The Hemp Connection [Search results for glycogen] 

Normally I wouldn't promote a show like this on a blog like this, but a recent client shared that last season a woman was diagnosed with PCOS after competing. She happens to be someone who really struggled with weight loss during the competition. My client shared with me, that she remembered thinking when hearing about the PCOS diagnosis,"Wow, if a show of experts can't even help someone like me, I don't have much hope."

Until that conversation, I'd kept my thoughts about this show primarily to myself, but realizing it may be important to provide hope to a segment of the population for whom this show may not be entirely productive…I've decided to make it a regular blog entry throughout this season of Biggest Loser.

And, I have a team of experts to help! The contributors to this blog will be taking turns sharing their thoughts, expertise, and insights. We'll be so much better at this with all of these viewpoints than if it was just me. I hope you enjoy our little series.

Now, about Episode One.

I'm going to use my turn to talk about something that has bothered me since the show's inception--how"progress" is described. Weight loss is the only measurement used in this competition. And it is never mentioned, anywhere, anytime, that weight consists of several things: fat, muscle, water, glycogen (how carbohydrate is stored) and bone, primarily.

At one point in the show, Jillian was showing how the Body Bugg works. She stated that the calories burned in a typical day are about 3,000. One pound of fat equals 3,500 calories. So if we use her statement and calculate out a week, the average Biggest Loser contestant burns 21,000 calories in one week. That works out to about 6 pounds. Any loss over that is coming primarily from water and possibly even muscle.

In my exercise physiology program, we learned that different fuels are burned at different intensities. The more intense the exercise, the more likely it is that fat is not being burned. At high exercise intensities, the body switches to burning carbohydrate, which it gets from breaking down glycogen. Each gram of glycogen is stored with 3 grams of water. So at the intensities I saw in this episode (which involved working so hard that some people literally fell off of treadmills while others retreated to corners to vomit), my guess is that fat is not what was burned.

Remember, this is a commercial television show that depends on ratings. Higher weight losses draw in bigger audiences and more advertising dollars, so what are you going to do to get there if time only permits a"measly" 6 pounds a week of weight loss? You're going to do what it takes to purge as much water and glycogen out of the body as you possibly can. I realize purging is a bad pun given the fact that people were throwing up, but it leaves me wondering if the trainers are truly aiming for health, or if they are focused on goals outside of the welfare of the contestants.

It seems to me, especially since two contestants this season aren't even cleared to fully exercise because of medical risk, that there would be some sort of attention paid to calculating target heart rates and staying in the AEROBIC range in order to maximize loss of body FAT. But then my goal would be the long term health of the person I'm working with, not my professional reputation in a televised weight loss competition.

When working with women with PCOS, I always have to keep in mind that they hit the top of their aerobic range at lower levels of exercise intensity than other women. They tend to be those clients who exercise harder and longer than anyone else…only to gain weight. It is one of the hardest things I do in this kind of work, to convince my clients to trust that if they drop the intensity, it will help to facilitate the right kind of weight loss. Especially when competitions like this one push for the exact opposite mentality.

But the wall these contestants always hit a few weeks into the season? It's about having completely run out of glycogen to purge, muscle weight gain that is occurring at the same time fat is lost, and more rapidly if target exercise heart rates are not respected.

If the measurements used to calculate progress were a combination of weight AND a body fat measurement from which total muscle gained and total fat lost were factored in, you'd see very different results. You'd probably also see a lot higher self-esteem in the contestants and fewer contestants trying to throw the weigh-ins with water loading when they start to panic about whether or not their hard work will show up on the scale.

If you're one of those people who tends to lose weight slowly or even gain weight when you feel like you've really worked hard, try this.

1. Calculate your target heart rate as follows.
-Subtract your current age from 220. This is your maximum heart rate.
-Multiply your maximum heart rate by.6, and then by.8.
-The numbers you get when you do that are the lower and upper heart rates
you need to be in, in order to be most efficiently burning fat.

2. The next time you exercise, stop a few times and take your pulse. If your heart rate is exceeding the upper limit of your target heart range, you need to drop your exercise intensity.

Many women I've challenged to do this are very surprised at how less intensely they need to exercise. And how much more pleasant exercising can be when it doesn't have to entail losing your lunch in front of a crowd of people.

Why aren't these contestants losing weight?

I wish, when plateaus hit, that there would be a little more education. My counseling experience has taught me that plateaus, if not fully understood, can be demoralizing and demotivating. It can tempt a person pursuing weight loss to give up altogether.

Some of the things I wish you all had heard last night:

1. One of the training effects of exercise is that your body gets better at storing fuel to use during exercise. One of those fuels is glycogen. Every gram of glycogen is stored with 3 grams of water. Glycogen is not fat, it's a form of carbohydrate. If you're starting to store more glycogen at the same time you're losing fat, the weight gain can offset the weight loss.

2. The more obvious training effect is that you are also gaining muscle. Gaining muscle while losing fat can negate what the scale shows.

In other words, not all weight is fat. Not all weight loss is fat loss, and not all weight gain is fat gain.

One of the contestants, after seeing her weekly results, stated that she believed that her body was not accepting the exercise.

Au contraire, madame!

If you're gaining muscle and developing a capacity to store more fuel, which ultimately allows you to be more active, your body is alive and well and responding to your hard work in a very healthy way.

The goal of this show is to lose fat and gain muscle, is it not? Then why do they only focus on one when it comes to measuring?

Source: Uploaded by user via Monika on Pinterest

If your PCOS has you struggling with weight, chances are, you have an ongoing battle with the scales. I encourage you to give up that battle.

First of all, when you are in good shape, chances are you are going to be able to carry more weight than a woman without PCOS and look leaner than someone without PCOS. As the photo here suggests, the only thing the scales tells you, at any given point in time, is how much you happen to be resisting gravity at the moment you measure yourself. It really is not an indication at all, of who you are as a person.

Secondly, if you haven't exercised much in awhile, because of your testosterone levels, when you start to exercise, you will put on muscle more easily than the average woman. This is going to work in your favor, over time, because muscle mass is your very best weapon against insulin resistance. If you freak out and stop exercising because you have gained weight early on…you have missed the point! If you have gained weight but lost inches, you are on the right track. Hang in there. It will all fall together, if you are consistently exercising.

Thirdly, something your body will do, as an adaptation to regular exercising, is start to store glycogen to fuel that exercise. Glycogen is a stored carbohydrate that your body becomes proficient at storing to help your blood sugar and energy levels stay stable during your runs/swims/spin classes. Every gram of glycogen that you store in your muscles and liver is stored with 3 grams of water. This water is important water, as it is released while you exercise and it helps keep you from becoming dehydrated while you're working out. A well-trained athlete can carry about 10 extra pounds of glycogen and water that simply is not there if you are not regularly training. But it is not fat, and it is not bad weight, and without it, you likely will feel miserable because you are not well fueled or hydrated.

If you have been restrictive with your diet, and you work out pretty hard…and then you go have a regular meal…of course the scale will jump! Your body is doing what it is supposed to do, start storing fuel and water for the next workout. The absolute worst possible thing you can do is try to control these fluctuations by cutting your calories.

Honestly, I can't even remember exactly when I last weighed myself…I think it was sometime last summer and I can't even tell you what the scales said when I did. I know my clothes fit pretty much the same as they usually do, and when they have been a little tight it's been right before my period and it resolves after about a week, and I know that is normal so I don't stress about it.

If you're not at that level of comfort with body yet, if you can't envision even being there, I'd like to ask you to do at least this:

-If you must weigh yourself, only compare Sundays to Sundays and only compare Sunday mornings to Sunday mornings.

- Once you have enough data points, only compare the Sunday after your period to another Sunday after your period.

The surest way to set off unnecessary exercising, or restrictive eating that is sure to set off a binge later, and to sabotage your overall progress in the long…is to weight yourself multiple times daily and assume that the numbers you see are 100% based on calories in and calories out. Anything you do in response to multiple daily weigh ins, is not based in proven exercise science or nutritional math. It is emotional and disordered.

The more you hear that from us, and the more you recognize that anything you do in response to disordered ideas about nutrition, calories, and exercise, the better chance you have at recognizing that these thoughts and feelings are based on anxiety. When you fight anxiety with responses that can help the anxiety, rather than behaviors that may actually DRIVE the anxiety cycle (think playing with the dog, participating in a hobby, reading a book that has absolutely nothing do do with self help, food, infertility, or hormones) that is when your weight actually starts to stabilize.

OK, let's see how you do!

I've had this conversation with two different clients recently and it occurred to me it's a phenomenon likely to be more common in women with PCOS, because of their focus on carbohydrates, than even the average dieter. Figured a blog post would be helpful to others.

Both of these clients shared with me that they went on low carbohydrate diets and did very well on them, until a few weeks into it, when, for whatever reason, they"fell off" the plan and started eating carbohydrates. And within a few days they'd gained a few pounds and felt more than a little discouraged…not to mention bloated.

Here's a little fact you don't often hear in weight loss advice or discussions. Not all weight that you gain, or lose, is fat. Some of it is water. Some of it can even be bone, if you severely restrict your intake for long periods of time, as with an eating disorder.

And some of that weight…can be your own body's carbohydrate stores.

When you are eating enough food to meet your daily needs, your body stores some of it as carbohydrate, in liver and in muscles. The function of this stored carbohydrate, is to help keep your blood sugar levels high at times when no food is directly coming into the system. Your brain relies almost entirely on carbohydrates to function, and the body has evolved with this"storage tank", so to speak, to be sure the brain never, ever runs out of energy.

Carbohydrate that is stored for this purpose is called glycogen. The body uses water to help store glycogen. And for every gram of carbohydrate you store, there are 3 grams of water alongside of it.

So what do you think happens when you suddenly switch to a low-to-non carbohydrate diet? All of the carbohydrate you've stored in your liver and muscles has to break down in order to keep your brain running. The weight loss is rapid, because you're losing 3 times as much water as you are other weight. It feels good when you look on the scales, because we're so cultured to believe that all weight shifts are coming from fat.

And what do you think happens when you eat carbohydrate again? The weight shift moves in the opposite direction, and 3/4 of what you gain is actually water. But again, because you're likely focused on fat if you're dieting…you visualize that what you've gained is more of that stuff.

Have you ever heard of carbohydrate loading, that athletes do before an endurance event? When you diet and bounce back with a high carb binge, that's exactly what you're doing! Here's a description off of the Internet that describes a carbohydrate loading protocol, from the Mayo Clinic website:
■Step 1. About a week before the event, reduce or maintain your carbohydrate intake at about 50 to 55 percent of your total calories. Increase protein and fat intake to compensate for any decrease in carbohydrates. Continue training at your normal level. This helps deplete your carbohydrate stores and make room for the loading that comes next.

■Step 2. Three to four days before the event, increase your carbohydrate intake to 70 percent of your daily calories — or about 4.5 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight. Cut back on foods higher in fat to compensate for the extra carbohydrate-rich foods. Also scale back your training to avoid depleting your glycogen stores. Rest completely for a day before the event. And…no big surprise…here, farther down the page, are the potential risks associated with this protocol:

■Weight gain. Much of this weight is extra water — but if it hampers your performance, you're probably better off skipping the extra carbs.

■Digestive discomfort. You may need to avoid or limit some high-fiber foods one or two days before your event. Beans, bran and broccoli can cause gassy cramps, bloating and loose stools when you're loading up on carbohydrates.

■Blood sugar changes. Carbohydrate loading can affect your blood sugar levels. It's a good idea to consult your doctor or a registered dietitian before you start carbohydrate loading, especially if you have diabetes I remember when I was working on my master's degree in exercise science, we were taught that the bloating and weight gain from carbohydrate loading could be so extreme and uncomfortable, that athletes should not even attempt to use it for a crucial race if they had not tested it out prior to know how their body would react.

So see, it's not your body, your PCOS, or anything weird about YOU that causes you to gain weight when you eat after restricting. It's exactly how ANYONE's body will react when pushed to extremes.

Try living somewhere in the middle, with a moderate, healthy carbohydrate intake…and see what it does for your weight, your body, and the bloating.

Thanks to all of you who wrote in response to the blog post on heart rate changes for women. When we get questions we know we're being read!

The most frequent question we got was whether or not the target heart rates would change depending on whether or not you are physically conditioned. The answer is no, and here is why.

Your heart is a muscle. Its job is to pump blood through your body. One of the reasons you should exercise is to make that muscle stronger. When your heart is strong, it can pump the same amount of blood with fewer beats. That is why, when you are in good physical shape, your resting heart rate usually drops…because your heart has become more efficient at doing its job.

Simply reducing your heart rate by one beat per minute saves you 525,600 heart beats per year!

Another really good sign that you're in good condition is that after you finish that exercise, your heart rate drops back to resting fairly quickly. In research times, you've improved your recovery rate. When you're out of shape and you start to exercise, you may find that you have an elevated heart rate long after your workout.

So if your heart is able to pump the same amount of blood with fewer beats when it is in good condition, it is going to be more difficult to get it to speed up its pace when you are exercising. The heart rate recommendations stay the same because your physical conditioning make it harder for you to stress your heart muscle.

One way you can challenge your heart is to switch out the kind of exercise you do, to use different muscle groups. Like your heart, other muscles can become accustomed to the workload and not have to work as hard to carry the same load.

The heart rate guidelines are a percentage of the maximum rate your heart rate should ever reach. So if you're having to work harder to max out your heart's capacity…you're in good shape.

The guidelines do NOT tell you what your maximum exercise rate should be. What they do indicate, is that if you are exceeding those guidelines, you're likely not burning fat and finding it harder to lose weight. You're also likely to be gaining weight in the form of muscle, glycogen, and water, to support that intensity of exercise.

You need to decide what your goal is. If you want to build muscle (and that's not a bad thing at all), then work out harder. If you want to burn fat, remember, more is not always better.

And keep that heart muscle pumping!