A technical question about overweight people...

[Peter]

Try a diet coke. Zero calories, a ton of artificial sweetener - and a massive attack of the munchies ten minutes after you drank it. It really works like that. (I wasn't joking about the pig farming thing either.)

The carbs in pasta are too complex to destabilize the blood sugars. White rice is somewhat marginal - who hasn't felt hungry again half an hour after eating a huge asian meal - but everything else digests slowly enough to help keep the blood sugar where it belongs, without making it twitch to a quick peak.
Everyone who has ever tried an "energizing" fructose tablet during endurance exercise knows that it's not much better than simple sugar, as far as the insuline overreaction and consequently low blood sugar goes.

Corn sweetener is isoglucose, made from corn starch. That's no better either. It sounds better on the package. And you have to put more of the stuff in to make it taste as sweet as it did before.

THE one thing that people need to do, as a starter into healty nutrition habits, is get off the sugar/sweetener trip. Stable blood sugar is the #1 thing that makes you stop snacking and munching all the time. And there's a reward, not a loss: Find out how stuff really tastes. Your meal tastes different when you don't drown it in Coke. Discover the finer aroma in tea and coffee once you stopped making it a sugary milkswamp.

... which brings me to another sad topic: Food quality. Buy the real stuff, not the preprocessed industrial lookalike placebos. Learn how to cook, gain control over your food (and its fat and sugar content). Sit down and enjoy your meal.

 

[Peter]

Sunner,
Too cold? Do you live in Sibiria or Alaska? If you don't, go out and try. You'll be surprised how enjoyable a run out in the cold clean winter air actually is. Don't overdo the clothing - if you feel a bit chilled right when you step out the door, it's OK. You're going to generate your own heat.

Yes, you need the muscle mass to burn energy. But you also need to use them. The little raise in baseline energy consumption from having more muscle won't help much.

 

[Nimloth]

Great discussion!

What I was wondering was: Am I safe to assume that it is better to consume carbs before the work-out and protein right after?

 

[Gibsons]

Try a diet coke. Zero calories, a ton of artificial sweetener - and a massive attack of the munchies ten minutes after you drank it. It really works like that.

Yes, as I said, sweet tastes can and do produce an insulin response. It's well-documented. What's not clear, however, is how "hard wired" it is. There's some rationale that this response to taste can be "unlearned," and IIRC, they've been able to make rats unlearn it. Maybe humans could too, who knows.

The carbs in pasta are too complex to destabilize the blood sugars.

I think we should say "raise blood glucose levels." Unless you mean something else (?).

White rice is somewhat marginal - who hasn't felt hungry again half an hour after eating a huge asian meal - but everything else digests slowly enough to help keep the blood sugar where it belongs, without making it twitch to a quick peak.

Well, now we're just comparing glycemic indexes of various foods. To pick a nit, some pastas have higher glycemic indexes than some rices.

from www.glycemicindex.com

Foods with a high GI are those which are rapidly digested and absorbed and result in marked fluctuations in blood sugar levels.

a few examples I ripped from there:

Spaghetti, white, boiled 15 min in salted water 44
Spaghetti, white, boiled 15 min 36
Spaghetti, white, durum wheat, boiled 20 min (USA) 64
White rice, type not specified, boiled (Pakistan) 69
White rice, type not specified, boiled (Canada) 51
White rice, type not specified, boiled (India) 48
Potato, Russet Burbank, baked without fat (USA) 94
Glucose (100 g test portion) 114
Sucrose (100 g test portion) 65
Fructose (50g test portion) 21

The serving size for the pastas was slightly larger for some reason (180 vs 150grams), so it's not quite an apples to apples comparison.

But in any case, my point that you can get insulin production in the absence of a sweet taste (especially if you eat a lot/too much) stands. Note that the sweetest thing I listed up there (fructose) has the lowest capacity to influence blood glucose level. (fructose is still highly fattening though - moreso than glucose even - it's kind of a special "worst case" exception to the rule)

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Peter
Sunner,
Too cold? Do you live in Sibiria or Alaska? If you don't, go out and try. You'll be surprised how enjoyable a run out in the cold clean winter air actually is. Don't overdo the clothing - if you feel a bit chilled right when you step out the door, it's OK. You're going to generate your own heat.

Yes, you need the muscle mass to burn energy. But you also need to use them. The little raise in baseline energy consumption from having more muscle won't help much.

Well, temperature during winter here varies from 0 to -20, it gets even colder sometimes, but that's rather rare.
One problem that this creates is that any path that would be even remotely enjoyable to run along will be icy, making it hard enough to walk on, but virtually deadly to run on, trust me, I have to make a run for the bus once in a while, slipping and tripping isn't all that unusual 🙂

Anyway, usually I play badminton once a week or so as well, I just haven't lately, first due to a cold, and now since I'm trying to find my gym shoes, I don't know how, but I've managed to lose them 😱

As for the original question, I was thinking more along the lines of how much fat can be burned by working out at the gym alone?
Endurance training tends to become more of a summer thing for me, since that opens up for such nice sports as football and beachvolley 🙂

 

[Peter]

Summer, I see. Below -10C is no good for intense outdoor exercise, lungs freezing and all that. Nasty. So, let's move indoors. Since gym work tends to be limited by muscle fatigue before your fuels run out, that's not quite the right kind of activity if you want to maximize your energy throughput. Have you tried swimming? This also happens to use the entire body all at the same time, also unlike typical gym work.

Gibsons, good info there. Yes there is insuline response w/o the sweet taste too, yes. I think we can stop sounding like we're contradicting each other when we actually aren't 😉

but ... but ... but ... Spaghetti cooked fifteen to TWENTY MINUTES? Man ... these scientists soooo need a visit to Italy. Cook them "al dente" not "al denture" >:-(

 

[Gibsons]

Well, I tend to get overly nit-picky at times, but yeah, I'm sure we're in general agreement.

but ... but ... but ... Spaghetti cooked fifteen to TWENTY MINUTES? Man ... these scientists soooo need a visit to Italy. Cook them "al dente" not "al denture" >:-(

And some poor test subject had to eat it. With no sauce! 🙁

 

[Runamile]

My opinions (and experience) on all the nit picky science stuff on the matter is a bunch of BS. YES, maybe TECHNICALLY, if all things are equal, eating EXACTLY X amount of Y will make a performance difference. Then again, you might argue that putting a super expensive, high octane gas into your '84 Voltswagen Rabbit will make a difference too, but who the hell cares? Does it matter? It is worth it?

Using super high efficency methods on a horrible, out of tune, worn engine is worthless. A human body is an engine. Unless you run marathons, are an avid triathalete, or have obsessive compulsive disorder, you DON'T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT IT. Those who are an ultra 1337 athlete already know all this stuff, and it comes natural in their daily routine. Those who don't already know about all that scientific stuff, have higher priorites then counting every last milligram of amino acid inside their cough drop.

My highly scientific advice to anyone wanting to get stronger/get more energy/get a great tan/get skinny is this, in the following priority:

1) Get off you butt, there is no way around this one
2) Do a full workout for at least 30, several times a week
3) Cut the sweets, start the fresh foods
4) Improve 1, then 2, then 3

 

[jimikim]

Originally posted by: Peter
Time of day doesn't matter much. You shouldn't be tired (just to avoid injury and sleep rhythm disruption), and the biological low at around 14:00 is also a poor moment if you have the choice.

I learned in college (the only thing I remember about this subject in college rather) is that it is best to excercise in the morning (or any time where you haven't had food in a while) in order to burn the most percentage of fat (percentage of "carb" energy vs "fat" energy) because of the insulin level. When you eat, your insulin level goes up and burns a less percentage of fat. Am I remembering correctly or was that class a waste of time? (I am an Econ/Accounting major in case you were wondering)

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Peter
Summer, I see. Below -10C is no good for intense outdoor exercise, lungs freezing and all that. Nasty. So, let's move indoors. Since gym work tends to be limited by muscle fatigue before your fuels run out, that's not quite the right kind of activity if you want to maximize your energy throughput. Have you tried swimming? This also happens to use the entire body all at the same time, also unlike typical gym work.

Gibsons, good info there. Yes there is insuline response w/o the sweet taste too, yes. I think we can stop sounding like we're contradicting each other when we actually aren't 😉

but ... but ... but ... Spaghetti cooked fifteen to TWENTY MINUTES? Man ... these scientists soooo need a visit to Italy. Cook them "al dente" not "al denture" >:-(

I think I'll try to just get going with the badminton again, I feel about as good in the water as a fish would on land 😉

Oh and pasta cooked for 20 minutes sounds like it could get pretty nasty :/