January 26, 2017

Why insulin is an advantage.

How to build muscle and lose fat in the same day

Here's what you need to know...

If you think that mass gain and fat loss are things that need to be done in phases separately, think again. By controlling your insulin, you can allow your body to build muscleand burn fat on a daily basis.
Muscle is made up of protein. To build muscle, your body needs to synthesize more protein than it breaks down.
Insulin is responsible for muscle growth and the storage of muscle glycogen.
Excessive insulin production will lead to storage of body fat and inhibition of fat burning.
To build muscle and burn fat on the same day, you need to manipulate your insulin production by strategically consuming carbohydrates. Prioritize carbohydrate intake around your training sessions.

Daily manipulation

Forget the idea of bulking and definition phases that beginners love to talk about. Instead, build muscle and burn fat on the same day to maximize your muscle gain while keeping body fat under control.

How do you do it? By manipulating insulin.

Depending on your background, you'll probably view insulin as either the anabolic holy grail or the natural enemy of fat loss. What is insulin really?

Insulin is like a weapon

It's human nature to categorize things as either good or bad, but this short-sighted way of thinking often does us more harm than good.

Those who want to lose fat label insulin as the "bad" hormone that makes us flabby by inhibiting fat burning and increasing fat storage. Those who want to build muscle refer to insulin as an anabolic and anti-catabolic phenomenon.

How can a hormone be a fat boy's nemesis and a skinny boy's best defense?

The truth is that insulin is like a weapon: it can harm you or help you. And the good news is that you can accurately predict how insulin will act.

Know your opponent

Insulin is an anabolic hormone. In fact, it's even more anabolic than growth hormones. The problem? It's indiscriminately anabolic and doesn't care if it helps build muscle or fat.

But you can't blame insulin for this. Ultimately, it's just a hormone that does its job. And its primary job is to maintain safe and consistent blood sugar levels in the 80-100 mg/dl range.

When blood sugar levels rise above 100, the pancreas releases insulin. Then the ever-helpful insulin removes the excess glucose from the blood and transports it to a storage site where it is stored.

There are three different storage sites for excess glucose:

Muscle glycogen
liver glycogen
Adipose tissue

And of course we prefer to store it in the first two, but the truth is that insulin doesn't care. It will simply do what it is programmed to do.

So let's take a look at what insulin is programmed to do.

4 good things insulin does

1. insulin builds muscle

Insulin stimulates protein synthesis (and therefore muscle growth) by getting ribosomes to make more protein.

Muscles are made of protein. Protein is made by ribosomes. Ribosomes are activated by insulin. Allow me to quote Guyton and Hall's Textbook of Medical Physiology:

"Insulin, through some as yet unknown pathway, turns on the "machinery of ribosomes." In the absence of insulin, ribosomes simply stop working - almost as if insulin were operating an 'on-off' switch."

Does this mean that insulin "helps" build muscle? No, it means that insulin is needed to build muscle.

2. insulin inhibits the breakdown of protein

Insulin inhibits the breakdown of muscle protein. The anti-catabolic nature of insulin is just as important as its anabolic nature. Every day your body synthesizes some protein and breaks down some protein at the same time.

Whether you build or lose muscle over time is a physiological math game. To build muscle you need to synthesize more protein than you break down.

Anyone with any financial intelligence will tell you that it doesn't matter how much money you make - what matters is how much money you can keep. The same goes for muscle.

3. insulin transports amino acids into muscle cells

Insulin actively transports certain amino acids directly into muscle cells. You can probably guess which amino acids get this special treatment: BCAAs, which are found in your training diet for a reason.

Branched-chain amino acids are personally escorted into the muscle cells by insulin, which is essential if you want to build muscle.

4. insulin increases the activity of glycogen synthase

Insulin increases the activity of enzymes (such as glycogen synthase) that stimulate glycogen formation. This means that insulin helps to store glucose in the muscle cells, improving performance and recovery and making your muscles bigger.

The formation of muscle glycogen results in fuller, denser looking muscles.

So far so good, but what about the other side of the coin?

5 bad things insulin does

1. insulin inhibits hormone-sensitive lipase

Insulin inhibits an enzyme called hormone-sensitive lipase, which is responsible for breaking down fatty tissue.

If you can't break down stored fat (triglycerides) and convert it into a form that can be burned (free fatty acids), then you won't get leaner.

2. insulin reduces the use of fat

Insulin reduces the use of fat for energy and causes the body to burn carbohydrates to produce energy. In other words, insulin protects your fat stores.

Even though this is not good for your body composition, it makes sense when you look at the main function of insulin, which is to remove excess glucose from the blood. And insulin will accomplish this by both storing and burning carbohydrates.

3. insulin increases fatty acid synthesis

Insulin increases fatty acid synthesis in the liver, which is the first step in the process of building up body fat. This depends on the availability of excess carbohydrates - the amount above what can be immediately burned for energy or stored as muscle glycogen.

4. insulin activates lipoprotein lipase

Once activated by insulin, lipoprotein lipase breaks down triglycerides into absorbable fatty acids that can be quickly and easily absorbed, converted back into triglycerides and stored by fat cells.

But if you understand a bit of medical terminology, lipoprotein synthase will look like a good thing at first glance. After all, it's an enzyme that breaks down fat, so why wouldn't you want the activity of this enzyme to increase?

Remember we just talked about how insulin increases fatty acid synthesis in the liver.

Once those extra fatty acids are converted to triglycerides, lipoproteins (e.g. VLDL) dump them into the bloodstream and get told to find a new home.

The really cool thing is that triglycerides can't be absorbed by fat cells...at least not until lipoprotein lipase is activated. So even if you have plenty of triglycerides in your blood, you won't get any fatter until insulin activates lipoprotein lipase.

5. insulin promotes glucose transport into fat cells

Insulin increases the movement of glucose through the fat cell membrane and into the fat cells. The breakdown and burning of fat for energy is increased in the absence of insulin. (But remember that insulin also increases the transport of glucose into muscle cells).

The solution to the insulin puzzle

Quite simply, insulin is an anabolic transport hormone that does its job. We would die if it did not do this.

Insulin doesn't care whether you build fat or muscle. All that matters to insulin is keeping blood sugar levels in the normal range. When blood glucose levels rise, insulin is released and it will quickly restore normal serum glucose levels.

It is not the job of insulin to release itself for leanness or muscle growth. It is up to you to optimally stimulate insulin secretion through your diet. And there is a way to do just that.

First, you need to decide where you are on the fat loss/muscle gain continuum:

"I want to build muscle exclusively."

If hypertrophy is your primary goal, then you want high insulin levels throughout the day.

You especially want high insulin levels around training to take advantage of the fact that muscle cell membranes are particularly permeable to insulin and anything that transports it (like glucose or BCAAs) at this time.

"I only want to lose fat."

If your goal is solely to lose body fat, then you want to reduce your average insulin levels throughout the day.

But don't get this wrong. Some people think that having low insulin levels throughout the day is the best way to lose fat. But if working out is more to you than just strolling around the mall, then you need a smarter strategy.

Even if you don't care about building muscle, it's still important to initiate some insulin secretion around the time of your workout. This will stop exercise-induced catabolism and also transport glucose and amino acids into the muscle cells.

Otherwise, you will lose valuable muscle mass and hinder the metabolic machinery that burns fat. You don't want to get thin but still flabby, do you? Well, that's exactly what you'll achieve if you don't regularly give your muscles carbohydrates.

"I want to build muscle and lose fat."

That's a goal everyone can identify with: Build muscle and lose fat.

Sadly, most of us believe the experts who say it's impossible to build lean muscle mass while losing body fat. Conventional wisdom says that you need to alternate between bulking phases and definition phases to gain more muscle mass with less body fat. But this so-called wisdom is ultimately not so wise.

When blood sugar levels are high, insulin is released and glucose is stored in the muscles or liver as glycogen. When blood sugar levels are low, insulin secretion stops and fat becomes the body's primary source of energy.

Insulin is like a switch that controls from moment to moment whether you burn fat or build muscle. It does not take the whole day for this change to take place. In fact, it only takes minutes!

This means that you can plan your day so that you have periods of time when you focus on building muscle and other periods of time when you focus on burning fat. And you can manipulate the length of these phases to change the rate at which you build muscle or lose fat.

Want to build muscle faster? Increase the amount of insulin you release. This is especially helpful if you do it around your training session. Insulin won't convert glucose into fat if it can store that glucose as muscle glycogen.

And after an intense training session with weights, both muscle and liver glycogen stores are depleted to some degree and ready to soak up serious amounts of glucose. Therefore, don't be too cautious with your carbohydrate intake at this time.

For even faster muscle building, you should also increase your insulin levels at one or two other times during the day. You could achieve this with some higher carbohydrate meals.

Then, to cover the fat loss part of this equation, keep insulin levels low during the rest of the day.

Flip the switch

Whether you want to promote muscle gain or maximize fat loss, insulin is the switch you need to learn to turn on for gains and turn off for fat loss.

Whatever you choose, remember that the switch doesn't have to be on or off for months in a row. Choose to manipulate insulin on a daily basis and you can reap all the benefits while avoiding all the downsides.

By Clay Hyght, DC | 08/26/16

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/insulin-advantage