04 Think, understand and apply - Muscle does NOT weigh more than fat

My supervisor has a phrase he likes to use on a regular basis - If you don't think, you will never learn anything. My high school had a similar motto, that being - Think, Understand and Apply. I am here to help you - to show you, to educate you. Please do not just hear something, believe it, and never question it. WHY and HOW are the most important questions we can ask in life. For many of you, let's be honest - you will categorically state:
MUSCLE WEIGHS MORE THAN FAT.
Really? Have you ever asked yourself : Why? Why do I believe this? Have I even thought about this statement?
Lets be scientific.

From the beautiful image above (all credit thanks to http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com/muscle-to-fat.html), you can now see, you cannot say, 5kg of muscle weighs more than 5kg of fat. They both weigh 5kg. 
What we CAN say, is muscle takes up less SPACE or scientifically said, muscle is more DENSE than fat.
Kilogram for kilogram fat takes up more volume. This means, if you have two women and they both weigh the same, they can look vastly different.
Assuming the same height, a woman weighing 60kg with 18% body fat will look a lot smaller than a woman weighing 60kg with 30% body fat.
I found a site that is trying to help show people how your perception can be so misguided. It is a site that uploads photographs (sent in by volunteers) giving examples of what people look like at a certain height and weight, and you can see many examples of what I have explained above.
http://www.cockeyed.com/photos/bodies/heightweight.html

The next thing I would like to explain is, when you start training, I repeatedly hear despondent people saying:

image taken from (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/09/party.html)

                                              THE SCALE KEEPS GOING UP!! :((((
The next thing I hear, is a friend or someone trying to console them saying:

                                                          image taken from (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/09/party.html)
                                              But muscle weighs more than fat! :D

Right, so. Let's get it straight. The scale is going up because you are BUILDING muscle. But! Beware
DID YOU CHECK YOUR MEASUREMENTS?
If the scale is going up, and your measurements are going up, this means, you have not lost any fat.
Your total volume is going up.
If your weight is going up or staying the same (in this latter case, assuming you gain 1kg muscle and lose 1kg fat), and your measurements are coming down - YAY! This means, you are gaining muscle and losing fat. The muscle takes up less space (losing cm or inches from your body)

Obviously the easiest way is to go and get your body fat percentage checked and monitored, however this costs money. What do I do personally? I maintain my weight within 1kg, I train and eat carefully, and my measurements are dropping (slowly). My muscle mass is increasing and my fat percentage is decreasing. I can see this, my muscles are becoming more defined and lean. This way, I am not trying to lose weight (and risk the chance of losing muscle). This will take a while to get right, because it is easier to gain muscle than to lose fat. Losing fat is the body's last option. It will rather burn muscle first than fat. This is where your diet and exercise comes in. You need to make sure you train right and eat right to ensure you lose fat and not muscle.
If you starve yourself, the first source you will lose is muscle and most likely replace the muscle with fat. Inevitably, you are making yourself look fatter. If you overeat, you will gain fat. You need to make sure you EAT and you eat right.

To share a personal story, in 2007, I used to (wrongly) think that my "ideal weight" was 52kg. With my height at 173cm, this placed my BMI at 17.39 (underweight). I remember thinking that my friend who weighed the same, and was the same height was so much skinnier than me! The other thing I remember is that I could not run as fast or jump as high as I used to. I often felt tired and blegh - no muscle tone. I was a skinny fat person! What I believed then was that if my weight was less, I would be smaller. What I know NOW, is that if I train and eat right and gain muscle and lose fat, I will be smaller. I am a good 3kg heavier now than I was then, but my measurements are smaller than I was then. At 52kg I wore size 34 jeans (size 10), now at 55kg, I wear size 32 (size 8) jeans. True story folks.

What you really need to think about is not an ideal weight, but an ideal body composition. High muscle mass, less body fat, and from that small measurements will follow. And then we will all look fabulous and feel fantastic! :)

Find me on Facebook - Join my group Nutrition through Science or Fitnessfacts100

03 - Saving calories - why this doesn't work.

This was not initially planned as my 3rd article in my series however, due to the enormous response I got on facebook on my personal profile with this topic, I realised it was necessary to write a more in depth article to explain exactly why "saving calories" throughout the day for a big dinner/night/event later actually does not work. It's all well and good to say it doesn't work - but why exactly does it not work? In theory, it sounds promising, right? Eat a salad, skip breakfast so you can eat to your hearts desire at that buffet dinner at night, maybe with a few drinks too? Create a calorie deficit during the day so that you have more calories to play with at night? This all sounds like it makes sense, but unfortunately, your body is not a bank. It cannot document deficits NOW to make up in the future. It cannot be bombarded with massive influx in one go without it creating some disharmony. Remember, everything in your body works on equilibrium. Your body's systems are very delicate and fine tuned. Balance is key to keeping everything running smoothly.

So, why does saving calories not work?


To understand this, we really need to look at metabolism, and specifically metabolic pathways. Lets look at carbohydrate metabolism first.

Lets use pasta as an example. Pasta is a carbohydrate. Carbohydrates are made up of sugars. Pasta is made up of starch with the formula:

(C6H10O5)n 

n is the number of sugar residues that make up the molecule of carbohydrate, C being carbon, H being hydrogen and O being oxygen. Starch is called a "complex" carbohydrate as it is made up of lots of sugar molecules to make it one big chemical structure. It is made of amylose and amylopectin, which are both complex structures of glucose molecules linked together in different ways as seen below:

When the pasta is metabolized by the body, this structure is broken down into its simple form: glucose

Glucose molecule

Glucose now enters carbohydrate metabolism, specifically, the glycolytic pathway

Pyruvate now enters another pathway called: the Krebs cycle/Citric acid cycle/Tricarboxylic acid cycle

http://science.jrank.org/pages/16356/Krebs-cycle-(citric-acid-cycle-tricarboxylic-acid-cycle-TCA-cycle).html

It is this cycle that generates NADH, GTP and FADH2 that are all used to generate ENERGY.

We use this energy to keep us going, keep our hearts beating, brain's functioning and for all the other processes that go on in our body's - including giving us energy for all our daily tasks like exercise.

If the body cannot use all the energy it is making at the time of ingestion, it has to store it, and it is often stored as fat. 

When you overeat at 1 meal, your body has to metabolize all of the glucose to pyruvate, but because it doesn't need anymore energy, it now turns to a different pathway. Pyruvate is still converted to acetyl CoA, but acetyl CoA is the 1st molecule needed to make fat.

The hormone INSULIN is very strongly linked to fat synthesis. When you eat, this hormone is secreted to signal to your body to break down the food to provide sugar to maintain blood sugar levels. The more you eat at one time, the more hormone is secreted.

Now instead of acetyl CoA producing more energy, insulin activates the enzyme citrate lyase. Citrate lyase converts citrate that has been transported out of the mitochondrion into the cytosol into oxaloacetate and acetyl CoA. Only acetyl CoA in the cytosol can be converted into malonyl CoA and finally cholesterol and fat. 

So, sadly, at the end of the day, you cannot "trick" your body into thinking you have "saved" calories and you now have 1000 calories to play with at 1 meal. 2 alcoholic drinks (200 calories), 1 dessert (500 calories), "restaurant dinner" (400-800 calories) - you can already see how all these excess calories are pumping insulin into your body to deal with the heavy calorie load - basically steam-charging ahead with fat production.

This is why it is SO important to eat small meals often! Prevent insulin spiking, prevent overeating and prevent fat production. 

The other thing to remember is, if you starve yourself, eat less during the day to compensate for a big night later, you are making your metabolism sluggish and slow - which then makes it even WORSE when you do binge. 

Now that you know better, you can do better and be better. Perhaps this is why you wonder why you battle to lose weight? Saving calories is a sad theory that we would love to be true, but, realistically it is not. 

My best advice is eat normally during the day of a big event - this will provide you with all the nutrients you require and you will then be less likely to crave more sugary and fatty foods later. Secondly, it will make you feel more full (as opposed to having starved all day) and you will be less likely to binge excessively.

When you do go for this big event, enjoy yourself, but listen to your body when it has had enough :)

Find me on facebook - join my page Nutrition through Science or Fitnessfacts100

Find me on Facebook

Hi Friends

You can find me on facebook. My group is Nutrition through science and the link is
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nutrition-Through-Science/245199962173890
I am also a contributor on the facebook group Fitnessfacts100.

You can get more daily,weekly updates there. Will try to get 2 articles out per month. As you can imagine, it takes some time to write a good article and finish my MSc degree.

Thanks for all the support :)
Keep in touch for the next article!
xxx