May 4, 2018

The Art of Manliness: Everything You Need to Know About Diet, Nutrition, and Fat Loss

Listen Here

Intro

• Robert Santana is a Starting Strength Coach and a Registered Dietitian who currently trains clients out of the Revolution Training Systems in Tempe, AZ
• Check out his website – weightsandplates.com

Nutrition

• Protein
  • To build muscle, we have to break our muscles down, in order to build them up bigger/stronger
    • This involves adding additional muscle protein, which muscles are comprised of
  • Protein is also a large component of hair, finger nails, and skin
  • “Proteins build things”
• Carbs
  • Carbs are an energy source. After we eat them, they’re converted to glucose.
  • Typically, we store the carbs we eat as glycogen (aka stored glucose) in our muscles and liver
    • Someone who’s 70 kg can store 425 g of glucose as muscle glycogen, and 75 g of glucose as liver glycogen
    • The more intense an activity, the more stored glycogen we utilize
  • When lifting weights, we have 3 energy systems
    • ATP Phosphocreatine – system responsible for fast/rapid explosive activities (like the first rep of an exercise)
    • Muscle glycogen – provides energy for the middle range repitions
    • With over 20 reps, or with aerobic exercise, we rely on oxidative metabolism
  • Glycemic Index (GI) – a classification system for how the body responds to carbs in terms of changing blood glucose levels (a high GI carb will raise blood glucose levels more than a low GI carb)
    • However, the GI of a certain carb will be altered when eaten with fiber from protein/fat/other carbs
    • The best time to take in fast acting (high GI carbs – like candy or Gatorade) is right after, or during, a workout to quickly replenish your glycogen stores
• Fat
  • Fat comprises cell membranes
  • Certain vitamins require fat for absorption – Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, and Vitamin E
    • Links are all to brands Dr. Rhonda Patrick recommends
  • Fat can be stored as energy (stored body fat)
  • By eating a high fat diet/low carb (like a ketogenic diet) our body becomes more efficient at burning dietary fat (not stored fat) for fuel
    • In the reverse – if we eat a high carb/low fat diet, our body becomes better at burning carbs rather than the fat – so the fat we eat gets stored more readily 
  • Why do people who go on high fat diets (like keto) tend to lose more body fat than people who eat a normal carbohydrate based diet?
    • It depends on our resting metabolic rate 
      • Resting metabolic rate is largely genetic
    • The loss of stored body fat is driven by a negative energy balance (the calories you burn/expend > the calories you take in)
      • At a caloric deficit, we then dip into burning our stored body fat
      • On a ketogenic/paleo diet – we tend to consume less calories, causing us to dip into/burn our stored body fat more often
  • The total number of fat cells a human has is largely genetic
    • It can be influenced by evironent
    • Up until around age 20, we are adding new fat cells
    • After this, any increase in body size is due to an increase in fat cell size, not number
    • It’s thought that once a fat cell hits a certain size, it can’t get any smaller

The Ketogenic Diet

• On a mixed fat/carb/protein diet, our brain uses carbohydrates to create energy
• When we restrict carbs and protein to very low levels, and eat lots of fat – we use dietary fat (and body fat when we’re lacking in dietary fat) to create ketones (the liver does this), which enter the krebs cycle to create ATP (energy)
  • Compared to using carbs for energy, the result is the same (ATP), it’s just something different that’s used to create it
  • Check out Dr. Peter Attia’s series on the ketogenic diet where he really break this down – HIGHLY recommend
    • For more on Dr. Peter Attia – check out these Podcast Notes
  • Technically we can create more energy per oxygen molecule (also used in conjunction with ketones/carbs to create ATP) when using ketones to create energy as opposed to carbohydrates
    • In that sense, it’s slightly more efficient than using carbs to create energy

Are carbs evil?

• Not all carbs are the same
• A lot of the fiber our body needs, comes from certain types of carbohydrates (vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grains)
  • Fiber can lower cholesterol levels and serves as food for our good gut bacteria
• The bad carbs (donuts, wheat, sugar) are inflammatory
• What happens when an endurance/weight lifiting athlete goes low carb?
  • Once our muscle glycogen stores are depleted, we are forced to burn fat for fuel
    • Unless we are keto adapted (this just means that our body is used to burning fat for fuel), this is challenging for the body
    • However, if we are, our body/muscles can then use the fat/ketones for fuel
• De novo lipogenesis
  • When we store the carbs we eat as fat
  • This only happens when we eat at a caloric surplus
    • First we store the fat we eat, then the excess carbohydrates
  • The easiest way to gain fat, if you wanted to, is to eat a high fat+carb diet
  • Check out Dr. Peter Attia’s blog post about fat cells for more on this – HIGHLY recommend
• Gluconeogenesis
  • When the body converts non carb macronutrients (like protein) into glucose
    • This is why you can’t eat a lot of protein on the ketogenic diet

The Thermic Effects of Macronutrients

• Each macronutrient has a different thermic effect
  • The digestion and absorption of fat, carbs, and protein is different
• Protein has the highest thermic effect
  • If you eat a diet higher in protein, theoretically you’ll burn more calories, to digest that protein, compared to a diet low in protein
  • It takes more energy to break down and digest protein
  • Carbs are next, and fat last – fat is stored very easily
• Carbs have half the calories of fat
  • Compared to a certain amount of fat, you have to eat twice the amount of carbs (by weight) to get the same amount of calories

Burning Fat and Weight Loss

• Exercise
  • Typically, moderate exercise doesn’t burn THAT many calories – a typical cardio session might burn around 400
    • This is only about 15% of daily energy expenditure
    • 10-15% of our daily energy expenditure goes towards digesting food  – this is called diet induced thermogenesis
• 87% of a fat cell is triglycerides, the other 13% are cellular machinery which we can’t “burn off”
• Robert estimates that 80% of weight loss is diet, the other 20% is fitness
• What would Robert advise the average male to do, if he wants to lose weight and is starting from square one?
  • Nutrition – eat about 100g of fat a day (no more), around 200g of carbs, and 250 grams of protein
    • A diet high in protein will keep you full
  • You should shoot for 1-2 lbs. of weight loss a week
  • Reduce calorie intake as you lose more weight and hit plateaus
    • The leaner you get, the harder your body fights back to lose weight
    • We have mechanisms in place, to protect us in times of famine
• Bodybuilder’s have around 5% body fat right before a competition

How do you add body and muscle mass?

• • Ramp your carbs up (to around 400g a day), lower your fat slightly, and keep training hard
  • It will be hard to avoid adding some body fat when trying to add muscle mass
    • Do it in stages, once you hit a goal body weight, take a break and then focus on fat loss
  • “Muscle takes a long time to gain”
  • “If you’re not stimulating your muscles, no matter what diet you’re on, you won’t gain muscle mass”
    • “The diet supplements the training. The training is the stimulus.”
    • “The training stimulates the growth. Then you have to eat to facilitate that.”
  • The more of a novice you are, the more lean mass you’re able to gain early on
    • If you’re 2-3 years into training, when eating to gain mass – most of the mass you gain will be fat (some muscle, but 90% fat)
  • At some point you will hit a plateau in your weight gain
  • Try to eat around 40 grams of fiber per day
    • Mission Tortillas have about 15 grams of fiber in one tortilla
    • Raspberries are also good, and so are pinto beans
  • For extra carbs, Brett adds oat and brown rice flour to his protein shakes

Art of Manliness : keto diet, ketogenic diet, ketones, nutrition
Notes By MMiller