Q&A for: 23-Sep-05
554. Q:
why is white rice more fatteining than brown rice even though the GI is nearly identical?
A:
Neither I nor anyone else can explain it fully simply because the human body is so incredibly complex. Like I said in Q&A #553 the conversion of food carbohydrates into glucose is just one step of many, so it's to be expected that it doesn't tell the whole story. The difference between white and brown rice lies in the fact that brown rice has all of its original layers except the outermost hull. White rice, on the other hand, has the bran layer, germ layer, and the aleurone layer (containing essential fats) removed. Those three layers contain almost all of vitamins, minerals, and fiber which make brown rice the superior choice, both health-wise and fatloss-wise. Those same minerals, vitamins, essential fats, and fiber are also responsible for the fact that brown rice is significantly less fattening than white rice. Why and how exactly nobody can tell you, though undoubtedly its extra fiber plays a role. If and when the entire reason for this difference is complete understood, it'll probably fill a few dozen pages at least.
Consider this -- it's merely an outline of metabolic processes that happen inside your muscles, the chemical reactions using proteins, fats, and glucose that drive your muscles. It doesn't even go into digestion, nutrients absorbtion into blood, uptake into muscles or organs or fat storage, or various hormonal interactions that affect all the other processes. The only reason I give this example is to demonstrate the incredible complexity of the human body. It's not reasonable to expect any simple guide like the GI index to give the whole picture. The GI index is just one of many tools that you should use to make informed decisions.
555. Q:
i would like to lose about 120 lbs in 6 months is this possible
A:
It's almost certainly impossible and even if it was possible it would be a bad idea. Weight loss at a fast pace like this (nearly 5 pounds/week) would destroy a lot of your muscle mass in addition to fat. That's very bad for a couple of reasons (even forgetting about basic health reasons for a moment). First, your muscle is the biggest thing that allows you to burn fat effectively in the first place, so the more muscle you lose the less fat you'll be able to burn. After a month or two of a crash diet like this your weight loss will come to a halt and leave you without much fat-burning muscle but still with plenty of fat. Second, the same muscle mass is your best protection against future fat gains, so by destroying your muscle mass you're making yourself very vulnerable to new fat gains in the future. Both these reasons are why crash diets almost always fail.
Instead of trying to lose a lot of fat so fast, you should realize that it didn't get this way in just 6 months so there's no way you can expect it to disappear in just 6 months either. Take your time and aim for 2 pounds/week weight loss. A steady weight loss like that will preserve your muscle mass and allow you to lose fat for a long long time. Please read this article for a detailed advice about how to proceed on this program. Good luck!
556. Q:
i'm a 24 year old double below amputee with diabetes i've spiked up to 270lbs and i'm 5'10 i really can't do some of the exercises needed like running and biking i want to get dowm to about 150-180lbs how can i do this.
A:
Unfortunately I haven't had any experience with cases like yours, so take my advice with a grain of salt... Diet-wise you'll ideally try for the same diet as anyone else looking to lose fat. That means many small meals each day, with lots of protein (lean meats, chicken, fish), veggies, and heathy fats like olive oil. You can fill out Mike's Fitness Guide too see a suggested diet.
Exercise will be a little trickier. For an excellent whole-body cardio exercise, consider swimming. Unfortunately you may need help getting in and out of the pool, but you should be able to swim on your own. Of course you'll want to be careful and have somebody to help you along in the beginning. For weight-training I hope you have access to a gym or can get some dumbbells for home. You will want to perform all the exercises you can with dumbbells, including bicep curls, tricep overhead extensions, and shoulder presses. Depending on the design on the machines in your gym you may also be able to perform machine pulldowns and/or machine rows -- both of those are excellent back exercises and would give you a big metabolic boost by working your back. You will want to pick such weights that for any given exercise you can only perform it 6-12 times before exhausting your muscles. Since the number of exercises available to you will be limited, you can do 2-3 sets of each one and go through all of them in a 1-hour session. Try to 2-3 such sessions per week.
Finally, try to be as active as possible in the wheelchair, even if it's just making loops about your house. If you at all can, consider finding an arena where you can go in your wheelchair. Especially if you try to do sprints, it'll be an excellect combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Please feel free to ask any other questions here if you have them and best of luck to you!
557. Q:
i was doing cardio for 30 minutes, 6 days a week, for 5 weeks. i was sort of eating healthy (half the time i was starving), and i did light/moderate weight training at home w/ no equipment 2-3 a week. weeks 4 and 5 i was doing HIIT. anyways, i don't think i lost any weight. but everyone keeps telling me my face is smaller. i don't notice it. is this possible? yet i still have a gut and semi-formed manboobs. what is going on? was i doing something wrong? although i try eating healtier (i.e. not starving myself), i haven't exercised in 6 weeks. i feel so bad. what should i do Mike? please help.
A:
Let me try to address all those things... First off, no matter what else, 5 weeks isn't a whole lot of time for any program to give good results. You have to remember all worthwhile things take a lot of time and effort and losing fat is no exception. You can't lose a gut in five weeks even on the best of the best programs. Hang in there for a long run -- months, maybe even years.
Having said that, it's certainly quite possible that you may start seeing the changes you described. Looking slightly thinner at the same weight is very common for beginners and is an indication of having lost some fat and having built some muscle in its place. HIIT and light weight training you did helped you along there. Unfortunately you can't expect such progress to continue for much longer, so you'll want to optimize your program...
First off, eat better -- no starving yourself again! When trying to lose fat you should undereat slightly so you always feel a little hungry, but nothing like starvation. Starvation is one of the worst things you can do to yourself when trying to lose fat. A starving body will want to hang on to its fat because it sees it as the last life reserve. Instead it will burn muscle for energy driving your metabolism lower and lower. So fill out Mike's Fitness Guide to see a suggested diet and try to follow it closely in spirit, just substituting foods that are roughly equivalent to one another to your taste. Again, give this new diet time to do its work -- it will first have to wake up your metabolism before effective fat loss can start. It may take a month or longer just to do that. After that, aim for weight loss of around 1 pound per week.
For exercise, keep HIIT but cut it down to 3-4 times/week max. Try to get access to a gym or at least heavy dumbbells for home so that you reach muscular failure in under 12 reps of any one exercise. Check out my recommended training programs here -- they include a couple you can do at home. Pick any one of the programs that you like that fits the equipment available to you, but do try and get heavy dumbbells at least.
Finally, don't ever get down on yourself because that just serves no purpose whatsoever. Even if you fall off the wagon, just pick yourself up and get right back on it. Good luck!
558. Q:
Hey mike, i have multiple things i need your help to adress. right now im a 200 pound sophmore(im 6'3 so you dont think im fat) but, i have manboobs.. im gonna start a cutting diet til they are gone, but next year i want to try out for our schools football team. Probably an offensive line position, or something doing with defending the QB or going for theirs. What can i do to getmyself big enough for that, without getting my manboobs back once i have them gone? (when i say manboobs, i mean like i have puffy nipples and a little bit of fat, but if i flex my chest i can feel alot of muscle in there)
A:
Don't try cutting at your age and physique. You're not overweight at all at 6 foot 3 200 pounds and by cutting now you not only lose valuable time you can use to build muscle but also jeopardize the completion of your growth and development. Right now you're at THE perfect age to build some serious muscle -- don't throw away that opportunity by wasting time on cutting and getting your manboobs smaller.
Clean up your diet, cut out all junk, and substitute it with whole healthy foods. That alone will go a long way to reducing those manboobs. Your continuing growth and maturation will finish the job. So that problems is taken care of. A bigger decision should be whether you'll try to eat to gain some weight (in muscle of course, not fat!) or whether you just want to make the most of your existing physique. If you choose the former, you'll be overeating slightly to gain about 2 pounds of weight per month. In conjunction with a good weightlifting program, most of those 2 pounds will be muscle, though it's almost unavoidable that some will be fat. How much of each will depend mostly on how clean and steady your diet is. If you choose the latter, you'll eat just enough to maintain your present weight and with good weightlifting burn off some of the fat and build muscle in its place.
In either case, fill out Mike's Fitness Guide specifying 'Build Muscle' as your goal. That'll give you both a workout program and a diet program. Try to stick with that diet (read the paragraph preceding it to see how you can customize it) and depending on whether your goal is to keep your weight or try to gain a bit adjust the calories up or down to stay on track.
As for your football position choice, your height should give you good advantage at either the offensive tackle or defensive end positions. I don't know your team and competition, obviously, but 200 pounds is probably a good weight for the end position and may be a little light for the tackle. Good luck and once again remember that you're in the perfect position to build muscle now so focus on that first and let good diet and exercise take care of manboobs.
559. Q:
How did anyone determine the loss of fat and muscle?
A:
It can be determined by keeping track of weight and body fat percentage. Body fat can be measured reliably by underwater weighing and somewhat less reliably by a professional with calipers (various scales and devices that send electricity through your body to measure body fat are not reliable at all). If you know starting and ending body weight and body fat %, then you can have a good approximation of fat and muscle lost. It won't be exact, because fat and muscle loss will not be the only changes you experience, but they will be by far the most dominant ones, so the numbers give you a good approximation. For example...
Suppose you weigh 200 pounds at 20% body fat. That means you have 200 * 0.20 = 40 pounds of body fat. After half a year of diet and exercise you weigh 170 pounds at 12% body fat. That means you now have 170 * 0.12 = 20 pounds of fat. So you lost 200 - 170 = 30 pounds total of which 40 - 20 = 20 pounds was fat. That means the other 10 pounds you lost was muscle. This would probably be considered a successful weight loss since you lost significantly more fat than muscle. Again, this is not 100% exact, but gives a good approximation.
560. Q:
What is the best possible choice for dessert in your opinion?
A:
There's a couple approaches to this... If it's something you just really want and feel like you deserve it, then just got for it, whatever it might be. Just don't make it an everyday thing. If it's desert idea you'll want to use often, then something built around real whole fruits or berries is a good idea. Frozen grapes and even frozen blueberries are delicious by themselves. A little whip cream and a lot of strawberries works well. You can also use jello for a variety of low-calorie recipes, many of them with fruits. Just make sure you use whole real fruits, not syrup or other sugars to sweeten them.
561. Q:
How many grams of carboyhydrates does an average teenager need daily?
A:
Sorry, that's kinda tough to answer in general. Typical consumption for an average growing boy might be around 400-500 grams of carbs. I would recommend a lower-carb, higher-protein diet. For your specific case, just fill out Mike's Fitness Guide specifying 'Build Muscle' as your goal -- a typical teenager should not in general try to lose fat, so build muscle is a more appropriate goal for the Guide.
562. Q:
How can I lose at least 5lbs without gaining much muscle?
A:
Losing weight and not gaining much, if any, muscle go hand-in-hand. It's completely normal to lose weight and lose or at least not gain muscle at the same time. A much more difficult task is to lose weight and to GAIN muscle. But to answer your question, just lose weight and you'll lose muscle too. It's not something I would make a goal (I always recommend trying to preserve as much muscle as possible and even build more), but it is the most natural outcome of losing weight.
563. Q:
What are the majority of healthy raw foods I can eat to lose weight??
A:
Veggies!!! Tons and tons of spinach, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, radishes, carrots, etc. When you can't eat it raw, boil or steam it like with broccoli, cauliflower, etc. Veggies are your best friends and spinach and lettuce are your best friends from among veggies!
564. Q:
i asked question#557.. how is it possible to look slightly thinner but weigh the same as before?
A:
I answered it in the second paragraph -- you lost some fat and built some muscle so the total weight doesn't change but you look thinner. You look thinner because muscle doesn't take as much room as fat and also because your body builds muscle in the way that's not perceived as fat even if a body part increases in size with new new muscle. A very muscular person and a very fat person may weigh the same, but there's no question that the muscular person will look much much thinner. You experienced the same thing on a small scale.
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