Nutrition Seminar at the Gym October 7th @ 7:00 p.m.

Why The Number 160 Is Significant

 

160 pounds of sugar is what the Average American consumes per year.  If you would like to get an idea on how much sugar this is, the next time you are in a grocery store, take all the 5 pound bags of sugar off the shelf and stack them on the floor.  Just tell the manager you are working on an experiment showing why America is so fat!! Chances are there will not be 32 on the shelf, but you will get a good idea of how much sugar we consume.  And if that is not bad enough, there are at least 41 different names for sugar.  This makes reading food labels an eye opening experience as well.

 

When we spike blood sugar from consuming as little as 1 teaspoon serving (4 grams of carbohydrates) of sugar, we alter the 2 main hormones essential to fat loss….insulin and glucagon.

 

The first and most common hormone manufactured by the pancreas is insulin.  It is a hormone which transports sugars from the bloodstream into muscles and into the liver.  The pancreas will manufacture insulin based on the body's need at that moment.

 

The second and much lesser known of the two is called glucagon.  The easiest way to remember the roles of each of these hormones is to look at insulin as a storage hormone.   Glucagon on the other hand is a release hormone.  Simplistically, glucagon is the hormone that allows you to release fat, and in order to burn it you first have to release it from the adipose cell (fat cell) where it's comfortably resting.

 

Any time you ingest a simple sugar (as in ice cream, pop, candy, sports drinks….) or refined carbohydrates (as in a waffle cone) you send your blood sugar trough the roof! That means for the moment you have high blood sugar which stimulates the pancreatic hormonal shift.

 

Insulin is cranked out at an elevated level, and in order to compensate for that insulin rush, glucagon production is diminished. That means, if you consume simple sugars and refined carbs, you're doing a pretty good job of locking in fat. 

 

If you're burning more calories than you take in, but limit fat release, your body is likely to begin to breakdown muscle tissue to use amino acids as an energy source. When you break down muscle, you slow metabolism. Muscle is the physical location where fat is burned, so when you contribute to muscle loss and its inevitable metabolic slowdown, you literally cripple the body's fat burning machine.

 

On October 7th at 6:30 p.m. we will be holding a nutrition seminar at the gym covering this topic as well as how to read food labels as well as everything about the Zone.  This seminar is open to everyone and is $20 to attend.  We are limiting the number of seats to make sure everyone walks out of this seminar empowered and with the most complete understanding on how to eat to supplement their workouts.

 

As you can see, below are a couple of diagrams showing what role insulin and glucagon plays in your metabolism.  Though a little steep for some, it is only geared at giving you a baisc understanding of what is going on inside your body when you eat.

 

I doubt that there is another hormone that has so many and wide-ranging actions as insulin.  It is the major actor in control of carbohydrate, lipid and protein metabolism.  These are well-discussed in all good medical biochemistry texts, and are summarized in the following figure, modified from Clinical Biochemistry, Gaw et al.  Insulin signals a state of energy abundance, and activates glucose uptake, metabolism and storage as glycogen in muscle and fat tissue.  These organs make up most of the body's mass.  At the same time, insulin restrains processes that release stored energy; lipolysis and ketogenesis, glycogenolysis, proteolysis and gluconeogenesis.   Insulin is necessary for uptake of amino acids to tissues and for protein synthesis.   Insulin is THE central actor in homeostasis; the stabilization of the internal milieu.

I have previously pointed out  that insulin and glucagon act together to balance metabolism  In general we can say that insulin favors anabolic reactions; glucagon, catabolic reactions.  Put more simply, insulin favors storing energy and production of proteins while glucagon activates release of stored energy in the form of glucose or fatty acids.  The actions of these two hormones on individual metabolic processes are summarized in the following table:

Metabolic Actions of Insulin and Glucagon
Fatty acid uptake and release  in fat.	Insulin	Stimulates synthesis of triglycerides (TG) from free fatty acids (FFA); inhibits release of FFA from TG.
	Glucagon	Stimulates release of FFA from TG.
Liver glycogen	Insulin	Increases synthesis and thereby glucose uptake and storage.
	Glucagon	Stimulates glycogenolysis and glucose release.
Liver gluconeogenesis	Insulin	Inhibits, saves amino acids.
	Glucagon	Stimulates, glucose synthesized and  released.
Glucose uptake, skeletal muscle	Insulin	Stimulates uptake, storage as glycogen and use in energy metabolism.
	Glucagon	No receptors, no effect.
Glycogen, skeletal muscle	Insulin	Stimulates synthesis.
	Glucagon	No receptors, no effect.
Amino acid uptake	Insulin	Stimulates and is necessary for protein synthesis.
	Glucagon	No receptors, no effect.
Brain (hypothalamus)	Insulin	Reduces hunger.
	Glucagon	No effect.