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TEST DRIVING THE INSULIN INDEX
Test Driving The Insulin Index Theory by John M Beradi
John M Berardi is a scientist and PhD candidate in the area of Exercise and
Nutritional Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. His company
Science Link: Translating Research into Results™ specializes in providing
integrated training, nutritional, and supplementation programs for high-level
strength and endurance athletes. The following is an extracted study that John
Beradi himself conducted in relation to the insulin index theories discussed
above.
'One of my clients told me that he was a big fan of my work and my nutritional
advice. However, he was convinced that his body simply couldn't get lean. The
problem was that this gentleman got fat by using the calorie counting method.
In fact, he used my very own Don't Diet method (the nerve of him!). He exercised
regularly, training with weights 4x per week and doing daily cardio (mixing
up interval exercise with endurance type exercise). In addition, he always ate
about 500 calories below what his maintenance should have been. Yet he got fat
anyway and was walking around at 25% body fat. He thought he was destined to
be chubby forever.
So, was it true? Was he really fat loss resistant? Had my Don't Diet plan failed?
I was perplexed so I had him write down everything he ate for a week. When sitting
down with him a week later, the answer to his dieting woes was obvious. He was
eating all the wrong foods. His diet was full of the media promoted fat free/super
sugared/over processed/synthetic/bleached supermarket foods.
He believed that the foods he was choosing were good for him, but in fact,
he was eating a diet designed for fat storage. When calculating the numbers,
it worked out to be about 2,300 kcal at 30% protein, 50% carbs, and 20% fat.
But the foods he used to make up these numbers were atrocious. He was eating
way too much saturated fat, was drinking way too many whey protein shakes with
milk, and was consuming too much sugar and processed, high-GI carbohydrate.
There was very little natural fiber in his diet and he rarely ate vegetables
or fruit. No wonder he couldn't lose weight!
Now, how on earth could he have believed that his diet was good? Well, although
this data is a little old, I wanted to share it with you anyway because it's
very telling about the power of marketing. In 1992 the National Cancer Institute
spent $400,000 on an ad campaign to encourage the consumption of fruits and
vegetables. That same year Kellogg's spent 32 million advertising Frosted Flakes
alone! No wonder people don't know what foods are good for them!
So, back to the client. Well, it turns out that he had been down this road
before. When he first started gaining weight, he decided to go on a diet program.
He followed a ridiculous, muscle wasting, low calorie diet full of sweeteners
and terrible tasting foods. And he lost some weight. But the minute he went
back to eating what he thought was healthy and sensible (as described above);
he gained all the fat back and then some!
So, now that I had him under my tutelage, what was the solution?
First I taught him where the produce aisle is. We gave him a list of the foods
he could choose from. In addition, I taught him to combine his meals such that
he was eating lean protein, good fats, and lots of fruits and veggies. We didn't
count calories or pre-plan meals; we just made sure he had enough protein in
the diet (200g). And guess what? Months later, he's still dropping fat while
maintaining his lean mass. He's eating far more calories than he ever had before
and enjoying meals more than he ever had before. In addition, he has a better
health profile (blood chems) than before.
The bottom line is that diet isn't that hard. When you feed the body wholesome
foods, the appetite regulates itself and you don't have to monitor very much.
However, by harnessing the powers of good food selection and smart calorie counting,
weight loss comes easy!'
Here are some basic rules for how to improve your eating habits:
1. Get used to the taste of food without dressings, sweeteners, etc. Ultimately
you'll grow to like the natural taste of foods you once though tasted bland.
2. Try to eat more like a true vegetarian (i.e. the bulk of the diet should
come from fruits, veggies, unprocessed and unbleached food). But don't get me
wrong; I don't want you swearing off meat.
3. "Supplement" your unprocessed vegetarian-like diet with the high-protein
foods discussed above.
4. Add unheated healthy oils to your foods.
5. Drink only calorie-free beverages (green tea, water, etc.).
6. Unfortunately the worst foods usually are the most convenient and the most
processed foods. Avoid eating for convenience alone.
7. Avoid any easy-to-prepare breakfast foods (waffles, french toast, etc) as
they're loaded with fattening trans-fatty acids.
8. Avoid products containing the ingredients or words "partially hydrogenated,"
"high fructose corn syrup," etc.
9. Avoid fast/fried food.
10. Avoid foods or meals that are high in both fat and carbohydrate.
In addition to these rules, here's the list of food choices that I give to many
of my clients. These foods should make up about 80% of your daily diet and,
as indicated above, you should be eating many of these foods each day, not simply
picking one or two selections to eat all the time.
Protein
Fish: Salmon, Tuna, Cod
Eggs
Chicken breasts
Cottage cheese
Milk protein isolates
Whey-casein blends
Lean Red Meat
Carbohydrates
Vegetables
Mixed beans
Low-GI fruits
Oatmeal/Oat bran
Mixed-grain bread
Small amounts of protein-enriched pasta
Fats
Flax oil
EPA/DHA
Olive oil
Mixed nuts (no peanuts)
Fish oil
For active individuals, the other 20% of your daily calories should come from
the following sources (in order to enhance your recovery from intense exercise).
The liquid meal should come during and after exercise while the second high-carb
meal should come about 1-2 hours later.
Liquid meal (during exercise and immediately post exercise):
Protein
Whey hydrosylates/Isolates
Carbohydrates
High-GI liquid
Glucose (dextrose)
Maltodextrin
Solid meal (2 hours post exercise):
Protein
Plain yogurt
Carbohydrate
High GI, solid-fiber cereal
In addition, here's the other list that I give to my clients. These are foods
to avoid at all costs:
Proteins
Fatty meats
Fatty dairy
Most lunch meat
Large amounts of milk
Large amounts of soy
Carbohydrates
Regular bread
Added sugar
Most cereals
Soda
Fruit juice
Bagels
Fruit bars
Candy
Fats
Margarine
Vegetable oil
Corn oil
Heated/fried oil
In conclusion, food selection is one of the more important determinants of your
body composition. Using the rules above, you can make your fat loss quest much
easier than you ever imagined!
Ignoring the Effects of Carbs and Insulin
If you have taken nothing else from the above segment, you should drill it
into your mind that the primary purpose of insulin is to facilitate the storage
of nutrients within the body, not to aid in glucose disposal. Yes, partial glucose
disposal is a result of insulin secretions, but by understanding insulin’s
primary role as a storage mechanism, you'll begin to understand the basic premise
behind this mystical hormone and be able to better apply it to your advantage
in fat loss and mass gains as we have discussed. This section will recap what
you should have learnt so far.
Several years ago, even before the popularised glycaemic index, we all followed
the dictum that simple carbs were bad and complex carbs were good - a gross
oversimplification as we've come to understand today and from the above research
information. In addition, little was discussed pertaining to insulin and its
anabolic properties. Much more relevant to training today are the issues of
carb timing, quantities of carbs ingested, and the insulin response to carb
types ingested.
Before we begin our recap of the above material, note that unlike protein,
vitamins, minerals and essential fats which are used for growth and repair,
carbohydrates are primarily used for short term fuel. Read the carbohydrate
section for further study. Basic biochemistry tells us the primary fuel for
exercise is adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and the body is much more efficient
at making ATP from carbs than it'll ever be at making it from fat (Colgan, 95-96).
It's true that you can condition your body to burn fats for fuel once you've
depleted glycogen stores (as in the ever increasing popular ketogenic diets
of today), but in consideration of purely performance related issues, carbs
are king. The dark side of carbs is if not properly understood, they can also
do more damage to your physique than a tornado can do to a trailer park.
For a while it appeared that the development of the Glycemic Index (GI) would
take all the guesswork out of which carbs we should or shouldn't eat. As a refresher,
the GI is basically a scale of how fast carbs enter the bloodstream as glucose.
High GI values (>70) could illicit a quick infusion into the blood and hence
a large insulin burst. Low GI values (<55) were considered to be slow releasing
and thus insulin response was much less than the higher aforementioned GI values
(Brand-Miller, 1, 3). Sounds pretty easy so far, but wait, it gets a bit more
perplexing.
Further research showed that despite the GI rankings, there were still some
foods which measured relatively low on the GI scale but also caused a large
insulin burst. In addition, the GI lists values for ingestion of single foods,
rather than food combinations, which is how most meals are structured.
Lastly, the GI is also based on a fifty gram serving of food, which usually
isn't how foods are consumed in a single sitting. For instance, fifty grams
equals one small bag of fries at your favorite fast food restaurant, one small
potato, four small onions, five cups chopped green peppers, or fifteen cups
of sliced cucumbers. When was the last time you only ate a small bag of fries?
And does anyone actually eat fifteen cups of cucumbers in a single sitting?
While the GI now appears to be a crude measure of insulin response, it laid
the foundation for the Insulin Index (II). The II is a measure of the direct
insulin response of food ingested (Coleman, 1). It separates itself from the
GI in that it's more useful when combining different food sources in a single
meal. More importantly, when considering the total carb load of a meal, it helps
predict how an individual will respond in terms of insulin response.
For example, whole wheat bread measures approximately 60 on the GI, but what
do you think would happen if you ate five or six slices with every meal? Just
because it's relatively low as far as carb GI rankings are concerned, it doesn't
mean you can eat all you want and not cause your insulin to go whacko. You have
to not only consider the GI ranking, but also you need to keep in mind the total
carb volume you ingest. This example illustrates why we need not only the GI
but also the II.
Used together, the GI and II indices can help you plan meals according to your
needs (i.e. high or low insulin release). For instance, if you're trying to
get lean you'll want to keep insulin at bay most of the day except immediately
after training when you want to spike it through the roof to shuttle glycogen
and protein back into your starved muscles.
In this scenario you'd eat a combination of low GI and II foods throughout
the day. If, on the other hand, you're trying to bulk, you'll no doubt want
to spike insulin several times throughout the day along with a generous helping
of protein.
Just how many grams of carbs you need a day for optimum performance is a debate
that most likely will never be settled. It's largely a matter of individuality
and I’ll harp on this topic one more time-if you're keeping a food log
it'll be much easier for you to answer that question than any of your favorite
diet gurus. A couple of points to remember:
• Diets that are listed in ratios such as 40-30-30 or 30-30-40 are only
relevant when considering total daily caloric intake.
• Repeated bouts of excess carb intake can lead to numerous insulin spikes
which affects insulin sensitivity for the worse, leading to insulin resistance
(and later a fat ass.)
• Insulin resistance leads to higher internal production of insulin within
the presence of carbs, making fat burning an uphill battle at best.
• Carb intake for cutting diets will range between 20% to 30% of daily
intake if your goal is to maintain a high level of performance. If you're willing
to let performance slip in the quest of greater fat loss, then carbs can fall
below this range.
• Carb intake for bulking will be in the 40% to 50% range of daily intake
(generally speaking.)
• Unprocessed carbs like fresh vegetables, fruits (those devoid of high
starch content), oatmeal, whole grains, legumes and sweet potatoes all rule
supreme when considering long term health and insulin control.
• Processed carbs, including enriched white flours, cream filled pastries,
sugar-laden candies, soft drinks, and pre-sweetened fruit drinks will send your
insulin to the moon and back.
• When used for comparison, your mileage may and will vary so use the
above only as guidelines. Individualize to meet your goals and/or needs.
Summary: Carbs can be tricky. Eat them wisely and time intake appropriately
based on your goals.
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