Great Health Part 5

Improving Your Metabolic Health.

Great health requires resilience in the following 4 domains:
1.  Physical
2.  Social
3.  Mental
4.  Emotional

Promoting healthy energy utilization and storage by understanding the NEXUS of intermittent exhaustion of stored liver glycogen through a healthy DIET and EXERCISE is the JUST RIGHT STORAGE or optimum condition to live a healthy life.

High intensity interval exercise of 4 minutes increased energy expenditure equal to 50 minutes of steady state exercise and increased aerobic capacity to exercise (or burn more calories per unit time) by 150% more.

The target of effective exercise is the type 2 or fast twitch muscle fibers because they exhaust quickly and cause type 1 or slow twitch muscles to adapt to exercise by increasing mitochondria or energy factories.

Intensity of exercise recruits type 2 or fast twitch muscle fibers.  One can produce intensity for muscle work in two ways, speed and load.  Load is essentially resistance exercise.

Calorie restriction is a similar stressor for cells as high intensity exercise.  High intensity exercise exceeds demand and requires the cell to become efficient by making more energy factories or mitochondria.  Intermittent fasting requires cells to become efficient for lack of abundant energy or supply.  Increased demand and decreased supply both require LEAN efficient cells.  Weekly fasting produces gene expression changes or epidemic changes that create metabolically efficient cell through expression of longevity and repair or regenerative gene action.

PRESCRIPTION FOR DIET AND EXERCISE that intermittently depletes liver glycogen (and triglyceride) while promoting increased aerobic capacity/resilience, increased muscle mass and strength.  Increased aerobic capacity or horsepower includes stronger heart and lungs.

1.  Weekly intermittent fasting of 24 hours without carbohydrate or protein.
2.  Low glycemic daily diet.
           1. limit 1 fist sized starch per meal or snack.
           2. eat 1 oz of healthy fats or nuts daily.
3.  4 minutes of high intensity interval aerobic exercise daily.
            1.  Tabata smart phone timing app.
            2.  8 cycles of 20 secs of speed and 10 secs of stop.
4.  10 minutes of weekly resistance exercise.
            1.  perform 7 reps of each exercise with 5 count positive and 5 count negative.
                  1.  Seated bench press.
                  2.  Seated chest pull.
                  3.  Seated military press.
                  4.  Seated overhead pull down.
                  5.  Quadriceps anterior thigh exercise, squat or extension.

OR CHOOSE a less efficient, less effective prescription without synergy.

1.  Chronic calorie restricted diet to deplete liver glycogen.
2.  Exhaustive steady state exercise to deplete liver glycogen.

This combination sounds logical but does not work well because appetite is stimulated by chronic calorie restriction AND steady state exercise.  Moreover this combination reduces basal metabolism by promoting loss of muscle (and mitochondrial) mass instead of muscle (and mitochondrial) mass building.  Would you prefer to look like a healthy marathon runner or a healthy decathlete?