My work covers the following subtopics:
1. Disputes over the best approach…
2. Three main directions in organizing diet and nutrition…
3. There is no universal diet that suits everyone…
4. The main causes of excess weight…
5. Insulin sensitivity…
6. Principles to follow when determining nutrient proportions…
7. What should we understand by balanced nutrition?
8. Features of a working, flexible diet…
9. Examples of meals during a dieting period…
10. Start with a moderate approach (keeping nutrient proportions in mind)…
11. Health can’t be bought in capsules, results don’t come overnight, and you need to have patience and stay flexible in the face of change…
12. People are eating themselves sick…
13. Specifics matter: the more extreme the dieter’s individual characteristics, the more extreme and flexible the approaches have to be…
14. Elite athletes and dedicated amateurs are a category of their own…
15. Conclusions and closing words…
16. References…
3. There is no universal diet that suits everyone
Janar Rückenberg:
I’m also convinced that there is no simply right or wrong approach. The key question is whether you can eat in line with your real needs and individual characteristics. The “fats versus carbohydrates” debate is about as meaningful a comparison as “tractor versus passenger car,” “airplane versus ship” or something of the sort. It’s funny that, with so much information available, when the big picture should in fact be quite clear, people still argue, and very passionately, about what is good, more effective or better. There are those who understand that nothing is set in stone, that everything is changeable and conditional, and then there is the other school, which, despite the shifting circumstances of real life, keeps chasing some “the one and only” miracle solution. I definitely belong to those who believe and understand that, first, there are many different routes to the “holy truth,” and second, everything depends on context. Adding nuts and/or fatty cheese to the menu can in one situation be the most effective step, but in others it is exactly the move that leads to disaster and works against our goals as much as anything can. There are experts who see the world only in black and white; at the other end of the spectrum are those who see things as a process. A process (body weight maintenance or change) that is dependent and changeable, and whose success is in fact determined only by a flexible approach. Life as a whole is a process; a person, in their mental and physical existence, is a process in constant change, and the environment around us is in constant change too. Under different conditions, entirely new patterns and principles often apply. For one person, evening apples may be highly recommended, even necessary; another should steer well clear of them. It follows that there can never be one best solution. There is a set of options, and some choices will turn out to be more suitable and others less so. The same applies to organizing nutrition, including the proportional distribution of nutrients. True, when we talk about diet (for weight loss) and about nutrition in general, we still have to formulate some positions in order to cope or find our bearings at all. You always have to start somewhere. But there’s no way around it: even general guidelines must always take the situation, background and conditions into account. Nutrition recommendations for an inactive woman who is an office worker with very poor insulin sensitivity and a high body fat percentage may be very different from what we would give a middle-aged man. There are many factors to consider, and they combine with one another. And when we talk about weight loss, we can never know exactly (there is no direct feedback) how much of the end result came from added physical activity and its nature, and how much from the manipulations we made to nutrition.
4. The main causes of excess weight
Janar Rückenberg:
Insulin and its role in controlling body weight have probably been discussed a great deal, across hundreds of articles. I, too, am among those who believe that one of the key causes of excess weight is insulin sensitivity and its decline. Obviously, obesity has other causes as well. It is certainly a multifactorial process that unfolds over a relatively long period, and its main components are overeating, low physical activity and, as a consequence of the first two, that very decline in insulin sensitivity. Fast-absorbing carbohydrates swing blood insulin levels up and down throughout the day. The quick feeling of fullness and satiety you get from high-glycemic-index carbohydrates disappears after a badly organized meal as abruptly as it appeared. Then comes new hunger, you eat again, yet that big, energy-rich, fast-absorbing meal isn’t actually being used for real energy needs. The hunger that arrives quickly after a meal comes from the fact that the insulin released into the blood in response to a large amount of carbohydrates recedes, once the carbohydrates have been cleared from the blood, as quickly as it appeared. A feedback principle is at work: if there are no significant amounts of carbohydrates in the blood, insulin has nothing to do there either. This sharp rise in insulin and its disappearance after it has done its job is what we call insulin spiking up and down. We actually feel it as a quick sense of fullness and then, again, sudden hunger. Such a scenario largely reduces the insulin sensitivity of our body’s cells and, indirectly, is in turn a key factor behind excess weight. People eat the wrong foods, wrongly combined, at the wrong time.
Insulin sensitivity
Janar Rückenberg:
If you surf the internet looking for information on different weight-loss regimens, you can find dozens of approaches. Many diets are in fact built around how to regulate and control blood insulin levels. The rule is actually simple: the less we disturb and push up blood insulin levels, the better. The better our body fat burns and the less we feel uncontrollable and often unfounded hunger. Blood insulin levels, and their sharp rises or drops, depend on the fats, carbohydrates and proteins we get from food (the composition and size of the portion), their origin and the composition of the foods.
How are weight loss and insulin sensitivity related? What does insulin sensitivity mean? Insulin sensitivity refers to how sensitive the cells of our body are to insulin. Insulin is released from the pancreas into the bloodstream in response to glucose (and amino acids) appearing in the blood. Still, blood sugar level is the main trigger of insulin secretion. This is because the very function of insulin is to deliver the carbohydrates (and amino acids) that have entered the blood into the cells. But once the cells’ energy needs have been met, the surplus starts being converted into fat in parallel. The more sensitive our body’s cells are to insulin, the smaller the concentration of insulin needed to direct the glucose in the blood into cells and tissues. The less responsive the body’s cells are to this hormone, the more insulin has to be secreted into the blood after a meal. Put simply, if the cells are insensitive to insulin, a small amount of the hormone is not enough to open the so-called “gates” of the cells to the carbohydrates circulating in the blood. With good insulin sensitivity, we can eat carbohydrates without much insulin having to be released to clear the sugars from the blood. A feeling of fullness comes relatively quickly, on a moderate amount of carbohydrates. With poor insulin sensitivity, for the cells to actually get the carbohydrates they need, along with other nutrients, we have to eat more than the real demand and more than is actually needed to cover our expenditure. The result is a situation where, on the one hand, the cells finally get what they need, but at the price of overeating, and the surplus all ends up as fat in the fat cells. To get a feeling of fullness, we had to consume clearly more than we needed. But insulin does more than deliver carbohydrates to cells. Now that a big meal has left a lot of energy in the digestive system and bloodstream, and therefore a lot of insulin, the excess energy also starts being stored in the fat cells in parallel. Insulin depositing surplus or excess carbohydrate energy into fat cells as fat is one side of its action. The other side is that constantly swinging insulin up and down, or chronically high blood insulin, shuts down lipolysis, i.e. the release of fat from fat cells and its use for energy. When blood insulin rises, lipolysis stops. For the body to take energy from fat cells, blood insulin has to be low. Carbohydrates should be timed primarily for the meals of the day when our body’s insulin sensitivity is highest. Those times are the morning after waking up and after training. At those times insulin sensitivity is at its highest and the risk of overeating is at its lowest.
Why have high-protein and high-fat diets become hugely popular, and effective, in recent decades? Why do you so often hear that these very diets are the right ones? These diets work for relatively large groups of people because those people have “killed off” the insulin sensitivity of their body’s cells with large amounts of high-glycemic-index carbohydrates. They eat plenty of fast-absorbing processed carbohydrates, which keeps blood insulin constantly swinging up and down and very high on average. Let’s draw a parallel from everyday life. What happens when everything is good all the time? At some point the “good” no longer feels “good”; it soon becomes basic and finally routine. Just like in relationships between a man and a woman, sex included. It’s clear that the initial passion fades and disappears, bodies simply adapt, and after a few years together the act may no longer feel as exciting as it did at the start. But if we go without for a few months, we all know how good it “tastes” again. When there is constantly a lot of something, you get saturated with it, you become numb, and what is plentiful no longer gives a thrill. So it is with insulin when there is a lot of it, all the time. Very many people have brought their body’s cells into this same routine, this same numbness, through uncontrolled carbohydrate consumption. And the cure that works is precisely these same high-fat diets. On the one hand, in many situations and during certain periods, such an approach to nutrition is even justified, even when insulin sensitivity is intact. On the other hand, these (high-fat) diets are a good way to improve your insulin sensitivity again.
Principles to start from when determining nutrient proportions
Janar Rückenberg:
The view is increasingly common that when calorie intake is under control, the ratio of nutrients within total calories has relatively little effect on weight loss (changes in body weight). If the balance of expenditure and intake doesn’t tip in favor of expenditure, then whatever the proportional split of nutrients, weight won’t start to fall.
At the same time, we come across plenty of recommendations on how nutrients might be split as a percentage of total calories under one lifestyle or another.
Nutrient proportions in the menu are determined, on the one hand, by:
1. Our health status (body weight, insulin sensitivity, other conditions).
2. The volume and nature of daily physical activity.
3. Taking metabolic peculiarities into account.
Although total daily calories are the primary factor in controlling body weight, adequate nutrient proportions ensure that:
1. We have enough energy.
2. The body gets all the nutrients it needs, especially the essential ones.
3. Our individual characteristics are taken into account.
If our goal is weight loss and total calories are under control, meaning we consume less energy from food than we expend, weight will still fall. But what happens if we don’t take into account the need, arising from our individual characteristics, for a nutrient split that suits us? In fact, nothing happens: if the goal is weight loss, then weight does fall. The difference is simply in how arduous it is, how much suffering is involved, and what side effects the process brings. A powerlifter on the Atkins diet will certainly lose weight from fat in a deficit. But I doubt that, in a deficit and after eating boiled eggs all day, they would get through the eighth-week squat 5 x 5 at the prescribed weights in the evening workout. Likewise, an insulin-resistant patient will certainly start losing weight on a high-carbohydrate diet too, but at what price, how will they feel, and how long will they be able to stick to such a diet? Whether we intend to control or lose weight with the help of increased physical activity or by correcting nutrition alone is of major importance when it comes to the proportional split of nutrients. I can’t confirm this with proof, but I still fear that a very physically active person cannot maintain performance on high-fat diets alone (especially in activities where the energy for muscle work comes mainly from glycolysis), even if their weight will probably fall. This (a high-fat ketogenic diet with a very small carbohydrate ration) can have a particularly negative effect on athletes in certain speed-strength sports, including top-level natural competitive bodybuilders and powerlifters.
If I had to give any starting guidelines at all (for healthy eating to maintain your weight, or for weight loss) on how to split nutrients proportionally under controlled calorie intake, then as a rule endomorphs respond relatively well to a nutrient ratio of 35% protein, 25% carbohydrates and 40% fat. For ectomorphs, a ratio of 25% protein, 55% carbohydrates and 20% fat usually works, and mesomorphs can start by trying proportions of 30% protein, 40% carbohydrates and 30% fat.
Another general approach is that the lower your body fat percentage, the more fat can be replaced with carbohydrates. In other words, the share of fat in your menu drops and the share of carbohydrates can be raised again. Always remember that it’s important to be flexible. You may have to start adjusting the originally set nutrient ratio very quickly. On the one hand, the chosen proportional split of nutrients determines whether we can function normally and whether we get the nutrients we need from food, given our individual characteristics. On the other hand, the proportional split of nutrients, especially when it is optimal for us, dictates whether and for how long we can stay on the chosen diet. The specific choice of foods, in turn, influences and determines how well we can stick to the nutrient split that suits our individual characteristics. The poorer the food choices, the greater the risk of overeating and of wrecking even the originally chosen nutrient proportions that proved optimal.
Author: Janar Rückenberg
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