Bcoulal's Journal

Interesting, my weight remained roughly the same around 202 lbs, but I lost 3% bodyfat. Last bodyfat measurement using the same calculator I was 17.5%, now it's 14.5%. I used the 3-site Jackson/Pollock method for simplicity.

The ironic thing is I haven't stepped in the gym since January and according to this chart I'm considered fit.

See what I mean? The Ketogenic diet preserves muscles while burning fat, once you're in fully keto-adapted state that is (this process takes up to 6 weeks if you do it right). Even scientific literature says ketosis induces a "protein and glycogen sparing effect."

Fructose, Glucose's evil twin brother.

Excerpts from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome,

What does the evil twin of glucose do to the body?

Lowers leptin concentrations:
"Because leptin production is regulated by insulin responses to meals, fructose consumption also reduces circulating leptin concentrations"

Fructose is considered a low glycemic sugar, which means it doesn't trigger insulin response, but don't let that fool you.

Fructose turns directly into fat in the liver, which either collects around your organs as visceral fat or floats around your blood stream as heart clogging cholesterol. Look up the metabolism of fructose, it's almost as frightening as the metabolism of alcohol.

Eating lots of fructose reduces leptin and insulin in your blood, therefore causing you to be resistant to the effects of either hormone, which is supposed to regulate your well-being and health in terms of diet. Fructose comes in and turns into chaos what was once in order:

"The combined effects of lowered circulating leptin and insulin in individuals who consume diets that are high in dietary fructose could therefore increase the likelihood of weight gain and its associated metabolic sequelae."

Fructose impairs glucose tolerance. That means eating so much fructose has also caused your body to become allergic to glucose too:
"Fructose consumption induces insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, hyperinsulinemia, hypertriacylglycerolemia, and hypertension in animal models."

Ref: American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Points to remember:
1. If you have more bodyfat than normal or are considered obese by certain standards, you already have metabolic syndrome in the form of leptin and insulin resistance.

2. The only way to efficiently reverse or minimize the damage of insulin and leptin resistance is to reduce the consumption of fructose and alcohol to nil for a lengthy amount of time, if not permanently. This also includes starchy glucose foods as well, since one evil sugar has already caused your body to hate the good sugar too, you might as well reduce consumption of both.

3. Take a look around and look at all the people who are morbidly obese. They're the ones with the sweet tooth's. Fructose is a useless sugar. It has no function in the human body except for turning directly into fat. 100% of fructose turns into fat. At least with glucose, if you're not insulin resistant, only 10% is turned into fat. If you ARE insulin resistant, thanks to fructose, 100% of glucose also turns into fat. In other words, fructose doubles the rate of fat accumulation by turning glucose evil too.

Here's one of my favorite websites to visit, Authority Nutrition, an evidence based approach. Excerpt: "Glucose is absolutely vital to life and is an integral part of our metabolism....Fructose, however, is very different. This molecule is not a natural part of metabolism and humans do not produce it."

That'll tell you everything you need to know about why humans don't need to eat fructose. Fructose is a sneaky ninja. Fructose alone doesn't make you fat, but if eaten with glucose, the fat will pile on at an accelerated rate until you finally look in the mirror and see a significant change in body composition and wondered what the hell just happened.

Salt and vision problems. Coincidence?

Unsalted meat actually has flavor to those who have lowered their daily sodium intake to 500mg a day. According to Clemson Cooperative Extension, you need a minimum of 250 to 500 mg per day to meet your daily needs, but this doesn't cover people who actively sweat (both gym rats and people with overactive sweat glands), which means you may need up to 1,500mg depending on how much you sweat. The American Heart Association recommends a salt intake of no more than 1,500 mg per day.

If you're not active and not sweating more than normal, you need just 180 mg per day to replace sodium, according to the American Heart Association. Despite what you may have heard or think, the amount of sodium intake required to stay alive vs what you normally eat on a typical American diet is a 1,833% difference.

For those who eat meat with added salts and hidden salts in processed meats, carbs, and even butters, which can total up to 5,000mg of sodium a day (the average American consumes 3,300mg of sodium a day), the desensitized tongue can't taste the natural flavor of meat.

Asians are the worst when it comes to sodium, everything they put in their food has high amounts of sodium from Fish Sauce to Soy Sauce to Sea Salt to seafood. There's a very strong correlation between vision problems and high sodium intake.

In fact, a study on nearsightedness conducted by the Australian National University found that vision problems (myopia in particular) are far more common in East Asian countries with up to 90% of young adults in countries like: China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan showing signs of nearsightedness.

This is no coincidence. I'm Asian, and when growing up, everything was salty as hell (mom's cooking, what can I say). Ironically, I wore glasses at a very young age, had horrible eye-sight and was dependent upon glasses to see everything, and later on in life I wore contacts instead of the BCGs (that's what we call them in boot camp).

Then come March 2003, where I had free lasik eye surgery (paid for by the military) to correct my vision before I deployed to the Middle-East for Operation Iraqi Freedom / Operation Enduring Freedom. I'm just saying, if you're having vision problems, especially at such a young age, you might be eating too much salt.

Great website to check out on the controversial topics on carbohydrates and gout (specifically fructose, the useless sugar that makes everything taste sweet and evil twin to glucose), and how it can cause metabolic syndromes like insulin resistance, obesity, and diabetes.

Gout was my biggest problem for over 15 years. I was consuming everything that was a processed/refined carbohydrate from alcohol to sugar to carbs, which were the demons that brought about such unholy pain in the end.

Trust me, you don't want to have a multi-joint gout attack that cripples you for 3 weeks straight disabling you from getting up to go eat or to the bathroom. I had such incidence and was bed ridden for 3 weeks straight, I basically had to go to the bathroom in my own bed, it was that bad.

Now that I've reduced my carb intake to less than 50g a day, I have more energy, my hormones are no longer out of whack and fluctuate like the stock market. I've lost a lot of weight and am lighter to do the things I want to do (like walk up a flight of stairs without losing my breath), and gout inflammations have completely disappeared. The connection between sugar/alcohol and gout is real.

Sugar and alcohol are no different in terms of metabolism. They both produce huge amounts of uric acid as a byproduct. The only difference is alcohol makes you drunk and sugar is just "alcohol without the buzz."~Dr. Robert Lustig, M.D.

Prevent or Stop Gout

Just keep in mind that exercise causes you to gain weight. If you depend on the scale to determine bodyfat loss, you're doing it wrong. The proper way to measure bodyfat is using simple old fashion bodyfat calipers, which btw are even cheaper than scales.