🏋️‍♀️Science of Diet and Exercise Journal👩‍🎓

[Cate]

It sucks that we still have rampant misogyny & basically, it sounds like you are being asked to be more "girly"(?) That is so difficult when you know that you get people to take more notice when you are assertive(as distinct from aggressive). I think we all get sick to death of walking this fine line. I was told I played golf like a man by one of the women & I think she meant it as an insult. I'm still not sure.

 

[Trusylver]

I did not get to be a test subject for the metabolic flexibility testing. but every sing one of the younger students had metabolic issues despite being young and fit.

Outside of the lab working out the correct training intensity will be far from accurate but there is a commercial device that uses some of the principles we use in the lab to test substrate usage at rest and is a lot cheaper than a full metabolic cart.

 

[Cate]

I did not get to be a test subject for the metabolic flexibility testing. but every single one of the younger students had metabolic issues despite being young and fit.

Why do you think that is, Tru?

 

[Trusylver]

Why do you think that is, Tru?

they are young and active but the testing is supposed to pick up problems 10 years or so before insulin resistance kicks in.

Most of these young adults have a very poor diet, which does not have an obvious health effect now but will in the future. Also the exercise they are doing in the HIIT anaerobic exercise which is great for using calories over all but is not great for mitochondria health.

 

[Trusylver]

I will also add that in the class discussion the dietary way to combat it was low carb diet or keto and Intermittent fasting with 2 meals per day. OMAD leads to muscle loss. I am adding a Lumen to my wish list

 

[Llama]

That's kind of chilling, if the prediction is correct.

 

[Cate]

That is frightening. Most young people I know have awful diets. I had to look up a Lumen. It looks like a very useful tool to have. I'm not sure that I would be able to put it to good use but I'm sure you would.

 

[Trusylver]

The Lumen obviously can't give all the data of a lab test which allows us to work out the best exercise intensity to fight the problem but it does measure the CO2 in the expired air at rest which is used to determine the percentage of fat : glycogen (carb) use at rest. In a person with a healthy metabolism the primary source should be fat by a long way. What you have just consumed can have an effect and for the testing in the lab we had to abstain from caffeine for the day to be able to get good clean results.

Caffeine has been shown to increase calorie burn BUT caffeine raises catecholamines (stress hormones), these hormones change the substrate used for energy from fat to glycogen. Which is fine for a short period of time to improve performance but a chronic rise causes lots of problems including increases in abdominal fat.

If the body does not have the metabolic flexibility to swap between burning fat and carbs at the appropriate times we have a long term problem in the making.

 

[Llama]

And that on a huge scale. At least I can't stand caffeine, I guess.

 

[Llama]

In a person with a healthy metabolism the primary source should be fat by a long way.

Been thinking about that and when I eat a lot of suger for longer periods of time I get unbearably hungry between meals. I guess fatigue and being hungry after sugar make sense in general because of the insulin spike/crash but it gets a lot more extreme when I do it a couple of days in a row. Could that be my body trying to switch over to all glucose, all the time already?

 

[Trusylver]

Been thinking about that and when I eat a lot of suger for longer periods of time I get unbearably hungry between meals. I guess fatigue and being hungry after sugar make sense in general because of the insulin spike/crash but it gets a lot more extreme when I do it a couple of days in a row. Could that be my body trying to switch over to all glucose, all the time already?

you could be right, I find it scary that 21-22 year old fit students were registering as using 65% glycogen for energy at rest rather than the 70-85% fat that should have been happening. Age makes it worse. Of course there fitness levels being better their optimal training intensity will be higher than mine.

I need to kick my own diet back into shape with possibly adding some IF into the mix. If I can get my pain levels under control for my injuries then I will be able to do more zone 2 training for my mitochondrial health, it will be hard to fix but I am stubborn and don't give up.

 

[Llama]

Between being stubborn and knowing that sticking with it is the best thing to do no matter what I'm sure you're going to have the best possible outcome for your situation. In the meantime I'm going to try and go for more pulses/fruit and fewer highly-processed sweets.