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Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

nytimes.com

281–290 of 322 posts

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#281
post #52
post #4

This is only tangentially related, but I've been practicing intermittent fasting for the past year, and I cannot recommend it enough -- it honestly changed my life. I feel better, I sleep more regularly, I have more energy, and my mind is more alert. I only eat from 12PM to 8PM. IF is also supposed to have an impact on your microbiome, reduce inflammation, and encourage autophagy (especially in the brain). PS: Please…

As a counterexample, I tried to fast from 8PM to 11PM and it triggered a starvation response in me and 4 days in, it made binge on what ever I set my eyes on. I do a bulk of moving around in the morning. So maybe I should do it in the evening, may be like a 7AM to 5PM. I am a woman. So the physiological differences may also come into play. I dunno. I am just adding this comment because, invariably articles on food &…

IF doesn't need to be every day, you can do it 3 days a week and also enjoy many of the same benefits.

As for the starvation response, it's really important to ensure your feeding window includes all of the needed macronutrients along with your calories. Doubly important if you're training/exercising regularly.

Female hormones are also tied to fat intake, so I'd speculate that ensuring you're ingesting enough fats is probably more important than for men too.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coconut is mostly saturated fat and terrible for you. Ugh. Every professional body recommends against it.

That's begun to change. I anecdotally know a lot of people on a high-fat diet (Keto and such) and it has really worked for them. Inflammation is way down, energy is way up, weight is down, blood pressure is down, cholesterol is down, etc. Sugars / refined starches seem to be the nutrition villains, not natural, saturated fats. (But who knows! The recommendations change almost daily, it seems.)

How do you measure inflammation?

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#283
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 out of 4 weeks are as above. 1 out of 4 weeks I might have a day or two where I take the bus instead of cycle, or feel a bit too run down / ill to go to the gym. From September to December I was about this active (plus some pick-up ultimate or basketball here and there) and put on six or seven kilos. Some muscle, some fat. I've been eating quite a lot too; a weekday's eating is something like: - Bran flakes cereal…

Ok, I'm by no means an expert, so if I were you I'd research it a little more through other sources. It shouldn't matter how much you eat, with the given minimum amount of exercise. The things you list seem ok to me. Two things come to mind: you are still not exercising enough; or you are producing too much insulin for some reason. Don't be alarmed; perhaps talk about it with your doctor, get some blood tests done (?…

I'm not alarmed because this is what I expected and planned to happen. I've been interested in physiology and nutrition for a few years and the most credible sources I've read all say the same thing. If you eat above your calorific output, you'll gain weight. If you also lift heavy and eat protein, a decent proportion of that weight will be muscle. This is especially true if you haven't lifted weights for some time, which was true for me before last year.

Note, I just realised I actually gained about two or three kilos rather than six or seven, but I definitely gained a bunch. Also I'm below average height for my gender. My thigh and shoulder muscles have clearly filled out.

Perhaps there is some magical amount of cardio beyond which it's literally impossible to gain weight, but you'd probably have to be beyond a Michael Phelps level of training.

For what it's worth I had my blood tested recently and my glucose levels were fine, slightly below average. I appreciate your concern though.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's begun to change. I anecdotally know a lot of people on a high-fat diet (Keto and such) and it has really worked for them. Inflammation is way down, energy is way up, weight is down, blood pressure is down, cholesterol is down, etc. Sugars / refined starches seem to be the nutrition villains, not natural, saturated fats. (But who knows! The recommendations change almost daily, it seems.)

Anybody who has done keto and lost weight certainly does not say they had evergy on it. Those first couple weeks are terrible and you never quite have the energy you want. Thankfully it is a short term diet with specific targets in mind. Any positive effects after stopping keto are from the weight loss in general. Even keto diets recommend against a high saturated fat content but with keto your body is in a specific…

Who says it? I had more energy on keto, except for one day (around a week after starting) that felt terrible and was fixed by drinking water with salt and potassium. Keto diets don't recommend against a high saturated fat content, only some do because of the common misconception that it is bad. There are no studies showing bad effects of saturated fat by itself. It's the carbs what causes the problem, fat only makes it worse.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#285
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saturated fat alone is not bad at all, it's actually very healthy. However combining it with carbs it's a bomb. If you don't believe me, try to find any study with negative effects of saturated fat where the diet doesn't also include >30% of calories as carbs.

Basically any diet beyond little studied, highly specialized diets that are often done short term by athletic types (eg keto, paleo). You just won't find good data with such a small, highly self selected population that includes an high amount of exercise.

The keto community doesn't exercise that much. I know there are not many studies on ketogenic diets, but there are and the vast majority are positive.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#286
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also had the food pyramid (it even originated in sweden, the WHO/FAO still edits a version of it), and I don't think it was much different. Also I don't think that science on sugar has been especially promoted anywhere either. I don't think our preprocessed foods use as much sugar as yours (do we even have corn syrup ?). But we sure have some [edit : preprocessed foods], although they are probably not as bad as am…

In Belgium we also had a similar food pyramid. But government now decided to update it, and get rid of all the "economic" influence, which was steered towards grain, meat and dairy industry, and only base it on what is healthy. To make their statement clear, they literally turned the food pyramid upside down. See https://www.gezondleven.be/themas/voeding/voedingsdriehoek . Nevermind all the Flemish, just scroll to th…

Butter is in "less" and salt and bacon in "as little as possible". With what we know now it should be the opposite.

About fat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6-v37nOtY About salt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ygExIZm7Wo

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#287
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically any diet beyond little studied, highly specialized diets that are often done short term by athletic types (eg keto, paleo). You just won't find good data with such a small, highly self selected population that includes an high amount of exercise.

The keto community doesn't exercise that much. I know there are not many studies on ketogenic diets, but there are and the vast majority are positive.

Keto is often used as a sort of very effective diet to cut fat preferentially. For example people like body builders use it effectively after their bulking phase.

It has gained much wider adoption recently of you include things like Atkins, but true keto is still very much more often used by a very self selected group of fitness people and a limited time (although I could be wrong and don't know of any good serveys).

However keto is not a long term diet and I don't know if long term effects have rally been studied much. I know more people that do keto cycling than sustained keto anymore.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a similar situation I've felt subjectively less hungry / performed better if I take some branch chain amino acids in the AM. Dunno if this makes the IF "invalid" -- I never felt significantly different during an IF. But commuting on my bike, I frequently felt weak if I was fasting, and BCAA stopped that. YMMV.

Anything besides water breaks the IF period.

This is a pretty hardline approach.

Most people allow for coffee and tea without sugar or cream.

If there are no calories you're not breaking a fast in my opinion.

BCAA's do have calories so I would say they would break a fast though.

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#289
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's begun to change. I anecdotally know a lot of people on a high-fat diet (Keto and such) and it has really worked for them. Inflammation is way down, energy is way up, weight is down, blood pressure is down, cholesterol is down, etc. Sugars / refined starches seem to be the nutrition villains, not natural, saturated fats. (But who knows! The recommendations change almost daily, it seems.)

How do you measure inflammation?

You don't. The current inflation trend is pure pseudoscience:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7465534

Re: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome

#290
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'm by no means an expert, so if I were you I'd research it a little more through other sources. It shouldn't matter how much you eat, with the given minimum amount of exercise. The things you list seem ok to me. Two things come to mind: you are still not exercising enough; or you are producing too much insulin for some reason. Don't be alarmed; perhaps talk about it with your doctor, get some blood tests done (?…

I'm not alarmed because this is what I expected and planned to happen. I've been interested in physiology and nutrition for a few years and the most credible sources I've read all say the same thing. If you eat above your calorific output, you'll gain weight. If you also lift heavy and eat protein, a decent proportion of that weight will be muscle. This is especially true if you haven't lifted weights for some time,…

> If you eat above your calorific output, you'll gain weight.

How does this account for the fact that lots of young people have difficulty gaining weight, no matter what they eat, until a certain age? Obviously not all young people, but lots even who play the Xbox or watch TV all day (i.e., little muscle mass and little physical activity).

By the way, one thing that helps me keep my weight and appearance under control is "planking", 3x 1.5 min a day (I also do it in the office, and I can read HN on my phone while doing it because I rest on my elbows). In times when I don't exercise enough, it keeps my belly flat, even when I have some fat in the mid-section. Combined with some simple yoga, it's also a nice way to de-stress during the day (keeping cortisol in check is an often forgotten factor in staying lean).

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