I love the dancing I’ve been doing every morning as exercise. Really love it. Just pop the earphones to my iPod onto my ears, start up one of the half-hour dance playlists I’ve set up, & dance. Fast enough to get a good aerobic workout, even to break a sweat before that half hour is up.
But I’m modifying my exercise plan now, & won’t be dancing quite as much for the time being. This email is to explain why, in hopes this explanation might benefit other people too. I am writing as an overweight person with insulin resistance (prediabetic) whose objectives include losing fat weight in order to restore insulin sensitivity & prevent myself from becoming diabetic. But this advice might also apply to anyone who is trying to lose weight & restore overall metabolic health. (Including diabetics.)
I had begun to follow the program described by Tom Venuto in his e-book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle. The philosophy of this program is in its title: rather than “starving” the fat through low calorie diets — which tends to result in the loss also of lean body mass (muscle & bone) — Venuto advocates burning the fat off through aerobic exercise (also called “cardio”); & also, through weightlifting or other strength-building/resistance exercise, building up muscle, which speeds the metabolism for faster fat-burning. The BFFM program depends on four fundamental components: proper goal-setting & motivation; proper nutrition which fosters fat loss & muscle building; aerobic exercise for fat-burning; weight training for muscle-building.
Having read a lot this past month & a half about insulin resistance, prediabetes, & diabetes, I already knew that one of my best routes to prevent myself from getting diabetes & to restore myself to insulin resistance was to lose weight & to build muscle. I knew also that rapid weight-loss through crash or fad diets was unhealthy weight loss. Everything Venuto said agreed with & expanded upon this knowledge. Except for my sense now that the ratio of 50% carbs to 30% proteins to 20% good fats in the BBFM program is too heavy on the carbs & too light on the fats, I still agree with this program all the way.
But I made one mistake in my thinking about the order in which I should take things, & that amounted to doing too much aerobic exercise for my current metabolic status of insulin resistant. Instead of trying to burn off the fat first through aerobic exercise, in order to regain insulin sensitivity & metabolic health, per Diana Schwarzbein’s second book, The Schwarzbein Principle II: The Transition I should first build up muscle through strength-building/resistance exercise in order to regain insulin sensitivity & metabolic health, & only then train more heavily with aerobic exercise to burn off the fat stores. As Schwarzbein says, “You need to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy” (p. 183). Rather than “lose weight & build muscle,” the order needs to be “build muscle, then lose weight.”
Venuto’s advice comes from a substantial practical background as a personal trainer & natural bodybuilder (one who has never used steroids or drugs for muscle-building or weight loss) who has helped who knows how many people lose weight & build muscle in healthy ways. Schwarzbein’s comes from a substantial practical background as a physician specializing in metabolic healing & endocrinology who has helped who knows how many people restore hormonal balance & metabolic health & to lose unhealthy weight.
Schwarzbein explains that people who are insulin resistant should beware of overexercising, particularly with aerobic exercise, because too much aerobic exercise at this point can actually prolong or even increase insulin resistance. The reason for this is that there comes a point in an aerobic exercise session that your levels of the stress hormones adrenaline & cortisol begin to rise. They do this as part of the body’s natural response to stress in order to provide your body with the needed energy to deal with a stress situation (fight or flight). Amongst other things, they lead to a breakdown of glycogen (human carbohydrate stores) in the liver & muscles into glucose, leading to a rise in blood glucose. They also lead to the breakdown of other structural and functional biochemicals — fats including body fat, proteins including muscles — in order to deal with the stress.
(As an aside, adrenaline & cortisol also will rise in response to stresses like skipping meals, not getting enough sleep, fasting or going on low calorie diets, not eating enough carbohydrates to meet the body’s daily energy needs, using stimulants like too much caffeine or certain drugs like Ritalin, Dexedrine, etc.)
When adrenaline & cortisol levels go up, so do insulin levels, in order to keep you from completely using up your structural & functional biochemicals & to help you rebuild them again. And since an insulin resistant person like me already has too much insulin floating around in my blood because of my chronic high glucose levels, this further whacks out my metabolism.
The rising of adrenaline, cortisol, & insulin levels this way would be completely fine okay if I was metabolically healthy. They would just be doing what they were designed to do in a balanced, healthy way. But when they do what they’re designed to do with a metabolically unhealthy person, they go beyond the design’s intent & put me on even worse ground.
Therefore, instead of doing the majority of my exercise training right now in the area of aerobic exercise, the best thing for me to do right now is to focus more on (anaerobic) resistance/strength-training. This will build up lean muscle mass. Since muscle weighs more than fat, I might even gain weight. But, I will also burn calories while training; increase my metabolic rate after a training session, which increases the speed with which body fat is burned even when I’m at rest; & as muscle is built, increase my metabolic rate overall — the more muscle in a body, the more calories that body burns even when asleep. More importantly to my health, I will also increase the number of insulin receptors in my body, & hence the places that insulin can attach to in order to usher blood glucose into my body cells. In other words, I’ll be increasing my insulin sensitivity. And once I’m back to being insulin sensitive, I’ll then be able to burn all my excess fat stores more efficiently & safely & in a healthy, metabolically balanced way.
In support of this program, eating more protein than I had been previously will provide the raw materials needed in building muscle. As I understand it, dietary fats are the raw materials for making hormones, neurotransmitters, cell walls, & other important structures, so I’m also eating more healthy fats (not man-made or otherwise damaged).
As for carbohydrates, I am about halving my previous consumption, from approximately 210 grams/day to 100 grams per day, in order to lower my blood glucose levels so that I’m not excreting more insulin than I need to.
Why am I not just cutting out carbs altogether, so I stop having this blood glucose & insulin problem?
Partly because of what Schwarzbein the endocrinologist says. First, my adrenal glands will excrete more adrenaline & cortisol if I don’t eat enough carbs, because they regard “low carbs” as a stress. Adrenaline & cortisol are “breaking down” hormones: if they can’t find enough glycogen (human carbohydrate stores in liver & muscles) to make up the energy I need to function — which might well happen if I’m not eating enough
carbs to even build glycogen stores to begin with — they will break down not just body fat but also lean muscle & bone structures in order to make up the difference in my energy needs. Second, as previously mentioned, my pancreas will respond to high adrenaline/cortison levels by excreting more insulin, which is exactly something I don’t want to have happen as an insulin resistant person.
Add into what Venuto the bodybuilder & persona training says. First, nsulin, the “builder” hormone, is needed to usher the amino acids from ingested protein into the muscle cells. And it can’t do this very well without a boost from carbs! In Venuto’s words, “To get the protein (amino acids) into the muscle cells efficiently requires insulin. Insulin is secreted most readily in response to eating carbohydrates. Therefore, a moderate (but not over-sized) portion of carbohydrate should be eaten with your protein to facilitate the uptake of the amino acids into the muscle cell” (Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle, p. 141). Also, “When fat is high and carbohydrates are very low, there’s nothing to stimulate a moderate insulin release. Fat has very little effect on insulin. In order to drive the amino acids into the muscle cells where they can be used for muscle growth, a moderate release of insulin is necessary, and only carbohydrates produce enough insulin release to shuttle those amino acids into your muscle cells. It’s ironic, but so-called ‘anabolic’ high fat diets are anything but muscle promoting” (p. 163).
Second, enough carbohydrate in the system gives you better energy to even lift the weights (or otherwise do resistance training exercise). Weightlifters all know that your workout sucks if you don’t have enough carbs. Bad workout: very little muscle-building.
Third, sufficient carbohydrate ensures that the energy you’ll be burning up isn’t from your own protein (muscle). “When glycogen stores are severely depleted through dietary restriction, your body can also burn protein for energy, converting muscle tissue into glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. Carbohydrates have a protein-sparing effect – they help ensure that you don’t burn up muscle for energy. (Unfortunately, if your carbohydrates are too high, they also have a fat-sparing effect because when carbohydrates are plentiful, you tend to burn more carbohydrate for energy). Advocates of ketogenic and very low carbohydrate diets claim that the very nature of the ketogenic diet prevents muscle loss. In the real world, I have never observed this even once! Extremely strict very low carbohydrate diets invariably cause muscle to be lost along with the fat” (p. 211).
So, not too much carbohydrate, not too little; not too much insulin, not too little. Insulin secretion & carbohydrates in the right amounts are necessary for me to build muscle efficiently, so that I can even hope to restore myself to insulin sensitivity & health.
And for exercise, aerobic exercise isn’t eradicated — just its ratio in proportion to resistance/strength-training has changed.
I won’t be dancing quite as much right now — but I’ll still be dancing.
