The Supplement All Hardgainers Need

Struggling to gain weight? You need to consume more calories. Simple fact is, if you are not consuming more than you are burning, you ain’t gonna put on size son. I have found the ultimate solution to every hardgainers problem; sugar laden soft drinks. Fruit juices, ‘full fat’ Coke, none of that ‘diet’ sugar free rubbish.

If I catch any dude in the gym who says ‘I eat loads but never put on weight’ I am gonna hand them a coke. Why?

1) Sugary soft drinks contain a lot of calories. As said before you need to consume more calories than you burn if you want to gain weight. Liquid calories such as those from fruit juices or even better lucozade are very easy to consume and they are macronutrient dense.

2) They have no impact on our appetite. Studies have shown that people who drank full fat variety soft drinks didn’t compensate by eating less later on. That means they ate what they normally would and had these drinks on top of that. For the hard gainer this is mega handy, it means you can effortlessly increase your calorie intake.

3) Sugar sweetened soft drinks can increase our consumption. Yup they can actually make you eat more than you normally would, a double whammy for weight gain. Studies have even shown that if you feed people the same number of calories in sweet form rather than sugary drink form you’ll compensate and eat less. So as a hard gainer you are better off drinking your sugar than eating it.

So there you have it, sugary drinks are not just easy to consume in addition to our diet, they actually make us eat even more. Hence why they are the hardgainers solution, they ultimately will lead to weight gain.

What can we learn from the above?

Sugary drinks if awesome for hardgainers, those actively seeking to put on weight, who have a hard time eating enough, are therefore pretty awful for the rest of us.

1) They are ’empty calories’. They provide zero micronutrition, unless of course you opt for a fruit juice, but you would still be better off eating the whole fruit. Plus by eating the whole fruit you get fibre, which is very important for a healthy digestive system.

2) We don’t get any fullness from them. I suspect due to the lack of fibre and the ease of digestion our bodies don’t compensate for their consumption. This means we could easily end up over consuming total calories for the day and putting on weight.

The Solution

Right now I hope if you are a hardgainer you are sipping on a can of Coke, but anyone else reading this you are hopefully thinking sugary drinks are a no no. However, there are some ways around this fact.

1) If you track your nutrition they can be incorporated. The fact is our bodies might not be good for compensating for the sugary drink, but if you actively track your calorie intake then you will force a compensation. This is how a lot of my online clients drop fat, gain muscle and get in terrific shape, we track our nutrition. This also means we can enjoy everything and everything, just not always the amount we want. This approach to dieting is called flexible dieting or some know it as IIFYM (if it fits your macros).

2) Milk does get compensated for. Any liquid drink that contains milk or milk proteins has shown to be the equivalent to food. So our bodies do compensate for those calories by eating less. So please do not stop drinking milk.

3) Drink diet drinks. In the video below, that I made years ago and probably look and sound like an idiot, I explain how the current scientific studies don’t show any reason why we cannot drink diet sodas in moderation. Personally I drink a can of Pepsi Max once or twice a day. This also gives us a solution to those who currently drink sugary drinks and want to lose weight. Switch to a diet variety. A simple switch of 2 cans of Coke vs. Diet Coke would save you around 300 calories, if you drank 2 a day, over the course of a week that would save you 2100 calories, enough to spur weight loss.

Further Reading:

– If you want to gain Lean Muscle mass effectively or Lose Fat guaranteed then these two articles will get you in the right place Need to know nutrition Part 1 & Need to know nutrition Part 2 Practical Application.

– If you want to know how anything can be health or healthy given the right context then this article is for you The Importance of Context.

‘Honey Monster Puffs’ The New Health Food?

‘Honey Monster Puffs’

The new ‘health’ food?

So Sugar Puffs are re-branding themselves to Honey Monster Puffs because sales have been driven down by the sugar scare that is currently rife. Not only that but they are changing the recipe of our beloved sugar puffs to contain 20% more honey and less added sugar.

So they will now contain 8.6g sugar per 30g serving, from the original 9.3g. Big whoop. Critics rightly pointed out that once broken down by the body, honey will do the same thing as the added sugar would have. Furthermore, there are worse offenders out there such as Coco Pops and Frosties which contain 11g of sugar per portion. Thus, we can clearly see the change is a marketing ploy, removing sugar from their brand name and assigning a ‘health halo’ by adding that the product contains honey, which is seen as natural and therefore good for you. This frustrates the hell out of me, and highlights how ignorant the consumer is and why education is still the only way to help people make wiser choices.

Education , Education, Education

People need to understand that when it comes to their diet what makes it healthy vs. unhealthy are not individual food choices, but the overall macronutrient and micronutrient contents of their entire diet. However, because the majority of the population do not understand this, they get mis-guided by companies, the news and word of mouth.

Governing Bodies are clueless
Companies are now required to put nutritional traffic lights on their products, assigning different colours to a choice of dietary aspects of the food. Typically calories, sugar, fat, saturated fat and salt.

I have a two big problems with this. One the colours are referring to a guideline daily amount, this is a generic and completely unindividualised figure. Just think, a athlete needs a load more calories and therefore fat than an office worker who is sedentary.

Second, they are focussing on some of the wrong things. I am fine with the calories and overall fat being put there, but sugar, saturated fat and salt? The governing bodies are focussing on the wrong things, they would be better off providing a macronutrient breakdown of the product i.e. fat, protein and carbohydrates.

Sugar at the end of the day is the final form of any carb, and we are not really helping by pin pointing just sugar. Why saturated fat is on there I really don’t know, as no one is sure how much we should really be getting, what we do know is we need a balance of each type of fat and that saturated fat is essential for healthy hormone function. Finally salt, this has been highlighted and vilified by the nutrition press recently, and in my view wrongly. It’s been known for over 20 years that people with high blood pressure who don’t want to lower their salt intake can consume more potassium-containing foods. It is the balance between the two minerals that matters. So if they do have salt on their, surely the potassium content should also be provided?

Confused Consumers

I feel bad for calling the general population ignorant, because I don’t think it is largely their fault. As shown above the government are focussing on the wrong things, and do not provide adequate education. So consumers only have the news, media and branding to base their choices off. And there is the problem, the news often tout complete bull, governing bodies focus on the wrong things and companies are concerned about their bottom line, not our health.

People need to educate themselves, but they need to use legit resources and question everything. This is good daily practice that can be used throughout life. Be open minded but skeptical, base your opinion on facts and if something sounds fishy, question it.

Horizon- Sugar v Fat – Review

This week Horizon presented an experiment, in which they sought to discover which of the two macronutrient’s, fat and sugar, was the ‘bad’ guy causing the health problems seen today. Two identical twins were given two opposing diets, one high fat and the other high sugar, they had to follow these diets for a month. During this time several tests were done, to see what impact the diets were having on their performance in particular tasks. Finally, the twins health markers were assessed at the end of the month and they came to a conclusion on whether it is fat or sugar making us ill.

Here I am going to take a critical view of the study conducted and give my opinion on the outcomes of the programme. I will first outline what took place and then go over what I liked and what I thought could be improved on.

Method

First the twins were tested on a few health markers; body fat %, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol levels, and BMR. Both saw very similar results and were classified as slightly overweight, being 27% and 22% body fat.

The Diet

The twins were advised to eat as much as they wanted from the foods given to them, one high carb (fruit, cereal, starches etc.) and the other high fat (butter, nuts, fatty meats). I will point out that on the high fat diet the twin was not allowed to consume trans fats, these are man-made fats and we want to avoid them where possible.

Cognitive Function Test

After the twins had been following their diets for a few weeks they were given the task of becoming stock traders. For this task they were given a sum of money and could use it to trade stocks and try and make a profit, the winner was the one who made the most money at the end.

The Outcome: The twin on the high sugar diet generated much more profit and performed better during the task.

This happens because when on a high fat diet you are without readily available glucose so the brain switches to use ketones (derived from fat) for fuel. This occurs so that the body breaks down less protein for glucose, by reducing the body’s total glucose requirements. And this is why carbohydrates are protein sparing, as we can derive glucose from them. This is known as ketosis, and some people do not perform well on ketones, they feel tired and become unable to concentrate. However, some people perform fine off ketones, once adapted, so in this case we can either assume the twin was not adapted or he was part of the crowd who perform poorly on ketones.

Satiety Test

Here the twins were given a breakfast of equal calories, one high sugar and one high fat of course. Then after this they were presented with a buffet of foods, and were instructed to eat as much as they liked of their prescribed dietary foods.

The Outcome: The twin eating high fat ate 825kcals, the twin on high sugar ate 1250kcals.

Protein has a significant short term satiating effect, this was seen here and has been seen in many studies; resulting in reduced self-reported hunger, increased self reported satiety and reduced energy intake in the next meal. The twin of course was meant to be eating high fat and not high protein, but as stated in the programme, the two often go together. Studies investigating the satiating impact of carbs and fat on their own show in-significant differences between the two, protein wins hands down for keeping you full. On a side note when looking at alcohol vs. other macronutrients satiating impact, it has been found that due to alcohols derived energy being hard to regulate by the body, we tend not to compensate for the calories ingested from alcohol, making it particularly easy for us to consume too many calories. Even more interesting is the fact that liquid carbohydrate forms, such as fruit juice or energy drinks have the same non-compensatory effect as alcohol. So because the twin on the high fat diet was also consuming higher protein than the high sugar diet he consumed less calories in his next meal. It was not the satiating impact of fat, it was the protein keeping him fuller.

Cardiovascular Test

The twins were put on bikes before breakfast and cycled for an hour, after which one was given an energy gel and the other given a stick of butter, roughly equal in caloric value. They then raced to the top of a hill, the winner being the one who got their first.

The Outcome: The twin on the high sugar diet reached the summit first.

Throughout the day we are mainly using our aerobic energy system, and this is powered mainly by fat. However, when performing high intensity exercise, such as in a race, we push ourselves past our aerobic energy system and move into our anaerobic and creatine phosphate energy systems. When we perform anaerobically we require glucose, when we have a diet high in carbs it is ready and waiting, however when we do not we have to get it from other places. Protein undergoes a process called gluconeogensis, this is where protein is broken down into glucose, this is inefficient and not preferential by any means.

Steve Phinney (ketogenic diet researcher) said ‘therapeutic use of ketogenic diets should not require constraint of most forms of physical labour or recreational activity, with one caveat that anaerobic performance is limited by the low muscle glycogen levels induced by the ketogenic diet, and this would strongly discourage its use under most conditions of competitive athletes’.

This explains why the twin receiving the high carb energy gel performed better on this task.

Body Composition Changes

Both twins lost weight, with half or more coming from their own muscle tissue. The twin on a high sugar diet saw an increase in insulin sensitivity and his cholesterol remained as per before the diet. The twin on the high fat diet also saw no change in cholesterol but saw a marked decrease in insulin sensitivity.

The Conclusion: They concluded that faddish diets prioritizing one food over the other is not the way to go.

My Thoughts

Likes:

• They used human twins as the test subjects.
• They tested the diets impact on brain function, cardiovascular ability and common health markers.
• They proved to be open minded, non-biased and skeptical. Key to being an evidence based practitioner.
• They concluded that we should avoid faddish diets and it is never one thing but the sum of things. Best is to avoid processed foods and eat a whole food based diet.

Dislikes:

• Diets were not calorie controlled.
• Protein was not controlled and hardly discussed.
• In general there was a lack of controls in all experiments e.g. they did not test the twins performance on their regular diets, for example one twin may have been fitter prior to the study.
• Both twins were overweight, which means the results cannot be directly applied to healthy populations.
• Small sample size.
• At no point were hormones discussed or studied, fat is essential for healthy hormone function and therefore I believe it should have been measured as a health marker. Also ghrelin and leptin were discussed but were never measured.
• They did not mention the fact that by excluding a whole macronutrient it was almost inevitable that the twins would be in a calorie deficit and lose weight.
• The diets were very unrealistic and unsustainable.

To me the study puts a clear case against high fat diets and really promotes carbohydrates. The twin on high carbs outperformed the other twin on both the cognitive and the cardiovascular task. Furthermore, his insulin sensitivity increase compared to the high fat dieting twin who’s sensitivity dropped, close to diabetic levels. Furthermore, the high carb twin lost only 1kg of muscle vs. the high fat twin’s 2kg. It looks like those who choose to eat a ketosis/high fat low carb type diet for extended periods of time would be at risk of diabetes and muscle loss. The study was very interesting, however it was uncontrolled and ignored some important areas, therefore it would be irresponsible to draw any conclusions from it.

Fat and carbohydrates are both important, they both serve their own purposes, to get rid of either would be a mistake. The amount we need is highly individual, if you want to know more about this please see my previous post Need to Know Nutrition- Practical Application. People today are becoming overweight because we have access to delicious food 24/7 and we do not have to work hard to get it. Studies show we burn less energy then we used to, and we also consume more calories.

As they said in closing on Horizon, ‘it’s up to you’, move a bit more and be conscious of what you are eating.

Resources

Alan Aragon ‘AACUK Conference’ 2013.

Beasley, J, M. et al. ‘Associations between macronutient intake and self reported appetite and hormone levels…’ American Journal of Epidemiology. 2009.

Horizon ‘Sugar v Fat’ 2014.

Lyle McDonald ‘The Ketogenic Diet’

Poppit, S, D. et al ‘Short Term Effects of Macronutrient Preloads on Appetite and Energy in Lean Women’ Psychology and behavior, 279-286pp. 1998.