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| 09/20/06 13:35
What's it like to train at Pat Miletich's camp, the camp that trains UFC's top champions Matt Hughes, and Tim Sylvia? It's like no other martial arts gym you've ever experienced. No Katas. No ...
(More...) | 08/11/06 20:51
Looking for a convenient prepackaged meal program to control your hunger and help you loose weight? Nutrisystem could be for you. It's a great system that I continue to use every day, but also ...
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WorkItSmart.com is a fitness and weight loss community designed to keep you motivated, track your progress and measure the performance of
your fitness program. At WorkItSmart you can track as much or as little as you want to help you reach your goals:
- Track and blog your activities, your speed, distance, calories burned, weight lifted, etc, etc.
- Track and blog your meals as balanced by your activities to control your weight.
- Track and blog your weight over time to keep you on goal.
- Sign up with a friend and keep yourself motivated by keeping an eye on their fitness program!
To see exactly what you can do with WorkItSmart check out my WorkItSmart blog:
http://workitsmart.com/user/drachs/
To get started, just click "Create New Account" to the left. After you have an account, this dialog
will no longer appear. Also, if you're in to it, please check out my new website for the
Marine Reef Aquarium Community
If you have any questions, concerns, comments or suggestions please email me at:
David Hinkle
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What should we eat to achieve our goals? The short answer is that if we count our calories it doesn't matter. A calorie is a calorie, it doesn't matter if it comes from a Steak and Shake Frisco Melt (1117 Calories) or an Asian Star Fruit (40 Calories). But the long answer is what we eat can have a huge impact on how hungry we feel and how well we deal with our cravings. | |
| by David Hinkle - 08/06/06 15:55
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When we get hungry, how much we want to eat, and whether or not that foot is stored as fat or burned as fuel all comes down to how our body handles a hormone called insulin, and the single biggest thing that can throw off that insulin driven body fat regulation system is the amount and kinds of carbs we eat.
Insulin is like our body's master switch that flips us between fat burning mode and fat storing mode. When we have a lot of insulin in our system it directs our bodies to store blood sugar as fat. When we have very little insulin in our systems our bodies burn fat instead.
Our bodies evolved in an environment where our ancestors consumed a diet low in carbs and sustained a great deal of exercise on a daily basis. Today, if you're overweight chances are you eat a great deal of carbs and exercise very little. Lets take a look at how this effects your body.
In a health body after a meal, carbohydrates are converted into glucose (Sugar) that is then released into the blood stream. As blood sugar levels rise, the pancreas secretes insulin. This insulin tells the liver to start converting glucose into fat. The excess glucose is stored as fat until the blood sugar levels off, and as the blood sugar levels begin to fall the pancreas stops producing insulin. As the insulin levels fall the body starts burning fat for energy again.
"Glycemic Index" is a new buzzword you may have heard lately. The Glycemic index is a measurement of the rate at which carbohydrates are digested and converted into blood glucose. High GI foods such as white bread, rice, and potatoes are converted into blood glucose very quickly, and low GI carbs such as Barley bread, soybread, whole grain pasta are converted into blood glucose slowly.
When your body digests a high GI carb such as French Fries, your bloodstream is flooded with glucose in a very short period of time. The pancreas, which evolved to handle much more gradual changes in blood glucose levels, over reacts and secrets too much insulin. This overdose of insulin causes your body to convert all that excess glucose into body fat very fast, your blood sugar levels plummet, but there is still a significant amount of insulin in your blood stream which suppresses your bodies ability to convert fat back into glucose and bring the blood sugar level up to normal... And then you get hungry again. Hunger is the bodies reaction to low blood sugar level.
So you eat again. And the cycle starts all over. Over time, these repeated overdoses of insulin causes your body to develop insulin resistance. Your body stops reacting to insulin as it should, so your pancreas produces even more of it. This spirals out of control until you're 200lbs overweight or die from a cardiac condition. Which ever comes first...
The problem is, that as we evolved carbohydrates where difficult to obtain, and because they are so important for the body and such a good source of calories we have evolved to crave them very much. Today, carbs are easy to obtain so we eat too much of them, and we even have new and highly refined carbs to kill ourselves with like white bread , short grain rice and baked potatoes.
So what can we do to break free from this cycle? Well, the first thing we need to keep in mind is the golden rule: "Too much of a good thing will kill you". Carbs are a good thing. Reducing carbs are a good thing. But, as we can see too many will kill you and too few will too. So when I say reduce carbs I mean reduce them, not eliminate them.
In addition to reducing them, the best thing you can do for yourself is to start replacing the high GI carbs you do eat with low GI carbs that digest slowly.
| Some High GI Carbs | Some Low GI Carbs
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- 93 - Baked Potato
- 75 - French Fried Potatoes
- 72 - short grain White Rice
- 70 - White Bread
- 62 - Raw Potato
- 56 - Long grain White Rice
| - 49 - Oatmeal
- 45 - Pasta
- 44 - Uncle Ben's Converted Rice
- 18 - Soy Beans
- 14 - Peanuts
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On of the reasons I use food from nutrisystem is because it's all designed to have a low GI. This is one of the things I've done to help myself get this problem under control. Stay tuned for next weeks article on how exercise effects the system.
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