Interesting Article for those who want to binge over Christmas. (IE Me!)

chin_grin

I wouldn't be the most clued-in to any "regimented exercise". But thought I'd post this as I found it quite the eye-opener!


http://gizmodo.com/5714653/holiday-fat-hack-how-to-eat-like-a-santa-and-not-turn-into-one

You know you're going to swallow whole ham, 12 gingerbread cookies and six glasses of egg nog over the holidays. It's just going to happen. You could run 26 miles after the damage is done. But there's a better way.

A new study in the Journal of Physiology shows that exercising in the morning, before you eat anything at all, is the best way to skim off fat you'd otherwise put on by binging on crazy fatty over the next two weeks.

In the study, two exercise groups composed of "healthy, active men" ate roughly the same crappy diet and performed the same rigorous exercise routines (60-90 minutes), 4 days a week. So, same caloric intake, some caloric expenditure. One group exercised on an empty stomach in the morning, drinking only water while exercising. The other, ate a "hefty, carbohydrate-rich breakfast before exercising" and drank something like Gatorade during.

The group that gained almost no weight despite weeks of a bad diet? The one who exercised before breakfast. They burned fat more efficiently. Or as the study's authors put it, the study "indicates that exercise training in the fasted state is more effective than exercise in the carbohydrate-fed state to stimulate glucose tolerance despite a hypercaloric high-fat diet."

This is how I've always approached food and exercise. Looks like I guessed correctly! Check out the full report and the Times' writeup here: [Journal of Physiology via NYT] Image by Pascal/Flickr, used under CC license]

We believe the body is a gadget. Here's how to hack it.

Dr Nic

I don't know about you Guys but that study seems very odd to me.
First off - not double blinded.
Second - n =27? Is that right?
Third - how many cals in/out is each group consuming?
Doesnt seem to be clear to me at all.

Can someone clear this up?

chin_grin

Dr Nic wrote: »

I don't know about you Guys but that study seems very odd to me.
First off - not double blinded.
Second - n =27? Is that right?
Third - how many cals in/out is each group consuming?
Doesnt seem to be clear to me at all.

Can someone clear this up?

I have absolutely no idea what you just said (I'm still in laymans terms!). But there's a link from the article to the study here.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20837645

Training in the fasted state improves glucose tolerance during fat-rich diet.

Van Proeyen K, Szlufcik K, Nielens H, Pelgrim K, Deldicque L, Hesselink M, Van Veldhoven PP, Hespel P.

Research Centre for Exercise and Health, Department of Biomedical Kinesiology, K.U. Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Abstract

A fat-rich energy-dense diet is an important cause of insulin resistance. Stimulation of fat turnover in muscle cells during dietary fat challenge may contribute to maintenance of insulin sensitivity. Exercise in the fasted state markedly stimulates energy provision via fat oxidation. Therefore, we investigated whether exercise training in the fasted state is more potent than exercise in the fed state to rescue whole-body glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity during a period of hyper-caloric fat-rich diet. Healthy male volunteers (18-25 y) received a hyper-caloric (∼+30% kcal day(-1)) fat-rich (50% of kcal) diet for 6 weeks. Some of the subjects performed endurance exercise training (4 days per week) in the fasted state (F; n = 10), whilst the others ingested carbohydrates before and during the training sessions (CHO; n = 10). The control group did not train (CON; n = 7). Body weight increased in CON (+3.0 ± 0.8 kg) and CHO (+1.4 ± 0.4 kg) (P < 0.01), but not in F (+0.7 ± 0.4 kg, P = 0.13). Compared with CON, F but not CHO enhanced whole-body glucose tolerance and the Matsuda insulin sensitivity index (P < 0.05). Muscle GLUT4 protein content was increased in F (+28%) compared with both CHO (P = 0.05) and CON (P < 0.05). Furthermore, only training in F elevated AMP-activated protein kinase α phosphorylation (+25%) as well as up-regulated fatty acid translocase/CD36 and carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 mRNA levels compared with CON (∼+30%). High-fat diet increased intramyocellular lipid but not diacylglycerol and ceramide contents, either in the absence or presence of training. This study for the first time shows that fasted training is more potent than fed training to facilitate adaptations in muscle and to improve whole-body glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity during hyper-caloric fat-rich diet.

PMID: 20837645 [PubMed - in process]

Dr Nic

Well i suppose thats the whole thing about publishing studies online. There is so much backround education required that a lot of it doesnt make sense unless you have a Med degree or similiar.

This study looks interesting but not comphrensive enough to draw conclusions from, i think...

Hanley

Did they just shove extra kcals into the CHO group and didn't correct for the kcals in their fat intake?

How many additional kcals were consumed if that's the case?

Seems a bit weird from reading the abstract tbh.

Mellor

Hanley wrote: »

Did they just shove extra kcals into the CHO group and didn't correct for the kcals in their fat intake?

Looks like that tbh, the gatorade during training was additional on top od food cals, a bit stupid if thats actully the case.

Dr Nic

I cant seem to access the full text, even though I have a pubmed account
Hate that feckin site...

It doesnt look like cals are balanced between the groups so its quite possible that the group that gained no weight simply ate less cal's than the others.

StudentC

Dr Nic wrote: »

I don't know about you Guys but that study seems very odd to me.
First off - not double blinded.
Second - n =27? Is that right?
Third - how many cals in/out is each group consuming?
Doesnt seem to be clear to me at all.

Can someone clear this up?

Pretty hard to double-blind this sort of study - the participants know whether they've eaten breakfast or not!

n = 27 (groups of 10, 10 and 7) wouldn't be too unusual for a study like this - when it's labour intensive (a 6 week training study) and invasive (muscle biopsies) the numbers tend to be smaller.

The cal intake (and composition of fat, CHO and protein) was matched for the three groups.

Hanley wrote: »

Did they just shove extra kcals into the CHO group and didn't correct for the kcals in their fat intake?

How many additional kcals were consumed if that's the case?

Seems a bit weird from reading the abstract tbh.

They had the same intake overall, just the timing was different. So the fasted group got the same breakfast, but after the exercise, and had the CHO cals from the drink in the afternoon.

Dr Nic

Exactly - not double blinded. So we have no way of knowing if either treatment was of benefit.
One group could have been doing extra/less work during the day.
Maybe it says all exercise/food was matched and accounted for?

rocky

This study is explained in more detail here:

http://www.leangains.com/2010/09/fasted-training-insulin-sensitivity.html

Dr Nic

Very interesting breakdown
Fasted group incr Insulin sensitivity greatly, but didnt improve VO2 max as much as C group...