will be drawn? Time to air one of my favourite quotes:

Superior doctors prevent the disease.
Mediocre doctors treat the disease before evident.
Inferior doctors treat the full-blown disease.

— Huang Dee Nai-Chang—(2600 BC 1st Chinese Medical Text)

Facing Fear

An interesting article caught my eye today which you can read here. A UCSB study has found that physical strength and fighting ability is revealed in human faces.

I have a post that is still in gestation which details some of my thoughts on physical activity. It includes the kinds of exercises we should pursue - and combat is one of them. If the paper above is correct and we have evolved mechanisms to determine an opponents ability in combat, you can bet your bottom dollar that some form of combat will be key to our physical well being and so should be a part of our training.

I myself do an hours Lau Gar Kung Fu and Lau Gar Kickboxing a week. The sessions are excellent for general conditioning and follow a classic interval training model with bursts of high intensity work (for up to two minutes), followed by rest. Some session concentrate on skill work and some are more fitness oriented.

Wider Picture
I have no interest in being 'hard', it is the wider implications of combat that interest me. Some of the kicks in particular require excellent balance (spinning kicks for example). Sparring improves reactions time and full body agility - ducking, bobbing and weaving. A key tool for the successful martial artists is speed and explosive power - jumping in to kicks and springing forwards with a jab. You develop all round kinaesthetic awareness.

If fitness is your thing then three one minute rounds on a kick shield (with a minutes rest between rounds), will get your heart working in a similar way as a sprint. The last round will demand real heart.

Variety
One of the real advantages of combat is that outside of skill work where you may follow a particular drill, sparring and pad work has a degree of randomness in that there is only a broad structure to your work. The detail within is ad-hoc and provides the randomness and novelty that should be present in every good workout.

Can you kick it?

Speed of Bite

It now appears that eating quickly can cause obesity! I hate to use car and gas-tank analogies as they can over-simplify the complexity of diet, nutrition, hunger and satiety. But to cut a long story short, that is exactly what your hunger should do. Hunger should act as a simple mechanism to guide your appetite - and given that it evolved over the last two-million years, you'd think it would be bloody good at it.

How does 'eating fast' cause obesity? According to Professor Ian McDonald from Nottingham University,

• "If you eat quickly you basically fill your stomach before your gastric feedback has a chance to start developing - you can overfill the thing."

Now this may be true, but if you put more fuel in to your car, you can drive further. And this is where the 'eating fast' concept breaks down. It simplifies the problem much further than my gas tank analogy in that it assumes that once the food is inside of you, no further appetite correction can or will occur.

I am sure many of us have 'over filled' our stomach - on Christmas day for example. And at your next meal, did you eat your 'usual amount' or did you actually have less or skip the meal all together? I for one have witnessed my family and myself all 'fasting' between our Christmas dinner (around 1400hrs) and a small late supper (around 2100hrs).

Why do we 'fast' this period? It is because we over-consumed and our bodies were happy for us to go without a top up for longer than usual. Much longer. Are we really to believe that our bodies cannot adjust our appetite in accordance with how much food we have eaten? Has anybody actually had an experience of being able to continually over-eat at every meal time?

You might be able to over-eat at a particular meal (and feel ill because of it), but that does not explain obesity. Obesity is driven by appetite.

Fork Me
Whilst eating fast may lead to a short term weight gain, over a longer term your body still knows if it is maintaining homeostasis and will adjust appetite accordingly....unless you eat grains.....but then you already knew that.

It can be only a matter of time before scientists discover that large plates or bigger spoons are similarly implicated.

Fat Fur

We hear a lot of excuses for obesity - slow metabolism, big bones (covered in meat and gravy with a side order of chips/fries no doubt), genetic predisposition etc... Recently I have found out that obesity is a 'disease' and/or an 'unavoidable product of middle age'. However, the excuses have begun to push the envelope and indeed the boundaries of the believable.

The BBC has taday published a story (which you can read here), with a new take on obesity, but the bit you should read with interest is as follows:

"You see at your age the belly resembles a very old balloon which has been repeatedly blown up and now lacks all elasticity. It no longer springs back into shape after exercise or dieting. It displays a permanent droop."

What niggles about this article is that despite the osteopath's diagnosis that "All this accumulated fat. It's tipping you over as though you were wearing a heavy rucksack on the front of your body. Your back can't cope with all that weight pulling it forward. Mr Taylor, you have to face the fact - you are a fat man.", he then confuses obesity with a bariatric condition.

Anyone who has seen the belly of somebody who has lost weight will appreciate the ability of skin to stretch and grow to accommodate an expanding girth. But such a person will also appreciate how skin, once encouraged to perform such accommodation, then takes its time to retract (if at all). What remains is a certain 'baggyness'. But such a condition should not and cannot be mistaken for fat!

If your posture is being pulled forwards then it is because of excess weight applying posture-impairing forces. That crap about the 'balloon' is nothing to do with the problem - it is just a sugar pill to sweeten the criticism.

Worse than that is the sense of 'hopelessness' offered by the osteopath. He give the impression that the damage is done and there is nothing that can be done. With medical advice like this, who needs enemies?

Tiger
This reminds me of my Gran's cat, Tiger. Tiger was a stray cat that my gran took in and was treated like a king - fed three times a day and offered a rich feast of food at every meal. The food on offer was both cat food (in all its guises) and left overs. Over time Tiger grew in to one fat pussy.

In Tiger's final year of life a family member commented that Tiger was looking a 'a bit big'. "Nonsense!", replied my gran, "It's simply fat fur!"

Gran has survived Tiger and is still going strong. I may well recommend she becomes an osteopath.