A Junk-Food Diet Is Counterproductive to Your Exercise Goals
Eating a poor diet isn't only a matter of "empty
calories" causing you to gain weight without getting proper nutrition.
Excess sugar and fructose consumption, which is common if you eat a lot of
processed foods, is linked to insulin resistance, high triglycerides, heart
disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer.
This is also a driving factor in insulin resistance.
According to Dr. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatric endocrinology at the
University of California, San Francisco (USCF), whatever organ becomes insulin
resistant ends up manifesting its own chronic metabolic disease.
For example, when you have insulin resistance, you can end
up with type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, heart disease or chronic
renal disease.
In addition, refined fructose, typically in some form of
corn syrup, is now found in virtually every processed food you can think of,
and fructose actually "programs" your body to consume more calories
and store fat.
Fructose is primarily metabolized by your liver, because
your liver is the only organ that has the transporter for it. Since nearly all
fructose gets shuttled to your liver, it ends up taxing and damaging your liver
in the same way alcoholand other toxins do.
A Poor Diet Turns on Your Body's Fat Switch
Further, dietary sugar, and fructose in particular, is a
significant "tripper of your fat switch." Dr. Richard Johnson
discovered the method that animals use to gain fat prior to times of food
scarcity, which turned out to be a powerful adaptive benefit.
His research showed that fructose activates a key enzyme,
fructokinase, which in turn activates another enzyme that causes cells to
accumulate fat. When this enzyme is blocked, fat cannot be stored in the cell.
Interestingly, this is the exact same "switch"
animals use to fatten up in the fall and to burn fat during the winter.
Fructose is the dietary ingredient that turns on this "switch,"
causing cells to accumulate fat, both in animals and in humans.
Not to mention, avoiding sugar is especially important if you
do high-intensity exercises, which will boost your body's production of human
growth hormone(HGH). Consuming carbs within a couple of hours prior to or after
such exercise will effectively prevent HGH from being produced.
Junk-Food Diet Promotes Inflammation, Alters Gut Bacteria
Trans fats, fried foods, processed foods, sugar, and grains
are highly inflammatory, and this is another risk factor that exercise can't
ameliorate. Health problems such as obesity, insulin resistance, type 2
diabetes, periodontal disease, stroke, and heart disease are all rooted in
inflammation.
The majority of inflammatory diseases start in your gut.
Chronic inflammation in your gut can disrupt the normal functioning of many
bodily systems.
Further, if you eat many processed foods your gut bacteria
are going to be compromised because processed foods in general will seriously
impair healthy microflora and feed pathogenic bacteria and yeast. This, in
turn, can further promote chronic disease and weight gain, even if you're a
regular exerciser.
Lean people tend to have higher amounts of various healthy
bacteria compared to obese people. For example, one 2011 study found that daily
intake of a specific form of lactic acid bacteria could help prevent obesity
and reduce low-level inflammation.1
Other research found that obese individuals had about 20
percent more of a family of bacteria known as firmicutes and almost 90 percent
less of a bacteria called bacteroidetes than lean people.2
Firmicutes help your body to extract calories from complex
sugars and deposit those calories in fat. When these microbes were transplanted
into normal-weight mice, those mice started to gain twice as much fat. This is
one explanation for how the microflora in your gut may affect your weight.
Eat to Exercise, Not the Other Way Around
What you eat can either add to or take away from your
exercise benefits, and if you're devoting the time to workout, you want to know
how to harness your meals to support your efforts, not detract from them. As
noted by sports nutritionist Susan M. Kleiner, R.D., Ph.D.:3
"When it comes to sculpting your body and enhancing
your performance, without a diet to support your training you are wasting your
time in the gym."
It helps to think of your food as fuel, and consider whether
what you're putting in your mouth will best keep your body in optimal working
order. Remember, youcannot exercise your way out of a bad diet, but you can eat
your way to a fitter and healthier body.
If you're like most people, you're probably eating too many
carbs. Your body's need for sugar is, biologically, very small. And when you
consume more than you need, your body turns it into fat. If you are a
competitive athlete and are not insulin resistant, you can tolerate more carbs.
You do not typically get fat from eating healthy fats—you
get fat from eating too many carbs (sugar) or excessive calories. Hence, what
you'll find on my list of "fitness foods" below are primarily healthy
fats, which is what you'll want to replace the lost carbs with for energy,
along with high-quality proteins and a couple of specific nutrients that are
particularly beneficial for boosting athletic performance.
Aside from avoiding refined fructose especially if you are
insulin resistant, remember to combine a quality protein with a veggie carb in
your meals, no matter whether it's a resistance-training day, an
interval-cardio day, or a non-workout day. However, after strength training (as
opposed to cardio training), your body tends to need more rapidly absorbed
nutrients and a higher glycemic (fast released, starchy) carbohydrate. Another
slight difference between interval cardio and strength-training days is the
timing of your meal. In this regard, when you eat is nearly as important as
what you eat: After cardio, you want to wait 30-45 minutes and then consume a
high-quality protein (whole food) and vegetable-type carbohydrate. (For
instance, a spinach salad and some chicken or high-quality whey protein). After
a resistance workout (muscle-building day), the ideal time to consume your
post-workout meal is 15-30 minutes after finishing your session, in order to
help repair your damaged muscles. Here, whey protein is an ideal choice as it's
predigested and therefore rapidly digested and easily assimilated, along with,
as mentioned, a higher glycemic (fast released, starchy) carbohydrate, such as
a banana.
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