Sugar-sweetened drinks with protein rich meal affect metabolism

My (entirely non-scientific) opinion is that most people exercise the wrong way.

After a bit of training, muscles can store carbon-hydrates for about 1.5 hours of exercise. When these carbs a burned, muscles take new carbs directly from the blood stream.

So if you exercise by burning mostly carbs and don't eat, you end up with low blood sugar levels and a very strong urge to eat.

The trick is to burn fat. But to burn fat in a straight forward way you first have deplete the carb store, and basically force muscles to burn fat. This requires exercise that lasts many hours in one go.

The additional benefit as far as I know is that if muscles are trained to burn fat, they will start burning more fat even when not in use. So the effect lasts a lot longer than just the actual amount of exercise.

So we have a culture where exercise means to go to the gym and do exciting things there. Which mainly burns carbs.

In the past when people did manual labor, they worked the same way for an entire day, burning mostly fat.

Sucrose is one part fructose and one part glucose. Our cells use glucose for energy directly, the liver metabolizes fructose. This similarity of fructose and alcohol is the basis of the whole sugar is a poison. Fruit is fructose, which is probably why we are to be able to metabolize it, but fruit is generally very high in fibre and around the size of a serving or 2. Serving sizes of juice and additive sugars are extremely oversized.

"Calories in, calories out" is both true (in the thermodynamic sense) and accurate enough to be useful (in a practical sense). I've personally performed the experiment, using MyFitnessPal and a $14 digital scale, and it turns out that I can control my weight to within a few pounds.

There are a few caveats:

- Yes, your diet composition does have metabolic effects. Protein, sugar and fat all follow different metabolic pathways, and converting between them requires energy. Protein is supposedly easier to store as lean mass than as fat, for example. But unless you're already lean and training hard, these effects are relatively minor. If you want to lose 50 pounds of fat, calories are good approximation.

- Unless you're a hard-core distance athlete, the "calories out" side of the equation is mostly useless. Depending on your weight, walking a mile burns about 1 Oreo. Essentially, it takes a lot of energy to run your brain and your digestive system, but exercise is surprisingly energy efficient. So if you work at a desk job, and you don't run 5 miles a day, then use the "Sedentary" option when calculating your daily calories.

- If you want to be both lean and muscular, things get trickier, because you need to worry about your muscle:fat ratio. You can control this with resistance training. But weightlifting while losing fat can be pretty metabolically brutal. Conventional wisdom says that it helps to watch your protein:carbs:fat ratio, and to eat a nutrient-rich diet. (And my personal experience bears this out, especially once I've exhausted the easy gains in the weight room.)

- Most diets fail because most people stop dieting. If you revert to your old habits, you'll eventually revert to your old weight and body composition. As a general rule, few people stick with long-term lifestyle changes.

Losing weight and becoming muscular are both solved problems. The major challenge is sticking with the behaviors that produce the desired result.

You are right. I cant remember the link but there was an article I read that drinking fruit juice is not the same as eating fruits with fiber.

I wonder if this means ending a meal with a dessert it's considered a "no no".