Have you ever won a lottery without actually purchasing the lottery ticket? It's funny to hear someone complaining about not winning the lottery although that person has not bought a ticket.
Today's topic is something similar. If you are working out and working on your nutrition to gain muscle and lose fat, you will need to learn to control your insulin. In other words, if you are not managing your insulin, you will probably not see any muscle gain or fat loss unless you are on some medication.
Good news is that the insulin is the only hormone that we have 100% control over. Which means as long as you learn how to manage insulin, you can manipulate the way you want.
Bulking and Cutting Is Outdated
People are truly struggling to keep their insulin level under control. Because of that they are not able to see much progress with fat loss and muscle gain.
There is a term called "bulking" where people "eat as much as you can" in the belief that "you can't put muscle mass without gaining fat". And then, when the time is right then they would go through "cutting" phase where they minimize their food intake to lower the body fat as much as they can.
However, not only the process is ineffective it damages your health because the process is ignoring hormonal balance. "Bulking" and "cutting" is outdated. Funny thing is people who are overweight or obese are following the similar sequence as "Bulking". Reason why weight loss or fat loss is challenging is because of not being able to manage insulin.
As mentioned earlier, among many hormones that our body has insulin is the only hormone that we have 100% control over. Yet with bulking and frequent cheat meals, people are abusing the insulin and not able to maximize it's potential.
Insulin Miss-Management
Biggest issue with bulking or frequent cheat meals are insulin management. Yes, it is beneficial to spike up your insulin after your workout and it is desirable for muscle growth and strength gain. However, other time of the day you will need to manage them. That is why intermittent fasting and Paleo diet got so popular.
Why?
When bulking or cheating, the body is most likely in hyperinsulinemia, or high insulin in the blood stream, and maintaining in that state for creating high insulin situation. Improper management of insulin actually leads to aging, which means the body will have tough time gaining muscle mass and strength. This is interesting because two of the top anti-aging factors are muscle mass and strength.
Mismanaged insulin, or keeping insulin level elevated for extended period, will lead to elevation of cortisol or stress hormone because of the fluctuation of blood sugar level. It will also triggers inflammatory signal which also elevate cortisol level.
Here is a fun fact. Cortisol elevates blood sugar to trigger more insulin. Amazing right?
So why do you workout again? To build more muscle and lose fat, correct?
Well, insulin increase the secretion of enzyme call aromatase. What does it do? It converts testosterone into estrogen. Don't you love this? To make this more lovable, not managed insulin will vastly increase the number of fat cells which release more of....aromatase.
So bulking or being fat is not productive with increase the size of the muscles or hypertrophy.
Eventually, as the insulin chronically elevated, the body starts to favor fat cells to accumulate rather than utilize them as energy source. The body may be able to gain muscle mass still but yet, accumulated fat mass will become difficult to manage. This will ultimately lead to unnecessary process of cutting by restricting carb intake.
By the way, chronically elevated insulin level will also have a negative impact to the thyroid function.Thyroid glands are the main generator for metabolism. Thyroid dysfunction can lead to low energy, fat loss difficulty, moodiness, and also digestion and immunity issues.
Conclusion
If you do carry extra fat mass and wanting to lose them, work on losing them first. It is more productive for you to gain muscle mass when you fat mass is less as mentioned before. Even when your fat mass is low and wanting to gain more muscle, there is no need to go into "bulking" phase, in fact you do not want to go there. Get lean and increase your insulin sensitivity.
Kota Shimada
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