OK, lately, I have been obsessed with “The Dog Whisperer” on Animal Planet

Now, stay with me for the next paragraph, I will tie this all into the title of this post and a simple and effective way to set your body up for the efficient utilization of the calories you eat….

Early in 2010, we adopted a 5 week old lab/Shepard/pit bull mix. I have always been an animal lover and with both my dog and cat dying of cancer in the past 4 years, I have decided that we must investigate how best to keep our pets healthy; much in the same way I investigate ways to keep myself and my patients healthy. The first thing I did was to dive into the vast amounts of information on dog training. Huck (the lab/shepard/pit mix) is incredibly sweet, healthy and is fun to go off-road unicycling with; this is in part due to the principle laid out by Cesar Millan:

1. Exercise
2. Discipline
3. Affection

Providing these things in that order helps to set rules, limitations and boundaries for dogs but also helps to support them physiologically as this is how their body is meant to work. This is where my dog training research started to parallel my human health and wellness research. Regarding dogs, it has been amazingly helpful and healthful with our dogs to take them for a walk, play Frisbee with them, go unicycling with them or rough-house with them before they eat; it’s what they would do (or technically, their ancestors would do) in the wild, they chase their food down and eat it.

Well, for the better part of human history, this is what we would do too. Research is telling us that this is the way our physiology is set-up too; metabolic and lifestyle diseases have been on the rise for the better part of the last 60-100 years and food has become easier to get and eat every day. So, regarding food, we should consider food as the affection, it’s how our internal environment communicates with the external environment and how we nourish (READ: love) ourselves. I know; what about the discipline part?

Well, that could be built into our “how to eat equation” by stating this; we should eat until we are 75% full and have the discipline to choose a diet that is plant-based or mostly plant-based and not processed. OK, it’s a little bit of a stretch but it works well for my agenda

Here’s more, in fact, I’ll cut to the chase with my recommendation regarding exercise and meals:

Do some quick muscle contractions a few minutes before you eat to make sure you maintain a healthy relationship with sugar, insulin and fat deposition.

Now, I’ll get to the “how” and “what to do” in a little bit; first the “why”.

I’ll start off by saying this idea is not necessarily new ; it’s fairly well-established in research to one extent on another (see my references) and the idea has permeated a few resources for the every day individual; most notably, in a book called, 4 Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss (click for link to book). In this book the idea is discussed under the premise that this technique and other explained in the book will help you look and feel better. I want to expand upon this idea and state that it can help you regulate the sugar in your body.

Why would you want to do this?

It’s scientifically-solid and well understood that after an intense work out, food calories are less likely to be stored as unwanted fat. When our muscles perform work (especially intense work and even in VERY short bouts), they use sugar. Most of the sugar used is supplied by glycogen; this is a storage unit of sugar in muscles and the liver. As such, exercise depletes muscle glycogen and therefore many of the calories you take in after contracting muscles intensely serves to replenish this glycogen so it’s there the next time your muscles contract for more than a few seconds.  In fact, it appears that this process occurs with as little as 60-90 secs of muscle contractions.

The appropriate exercise carried out a few minutes before eating may encourage glycogen restoration and not favor fat deposition, this is a GOOD thing.

In addition, this “habit” seems to be a good recipe to improve insulin sensitivity and improve your blood sugar regulation long term. Exercise before eating does this by increasing a substance in your body named GLUT-4 (glucose transporter type 4). By contracting muscles before insulin is secreted after a meal, it appears we can make sure that the calories we eat are used to replenish glycogen and not be stored inside our fat cells.

What type of exercises should you do? Here is a list of things you can do but the main principle is, 90 seconds of intense muscle contractions:

• Go through each big muscle group and squeeze them as hard as you can for 10-30 seconds until you accumulate 90 seconds of muscle contractions. (the bigger the muscle group, the better
• Do 90 seconds of kettlebell swings
• Do 90 seconds of jumping jacks or jumping rope
• Do 90 seconds of squatting up and down

The list goes on; NOTE: if the activity you choose causes pain, stop and talk to your chiropractor or trainer.

So, be good to yourself; regarding food, use this formula:

1. Exercise first (60-90 seconds),
2. Discipline next (make the right food choices; real, unprocessed foods, eat mostly vegetables)
3. Affection last (EAT )

I should also note that those of you who regularly workout should eat readily-available carbohydrates within 60-90 minutes after your workouts. This is the window of opportunity to maximally replenish your glycogen after a longer workout.

Questions? Ask away…..

References:

• Terada S, Yokozeki T, Kawanaka K, Ogawa K, Higuchi M, Ezaki O, Tabata I.Effects of high-intensity swimming training on GLUT-4 and glucose transport activity in rat skeletal muscle.J Appl Physiol. 2001 Jun;90(6):2019-24.
• Barnard RJ, Youngren JF. Regulation of glucose transport in skeletal muscle. FASEB J. 1992 Nov;6(14):3238-44.
• Youngren JF, Barnard RJ.Effects of acute and chronic exercise on skeletal muscle glucose transport in aged rats.J Appl Physiol. 1995 May;78(5):1750-6.
• Richter EA, Kristiansen S, Wojtaszewski J, Daugaard JR, Asp S, Hespel P, Kiens B.Training effects on muscle glucose transport during exercise.Adv Exp Med Biol. 1998;441:107-16.
• Kawanaka K, Tabata I, Katsuta S, Higuchi M. Changes in insulin-stimulated glucose transport and GLUT-4 protein in rat skeletal muscle after training. J Appl Physiol. 1997 Dec;83(6):2043-7.
• Terada S, Tabata I, Higuchi M. Effect of high-intensity intermittent swimming training on fatty acid oxidation enzyme activity in rat skeletal muscle. Jpn J Physiol. 2004 Feb;54(1):47-52.
• Fujimoto E, Machida S, Higuchi M, Tabata I.Effects of nonexhaustive bouts of high-intensity intermittent swimming training on GLUT-4 expression in rat skeletal muscle. J Physiol Sci. 2010 Mar;60(2):95-101. Epub 2009 Dec 19.
• Hiltunen JK, Qin Y.beta-oxidation – strategies for the metabolism of a wide variety of acyl-CoA esters. Biochim Biophys Acta. 2000 Apr 12;1484(2-3):117-28.

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