Sugar

Is sugar a bad thing?
But sugar is important to maintain our health?

Which is true???

Well they are both true and I would like to explain in detail how sugar can be bad and good.

Sugar is bad

It is widely known that sugar can be bad to our health, because too much sugar in our blood can cause diabetes and this can cause many health problems that can kill you.

Having a huge amount of sugar intake will not only boost our blood sugar level, but also excess sugar will turn into fat cells and will be stored in our body. Too much fat cells will make insulin not work well in the body, and can produce hormones that can lead to Arteriosclerosis.

Sugar is good

Well we really do need sugar to maintain our health.

• To make muscle

During the resistance training rather than taking just amino acid, taking sugar with it will increase the effect of training. Also even if we take protein if there is not sufficient amount of Glycogen, the formation of muscle will not happen effectively.

• To burn fat

The process of neutral fat becoming energy goes like this:

neutral fat → fatty acid → acetyl COA (oxidised at mitochondria) →→→→→ ATP (inside of TCA cycle)

When ATP is produced from acetyl COA, it needs Oxaloacetate from Glucose.

This means that there needs to be sugar in the blood for the fat to be decomposed as energy efficiently.

Good sugar and Bad sugar

There are mainly two types of sugar and one is what we call “good sugar” that increases the blood sugar level slowly (fruits, brown rice, potatoes…) and the other is what we call “bad sugar” that boosts the blood sugar level quickly and produces a lot of insulin to lower it down (white rice, white bread, pasta…).

When we take “good sugar” the blood sugar level will increase slowly, thus the production of insulin will be slow too. When insulin is being produced, the fat cells will be engaged with free fatty acid in the blood and they will be stored as fat. This means that “good sugar” will make less fat to be stored.

On the other hand, when we take “bad sugar” the production of insulin will be very big. This not only makes us store more fat but also makes us want more sugar. The rapid production of insulin drops the blood sugar level very low all of sudden, and this leads to make us demand more sugar.

However, “bad sugar” is not bad occasionally. Taking “bad sugar” right after training will increase the production of insulin, and this prevents muscle from decomposition. It will also help anabolic reaction to happen.

Nothing is the best thing and nothing is the worst thing.

It is all balance. Life is all balance 🙂

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess

Feeling sleepy after meals

So!!!

I have this problem that I feel extremely sleepy after my meal.

It feels horrible when I have this feeling, because I am trying to save time as I am preparing for an exam

and I know that it is not the best thing for my health maintenance.

Knowledge always helps in some way, so let’s talk about feeling sleepy after meals.

Why do we feel sleepy after meals?

When we eat, our digestive system will try to digest and more blood will be delivered to organs such as an intestine or a stomach. Thus less blood will be delivered to the brain and this makes us feel sleepy.

This is one of the reasons why working out right after the meal is not very good since blood will not be delivered to the muscles so much.

Is it bad?

It is not very good if you fall a sleep right after meals.

As I mentioned above, the blood is concentrated around the digestive system after meals.

And if you go to sleep like this, then there is less blood to all other systems in our body including the brain.

This can damage cerebral blood flow and also this can lead to the slow recovery and growth of body parts.

How can we prevent this?

Having small meals many times rather than having three big meals are said to help,

because the concentration of blood flow around the digestive system will be smaller.

Also having less sugar in your meal helps since it can prevent the rapid increase of insulin production.

In the next blog I would like to discuss a little bit more on sugar!!!

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess 

Types of Muscle Fibers and Training

Did you know that muscle has 3 main types of muscle fibers and they play different roles during muscle activity?

Well, if you didn’t know about it, don’t worry!

Because today’s topic is on the types of muscle fibers and training.

Let’s learn about them together!!!

Types of Muscle Fibers

As a known fact muscle is made of thousands of muscle fibers.

These fibers include 3 main kinds:

• fast twitch muscle fiber (type b)
  white coloured, high in power and  low in endurance
• intermediate muscle fiber (type IIa)
  pink coloured, high in power and medium in endurance
• slow twitch muscle fiber (type I)
  red coloured, low in power and high in endurance

Type b is the one that gets big in volume, thus we can say that all the big muscles that we can see from the outside contain higher percentage of type b.

And the reason why type I is red coloured is because it contains more Myoglobin, protein that is essential for metabolisation using oxygen, and it has a red colour.

When we do weight training more Type b muscle fibers get mobilised, which leads to an increment in volume.

On the other hand, when we do aerobic exercise more type I muscle fibers get mobilised.

Transition of Muscle Fiber Type

The percentage of the types of muscle fibers that are contained in the muscle varies depends on the individuals and parts of the body.

But there is an interesting fact. It is said that trainings can make the transition of muscle fiber type to happen. 

This transition happens more for 

type b → type IIa → type I  (especially for  type b → type IIa)

and does not really happen the other way around.

This means that depends on the training you can increase the proportion of muscle fibers that are more suitable for supplying long-lasting energy.

Body Builders have higher percentage of type I???

Body builders train lifting heavy weight, which makes us believe that they would have higher percentage of type b than any other athletes, but in fact it is the opposite.

This can be explained by the way they train. 

Body builders usually lift heavy weights for 5 to 15 times in one set, and they repeat this until their limit.

This huge pressure makes the muscle cells unable to take the oxygen, and this situation lasts for a long period of time.

The muscle cells will try to use the little amount of muscle they can get more effectively,

and this causes the muscle fibers to transit to  type I.

I am training to gain muscle strength, not the durability. 

How should I train taking the advantage of those muscle fiber types?

It is said that when there is the same pressure to the muscle for more than 3 months,

the muscle will start adopting to the pressure.

So!!!

Changing the training content every 3 weeks will help preventing the muscle type transition to happen.

 

 

 

 

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess

So… What is Lactic Acid?

Lactic Acid…

We have all heard about this, this is the compound that makes us feel tired, right?

 

NO!!!!!!

 

A lot of people think that Lactic Acid is something that will be produced inside of the muscle,

and this is the chemical that makes our muscle feel tired.

However this is not true. In fact, the protons that are produced with Lactic Acid makes our muscle feel tired.

 

 

• How is Lactic Acid produced?

Lactic Acid is produced when sugar is decomposed to create ATP (compounds that are used to move muscle, in an easy term “energy”) when there isn’t enough oxygen. 

Sugar is used to create ATP in the following two ways:

<not enough oxygen>

sugar → Pyruvic Acid + ATP
                       ↓

               Lactic Acid

<enough oxygen>

sugar → Pyruvic Acid + ATP

                       ↓

　　　    Acetyl COA → ATP + water + Carbon Dioxide 

 

 

• Does Lactic Acid make us feel tired?

No, it doesn’t.

When Lactic Acid is produced in our muscle, protons are produced as well.

This makes our muscle more acid, and this makes our muscle contraction harder to happen,

(1. It inhibits the action of enzyme of recreating ATP      

 2. It inhibits the bonding of calcium ion and filaments of muscle fibers, and this bond makes muscle contraction to happen)

thus we feel more tired.

Even though Lactic Acid itself is not the reason why we get tired,

it is also important to get rid of it from our muscle because it can lead to produce protons.

 

 

• How do we get rid of Lactic Acid?

Lactic Acid goes back to the liver and becomes glucose to be used to create ATP again.

Cool down (or light cardio) is very useful to get rid of the blood that contains Lactic Acid from the muscle.

Also to prevent producing Lactic Acid in the first place, when we are too tired we should do less muscle training and we should have less sugar intake.

 

 

Lactic Acid wasn’t after-all a bad fellow 😉

 

 

 

 

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess 

Eating Seafood to Build Muscle???

It is a known fact that the protein from animals such as chicken, beef and pork have similar composition of amino acid to humans. For this reason it is said that it provides better protein to build muscle than the one of seafood.

 

Builders who love animal meat may wonder why we even have to bother eating seafood.

Well, seafood CAN actually help you build bigger muscle!

Being Japanese, I have always loved eating seafood and seafood has always been around me.

So I am very glad to inform you all how seafood is benefitial for muscle creation!!!

 

 

Seafood contains a lot of  Arginine

Arginine is a kind of animo acid. 

The benefits of Arginine for muscle growth are:

• It improves the production of growth hormone, which is essential for muscle growth.

• It helps creating Creatine in our body.
  Creatine is an organic acid.
  Creatine is converted into Creatine Phosphate in our body and is stored in the muscle, becomes the energy. Unlike sugar or fat, Creatine Phosphate becomes energy without breaking down, therefore it provides an explosive power. It can also make muscle strength long lasting by storing more easily convertable source of energy inside. The more Creatine Phosphate there is in the muscle, the bigger the muscle gets. 
• It improves the production of Nitric Oxide. It is produced from vasclar endothelial cells and expands the vessels. This makes the blood circulation around the muscle better, and more oxygen, hormones and amino acids are delivered to the muscle. Thus, the muscle will grow quicker.
  (Too much NO can be bad for your health though, since it increases oxidant stress of our body.
  NO combines with Super Oxide and produces Peroxynitrite, which is very toxic.)

 

 

As you can see seafood IS benefitial for muscle growth.

Don’t think that chicken breast is better than anything!

We can enjoy our tasety seafood too 🙂 

 

 

 

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess

 

Maintaining Muscle???

The first day we decide to get our body toned and get more muscle, we are very focused on creating muscle.

It is fun seeing the result, getting muscle definition.

You feel so happy and maybe always staring at the mirror 😉 

 

BUT!!!

 

 

Once you get that muscle, have you ever had any trouble maintaining it?

I am sure a lot of people have felt this way,

and today I would like to explain some scientific side of maintaining muscle.

 

 

How do we lose it?

When we stop training, the first thing that happens is that our nervous system of the trained muscle will start becoming inactive. This only makes the muscle strength weaker, and this is different from your muscle mass getting smaller. However, if you don’t use this muscle for a long time, then your body assumes that this is the muscle you don’t need and the muscle will get smaller. As you can see, the muscle mass will not get small all of sudden, but the muscle strength will get weaker earlier.

 

How long does it take for the muscle mass to be lost?

On average someone who has never trained will gain about 15-20% of muscle strength in about 3 months of constant muscle training. If this person stops training, then he or she will lose the gained muscle in the same amount of time, about 3 months, if not trained. 

Yet, this totally depends on your body type, your lifestyle and also how many years you have been training. Muscle has an ability to memorise, and this is called muscle memory. When muscle has been trained for a long time, then the muscle will remember how to activate the nervous system and also the body will remember muscle as something that is essential to maintain its life. The longer you trained the slower we lose muscle. 

 

How often should we train to maintain our muscle?

It is said that training muscle once a week will let you maintain the muscle mass. Try to make your workout hard enough to get the muscle active.

 

Some people go crazy that if they don’t train for some days they will lose muscle all of sudden.

Don’t worry! 🙂

You will not lose muscle so easily, your hard work will not be lost that easily.

If you missed some days at the gym, it is okay.

Let’s enjoy every step of our journey.

After-all it is life and we have to live it! 

 

Reference:      Ishii, N. (2008). The Muscle Encyclopedia.

 

 

 

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess

 

Muscle Training First, Aerobic Exercise Later…???

Yes!!!

If you are trying to lose fat cells, then you should do muscle training first and then aerobic exercise later.

Exercise totally does depend on how you want your body to be and what kind of skill or power you want to provide, but if you are trying to lose fat, then muscle training comes first and aerobic exercise comes later.

 

Firstly, let me explain a little on how we use “fat” as the source of energy.

Neutral fat cells are what we store in our body as “fat”. When we use fat as source of energy,

we decompose neutral fat cells as:

neutral fat cells —>  glucose  +  free fatty acid

And if we have too much free fatty acid that is not being used, then it will combine with glucose again and will be stored in our body as “fat”.

Most of the time we use sugar and fat as source of energy.

The differences are:

• Sugar takes less steps to be decomposed and used as energy, so it can provide energy quicker
• The amount of sugar that can be stored in our body is limited, so when there is too much sugar 
  we store it by having “fat” in our body. And we can store fat in our body as much as we allow it to.

 

Now that we know enough about how fat is used as source of energy, let’s have a look on why it is better to do workout in this order. When you do muscle training your body produces growth hormone and activates the sympathetic nerve. This makes neutral fat cells in your body to be decomposed and the amount of free fatty acid increases. Therefore it is easier for our body to use “fat” as energy. Especially if you train big muscles such as legs, chests or back the effect will be bigger. 

 

If you want to lose fat effectively let’s do muscle training first and then do aerobic exercise!!! 😀

 

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess

Homeostasis and Plateau

I am sure everyone who has been on a diet has experienced this.
Plateau is when you are burning more calorie than your intake,
Still you are not losing weight at all.

This is because of the system that we have in our body called
“homeostasis”.

According to Wikipedia, homeostasis is the property of a system in which variables are regulated so that internal conditions remain stable and relatively constant.
For an example, it controls our body temperature, blood sugar level or even lactic acid level in our body so that we can maintain our health.

When we go on a diet we lose some weight, and we lose fat. Our bodies consider it as a danger. And they try to keep the status of our bodies the way they have always been. This is why we stop loosing weight even though we are eating the same amount as when we were losing weight.

When we hit this stage, we should eat a little bit more than when we were losing the weight so that the bodies can understand that we will not go starvation and stop storing fat.

It is said that this happens the most when we lose about 5% of our body weight and lasts around one month. If we stay consistent with our meals and workout, we will soon start losing the weight again because the body then thinks that this is the normal state of our body.

Don’t worry too much about the result, just enjoy the journey.
After all you are already beautiful. Everyone is!

xxxx FitNessEmikoNess