Yeah I've seen people on the Keto diet who manage to stay very thin. But I get bored just looking at what they eat. I had a couple of friend who would have like, a steak, some green veggies and then just a pile of cooked fat on the plate. And that seemed like their meals most nights. Didn't seem super appealing to me. But again, I'm pretty biased.
I'm not an expert here, just read the one book I already linked, but it mentioned that the process of your body breaking down muscle tissue to use as energy is called 'wasting' and it does happen, but only to people that are at extremely low levels of body fat, IIRC it was below 2% BMI. Otherwise, your body simply uses your stored glycogen in your liver and then your fat reserves for energy, but releases that fat as ketone bodies, which are purported to actually be far greater than glucose as an actual energy source.
I think it's sorta similar to what happens to long distance runners. They run for 45 minutes, run out of all the stored muscle glycogen, then there's this 30 or 45 minute period where they're probably pulling it from their liver. Then after about 2 hours of steady state cardio, they start pulling it from fat cells and their fat loss goes through the roof. (Was watching a whole video on sort of the calorie and fat burning map of a long distance runner.) The release of ketones also probably contributes to the "Runner's High" and the second wind.
But you know who has like, no muscle mass at all and insanely low body fat levels? People that can run for 6 hours straight. So the body cannibalizing muscle mass does happen beyond a certain threshold of sustained effort, once you've tapped out the energy in the muscles and other places. I know from resistance training that I can tell when I've not had enough carbs, because my muscles tire way faster. And a lot of body building channels I've watched have all more or less lined up to say you have to eat a reasonable level of carbs to both fuel your intensity and prevent muscle loss if you push through fatigue and keep working out.
I read that the deal with carbs is that refined carbs like bread or cake or whatever, overstimulate the insulin system because they're basically things our bodies were never evolved to have in such large quantities as they now exist in most 1st worlder's diets. Meats and fats don't stimulate it as much, so even though fats are very calorically dense, they don't stimulate the insulin system very much and therefore your body never goes into 'save that shit' mode, and so during a keto diet your body continues pulling from bodily reserves even though it has food in it's system.
Yeah, our bodies definitely did not evolve in a time when carbohydrates from sugars and processed grains were readily available. I find the whole science of insulin and how it's reacted to our modern habits pretty fascinating now that I getting in to it. And I'm starting to think a regular dose of cinnamon every day, to increase the body's insulin sensitivity, has really helped keep my appetite in check and in turn help me lose weight. I'd use even more but it's hard to find a lot of things to put cinnamon on in a day. I suppose if I was getting donuts or rolls or something it'd be pretty easy, but that'd sort of be self-defeating, wouldn't it?
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Topic: The Fitness Thread - THE RE-SWOLLENING (Read 62451 times)