Found an interesting Q&A with Dan Duchaine – gives credence to the idea that not only is what you eat throughout the day important but so is when you eat it.
Source: http://www.trulyhuge.com/dan_duchaine.htm
GURU: I want to carb up for about the usual three days for an upcoming contest. Shuld I eat at night? I heard I shouldn’t eat carbs after six pm.
A: When you carb deplete, your insulin sensitivity is greater. And you’re probably going to use chromium, vanadyl sulfate, and magnesium to improve insulin sensitivity. But it’s true that insulin sensitivity is lowest at night. Let’s discuss what is happening in your body that makes it dislike carbs at night. Cortisol, a catabolic hormone, is highest at night. When cortisol is elevated, your muscle cell insulin sensitivity is lowered. And I have no idea if using all these various insulin agonists will guard against the bad effects of the cortisol. Probably not. The other avenue would be to reduce the cortisol at night, so you could eat the carbs without worrying about the blood glucose going into fat cells instead of muscle cells. I wondered about this same area in the Recomposition (carbing-up) phase of the BODYOPUS diet, when after the 5 no-carb days, you only have 48 hours to carb up before resuming another 5 days of no carbs. In Recomposition, I! do recommend eating carbs throughout the night, waking up every two hours or so, to take in a specific carb meal. For most people, the best they can do is use chromium, magnesium, and vanadyl with each meal. A final note: if you can’t eat throughout the night, the last carb meal before bed should have some kind of delayed absorption. You should include some vegetable oil (about 1 tablespoon) and guar gum (about 10 grams) with the carb meal. Glucophage (metformin), is ideal for slowing carb absorption, as the chief mechanism of metformin is to slow glucose uptake from the small intestine.
GURU: I’m following that new anabolic diet by mauro dipasquale. I check for ketones in my urine with ketosticks. It shows a slight purple color when I get up in the morning. But I check later on, and I show no ketones. What gives? What am I doing wrong? Should I use a glucometer instead?
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A: … In BODYOPUS, I go into great detail on how the system works, but I will highlight some key points now. The five (or more) no-carb eating days force the usual dietary and stored fats into something else called ketones. Ketones are fractured fats that can be used in the place of glucose. Ketones are a faster energy source than regular fats. They don’t yield the expected nine calories a gram; instead, they yield somewhat less, around seven calories a gram. Ketosis doesn’t normally happen–only when insulin is low and the other hormone in the pancreas, glucagon, is high. Your blood glucose level has to be around 50 mg/dl for ketone production to happen in significant amounts. To drop your blood sugar so low (regular blood glucose is between 80-120), you can’t eat carbs for a few days.
Getting into a short-term ketogenic state does a number of positive things. You train your metabolism to enhance its fat-burning ability, which gets lazy with a high-carb diet. Also, as previously mentioned, ketone burning is inefficient, so more grams are burned as compared to non-ketogenic fat burning. The really interesting thing about short-term ketogenic diets is the set up for an anabolic rebound growth spurt after the two-day carb-up. We don’t know all the mechanisms for this growth spurt. However, starving the body of carbs instills a temporary rise in muscle insulin acceptance. The extra glycogen, fluids, and electrolytes will make the muscle cell bigger, and the increased mechanical leverage will make you stronger. When you ramjet the muscle cells with more volume, you get an anabolic stimulus from the stretching of the cell.
About your particular problems: once fats are converted into ketones, they have to be used as fuel or eliminated. You can’t store ketones. Your body can’t reconvert ketones back into fats. The route for elimination is through the kidneys and into the urine. Remember, ketones in the urine are whole, unburned ketones. Ketosticks are small plastic and paper testing strips, about the length of a Q-tip. You allow your urine stream to wash over the paper end of the strip, and if there are ketones in the urine, the paper will turn from the normal tan color into a purplish color. The deeper the purple color, the more ketones in the urine. Your problem is that during the day, you don’t get a purple reading on the ketosticks. Does this mean you’re eating too many carbs and not getting into ketosis?
During the time you’re sleeping, the liver is still converting fats into ketones. But since you have little energy requirements during sleep, these ketones are not needed for fuel. They have to be eliminated. When you wake up in the morning, your first urination will have unused ketones, and you will get a light purple color, assuming you haven’t been eating any carbs for about 48 hours. When you become active, the ketones will be used as fuel. Between usual activities and exercise, most people in a ketogenic state won’t show purple on the ketosticks, especially when on a low-calorie diet. Most of the ketones will be used as fuel, with hardly any unused ketones left for excretion. If you’re eating a lot of calories, above maintenance, then you might get a purple reading during the day. But BODYOPUS is a weight-loss diet, so calories are at maintenance or below. If you’re trying the Anabolic Diet or BODYOPUS for fat loss and get a purple reading during the! day, you should either reduce calories or increase activity, so you won’t have extra unused ketones. Final advice on ketosticks: after 48 hours (in BODYOPUS, I give you tricks to lessen the time needed to start ketosis), you should be getting a light purple color on the ketosticks on the first morning urination only. During the day, the ketosticks will show tan because most of the ketones are being used as fuel.
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Posted on May 23rd, 2009 by fat2fit
Filed under: Miscellaneous Musings
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