Fats reduce protein catabolism?

Just a quick update, I dont really have time to blog at the moment since I have alot going on in my real life. My father died in June and I have been suffering with pretty severe depression since then. It caused me to start steroids, mainly because testosterone is the best anti-depressant available to men. Anyway, ive come off them now, it was interesting and certainly helped me cope with the depression. I also managed to fall for a girl I apparently have no chance with, which has been a MAJOR headache. So yeh, my life is pretty fucked up at the moment.

Well, I dont want to discuss too much of my personal goings on here, I found this study today which seems to provide some answer to the strange paradoxical question, why would you lose muscle mass on a hypo-caloric diet despite consuming surplus protein? ( say 800 calories per day 150g protein ).

Hepatic amino acid-degrading enzyme expression is downregulated by natural and synthetic ligands of PPARα in rats.

PPARalpha is activated by fats, including dietary fats, and according to this study PPARalpha down-regulates protein degradation. So in a strange way, eating fat may help with increasing or preserving muscle mass. I think this is a good explanation for as to why 2000 calories 150g protein 150g fat would be better for muscle mass than simply a 800 calorie diet with 150g protein.

I don't like lowcarb - to be honest

Just because I follow/advocate lowcarb, doesnt mean I like it. Infact, I think I almost hate it.

Dont get me wrong, I enjoy the lowcarb foods, ill eat fatty meat everyday, no complaints. BUT, I want potatoes with my steak, I want rice with my fish, I want baked beans with my bacon and eggs for breakfast. Yes, I love my carbohydrates, especially milk, it horrifies me to no end that I need to give up milk to get weight loss. ( I can be weight stable on milk but never weight loss ).

All last week I drank an additional 300ml  ( 1500 calories roughly ) of double cream on top of my normal zero carb intake, and well, my weight hasn't budged. To add insult to injury, my waist circumference has gone down *slightly*. What would of happened if I had added 1500 calories of potatoes/rice instead of the cream. FAT EXPLOSION. my trousers would be tight and my belly bloated.

Despite all the research ive done on this blog, I still dont have the answer. All I know is that keeping my carbs near zero gets and keeps my weight down.........effortlessly. I can eat plenty of cheese and get weight loss, but adding equivalent amounts of calories in milk stops weight loss. That REALLY bugs me. Especially since milk is quite gentle on blood sugar spikes.

With the amout of time ive spent trying to point out the fallacy of the CICO logic, the irony is id be much happier if CICO was infact true and all I had to do was watch my calories to control my weight because then I could enjoy my carbohydrates. BUT IT AINT FUCKING TRUE MAN. Its the bloody carbs controlling my fat mass. Im sick of telling myself everyday *CANT HAVE THAT,  its got some glucose molecules in it!*

I suppose id be happier if I wasnt actively trying to lose fat, I can maintain weight eating some carbs, but to lose I gotta go almost zero carb. Ive learnt im prone to hypoglycemia from exercise while zero-carbing. At the gym few days ago I almost passed out from light-headedness after a few mins on the step machine ( granted I was doing near max intensity ). I also feel a bit light headed after running up alot of stairs quickly. As far as my body is concerned, anaerobic exercise and zero carb dont mix.

Well, I dont know what the problem with carbs and my body is. It sucks other people can eat what they want and stay slim. I , meanwhile, have to cut out entire food groups. Damn, I want some marmite on toast, but jeez, if I touch toast ill wake up tomorrow +10lbs.

Growth hormone dosing + fat loss stacked with zero carb

I think I have found the sweet-spot for growth hormone dosing, 2ui ( of high quality version ) taken in the morning before any food seems to yield very good body re-composition results but at the same time doesnt result in it being overly expensive. Basically its a good balance between cost and results.

There are other options for increased GH, like GHRP2 + mod grf 1-29, this causes a spike in natural growth hormone produced by the body which has more isoforms than exogenous GH, this option is also much much cheaper but has a few side effects, GHRP2 can cause increased hunger and increased cortisol.

Anyway , GH combined with zero carb produces amazing fat loss. In the last 3 weeks I dropped 5cm on my waist and I can feel how much lighter I am walking around.  Ive had a few cheat days in those 3 weeks but on the whole ive been 75% zero carb for that duration. GH is associated with insulin resistance and in particular probably induces insulin resistance in adipocytes ( link ), no doubt this is how it helps you lose body fat.

Ive had to stop the melanotan II, a few people have made comments on how dark my face has gotten compared to the rest of my body. Basically because I spent all summer only exposing my face and neck to the sun, these body parts have become exceptionally dark tanned, while the rest of my body has only darkened a little. oh well, now I have wait a few months for the colors on my face/body to equalize before I can consider doing this again. Make a note, Melanotan II doesnt work so well without atleast *some* kind of UV exposure.

I also tried Ipamorelin which was quite interesting. Its another growth hormone secretagogue although its not as potent as GHRP2, it has way less side affects. However the reason I tried this peptide was because of various anecdotal reports on bodybuilding forums of it improving sleep. I took 100mcg 1 hour or so before bed and I can confirm that sleep is improved, the sleep is deeper and you feel more refreshed in the morning.

I have a sketchy theory as to how or why this might help sleep.

Ipam is a ghrelin mimetic, and ghrelin is a slow-wave sleep promotor. In particular, I can remember something quite odd back from this study which looked at 24hr ghrelin levels in obese vs lean subjects. As we all know, obesity is associated with poor sleep. Although the arrow of causation is still tricky. Which causes which? Anyway the most peculiar thing about this study was that at night during sleep, the lean subjects exhibited a large increase in ghrelin, while the obese subjects did not.

See here.......

The bolded black part on the bottom x-axis is the period where the subjects are sleeping and as you can see, the difference between lean and obese is quite startling. *Could* this be why obesity is associated with poor sleep? Either way, I can confirm that Ipam does help with sleep. Im not saying its a cure of insomnia, It doesnt even make you drowsy, but it does seem to help with deeper sleep once sleep comes on.

I think that, if your a bad sleeper, then you really need to try EVERYTHING to resolve this, sleep is probably THE most important thing when it comes to being in good health, It doesnt matter how perfect your lifestyle, diet, or anything else is, a bad nights sleep will trump ALL OF THAT and make you feel like shit.

Ketones inhibit fat synthesis

Metabolite regulation of nucleo-cytosolic trafficking of carbohydrate response element binding protein (ChREBP): role of ketone bodies.

Without going into all the technical details, here's the punchline....

 These observations show that ketone bodies play an important role in regulation of ChREBP activity by restricting ChREBP localization to the cytoplasm, thus inhibiting fat synthesis during periods of ketosis.

ChREBP is a transcription factor that is activated by increased glucose levels, and ChREBP increases synthesis of enzymes like fatty acid synthase that are responsible for lipogenesis.

Anyway what this paper implies is that high ketone levels will inhibit glucose induced lipogenesis.  I think potentially if your in ketosis this could probably mean that you can eat carbs for 1-2 days while stimulating only very limited lipogenesis. Basically the ability of carbs to cause fat gain should be curbed by high ketone levels. ( in theory ). However ofcourse repeated carb feeding will eventually kill your ketone levels and this will allow ChREBP to frontload its lipogenic power.

Now, who knows the answer to this question....... lets say you eat some carbohydrate, you activate ChREBP and it subsequently causes your cells to manufacture some fatty acid synthase enzymes. Now, how long do these enzymes sit around for? Whats their half life?



EDIT*

From the paper it seems oleate and linoleate also appear to be quite good at inhibiting ChREBP.

Hyperinsulinemia increases GLUT4 in white adipose tissue

Hyperinsulinemia increases the amount of GLUT4 mRNA in white adipose tissue and decreases that of muscles: a clue for increased fat depot and insulin resistance.

To mimick a state of hyperinsulinemia, normal rats were infused with insulin for 4 days via minipumps, and compared to saline infused rats. At the end of the experimental period, the abundance of mRNA was increased in white adipose tissue (WAT) and decreased in muscles of "insulinized" rats compared to controls. These findings were accompanied, in all tissues considered, except the diaphragm, by parallel changes in the amount of the glucose transporter protein and by parallel changes in the in vivo glucose utilization index. Hyperinsulinemia is thus a driving force in stimulating adipose tissue metabolic activity, while bringing about incipient muscle insulin resistance.

 Anyone got full text of this? I havent seen this study on the likes of carbsanity. But anyway its quite clear as I have said before, high fasting insulin is a nasty problem and it contributes to making you fat. The calories go where the GLUT4's are. Calories into muscle = lean and strong, calories into fat = obese and lazy.

Hyperinsulinaemia increases insulin action in vivo in white adipose tissue but not in muscles.

The effect of 4 days of stable hyperglycaemia and resulting hyperinsulinaemia on insulin-induced glucose utilization by individual rat tissues was studied in vivo. The treatment produced a net increase in the glucose utilization index under both basal and insulin-stimulated (euglycaemic/hyperinsulinaemic clamp) conditions in white adipose tissue. On the contrary, glucose utilization was unchanged in aerobic muscles but was decreased in glycolytic skeletal muscles during the clamp.

Old news but still noteworthy.

Melanotan II crushed my appetite.

So I been running this at 1mg per day for several weeks now, and im still nowhere near the tanning level I would like to be. As noted previously, theres been some developments however, my skin has undergone much higher pigmentation, lots of new freckles have shown up and some older freckles went REALLY dark. The strangest thing is , without sounding too crude, my penis has an amazing tan despite not seeing even a single photon of UV light.

I dont know what it is but my body is just severely resistant to tanning it seems. But the thing that has struck me the most is the reduction in appetite. Its been phenomenal. In the last week I have been literally having to force myself to eat, im currently running at around 1200 calories per day. Nothing in the fridge looks tasty. Most of my calories have been coming from milk. Even when I ordered a 15inch meat feast pizza I could only eat 2 slices before feeling COMPLETELY full, normally I could eat the whole thing no prob.

Today I even puked up half a tin of salmon I ate for dinner because it felt like "too many calories".

So have I lost any weight? Well yes, but I dont think its as much as it should of been given how little im eating.  Melanotan II has taught me that without a shadow of a doubt hormones control feeding. If your hungry and eating alot, its purely because your hormones are communicating this message to you, and has nothing to do with the reward value of the food or gluttony.

Human body is fucking shit trash

im so frustrated.

I sprained my ankle last Tuesday and its been the worst experience ever. Not only does it fucking hurt like hell, it takes AGES to fucking heal and I cant do shit at moment except ly in bed all day.

Seriously how the fuck did human evolution allow this type of injury to not be weeded out. It can happen SOOO easily and it just completely incapacitates you. In the wild youd be dead for certain with such a simple injury unless you had your family do EVERYTHING for you.

The more I learn about physiology the more I become convinced the human body is just a pathetic frail piece of trash.

Fucking amen for pharmaceuticals and drugs.