Joined: Apr 25, 2003 Posts: 3,350 Location: Trying to slim down in NZ!
Posted: Thu 15th May 10:30am Post subject:
I understand that, but if I had two days where my energy usage is the same, what is the major difference if I eat most of my energy in the morning or in the evening?
I was working on the premise that you use so much energy in a day, your body will take what you put in, turn excess into fat or turn fat into the required energy if there is a shortage.
Joined: May 09, 2008 Posts: 77 Location: Wellington
Posted: Thu 15th May 10:41am Post subject:
Gotta say it, but i go the gym three times a week as well as all my rides, and it's great for reducing weight or just putting the muscle in the right place
Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 10,311 Location: Home sweet, cold home
Posted: Thu 15th May 10:46am Post subject:
way_downsouth wrote:
I understand that, but if I had two days where my energy usage is the same, what is the major difference if I eat most of my energy in the morning or in the evening?
I was working on the premise that you use so much energy in a day, your body will take what you put in, turn excess into fat or turn fat into the required energy if there is a shortage.
Beeker can probably give a more technical explanation, but look back at the post regarding lower vs higher intensity and the impact of each on calories burned.
Consider the 'window of opportunity' for refuelling (15-30 mins or so after training/racing). This window is about getting the calories back in to reduce the chance of unwanted weightloss. My point is that the timing can be just as important as the actual volume/number of calories. Type is also a factor (again see more of Beeker's stuff on high nutrition/low density).
Some of the tricks I used for weight loss a few years ago were low fat diet, low sugar diet (ie high GI), high protein, limited carbs after 4pm, most of my calorie intake before 4pm, trained before breakfast most days (and again in the evening), and waited 30-60mins to eat after training.
Joined: Oct 12, 2005 Posts: 2,870 Location: Christchurch
Posted: Thu 15th May 10:51am Post subject:
Also just thinking about it, if you've skimped on your food intake during the day, whether you've trained or not, you'll probably make poorer food choices when you do finally come to eat because you're so hungry.
I understand that, but if I had two days where my energy usage is the same, what is the major difference if I eat most of my energy in the morning or in the evening?
I was working on the premise that you use so much energy in a day, your body will take what you put in, turn excess into fat or turn fat into the required energy if there is a shortage.
That is true to a point...but;
Your body is under the influence of many control points & hormones, one of the major ones being your blood glucose levels.
Your metabolic rate runs at its fastest from early morning through to late afternoon & generally starts to wind back into the evening. Your brain is normally most active during the day. You have to be up & about for work & life in general. And many other processes need to function. All of these things pull fuel out of the blood stream. If glucose levels begin to fall too low, warning lights start to flash. Your body does have systems to maintain a constant output (can break protein down to produce glucose), but these processes are long term survival adaptations that are not ideal & have drawbacks.
If BGL's drop too low, cortisol levels increase (cortisol is catabolic - it breaks you down), adrenalin increases & puts your system under stress. And many other signals are released to help drive appetite. What happens when you get home & have easy access to food is that you run the risk of over compensating & eating too much. You stack the majority of your energy consumed into your body at a time where it cannot preferentially restore it as glycogen in the muscles & the system response to low fuel during the day regears the system to increased fat deposition. Multiply this effect over days, weeks, months, & body fat levels can increase dramatically.
If say, to remain in energy balance you needed to consume 10000kJ per day, theoretically it doesn't matter if you consumed this all in one hit at any point during the day or spread it out... in theory. But in practice, the above hormonal cascade has too big an influence on our decisions we make. And humans cannot gauge energy density - they eat on volume. And with more & more food coming in smaller packages but being incredibly energy dense, it is very easy to passively over consume. e.g. a chocolate bar may have more energy than a plate load of vegetables, a chicken breast, & a cup of rice.
You need to remember that our body has evolved to cope with periods of low energy intake that may last days or weeks (time between kills, harvests, scavenging). But this protective mechanism gets us into trouble when the period of starvation lasts only a matter of hours before an abundance of high energy food is accessible.
Last edited by Beeker on Thu 15th May 11:10am; edited 1 time in total
Jebus maing, just get out and ride a heap, and eat betterer food.
Unless you are training for performance in which case you need to know a bit more detail...
Only problem otherwise, is that many people don't actually know what is betterer food and what isn't. A great place to start is reading the labels on things - less than 10g fat per 100g, and look for high splits of complex over simple (sugar) in the carbohydrate line. An even healthier guideline is food that is 'close to the ground' ie, the less processed the better. Fresh fruit and veg, unprocessed meat, whole grains etc. (Which is why I'm so peeved we won't see an Aussie-like GST removal on unprocessed foods).
Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 10,311 Location: Home sweet, cold home
Posted: Thu 15th May 11:08am Post subject:
Beeker... with all your wonderful technical foody knowledge, I wonder if you can answer a question for me. I have read that canned food essentially has no nutritional value because it is super-heated during it's processing. Is this true? I'm rather fond of my tinned peaches (and get rather excited when the ones with the lower simple sugar content go on special), and would it also apply to tuna?
Some of the tricks I used for weight loss a few years ago were low fat diet, low sugar diet (ie high GI), high protein, limited carbs after 4pm, most of my calorie intake before 4pm, trained before breakfast most days (and again in the evening), and waited 30-60mins to eat after training.
Some of those are good strategies, but I wouldn't be too concerned with really screwing fat levels right down, i.e. 99% fat free foods are kcollobs. It is looking more & more like fairly even portions (energy-wise) are the best, with a slight bias toward carbs... along the lines of the zone diet (40C 30P 30F). Guidelines for fat intake have been 33% for donkey's...again the quality is more important the the quantity (to a point).
I'm not a fan of decarbing the evening meal per se unless that carb load has been shifted, such as more carbs stacked in & around training sessions. People often fail to compensate for additions to their eating, e.g. eat an office shout, but still have a metric kcufload of carbs at night, or have their carbs plus a dessert. If weightloss is the goal & you want these extras, then be prepared to compensate & decarbing the dinner meal is one way of doing that.
Glycaemic load is probably more important than GI for weight loss too (again very general & to a point). GL = GI x amount. So for a high & low GI example;
0.75 x 50 = 37.5
0.40 x 200 = 80.0
There are people who use predominantly low GI, but still eat so much that the total loading is far too high, but this is more in super fatty territory than just a minor bit of weightloss.
rachelr wrote:
Also just thinking about it, if you've skimped on your food intake during the day, whether you've trained or not, you'll probably make poorer food choices when you do finally come to eat because you're so hungry.
Exactly. The higher some of those hormones ramp up, the more likely you are to go for quick fix high energy foods.
Beeker... with all your wonderful technical foody knowledge, I wonder if you can answer a question for me. I have read that canned food essentially has no nutritional value because it is super-heated during it's processing. Is this true? I'm rather fond of my tinned peaches (and get rather excited when the ones with the lower simple sugar content go on special), and would it also apply to tuna?
I would doubt this very much... can you imagine fruit if it was superheated?
The drop off in nutritional value from eating canned but still relatively unprocessed foods would be minimal. And if you are eating canned peaches you are getting more nutrients than not eating fruit at all if it wasn't otherwise available.
I would simplify the whole label reading thing even further:
- Energy content in the serving size you are likely to eat
- Proportion of saturated fat to total fat (fat is your friend - don't be afraid of the good stuff)
- Proportion of sugar to total carbohydrate (although this is still misleading)
Single biggest over-riding factor should be the level of processing... how many steps away from its original form is it? Or if you left it on the kitchen bench exposed to the air for more than 24-48 hours, could you still eat it? Was it killed, milked, grown, or man-made?
Joined: May 31, 2004 Posts: 10,311 Location: Home sweet, cold home
Posted: Thu 15th May 11:41am Post subject:
Beeker wrote:
wgtngrl wrote:
Beeker... with all your wonderful technical foody knowledge, I wonder if you can answer a question for me. I have read that canned food essentially has no nutritional value because it is super-heated during it's processing. Is this true? I'm rather fond of my tinned peaches (and get rather excited when the ones with the lower simple sugar content go on special), and would it also apply to tuna?
I would doubt this very much... can you imagine fruit if it was superheated?
The drop off in nutritional value from eating canned but still relatively unprocessed foods would be minimal. And if you are eating canned peaches you are getting more nutrients than not eating fruit at all if it wasn't otherwise available.
I would simplify the whole label reading thing even further:
- Energy content in the serving size you are likely to eat
- Proportion of saturated fat to total fat (fat is your friend - don't be afraid of the good stuff)
- Proportion of sugar to total carbohydrate (although this is still misleading)
Single biggest over-riding factor should be the level of processing... how many steps away from its original form is it? Or if you left it on the kitchen bench exposed to the air for more than 24-48 hours, could you still eat it? Was it killed, milked, grown, or man-made?
Haha - that's why I was quite dubious of the claim.
As to the rest - Amen! But how do you make that sexy for marketing campaigns
Joined: Dec 25, 2001 Posts: 32,389 Location: Liberty City
Posted: Thu 15th May 11:46am Post subject:
If I want to lose weight all I have to do is cut out sugar and processed grain out of my diet and eat as much as I want of everything else - I then shed about ½ a kg a week and feel a lot better for it...
...however it makes eating a complete esra as you rapidly realize how much sugar and processed grain there is in our diets so your food options plummet dramatically. Sooner or later I crack and end up back up eating loaves of white bread covered in hundreds and thousands (well, perhaps not that bad but you get my drift.)
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