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Physiology question


Scott Rose
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I read that if you wait too long to eat, your body will start using your muscles as a food source. My question is why would your body choose the muscle over fat stores, and what conditions are needed for each to happen?

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Keilani Gutierrez

i don't know much of the science, but since systems usually have "carry-over" from following the same physic principles, it'd have to be something not so far fetched and easily explainable. i'd shoot out my speculations but that's all it is, i'm not sure if it's based on science, so i dont go on it based on gospel because im not versed in it. 

 

mobilizing the fat stores has something to do with how our bodies react to insulin, which im also not to keen on. all I know is that the more explosive the movements are, glycogen stores are mobilized. the more low intensity the movements are, more fat stores are mobilized. 

 

all I know is that eating my portions 3 hrs spaced, gives me the psychological anxiety that i'm overeating but my body apparently loves it, so i have been sticking to that. 

 

as to what conditions induce anabolism and catabolism, someone else will chime in on that and add or correct whatever i just said. 

 

(disclaimer)

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Leandro Santos

It's not true that our body will use your muscles as food source. It's false science.

 

I say this by personal experience, i eat 2 times per day and do all day fasting on saturday , have been doing this for more than 1 month (except fasting) and did not even lost musculature. I did gain musculature and lost body fat and i'm vegan.

 

There's no logic in our body use our muscles as food source if there is another source like body fat to use. We need muscle to move our body and live.

 

Instead of getting sick, the only things i got from doing this are the following:

 

-Increased mental cappacity, memory,thinking

 

-Greater muscle recovery, my body fully recovery after each workout

 

- Never more had gastrointestinal problems, and to give u an ideal, i have chronic gastritis but never more have had any problems with that, never more had pain, stomach gas, burn,etc.

 

-Improved sleep

 

-Increased muscular strenght levels, rapidy advance in strengt, flexibility etc.

 

-Economy

 

-My health and welfare increased like 300 times.

 

-On the Sunday after the fasting on the saturday i feel like, " I have a new body"

 

- I'm losing excess body fat

 

- The vegan food is so much better than the "normal food"

 

 I don't eat excess calories to gain musculature, i eat until i get satisfied without getting full, i don't count calories.

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I was thinking along the line of the body goes into 'mantenance mode.' Muscle burns a lot of calories compared to fat. A pound of fat is about 3 calories and a pound of muscle is in the neighborhood of 100ish. Maybe the body realizes this and tries to make adjustments based on what it thinks it can maintain with current intake? We do need muscle, but many athletes have an excess to what their body would naturally have. This is my best guess. Any thoughts?

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Connor Davies

Basically your body will use muscles for a fuel source when there's no fat left to use as a fuel source.  go a couple months without eating, you'll go catabolic.  It isn't the kind of thing that happens in a few days, so I wouldn't worry about it.

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Keilani Gutierrez

I was thinking along the line of the body goes into 'mantenance mode.' Muscle burns a lot of calories compared to fat. A pound of fat is about 3 calories and a pound of muscle is in the neighborhood of 100ish. Maybe the body realizes this and tries to make adjustments based on what it thinks it can maintain with current intake? We do need muscle, but many athletes have an excess to what their body would naturally have. This is my best guess. Any thoughts?

I think you meant to say one lb of Fat = 3,500(around the neighborhood)Calories. 

 

what will make the difference in how you "process" your calorie intake is when and how you take them. 

 

for example, if your BMR is (2,000 calories) and you eat those 2,000 calories for breakfast, you'd store most of it as Fat.

if you eat those exact same 2,000 calories in the evening, you will have lost a lot of muscle throughout the day and stored quite a bit of that food you just ate as fat, as well. 

 

nature has cycles, like the seasons, plant in spring, plants veg in summer, harvest in autumn, nothing really happens in winter. 

depending on where you begin which process will give you an indication of what will happen. if you plant in winter, it'll die, if you plant it in summer, it won't have a lot of time to veg and won't be ready for harvest before Winter comes. 

 

 

body has a rhythm(which i don't know what to call, since i just simply don't know) and the better you follow it, the better your performance will be, granted that your caloric intake is a mixture of protein, carb, fat sources with plenty of veggies. 

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Leandro Santos

I was thinking along the line of the body goes into 'mantenance mode.' Muscle burns a lot of calories compared to fat. A pound of fat is about 3 calories and a pound of muscle is in the neighborhood of 100ish. Maybe the body realizes this and tries to make adjustments based on what it thinks it can maintain with current intake? We do need muscle, but many athletes have an excess to what their body would naturally have. This is my best guess. Any thoughts?

In my opinion and based in some actual studies showing that muscle has an important hole in improving health, and in the fact that man was created (i'm cristian) to be in constant devolopment (mind, character, spirituality) , i think there is no such a thing like excess musculature, unless the musculature gained by steroids which will be gained by unnatural means and the body will not have a "support" to have such high levels of musculature if the rest of it's faculties aren't proportionally devoloped. 

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I think you meant to say one lb of Fat = 3,500(around the neighborhood)Calories. 

 

what will make the difference in how you "process" your calorie intake is when and how you take them. 

 

for example, if your BMR is (2,000 calories) and you eat those 2,000 calories for breakfast, you'd store most of it as Fat.

if you eat those exact same 2,000 calories in the evening, you will have lost a lot of muscle throughout the day and stored quite a bit of that food you just ate as fat, as well. 

 

nature has cycles, like the seasons, plant in spring, plants veg in summer, harvest in autumn, nothing really happens in winter. 

depending on where you begin which process will give you an indication of what will happen. if you plant in winter, it'll die, if you plant it in summer, it won't have a lot of time to veg and won't be ready for harvest before Winter comes. 

 

 

body has a rhythm(which i don't know what to call, since i just simply don't know) and the better you follow it, the better your performance will be, granted that your caloric intake is a mixture of protein, carb, fat sources with plenty of veggies.

I was referring to how many calories a pound of fat burns a day vs muscle. My numbers were wrong but here is a link. http://www.ncsf.org/enew/articles/articles-poundofmuscle.aspx

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Keilani Gutierrez

I was referring to how many calories a pound of fat burns a day vs muscle. My numbers were wrong but here is a link. http://www.ncsf.org/enew/articles/articles-poundofmuscle.aspx

read it over the top and the concensus seems to be the same, there's a rhythm in the blood glucose levels(if im stating this wrong, please someone point it out, so i can edit it) when you eat and when it starts to dip down, you pick it up at around the 2.5-3hr mark and keep riding that wave until the end of the day. 

 

as an example, my numbers:

2328kcal (no exercise)

wake up:7am

go to bed: 11pm

hours awake: 16hrs(divided by 2.5 or 3 = 6.4 or 5.3)

meals:divide the calories by meals per day. 

 

 

i don't know much of the science, but thats the equation i've put together reading up on Josh's material and from personal conversations with other forum members. it's extremely rudimentary on my part from inexperience, but if i eat around 5 times a day, two shakes will be around the area of exercise be it morning or during-the-day-time. 

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Connor Davies

Your body is supposed to only be able to process 30 grams of protein at a time, hence the logic behind the "eat 6 small meals a day" thing, which does nothing to boost fat burning, like most people seem to think.

 

However, depending on how long it takes you to digest the protein, you can actually use more than the base 30g, so provided your food takes a long time to chew (my baseline for rate of digestion) you're probably fine eating fewer meals a day.

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FREDERIC DUPONT

At the risk of tripping in the carpet, I'll give that one a go: :)

 

1- We cannot directly and instantly measure what the body is doing at any given time; we can only observe markers of metabolism, and try to infer what happened. In the case of protein synthesis, what is observed after exercise in an increase in the "protein destruction" markers. That can mean that (a) exercise damaged some muscle fibers that are being "cleaned up" and recycled, (b) some muscle is being used to repair the damage done during exercise elsewhere, or © any combination of (a) and (b).

 

2- Protein intake before, during and just after exercise ensures the immediate availability of amino acids for the repairs.

 

3- Energy must be ingested at these times as well (preferably fast carbs) in order to (a) replenish the stores of glycogen used during exercise, and (b) allow for a better absorption/utilization of the protein without further taxing the already low energy stores of the body after exercise (Amino acid absorption & protein synthesis requires energy)

 

4- I do not think that over such a short period the body would use muscle for energy! Protein can enter the energy cycles, but the process is rather inefficient, it is costly to the body (what is burnt will have to be re-synthetized at a higher cost); it takes time to turn on this metabolism pathway - I think that in the short term fat metabolism will always take precedence over protein metabolism for energy.

 

5- Of course, over a period of days, if you continue to deny your body the essential nutrients it needs - in this case amino acids - some muscle and organ will be metabolized to free up what is needed for essential repairs.

[i am unsure how long it would take for your body to start down that path]

 

 

In short: Provide what your body needs when it needs it :)

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Joel Tomkins

In response to the question, "Why would your body choose the muscle over fat if both are available?", there's a really simple answer - because muscle is protein and fat is fat. If your body needs protein and you aren't eating any then it has no choice but to use muscle. In all likelihood your body is going to be using both rather than just one in isolation - fat for general energy requirements and muscle protein for maintenance as required.

As to when and what may cause your body to need protein I'm not going to speculate on because others here know better than I do, but daily maintenance of the vital organs is going to have a higher priority than maintaining your biceps.

 

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Connor Davies

In response to the question, "Why would your body choose the muscle over fat if both are available?", there's a really simple answer - because muscle is protein and fat is fat. If your body needs protein and you aren't eating any then it has no choice but to use muscle. In all likelihood your body is going to be using both rather than just one in isolation - fat for general energy requirements and muscle protein for maintenance as required.

As to when and what may cause your body to need protein I'm not going to speculate on because others here know better than I do, but daily maintenance of the vital organs is going to have a higher priority than maintaining your biceps.

 

Something I learned recently, is that it's all protein.  Basically everything your genetic structure does at the cellular level, all the chemical signalling, is done by protein.  It's the only fuel source your body needs.  To some extent you can convert carbohydrates to protein, but I'm not really sure of the specific mechanisms.

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Daniel Burnham

Guys,  unless you actually know what you are talking about (few do) please do not muddle up the subject.  This is how pseudo-science gets perpetuated by starting with a concept we don't really understand.  

 

In reality this topic is fairly involved and depends on a lot of factors which I do not have time to get into.  In the end it really doesn't matter does it? Read Fred's comment and that's about all you need.

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Daniel Burnham

Something I learned recently, is that it's all protein.  Basically everything your genetic structure does at the cellular level, all the chemical signalling, is done by protein.  It's the only fuel source your body needs.  To some extent you can convert carbohydrates to protein, but I'm not really sure of the specific mechanisms.

That is just blatantly false.

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Joshua Slocum

Something I learned recently, is that it's all protein.  Basically everything your genetic structure does at the cellular level, all the chemical signalling, is done by protein.  It's the only fuel source your body needs.  To some extent you can convert carbohydrates to protein, but I'm not really sure of the specific mechanisms.

 

That is just blatantly false.

To expand on this: yes, what genes do is make proteins. And proteins are largely responsible for chemical signaling. This does not mean that protein is all you need. If you were to only eat protein, you would get very sick. You need a good balance of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. 

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Agree with Daniel. While I was reading through this I just though " man people are going to be reiterating what they heard here based on people's very limited knowledge and a whole bunch of guessing and assumptions"

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Connor Davies

Guys,  unless you actually know what you are talking about (few do) please do not muddle up the subject.  This is how pseudo-science gets perpetuated by starting with a concept we don't really understand. 

Noted.  I've been developing a tendency lately to chime in with advice on everything, regardless of whether I really know what I'm talking about or not.  This clearly isn't my field of expertise, nor will it ever be, and I'd hate to turn into an "armchair expert" giving people terrible advice or false information.  I think I'll try asking more questions, rather than giving more answers.

 

Either way, if anyone wants to know how to buy an armchair I know some decent progressions...

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