The Body Sculpting Bible for Women (16 page)

Stretch your
shoulders
by grasping one of your wrists with the opposite hand. Without moving your torso, begin to pull your arm as far as possible. Hold this position for a count of five and repeat with the other arm.

Chapter 4

Nutrition

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The second component of the formula for success is nutrition. Nutrition is what gives us the raw materials for recuperation, energy, and growth. Without a good diet, your dreams of achieving your ideal body will never be reached. Please pay close attention to the following sections.

If you truly wish to succeed and reach all of your body-sculpting goals quickly with no delays, then you must make sure to follow the nutritional guidelines. Too many people neglect to follow these guidelines and, because of that, never reach their goals of creating a beautiful physique. You could train like a maniac but if you fail to pay attention to your nutrition, you will fail.

Let’s discuss the characteristics of a good nutritional program, beginning with the nutritional basics.

NUTRITION BASICS

There are three macronutrients that the human body needs in order to function properly:

CARBOHYDRATES

Carbohydrates are your body’s main source of energy. When you ingest carbohydrates, your pancreas releases a hormone called insulin. In addition to regulating our blood sugar, insulin is very important because:

• It grabs on to the carbohydrates and either stores them in the muscle and liver for future use (this is called glycogen which is stored carbohydrates) or stores them as fat.

• It grabs on to the amino acids (protein) and shelters them inside the muscle cell for recovery and repair. This is called increasing protein synthesis.

• While the above is an oversimplification of the many actions of Insulin, for our purposes of discussion those are its main functions.

Most people who are overweight and are on low fat/high carbohydrate diets are in that condition because they eat an overabundance of carbohydrates. Too many carbohydrates cause your body to release huge amounts of insulin. When there is too much insulin in the body, your body naturally turns these excess carbohydrate calories into fat, thus creating a human fat storing machine. Therefore, it is important that we eat the right amount and types of carbs.

COMPLEX AND SIMPLE CARBOHYDRATES

Carbohydrates are divided into two categories: complex carbs and simple carbs.

The
complex carbohydrates
are hundreds of sugar units linked together in single molecules (reason they are called complex) and typically give you more sustained energy (provided they have a medium to low Glycemic Index (GI)) as they take more time to be broken down by the body. Note: Complex carbohydrates with a high GI behave more like a simple sugar, which is digested quickly.

There are two types of complex carbs, which you will be eating in small portions frequently throughout the day:

• Starchy carbs provide you with raw energy that your body can use. Good sources are oatmeal, grits, brown rice, lentils, sweet potatoes, and cream of wheat.

•
Fibrous carbs
cannot be absorbed, but are rich in vitamins and minerals. In addition, fiber cleans up your intestines, which allows for better absorption of the nutrients that you get from digestible foods. Mixing fibrous sources with starchy sources lowers the rate of digestion of the starchy carbs, thus lowering their GI. Good sources are: asparagus, squash, broccoli, green beans, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, mushrooms, lettuce, red or green peppers, tomato, spinach, and zucchini.

GLYCEMIC INDEX

In order to understand the proper carbs to consume, you must understand the details of the Glycemic Index. The Glycemic Index (or GI for short) is a measure of how quickly your blood sugar rises after ingesting a carbohydrate. Basically, once you consume a carbohydrate and it gets digested it gets turned to glucose (blood sugar). Blood sugar is used by the body to manufacture ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate), which is the molecule that the body uses to power up all of its functions. You can think of ATP as your body’s fuel, as without ATP, your organism would not be able to function.

The way that GI works is that each food is assigned a value, typically from 0-100, based on how fast blood sugar increases in the next two hours after consuming a carbohydrate. A value of 100 would represent a food that increases blood sugar very rapidly, such as a straight glucose drink. A value of 59, like the one from brown rice, means that the blood sugar response is moderate. Therefore, for the purposes of blood sugar control and fat loss, brown rice is a much better choice than a glucose drink.

That is because how quickly a carbohydrate is turned into glucose and released in the bloodstream affects the amount of insulin that the pancreas will release to control blood sugar levels. Too quick of a conversion and your insulin levels skyrocket, a bad situation if you are trying to lose body fat since fat loss cannot occur in the presence of high insulin levels. Such a hormonal environment triggers fat storage. Therefore, it stands to reason that if a carbohydrate is released slowly into the blood stream, then less insulin is released and fat loss is maximized.

So is controlling GI the main key to losing body fat? Yes and no. Understanding the effect of foods on your blood sugar is important as several studies have shown that eating low GI carbohydrates throughout the day suppresses appetite and provides more stable energy levels as blood sugar is better controlled (Note: sudden drops in blood sugar make you feel hungry and lethargic). In addition, eating low GI foods allows for more consumption of food without body fat storage and for a leaner you due to body fat loss.

What’s a Low GI Food?

While there are many opinions out there on what a low GI food is, typically a food under 55 is considered low, a food under 70 is medium and anything over 70 is high. However, we must understand that what you eat in conjunction with your carbohydrates will affect your GI. Every time you eat a protein with a carbohydrate the total GI of the meal will go down since protein is a very complex molecule and thus slows down the digestion of the carb. Fats also have this effect. Since you will not be eating just a carbohydrate in the Body Sculpting Bible nutrition plan, then the raw GI number should only be used as a guideline. Besides, GI does not provide us with the whole answer as to which carbohydrate is best for us in order to lose fat.

What GI Does Not Take Into Account

An important reason why we cannot take GI as the only measure of whether a carbohydrate that we choose will help us lose fat or not is because GI does not take into account the different ways in which the body handles complex carbohydrates from starches like brown rice (or grains like oatmeal) vs. a simple carbohydrate like an apple.

Simple carbohydrates
are made up of one, two, or three units of sugar )at the most) linked together in single molecules, and thus, give you immediate energy as they are released more readily in the body. Good sources are: apples, pears, cantaloupes, oranges, cherries, strawberries, grapefruit, lemon, nectarines, peaches. Higher sugar fruits like grapes or bananas are best for after a workout if desired.

Though the glycemic index categorizes most fruits as low GI, as you will see, the simple sugar found in fruits called fructose is metabolized differently than the sugars from starches. To understand how the process differs, first let’s see how the body uses glucose.

If blood glucose levels are low, the body uses the glucose it gets from foods and bums it immediately for energy. This is one of the reasons why after a workout, the body utilizes carbohydrates so efficiently. Now, assuming that there is no immediate need for energy, glucose is then converted into glycogen and stored in the liver or the muscles. The liver can hold roughly 100 grams of glycogen but the muscles, depending on how muscular you are, may store between 200-400 grams. The key point to remember: The glycogen from muscles can only supply energy to the muscles when they are contracting (so muscle glycogen gets depleted badly during a weight training workout). Liver glycogen however, can supply energy to the entire body. It is key to remember this in order to understand how fructose does not help with fat loss.

The way that the body gets fat when there is an excess of carbohydrates is that if all of the glycogen stores in the body are full, then the extra glucose is converted to fat by the liver and stored as adipose tissue (bodyfat), probably around your waist.

Now that you understand how glucose is used and how fat can be stored in situations where all glycogen levels are full, lets go back to the fruits. What happens with fructose is that the muscles do not have the enzyme required to turn fructose into glycogen. The liver does, so fructose replenishes the liver. It does not take much to replenish a liver of glycogen as it can hold around 100 grams only. Therefore, if you overdo the fruits, you will fill up your liver glycogen and this causes the body to release an enzyme signaling the body that glycogen stores are full. Since the liver has to supply energy for the whole body, the body uses its glycogen stores as the fuel gauge. When the tank is full, so to speak, that is when any extra fuel gets stored away. Because of this, we suggest that fruits are limited and even eliminated If on an aggressive fat loss diet. By the way, if you are wondering why most fruits can be so low GI and still cause so much damage is because fructose leaves the liver as fat and fat does not raise insulin levels.

C
ARBOLHYDRATE
C
ONSUMPTION
R
ECOMMENDATIONS

It is recommended that you eat mainly medium (less than 65 GI) to low (less than 55 GI) glycemic complex carbs throughout the day, as they are responsible for creating consistent
energy levels for peak performance and daily functions.

If you must eat fruits, minimize your consumption to two servings per day at times where some of your liver glycogen has been depleted. The best times are the morning with breakfast and right after a workout. This will help to speed up the recuperation time and aid in the production of lean muscle tissue. Ingesting simple carbs throughout the day is not recommended as if your liver glycogen is full, then you will risk storing body fat.

Now that we have covered all that there is to know regarding carbohydrates, let’s talk about the major building blocks in the body, which are proteins.

PROTEIN

Every tissue in your body is made up of protein (i.e. muscle, hair, skin, and nails etc.). Proteins are the building blocks of lean muscle tissue. Without it, building muscle and burning fat efficiently would be impossible. Protein helps to increase your metabolism every time you eat it by 20% and it time-releases carbohydrates (glucose) by lowering their glycemic index, so you get sustained energy throughout the day.

During the 14-Day Body Sculpting Program, you should consume between 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass. (In other words, if you are 200 lbs and have 10% body fat, you should consume at least 180 grams of protein, since your lean body mass = 180 lbs.) Most people should not consume more than 1.5 grams per pound of lean body mass as this is unnecessary and the extra protein will be turned into glucose and used for energy, excreted out of the body, or provide excess calories that may get turned into fat. (Note: While protein itself is very unlikely to be stored as fat, a consistent caloric intake higher than that required for your body to function will lead to an increase in body fat over time).

Good examples of protein include: salmon, lean ground turkey, founder, grouper, halibut, cod, round steak, chicken breast, tuna fish (spring water), turkey breast, whey protein, and egg substitutes.

All proteins are low in glycemic index and by combining a carbohydrate with a protein the combined glycemic index of the whole meal goes down as a result. The proteins included here were selected due to their low fat content and their digestibility.

Note:
Avoid deli meats as they are high in sodium. If you are eating salmon, eliminate two servings of good fats.

FATS

All the cells in the body have some fat. Fats are responsible for lubricating your joints. In addition, hormones are manufactured from fats. If you eliminate the fats from your diet, your hormonal production will drop, and a whole array of chemical reactions will be interrupted. Your body will start accumulating more body fat than usual to keep functioning. Because your testosterone production is halted, so will the production of lean muscle mass. Therefore, in order to have an efficient metabolism, we need to consume a small amount of certain fats.

There are three types of fats: Saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated.

Saturated Fats
are associated with heart disease and high cholesterol levels. They are found to a large extent in products of animal origin. However, some vegetable fats are altered in a way that increases the amount of saturated fats in them by a chemical process known as hydrogenation. Hydrogenated vegetable oils are generally found in packaged foods as they extend the shelf life of the food item. However, in return, these fats, when consumed,
cause your body to be resistant to insulin (which in turn causes issues in controlling your blood sugar) and also increase your cholesterol dramatically.