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Understanding insulin to improve body composition
Control your insulin for optimal gains in lean muscle and fat loss.
Firstly I will explain what insulin is and it’s role within the body.(If you want to get straight to how to lose fat go to paragraph 3). Insulin is a hormone,that’s produced in the pancreas and is mainly responsible for transporting carbohydrate into your muscles where it can be used as energy.
Unless suffering from a disorder,diabetes and metabolic syndrome, insulin is released into the bloodstream to transport it into to your muscles. When blood glucose levels fall below a certain level in starvation for example the body begins to use stored sugar as an energy source through glycogenolysis, which breaks down the glycogen stored in the liver and muscles into glucose, which can then be utilised as an energy source. In this state this is when your muscles are being eaten away for your body to survive as long as possible.
The reason you can’t just eat as much carbs along as possible so your body has lots of energy and your muscles will continue to grow,is because abusing this finely tuned hormonal system will result in insulin resistance. When resistance has happened the body is messed up in two main ways. Firstly your body can’t use carbohydrate as energy efficiently as the muscles block insulin and carbohydrate uptake,which leads to a second problem the carbohydrate has to go somewhere,your fat cells accept it instead so your fat cells enlarge making you fatter. At this point lean gains and fat loss will be neglible.
If you have become insulin resistant this needs to be remedied as soon as possible for results. An insulin reset protocol is the way to do this again it’s something I require my clients to do once I have assessed their insulin sights to determine if they are insulin resistant (for anyone self assessing if you have back boobs you are insulin resistant). The protocol will last ten days to be effective, during this phase training has to work in tandem, so workouts would be focused on emptying the body of stored glycogen. Typically training will consist of circuits using compound exercises only with a rep range of 10-12 and tempo of 2010. Diet wise during these 10 days carbs are off limits and the only veg you eat are dark green,cruciferous as they are low/no carbs this is absolutely essential. Fat needs to be consumed with EVERY meal doesn’t always need to be meat (eggs,butter,fatty fish,coconut oil).It’s not uncommon to get sugar bad cravings during the insulin reset phase to help with this ,foods high in sulphur can help eg broccoli.
For fat loss or looking for lean mass gain,and you are not insulin resistant a carb cycle protocol is best, which I do with many of my clients this will keep your body metabolically flexible, meaning it has carbs when needed for sufficient energy to train hard and recover optimally,and will also be able to use fat for fuel, Typically you would do this by -workout days medium to high carbs (dependant on muscles used), rest days no to low carbs.