Tag Info

"Hitting the wall" isn't so much a plateau as "precipitous fatigue and loss of energy" (Wikipedia). It happens when you run out of glycogen (the storage for of carbohydrate in your body). When I was training for a marathon a couple years back, I went out on a 16 mile run without bringing a source of carbs along. For my first 10 miles (~1h 20min) I had an ...

The emphasis on grains comes from the fact that the food pyramid is produced by the USDA and grain is a major crop that the organization is behind. You'll also find the major U.S. subsidies (dairy, corn, soy) will play highly in the "recommendations" that come from the organization. You will not be missing out on major nutrients if you choose to take ...

The first few days after switching to a low carb diet I felt the most hungry. The main culprit for me at any rate was the fact that my body was still craving carbs and I wasn't giving it any. Don't get me wrong, I filled my stomach until I couldn't add any more food but I was still hungry. It takes up to four days for your body to burn through all its ...

I've been told that the body can store up to 3 days of glycogen, and consequently takes about that long to transition into ketosis. You can feel lethargic and possibly even nauseous during this time (some of my friends experienced the latter where I only experienced the former). The initial stages of ketosis are rather inefficient, and it takes about three ...

As the link you provided mentioned, diet drinks are able to remain sweet due to the artificial sweeteners. Those same artificial sweeteners are used in many diet oriented food products as well (check out Walden Farms products). That said, there are differences in how bad the different sweeteners are, or how much we know about their long term effects. As ...

The simple answer to gluten is that gluten comes from wheat. It's one source of carbs out of many. It's in important part of baking, but a significant number of people have celiac disease or some other form of gluten sensitivity. As a result they need a gluten free diet. The paleo diet and diets similar to that avoid all grains. They associate a number ...

Even if his theory is correct, it focuses on only a very small subset of the issues that could potentially cause weight gain. The reason nobody has been able to produce a single bulletproof theory on weight gain is due to the fact that there is no single cause. Weight gain is the result of many potential causes: Excess Catabolism of Muscle Mass: Many ...

I'm in agreement with Gary Taubes when you want to put it in terms of sustainable weight loss and maintaining healthy organs. Over production of insulin causes your body to resist its presence so that its role in building muscle is limited just as the fact it is converting your excess blood sugar to fat. The pancreas is also responsible for producing a ...

Insulin is absolutely proven to be a major contributor in the production of new fat cells. Fructose, sucrose, and glucose all rapidly increase your blood sugar, causing an equal or greater insulin reaction as well. Weight and weight loss still essentially boil down to calories, though. If you take in 1200 calories a day in almost nothing but carbohydrates, ...

Marketing the emphasis of certain foods as being beneficial to health will make key industries more money... Goes right along with the "milk does a body good", "beef, it's what's for dinner", and "High Fructose Corn Syrup is Corn Sugar" campaigns. Very little of what they say is based on scientifically proven facts and the recommendations made don't take ...

Re fueling for runs, HIGHLY recommend you read the Endurance Athlete's Guide to Success on Hammer Nutrition's website. And for losing weight, equally strong recommendation to read Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman, MD. Some learning, of course, is involved. The takeaway points are these: To lose weight, eat minimal carbs, especially starchy carbs, except as ...

Low carb diets and running don't mix. If you're running primarily for weight loss, you might want to stick it out until you get closer to your goal weight. If you switch to a higher carbohydrate diet, you'll be able to burn more calories in your runs, so it is possible to continue to lose weight. However, if you increase your carbs, and that makes your ...

Too much protein is excreted so there are no health risks in that respect. You will also avoid muscle wasting with a high protein diet, however you're likely to have low energy levels from the lack of carbs so maintaining protein-only for more than one day isn't a good idea. The tryptophan found in protein also needs carbohydrates to be transported, which ...

Very likely it is a vitamin deficiency. Likely culprits are water soluble vitamins like Vitamin C or Folic Acid. If you are not taking a multivitamin with your low-carb diet to compensate for the vitamins you are missing from not having carbs, then you will be experiencing any number of unhealthy symptoms. Cracked lips, sore mouth vitamin deficiency ...

This recent study from Johns Hopkins, while far from conclusive, supports Taubes' position. It shows that a group of people on a low carb diet lost weight faster than those on a low fat diet (each eating the same number of calories), while not adversely affecting their coronary risk factors. It is not conclusive, because it is just one study, and a small ...

For weight loss, you don't need ANY carbs before a run. The body has enough glycogen in the liver for a 20 mile run - an evolutionary survival mechanism that has allowed us to escape predators during times of Hunger for Millions of Years. Only when this supply of glycogen is depleted or reduced does the body turn to fat to replenish it. The common ...

Calories! Simply put, you are not eating enough. There are only about 30 calories in a cup of brocolli, whereas there are about 210 calories in a cup of mashed potatoes. When switching to a low-carb diet, you have to take this in to consideration and make sure you are still getting enough food to sustain yourself.

When it comes to feeling full, there's no such thing as a single factor, in fact it is not 100% clear, which factors lead to this feeling, although some are known. To feel full a number of factors must be met, the more the better: Stuffing of the stomach (mechanical receptors in the stomach) Nutritional values of the food (chemical receptors in liver and ...

If you compare the nutrition of grains to veggies or to meat you will see the grains are largely worthless. Notice how most cereal are 'Fortified with vitamins and minerals!!!'. They do that cause otherwise there is no nutritional value. We evoloved to eat meat and veggies - not grains. Most people are to some degree alergic to gluten that is found in ...

It's really hard to have any definitive study about the digestive system because there are a number of interrelated systems and you can never be fully confident that the trends you are seeing are because of the stimulus you changed. To that end I can only offer my own experience. As I lost weight all my numbers improved: blood pressure, cholesterol ...

High intensity intervals and eliminating carbs sounds good to me. I'd pull back on the weights, staying on the high-weight, low-rep side, but not eliminate them. If your goal were mine, I'd scour Martin Berkhan's LeanGains for information to see if I can tweak anything further than the basics already mentioned.

The more calories you consume, and carbohydrates are calories in their simplest form, the less quickly you will lose weight. Example : If you were to consume 1400 calories/day and burning 1750 calories/day you will lose 1 pound in 10 days. Adding 175 calories in carbohydrates/day to your diet you will lose that same pound in 20 days. This assumes that ...

You're not going to lose "only belly fat", but maybe you meant to differentiate "fat" from "muscle"? HIIT and a very strict diet will increase your odds of making a significant difference. Adding a thermogenic supplement may also help, but different people react to those in different ways, especially if you're already caffeine-tolerant. I differ from Dave ...

Maybe it's because you're not paying attention to the fats you intake. You may be so focussed on the carbs and protein that you're not paying attention to anything else. Also it would seem to me that you're assuming that the last 3 weeks are what's responsible when in fact it could have been the whole 5 months prior that caused the bad cholesterol to go ...

The description you put in your own words does seem correct, in the matter that insulin does make fat. However, insulin is a necessary hormone. It is the consumption of excess calories and the lack of exercise that makes people fat. Insulin can convert fatty acids, carbs, and protein into fat molecules; however, insulin uses about ten times more energy to ...

High-protein diets only pose a serious health risk if you do not take in enough fat and/or carbohydrates with them. The maximum for a high-protein diet is 60% protein. The human body only requires 0.36g protein per pound of body weight daily, and my understanding is that high-protein diets are usually regarded in the medical community as unnecessary. ...