May 5, 2017

The time-limited Diet Plus

The time-restricted Diet Plus

From TC Luoma | 01/01/16

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/time-restricted-plus-diet

Here's what you need to know...

Exercisers often bounce back and forth between bulking and dieting. As a result, they spend most of their lives somewhere between defined and bulky.
The answer lies in adopting an extremely simple nutritional strategy that allows you to become more defined and build muscle at the same time.
Scientists have recently published an illuminating study highlighting the benefits of restricting food intake to periods of 9 to 12 hours per day.
Although this strategy has worked well in mice and is likely to work well in normal humans, it needs one or two modifications before it can be adopted by strength athletes.
Strength athletes are well advised to use a modified approach where they limit their food intake to a 9 to 12 hour phase, but spice up the "no food intake" phases with specific proteins to ensure sustained muscle protein synthesis.

Should I bulk up or diet?

Pretty much everyone who cares about their body development is constantly struggling with a dilemma:

"Should I eat more so that I can build muscle, possibly putting on some fat in the process? Or do I eat less so that I can become more defined, risking losing some muscle mass?"

One week we see a massive powerlifter putting on an amazing strength performance and we toy with the idea of eating and training like a powerlifter. The next week, we'll see a picture of a guy who is so exceptionally defined and muscular that he looks like he stepped out of the pages of a Marvel comic to fight evil.

Almost immediately we'll stop doing the powerlifting stuff and start working out and eating to get defined so we too can save the world.

By bouncing back and forth between these two positions, and by never really deciding on a body style or lifestyle, we live in a perpetual hell of looking good but not looking great.

However, there is a way to combine both of your desires and that way is through a relatively simple dietary adjustment. This strategy will allow you to get and stay defined without losing muscle mass. You will probably even gain muscle mass at a satisfying rate.

The intermittent fasting leprechaun

First, let's throw a nutritional gremlin out of this article before it becomes an annoying distraction.

I don't like Intermittent Fasting (IF) - at least when it comes to conventional Intermittent Fasting. While this is probably a good idea for people who suffer from type II diabetes, this strategy is not so great for people who are interested in giving their body the shape of a Greek statue.

IF may make you defined and it will probably also improve your insulin sensitivity, but there is evidence that it also limits your muscle gains.

A new study and a new way to lose fat

Having said that, I would like to look at an interesting study that is doing the rounds. It's an in-depth follow-up study to a similar study published in 2012 that produced similar results. This study involved a type of intermittent fasting that gave me an indication of how superheroes should eat when training.

Okay, this study was done with little mice, but in many cases mammalian physiology equals mammalian physiology regardless of the species involved.

Scientists at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California fed mice four different isocaloric diet programs over a 38-week period:

High-fat
High fructose
High-fat and high-fructose
Regular mouse food

Some mice were allowed to eat whenever they wanted, while others were only allowed to eat during 9, 12 or 15 hour phases, but there was another interesting feature.

Some mice in the groups with a time-limited food intake were allowed to "cheat" at the weekend and eat whenever they wanted. Furthermore, some mice in the group that were allowed to eat whenever they wanted were switched to a time-restricted diet in the middle of the study.

Some of the results were predictable, while others were completely surprising:

The mice that could eat whenever they wanted got sick and overweight, and their pants had to be made wider.
Mice that ate in a 9 to 12 hour window stayed slim and healthy - even when they were allowed to cheat on weekends.
The mice that could eat when they wanted and were switched to a time-restricted diet in the middle of the study lost the weight they had gained (the time-restricted diet not only prevented obesity, but actually reversed the weight gain).
When mice that could eat whenever they wanted switched to a time-restricted diet, they lost 5% of their body weight within a few days.
The time-restricted mice also had more lean muscle mass than their laxer-fed friends.

Most of this is pretty interesting, but it's probably the last result that gets our muscle-building spiderman sense ringing. Yes, the mice on time-restricted diets had more muscle, but truth be told, scientists don't yet know if these mice actually built muscle or simply maintained the muscle mass they might have lost on a free-range diet.

From fat storage to fat burning

The scientists believe it was an epigenetic response, where they believe food affects the body's internal clock and this internal clock affects the function of genes involved in metabolism.

But it probably also has something to do with insulin sensitivity. The mice with time-restricted food intake improved their insulin sensitivity to a large extent, while the mice that could eat whenever they wanted remained in the land of insulin resistance.

Finally, it has been repeatedly observed in humans that even a few hours of fasting increases insulin sensitivity and switches the body from a fat-storage mode to a fat-burning mode.

Muscle protein synthesis must continue!

Believe it or not, insulin sensitivity is one of the reasons why conventional intermittent fasting is so popular with strength athletes and non-athletes alike.

This type of fasting leads to higher insulin sensitivity and increased fat burning, but the downside has always been that it is much harder, if not impossible, to build muscle during intermittent fasting because you are not only depriving your body of calories, but also protein.

Due to this protein shortage, there are large parts of the day or night during which muscle protein synthesis comes to a complete standstill.

The solution to combining time-restricted dieting, fat burning and muscle building is to limit conventional food intake to a predetermined period of time and then somehow ensure that enough protein circulates in the body to keep muscle protein synthesis going during the rest of the day and night.

Unfortunately, eating large amounts of protein - the amounts that would trigger adequate protein synthesis - would also provide enough calories and insulin-raising amino acids to spike insulin levels and defeat the reasons for a time-restricted diet.

That being said, you couldn't call your diet intermittent fasting or a time-restricted diet if you were eating protein meals outside the confines of the time-restricted phases of food intake - this would simply be considered the normal life of a strength athlete.

There is a way around these problems and it involves the combination of time-restricted eating and spurts of highly hydrolyzed protein consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides.

This approach is perhaps the simplest of all and my human guinea pigs have had excellent results with it.

How does this nutritional approach work?

First, we determine our level of "fatness".

If you are carrying a significant amount of body fat, then limit your food intake to a 9 hour window.
If you just need some fine tuning because you can see at least a shadow of your abs or a few veins by your muscles, then limit your food intake to a 12 hour window.
The groups consume one to two servings (20 grams) of highly hydrolyzed protein, consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides, during the periods without regular food intake.

The 9 hour group

Let's say you belong to the 9 hour group and eat your first meal at 7am. This means that you need to have eaten all your conventional meals by 4pm.

To maintain your protein synthesis, you consume a portion of highly hydrolyzed protein, consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides, at 19:00 and before going to bed.

The 12 hour group

Eat your first meal at 7am. This means that you need to have eaten all your conventional meals by 7pm.

To maintain your protein synthesis, consume a portion of highly hydrolyzed protein consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides before going to bed.

Options

Either group can also consume an additional serving of highly hydrolyzed protein, consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides, in the middle of the night if you're one of the few dedicated strength athletes who don't mind waking up in the middle of the night to get some nutrients.

In addition, both groups can take things a little easier on the weekend without significantly compromising your diet.

Questions and answers

I know, I know, you have questions. Like how such a comparably small amount of protein (20 grams of highly hydrolyzed protein consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides) can keep your muscle protein synthesis alive.

Won't this protein also cause an insulin spike? Why can't I use just any protein to accomplish the same thing?

Straight into the bloodstream, boom!

One serving of highly hydrolyzed protein consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides - 20 grams of protein - stimulates protein synthesis many times more than a similar amount of conventional protein.

Because of its powerful effect, you don't need to consume a lot of protein, which would not only provide a lot of calories, but also greatly increase your insulin levels - both of which would defeat the purpose of a time-restricted diet.

The reason that highly hydrolyzed protein is so effective is that it consists primarily of di- and tripeptides, which do not need to be broken down or digested further. As such, they are transported directly into the bloodstream, boom!

And these peptide structures have biological activities that go far beyond regular amino acids, which is what makes them so effective at stimulating muscle protein synthesis.

If you want to make it even more effective, you should use a highly hydrolyzed protein that is enriched with leucine. Leucine is the key factor in stimulating muscle protein synthesis after a meal. No other essential amino acid or branched-chain amino acid stimulates muscle protein synthesis as strongly as leucine.

In fact, scientists have found that a small amount of leucine (6.25 grams, to be exact) stimulated muscle protein synthesis in exercising young men as much as four times as much whey protein (25 grams).

Taking a large dose of leucine on its own is potentially problematic, as it could result in lower circulating concentrations of the other two branched-chain amino acids, isoleucine and valine.

This is why scientific research has shown that consuming all BCAAs is a better idea when it comes to maximizing muscle protein synthesis.

Keep it simple

Let's not mess up this simple nutrition plan too much.

You limit your sensible and healthy eating to either a 9 or 12 hour window depending on your amount of body fat. During the periods without regular food intake, you consume one, two or even 3 servings of leucine-enriched highly hydrolyzed protein consisting primarily of di- and tripeptides.

On the weekends, you can take it a little easier and eat outside of your time constraints.

That's all. Needless to say, you can't eat everything you want in unlimited quantities. No nutrition or diet plan can withstand such idiocy.

Furthermore, you should know how your macronutrients should be composed and what constitutes a healthy diet. You don't need me to tell you that you need to eat some fruits and vegetables.

Studies

Chaix, et al, "Time-Restricted Feeding is a Preventative and Therapeutic Intervention against Diverse Nutritional Challenges," Cell Metabolism, Volume 20, Issue 6, p991-1005, December 2, 2014.
Churchward-Venne, et al, "Leucine supplementation of a low-protein mixed macronutrient beverage enhance myofibrillar protein synthesis in young men: a double-blind, randomized trial," Am J Clin Nutr, 2014;99:1-12.