NUTR-313 Final: Lecture 36 (Nutrition for Exercise)

Post Exercise (continued)

Also post-exercise we have proteogenesis yay, which is the stimulus of muscle tissue synthesis. So a couple factors have to be present: 1.) Number one, there has to be the mechanical loading or the stress from resistance exercise. 2.) Two, there has to be presence of amino acids. 3.) Three, there has to be the hormonal response and this requires insulin and growth hormone → And this elicits the development of tissue proteins and those can be globular → So again I want to say this here because this is a misconception that when we're talking about protein synthesis it's just muscle tissue, but it's also all types of globular proteins, like hormones and enzymes and not just muscle protein. → But also those structural proteins like muscles. And also, we're synthesizing mitochondria and all sorts of other fabulous things.

Weight Gain, Cholesterol Increases, & Amino Acid Imbalances

And then the last thing, if we get too much protein we're going to definitely get weight gain or too many calories for sure, but most of the time high-protein diets lend to high weight gain. If it's not specifically reducing carbs or fat and it's just increasing protein, then it's certainly going to cause weight gain as all excess calorie diets do. 1.) Sometimes also you'll see cholesterol increases and this comes anytime that we're increasing the amount of carbohydrates that we're like loading or anything we'll get an increase in cholesterol production 2.) And then like I mentioned before, we could have some amino acid imbalances if we're supplementing single free amino acids. → So if we're dosing lots and lots and high doses of those it could cause competitions that affect absorption of other amino acids. 3.) So some things to consider on the too much side of the umbrella and measuring the effectiveness of our diet in terms of it helping our exercise performance.

Exercise Greater than 90 Minutes

For exercises lasting more than 90 minutes, again we might want to replenish or spare glycogen or spare during that time. 1.) So we would every 30 minutes have about a half a cup of fluids and 15 grams of carbs. 2.) 2.) And you can do this very naturally with some water along with honey and raisins. You can also use products that are designed for endurance sports, like gels and sports beans and sports beverages. → It's fun if you've ever done a marathon or gone to one, there's all sorts of these fun products they hand out for free. But they're good, they sustain blood sugar levels during exercise so that you can conserve what you have. → And they're popular because they feature certain nutritional things that just help exercise. For instance honey and honey and sports drinks are made with a perfect fructose to glucose ratio and we'll get to this later when we get to the digestive and absorptive systems, but it favors absorption in a nice steady way that's not too high glycemic. 3.) Sports drinks are formulated also to not be too high glycemic by using maltodextrins which are this perfect intermediate of easy to break down but not too high glycemic mixed with electrolytes because as we'll learn that helps absorption. → And also, sometimes as you can see energy ingredients. So we see caffeine, this has that sodium so that has electrolytes over there. → This one's cool it even has amino acids added in, so now we even got that recovery element built in there. 4.) And then what you might not want to do during exercise, coffee or caffeine drinks, beer or alcohol beverages or milk.

Daily Energy Expenditure (DEE) (continued)

If we looked at the additional intake, so say you took in 500 extra calories per day and using just this little graphic right here, say a percentage of those calories were protein, then you would have an additional 25 grams extra per day. 1.) So what this means to a person who's 70 kilograms, like a regular sized guy who is taking in the regular RDA of 0.8 grams per day, this is about 56 grams per day. 2.) So the additional needs for taking in those extra calories it's not really an additional protein need it's just a balance across those calories. That guy taking in a little bit more, the 1.1 gram per kilogram is 84 grams per day. 3.) So it's really just a function of calorie intake and I say that because protein intake is a big misconception in the exercise and fitness and sport world. People think that they need more protein in terms of its relationship or relativity to everything else in the diet, but really you just need an extra gram amount to support or that fits in, in the same proportional fashion as it did before → And so this is one more little indicator and it's just more scientific evidence where they look at both in sedentary bodybuilding and endurance athletes who had a protein intake 1.1, 1.0 and 1.7 grams per kilogram per day and that should kind of be making sense by now as we talked about the protein chapter already, but the typical RDA is 0.8 grams per kilogram per day. → And so it's increased a little bit in these experimental diets and what they could see and I'm fast-forwarding a little but nitrogen balance is maintained and positive, which means there's plenty of nitrogen to, you know, accrue new muscles where in a positive nitrogen balance in all diets → So even at that bodybuilder level at only 1.0 gram per kilogram there was still positive nitrogen balance. → So this is nice evidence and what I want to point out is that it doesn't mean there wasn't more, there was 4,000 calories in this diet. So it more protein but again as a function of calories. 4.) This is, I love the Gatorade sport science division and website, they have a lot of fun little tools. This is cool to calculate sweat rate. → So the general guideline is presented right here, which is just saying that it's two cups per hour of exercise. → So if you're doing an hour of sweat involving exercise, then you swig two cups to replace or before, but this is a more detailed way to calculate sweat rate looking at you know water bottle weight and estimating urinary losses. → And they give you little tools if you, you know, don't have a way to obviously estimate the volume of your urine, but of course you could just catch it and put it in a plastic beaker → But anyway, no one's probably going to go to that crazy extent, so guidelines for fluid intake are just two cups per hour.

Inhibited Protein Synthesis

Inadequate protein intake leads to a negative nitrogen balance. 1.) So we talked about our protein needs and I showed you how they were in a positive nitrogen balance and this is the opposite. → When we don't have enough protein then we break down our muscle protein to use that nitrogen for other needed reasons, like all of these reasons and so we break down our muscle tissue and because of that it comes out in the urine and we can sense that we're in a negative nitrogen balance. 2.) So that's an important thing and that can also be measured in the urine and it can also of course affect hypertrophy and strength gain, so it can also affect performance. → It can also affect anthropometric gains in terms of atrophied muscles, so muscles shrinking, it's getting smaller 3.) So those are some feedback measures, they can be anthropometric biochemical and really or they can affect performance.

Ergogenic Nutrients & Compounds

Let's take a look at some other dietary compounds. So I'm sure you'll notice we kind of glazed over vitamins and minerals and that's because supplementation trials haven't really showed any promising effects for supplementing high doses of vitamins and minerals. And again adequacy is it important? Absolutely, but as far as consuming more outside of the realm of balance there isn't any additional requirements. 1.) There are however all sorts of classes of ergogenic nutrients and compounds. And what we mean by ergogenic is that it might elicit some kind of performance effect. → And this includes categories for protein where all of these different whole sources and fractionated or partial proteins can be used, usually in the case of strength and bodybuilding markets. → We also have different fat ones and these fat categories are marketed for all sorts of types of exercise. But sometimes erroneously usually these are based on endurance or long-term exercises and ones that need to enhance hydration. 2.) Minerals, that's a big area especially for bodybuilders because if we're building extra protein we know that a big component of our protein tissue is mineral. The same with our bone mineral to maintain normal and good healthy protein turnover. 3.) And electrolytes because we're losing water in our sweat, so we see those in supplements and marketed in products along with these proteins. 4.) And also vitamins, so we can't ignore those. But again for the most part when we isolate these and supplement these in athletes that aren't deficient we don't see any real ergogenic benefits. 5.) There's also pharmacologic compounds that some do, some don't have effects. All of these ones are I believe technically classified as safe with most sport organizations. I'm questioning myself on this one, this is a precursor to a steroid (DHA) but it's not a steroid and I think it might be safe but don't quote me on that one. → But all these are just over-the-counter supplements, caffeine obviously is easy to get and pyruvate carnitine HMB these are all things you can buy → But again that are supposed to have some ergogenic benefit and they're consumed in our regular diet or through supplements. 6.) But for the most part the most critical thing to remember is just balancing those extra calories across the groups, and you'll get everything you need, especially anything that would be supplemented in any of these different nutrient groups.

Amino Acid Composition of Major Food Protein Sources

Looking a little bit closer at within protein at amino acids. So we haven't learned this yet but leucine, that's a big one for stimulating muscle protein synthesis. 1.) Leucine is important for stimulating muscle protein synthesis and you can see here the difference between plant wheat and a little bit better in bean because bean is one of those! → That's why bean is in the protein category or in the instead of in the vegetable category like it should be because it's a plant and why it confuses everyone all the time, but that's why because it's higher in those high-quality amino acids. → It's comparable up there to milk and eggs, not exactly as high but it's high. So leucine is one of those important ones for building tissue 2.) And then looking a little closer at leucine's family members, isoleucine and valine, these are also a low branch chain guys. You can look at some other high-quality sources like beef is really high. → But interestingly, look at hemp, hemp is coming up on totals higher and leucine, the very critical one for muscle protein synthesis, is almost just as high. → So I guess I shouldn't just not disclose that hemp isn't super highly bioavailable, so it's not super digestible because of those phytates remember from mineral chapter. But anyway, hemp isn't the most digestible but if you look for hulled hemp and I've seen that lately they have little packages of hulled hemp those are really, really, really good for supplementing branched chain amino acids in a vegetarian vegan diet. 3.) The branched chain amino acids are also really impressive and surprising in cashews and legumes which are the peanuts, so impressive things and so all three of these sources are safe for vegetarians to get their high-quality leucine levels → And then of course you can supplement them, that's one of the most popular supplements for bodybuilding for sure.

Food Intake for Pre-Exercise

Looking at food intake for pre-exercise, so we're talking now we're an hour within an hour before exercise we are looking for foods that are in the 3 to 400 calories zone, 10 to 25 grams of carbs, 20 to 25 grams of protein, and the big principles here are pretty low in fat, pretty low in protein, and pretty moderate in fiber and if you're like well how can we make sure that we have adequate protein for after our workout, but have a low protein pre, you know, snack or pre-meal. 1.) It's because you're going to want really high-quality protein, maybe even you know a single amino acid supplement if you're like really into it, but you're not going to want to have a low protein meal that's also low-quality because yeah, then you might not have as much around after. → What this looks like, this is about like an egg, a couple pieces of bread, some hummus and some carrots, and this provides right in that profile shown and this again is just to highlight some of those perfect foods for before, it's really high quality → Egg is relatively low, it's a high protein food but in the place of a 3 to 400 calorie meal it's a relatively low protein contribution, easy to digest and really high-quality 2.) Not going to want to do too much dairy within an hour of exercise because even if you don't feel very lactose-intolerant in the everyday moments of life, sometimes even the most mild amount of lactose deficiency kicks in during exercise because as we'll learn, we lose a lot of the blood supply to the gut.

Creatine & Phosphorus

Most of it after that, in that initial couple seconds and you can see ATP right here, it immediately depletes. 1.) The next little piece to kick in is the PCR system. PCR system kicks in, peaks within seconds and then quickly rushes back out. And so the PCR system and the ATP or the phosphagen systems buffer until the oxidative requiring or oxygen requiring systems can kick in. 2.) So one of the things that people supplement is creatine or phosphorus and sometimes both together, but usually just one or the other, is to supplement both little pieces here, the P is the phosphate and the CR is creatine. → And so people are under the assumption that if I eat some of this it will get in my muscle more, but like I mentioned, we do consume some in foods and we do make this in our cells → So our cell makes creatine and we'll get to out of what amino acids shortly

Carnitine Shuttle

Now I put up here again, I wouldn't want to show you this detail except for that there's another ergogenic compound that people initiate for this. 1.) So triglycerides are broken down, they come over here to the mitochondrial membrane and now if you remember they're taken into the mitochondrial membrane through this carnitine shuttle. → So people take carnitine because they think that if they have more carnitine in their diet and more carnitine in their cell that they'll be able to more effectively bring fatty acids into the mitochondrial membrane for oxidation 2.) So probably should be marketed only to endurance athletes but I know strength athletes that take that one too.

Daily Energy Expenditure (DEE) (continued again)

Now when we talk about nutrition for exercise the biggest deal is timing. So we're going to see here just this same layout for nutrients that we're showing in this column, but now let's look at timing. 1.) So one hour before exercise the diet should look about like this and that's going to be your loading phase. So you're going to want to make sure everything's there, your muscles are cool, your liver's cool, it's all pumped up with glycogen and making sure that there's adequate amino acids available for afterwards which we'll get to 2.) During exercise, so these are only for exercises that are long or what's classified as endurance which is 90 minutes or more, you might want to go through a sparing consumption process which is where you take in carbs and fluids and you make sure that you're sparing glycogen so that you can do your exercise longer → When we can't do exercise anymore it's because the liver and the muscles have just plum run out of glycogen 3.) And then the after phase when we're focused on nutrition for post or replenishment is we're looking at anywhere between 30 minutes and 60 minutes after exercise, making sure that carbohydrate intake and protein intake specifically are adequate to meet those needs of protein synthesis and to restore that muscle glycogen → So after exercise your body is like a sponge and it's really in this high growth and repair phase. So if you want to make sure that you have adequate nutrients available after then one, it's good to eat some stuff before. But within 30 minutes and no more than two hours after exercise these nutrients should be a focus.

Glycemic Index/Load

One of the big principles before exercise is the low glycemic index principle. 1.) So what you don't want is for your blood sugar levels to spike really high because you had a high glycemic or high blood sugar triggering food or meal and then right in the middle of your exercise because the insulin response was so big that all of a sudden blood glycogen is completely cleared out that you have what's called a rebound hypoglycemia. → So we don't want super high glycemic index foods and what glycemic index is it's basically looking at the amount of food elicits a blood glucose response compared to a reference food or a test food 2.) So there's all kinds of different ways to categorize them but the simplest goes just the low, intermediate, high and this gets a little bit confusing and here's why I'm pointing it out in so much detail instead of just saying you know low GI foods. → Because just because it's a grain food doesn't mean that it has a high glycemic index. So for instance, spaghetti has a really low glycemic index but white rice has a really high glycemic index. So it's not quite as straightforward, it's just based on the density, it's based on the type of starch, it's based on you know how it's prepared, how much fat, how much fiber. So it's pretty complex. 3.) Glycemic load is another concept that multiplies the glycemic index value times the grams of carbohydrate per serving → And again categorized simply as low, medium and high. And you can you see here the interaction of the two. → So you have a food like carrots which has a relatively low glycemic index and glycemic load → Here's spaghetti, see how low the glycemic index is, 42, an intermediate level glycemic load though. So if you were looking for low glycemic food this is a focus → And then in some instances as we'll get to in the disease chapter, glycemic load is the focus and then you know spaghetti isn't the best choice. Then we're looking for low load foods which are different than low glycemic foods. 4.) For instance over here let's look at watermelon, high glycemic index, low glycemic load and so the concepts while intertwined are, you know, different when we're looking at strategizing dietary intake.

Enhanced Muscle Growth

One of the major ways that nutrition supports exercise is by enhanced muscle growth. 1.) So you can see here that if you do not eat after exercise versus if you do eat after exercise it stimulates muscle protein synthesis you know right after three hours and all the way two days later. 2.) So muscle protein synthesis is certainly encouraged by the intake of food after exercise, which eventually if we looked at different types of outcomes or how we could measure this this boils down to strength and power. → So we're able to do a higher amount of work which is maybe either rep sets or higher levels of weights than we could do previously because we are stronger.

Post Exercise

Post-exercise, so now we're talking within an hour after. All sorts of good foods to pick from. 1.) My favorite, so if I'm working with someone I'm like the easiest go-to it's always going to be in the milk family! → Milk has a perfect profile for after, it's got that nice distribution of carbs to protein, it's like in a two-to-one, maybe three-to-one ratio if it has some of these extra sugars like this product → Low calorie smoothies are a great idea and if you're looking to bulk high calorie smoothies. So kind of depending on is this a, you know, post-recovery protein thing or is this like a whole meal you can do it low calorie or high calorie fashion. 2.) Taking a closer look at some milk protein contributions, so whole milk yogurt is great too → That Greek, that double-strain high-protein yogurt and then also we supplement a lot of times to smoothies with milk fractions so we can use non-fat milk solids or we can use whey isolates that we purchase → We can also if we're vegan or vegetarian we can go with plant fractions, so soy protein consulate and soy concentrates and isolates, which we talked about before but again kind of highlighting some of the quantities. → We're talking a lot, there's you know 20, 10 to 20 grams of protein coming from one serving of these things which really help with that muscle recovery.

Post Exercise

So after exercise, so we have. So, now we've exercised. I've talked about all of the different systems that are in use at the very beginning, middle and end of it, and also some of the digestion issues that we could deal with. 1.) So after exercise we do what's called the glycogenolysis. → So stimulated by insulin, all the glucose from our post-meal which is usually again at 30, 60 minutes after, almost all that glucose is converted to glycogen to replenish the muscle and liver stores. 2.) And some people like to supplement with chromium or vanadium which are both trace minerals and they're both, they both act like insulin or potentiate the action of insulin. So they act like it or they modulate the insulin receptor in a way that favors insulin action and the point of this is that we need insulin to stimulate this glycogenesis process. → So if we take this extra chromium and vanadium then we will have extra insulin effects.

Carbohydrate Loading

So also, for certain types of exercise or events where you're going to be performing exercise for more than 90 minutes you can do loading techniques. 1.) And loading techniques involve a series of depleting carbohydrates and then replenishing carbohydrates, following really high carbohydrate meals and then 1 to 2 days like a loading phase. 2.) So you're going to find it probably different not only days on the timeline, but you'll also find different percentages, different gram amounts, there's a lot of different loading protocols and some experts say it's not even a great idea, some experts say you just have to take a really good high carbohydrate meal the day before and you know the morning before. → The research goes both ways, most definitely say that carbohydrate loading for sure maximizes glycogen storage → But I mean the whole protocol of like the depletion, the repletion and all those different things. So again this is for kind of high-level competition but it's a series of depletion steps and then repletion and then load and you can look up different protocols for that → But some you know teeter on the lines of you're kind of running out of energy and you're tapering off on your exercise levels and so all kinds of back and forths on those.

Nutrient Substrate Utilization

So basically, we just said that this whole long-term exercise thing is being supported by mixed fuels. So it's a mix of carbs, triglycerides or fats and honestly even in really long exercise even proteins which we'll get to. But how do we know which one? 1.) So the theory really is based on exercise intensity. So this is called the crossover theory and it really is kind of a miraculous relationship between exercise intensity and which fuel is being used. 2.) So as exercise intensity increases so does the reliance on carbohydrate and as exercise intensity decreases so does the reliance on fat. → So like I mentioned before, at complete rest we're using those oxidative systems which use all fat and then as we build up our exercise intensity we need it to be done quicker, which is like less efficient but it's quicker so we use carbs. 3.) Now looking at this in a little bit of a different view, like the same activity walking, jogging versus running. → So you can see that the amount of fat burn is the same. What changes, as exercise intensity changes is the amount of carbohydrates that's being used → So as exercise intensity increases so does the amount of carbs. So carbohydrate increases and what you can also see it's coming from local sources. So we're not obviously getting it from the blood fast enough but we have a huge increase. So when we're running we're using our local muscle glycogen fast and we can measure this by measuring how much oxygen we're taking in and how much CO2 we're expelling out. → So we can measure these gases and get an idea of what fuel we're burning and this is called the respiratory exchange ratio. 4.) So again kind of the main concept here is exercise intensity picks up, so does our reliance on local muscle carbs, and fast-forwarding that is going to get us to fatigue a lot faster! → So running obviously is a much gateway to fatigue.

Cardio-Respiratory System

So because we have now accumulated all of this lactic acid and because we borrowed some time we have to now have an oxygen debt and the brain quickly senses this oxygen debt and goes oh no let's have a compensatory cardiorespiratory effect and a hormonal effect that gets things going. 1.) And so one of the first things that happens is the brain secretes epinephrine and this gets the heart rate going in a linear way or fashion to exercise intensity → And one of the things that people take to initiate this response and initiate the release of epinephrine to stimulate this faster, better and stronger is caffeine. 2.) And also, we have epinephrine release and that will cause the vessels of the endothelium to constrict. → And what we like about this is that that constriction stops the blood flow to areas like the gut and really focuses in on those working muscles. So these are all part of those processes. → And then sometimes athletes are, you know particularly bodybuilders, I hate to say endurance athletes don't supplement but most of time its bodybuilding communities and elite athletes sometimes they'll supplement omega-3 and nitric acid. Both of these guys have roles in vasodilation, so both are really important for letting that relaxation effect happen. And this of course helps blood pressure and for strength athletes it can also increase muscle cell volume, which makes muscles look bigger and of course that's a desirable effect. → So a couple more of those ergogenic compounds

Daily Energy Expenditure (DEE)

So before we talk about the nutrient intake or the additional nutrient needs of exercise I want to highlight saying there's no perfect diet. 1.) So there's all sorts of elite athletes that do different sports and those different sports use different energy systems and different sports have different training programs and different sports require different body compositions. → So you know one athlete may need to be super lean and one wants to be a little bulkier. One wants to illicit muscle injury for bodybuilding and one wants to illicit, mitochondrial capacity (endurance). → So the goals and training of sport is outside of the scope of what we're going to talk about. 2.) So what we talk about will be great for athletes who are training, you know, how many grams of carbohydrate should I consume an hour before I go to the gym, but in terms of like what are the performance foods that make elite performers amazing at the top of their game and really the nutrition support there is just making sure that they're adequately nourished and that they don't have any nutritional deficiencies that would, you know, inhibit the progress of their training or psychological development, their muscle neural development, etcetera. → So this is more about nutrition for exercise and sport there is no one best diet, it really is just a matter of all sorts of genetic and training factors. 3.) So guidelines for the regular exerciser. Daily energy expenditure or that TDEE is the basics for where we get extra energy requirements from → So you can use the same formula that we've discussed before, except for at the physical activity part right here when you're using that part of the formula we're only picking from lightly active, active and very active numbers so that these are higher multiples of course and we took out sedentary because of course we're talking now about increasing calories to support physical activity. 4.) These are the major nutrients we focus on when we're looking at athlete diets, carbs, fluid, calories and protein and of course micronutrient status is important too. We're really concerned you know make sure they're getting enough copper and magnesium, and all those great things and iron, but for the most part when we have a sufficient increase in calories and they're appropriate food choices that are balanced in a similar fashion as other food choices you know that just happens naturally. → And so let's first start by saying that the additional calories as long as they're sufficient to replace the losses from exercise and they're balanced, then really none of this other stuff is really that important until we get to the topic of exercise timing. → But if you look at the daily intake versus the daily exercise intake guidelines you can see a little bit higher carbs, fluids just to replace losses during exercises from sweating. And then protein requirements look a little bit higher, but we're going to talk more about that because actually they're not really higher. ⤷ It looks like they're higher and they are, you know, absolute gram intake daily is higher, but protein as a percentage of calories in the diet, like what's going on up here, is not different at all.

Gluconeogenesis

So exercise duration continues tremendously to the point where liver glycogen is getting low and liver glycogen is what pretty much maintains blood glucose. So liver glycogen and liver glucose is getting low. So for blood levels to be maintained we have to start kicking in to a different energy system. 1.) So now instead of using the glycogenic pathways we do something called gluconeogenesis, which is to make glucose from other stuff. → And so we take amino acids, we even take lactate from other muscles that aren't even working at that time, we even take fats. And we convert them all to pyruvate so that it can be made into glucose. 2.) Now this only happens in the liver, I only put the muscle up here because some lactate comes from the muscle. → So this happens in the liver and what this allows is for the liver to keep sustaining blood glucose because the glucose has to be there in order for the brain to work.

Output: Nutrient Outcomes

So hopefully you have a good understanding of some of the different systems that we use and exercise and how they are impacted by nutrition and nutrition supplements. 1.) The outcome of how nutrition affects exercise is we can look at this in a few different tiers here. I always, you know, I like to either start like the cell level and then kind of go up by body system level. → Well all of these things are going to significantly impact health 2.) Now if you're really serious about it and you're training and your diet, then you know it's going to lend itself to even performance outcomes, like you know say winning a medal. → But if you're really, really, really specific about the nutrition and the training then we're talking about like compete level. → So, you know, if you're doing this stuff for competition it's going to encapsulate all your health needs as well.

Input: Food, Beverages, & Supplements

So let's look a little bit at the food, beverages and supplements for exercise. 1.) Number one principle is no long periods without eating. → So if you're doing either, whether you're on an endurance training program or you're on resistance or bodybuilding programs whenever we're not eating for long, long periods I know we think we're looking way skinnier. I've spent many of years going through that process... → But maintaining your lean tissue mass and your protein mass is a better way to maintain that metabolic rate. So if you don't eat for a long time you cannot maintain maximum amounts of net protein gains because your breakdown will be equivalent to whatever you just did in your work, in your synthesis. 2.) Big principles for basic athlete diets, you know there's a few foundations of the diets but I think the big things to highlight are to portion the meals by time. → Like this is an example for breakfast, but I'm going to the gyn soon so I'm going to have a smaller portion and then if I'm going later I'm going to have you know maybe that same meal but just a little larger portion size of it. → You would never want to eat a huge portion going to the gym soon and it's probably better to have your larger portions of food away from going to the gym and saving them for after → Here's another example, but we're again looking at having a larger serving size the farther we are out. Once we're within that hour zone, we'll get to those guidelines next. This is just for your everyday typical diet stuff and of course that's going to involve doing your exercise. 3.) Lunch and dinner, big concepts are just making sure that they're balanced and nutritious and by the way, this is generically this breakfast and lunch, the big concepts here are portioned by time, balanced and nutritious. I just wanted to give examples of meals and they look a little sub headed, a little weird, but big three principles, portioned by time, balanced and nutritious → So the balanced concept you know that's no surprise to any of us, it has to be from every food group. So it's got to have a little bit of protein, a little bit of dairy, a little bit of grain → And why is that? Because we want to make sure that we're getting all of those additional nutrient needs in a balanced fashion. I don't want my entire extra 500 calories or so to be dairy, I mean that would not be a balance, I would not get the amount of additional potassium I need, etcetera. → So if we don't want to worry about supplementing, just making sure that the choices are spread among those food groups and their balanced is effective. 4.) Looking at nutritious, so having a variety of foods that's also very nutrient dense. → So for example, this three-bean salad is one of my favorite examples on here. Three-bean salad is so nutritious because beans have so much protein. So you can use soy beans, both the mature or immature green edamame type, and of course they're a little lower but still are just such a nice little snack. It's only a three-ounce serving and you're getting lots of additional protein. → So basic concepts for the daily diet, portioned right, balanced and nutritious and for the balanced and nutritious thing it really boils down to the foundations of the athlete diet which are good whole grains, good whole fruits and vegetables, and of course good high-quality protein. 5.) Our food also has natural sources of a lot of these ergogenic compounds. Like there's up to five grams per pound of creatine in fish. So you know we're getting some of these things that we would supplement in our diet regularly. We also make creatine in the body which we'll get to but everybody is like oh I won't have any, well we do get it from our regular foods, in most cases for almost all the supplements that we'll talk about.

Vitamins & Minerals

So looking at some of the functional roles of vitamins. 1.) We have our ones that are antioxidants, we have our little guys that are those rechargeable coenzymes. We have our important minerals for iron oxygen delivery and for calcium, stimulates our muscle contraction. → If I didn't go over that with you, calcium is released into the muscle cell and that stimulates the whole electric potential that causes contraction. 2.) Electrolytes and then we also have a very important role of amino acids that we don't talk about much but they're important in non-protein products. So say for example carnitine right here, creatine, bile, heme which we know what that's for, all sorts of important biological compounds that are pre-cursed or from amino acids. → So another critical role of how nutrition supports exercise and energy systems.

Sustained Aerobic Exercise

So now we're talking exercise has gone on for a little while. So I guess let me back up and say that here it was short term, we had buffered this cell with this quick little phosphagen system. Then we started to use some close-by glucose in the muscle and a little bit of glycogen and then what would happen is we have oh my gosh get some oxygen to the cells because now we're in a minute of exercise going here and we need oxygen everywhere. 1.) So glycolysis is what is going to sustain muscle contractions for that little gap between like 10, 15 seconds to about 2 minutes and that two-minute zone is still using all carbohydrates, but now we're using the glycogen that we broke down in the muscle and we're using some of it coming from the blood → Glycogen is broken down the same way, only instead of pyruvate this time pyruvate is going to go to the Krebs cycle instead of it being converted to lactic acid 2.) It's just not a very energy efficient system. So again it buffers us until we can really get the job going with our more efficient ones. But for now glycolysis sustains us, it only yields a couple ATP but hey it got us by until oxygen delivery is adequate for oxidative systems

Sustained Aerobic Exercise (continued)

So oxidative systems come in and they're going to fuel those long activities that use a ton of contractions and those are going to use mixed fields, so now we're not just using carbs we're using fat and carbs and these are really, really efficient in terms of energy. 1.) So we'll have fat and liver and muscle sources of fuel coming into the picture and stimulated by all sorts of hormones that are going to stimulate breaking down of fat, breaking down of glycogen, sending all these guys over for cutting down in the oxidation cycle. → And so basically, TCA cycle and the electron transport chain is on fire. 2.) Now these are really energy efficient, like booyah we're talking like triple and quadruple the amount and I didn't even put up here fatty acids, this is just from pyruvate entering into the TCA cycle per unit of glucose. → So now we're talking energy efficiency and over here we're talking hundreds, like we've discussed before.

Types of Exercise

So there are a couple different types of exercise and really, I used the principle that looks at the different energy systems that the muscle uses to sustain muscle contraction. 1.) In a nutshell the muscle contracts, it consumes ATP and ATP is regenerated by nutrient substrates and so this is called nutrient catabolism, we've talked about that before. 2.) Now aerobic and anaerobic energy systems both catabolize nutrients to sustain ATP, to sustain muscle cell contraction. → The difference between these is really the foundation for the different diet strategies because the aerobic system works with oxygen available and for long duration activities, like a marathon or a couple mile run. → The anaerobic energy system also breaks down those same fuel sources but does it in an anaerobic fashion or one where oxygen is not available and so therefore it can only be maintained for a very short amount of time. ⤷ Because the by-product of when oxygen isn't around is toxic to the muscle cell and we feel it, it burns. 3.) Taking a little closer look at aerobic activities, these are classified by the intensity in which you do them → So aerobic activities can be done in a light, moderate or rigorous fashion, and these are really just an expression of how much of the activity takes of your heart rate capacity or your capacity to exchange gas between your lungs → So if we were to measure that in a lab we would come up with a value that says this is the most gas you can exchange, the most oxygen you can bring in, the most CO2 you can expel and then we want you to work within a range of 40 to 60% of that and because we know that you can sustain that amount for about 30 to 60 minutes. ⤷ And for what it's worth, that's the recommendation for health, for general good outcomes and disease prevention is 30 to 60 minutes, 40 to 60% VO2 max most to every day of the week. → Anaerobic activities are also recommended but in a lower frequency, so they're only recommended 2 to 3 times per week. And they involve all sorts of high-intensity activities, like yoga and resistance training and things that elicit hypertrophy, muscle cell injury, and usually some kind of bodybuilding. ⤷ So these occupy a big percentage of our heart rate capacity and our oxygen exchange capacity. And because of that we do a lot of anaerobic processing and a lot of using of storage phosphagens and of course because of that we can only sustain these for a very short amount of time. ⤷ In fact most of these systems in the anaerobic and phosphocreatine side only last for about 1 to 2 minutes before they're completely maxed out and then they're lightly and slowly regenerated as exercise continues, but they're not contributing the majority of energy to sustain ATP

Fatigue

So what happens if we don't get enough or we get too much? 1.) So if we don't get enough nutrients we're going to get to fatigue, we're going to deplete our glycogen faster and the muscle will stop contracting. → This is something that's called bonking or hitting the wall. → So bonking actually occurs first and it's a depletion of liver glycogen and then hitting the wall is when your blood glycogen levels get low and it just will not go. 2.) These can affect performance and so of course these can also be performance measures and these measures dont have to be levels of glycogen in the muscle it could also be something like you know time to fatigue. 3.) Dehydration can also cause fatigue and we see dehydration levels in our urine, and this is a very common thing to look at in athletes to make sure that they're at optimal hydration status.

Digestion and Absorption with Exercise

So with digestion and absorption we have to look at what kind of changes happen with exercise. 1.) So all sorts of gastrointestinal changes and issues can occur with exercise, mostly though looking at the nutritional ones it relates to the release of epinephrine and the big change in blood flow away from the gastrointestinal system. → So it's again diverted away and it's diverted to the periphery, which is the muscle tissues. 2.) So with that comes a change in taste acuity, decreased rates of stomach emptying, and decreased rates of nutrient absorption. → Now to combat that, or some ways that we can use diet for that, is by using lightly sweet beverages, which they've shown in research to be favorable for endurance athletes at least. → Using low-fat foods because high-fat foods delay even more the rate of stomach emptying. → Using foods with a nice high glucose to fructose ratio to favor high absorption rates. → And again low glycemic loads and again this isn't absorption, this is, glycemic load is the effect it has on blood sugar because low glycemic load will allow us to not have that rebound insulin effect. 3.) And then also, for the lack of absorption rate, low fiber content foods. Because remember fiber slows down the rate of everything, we don't want to slow it down even more so we avoid fiber in those exercise involved or around exercise meals and then we increase our electrolytes → And not only to replace fluid losses which is really more of an issue after exercise, but more so because carbohydrates are absorbed, glucose is absorbed and so are other nutrients with sodium. → So having electrolytes in our drinks and even potassium because potassium works through the sodium channel same as sodium does, it helps absorb nutrients. So that's another principle of why electrolytes are included, it's not just for those whole water balances after.

Transformation: Digestions & Absorption/Metabolism & Storage/Homeostatic Operations

So with the onset of exercise our neuromuscular system sends a signal through what's called a motor neuron. 1.) Sends a signal down the motor neuron, it hits the end or what's called the terminal plate. The motor neuron secretes out all kinds of little neurotransmitters, acetylcholine being the key one here that we're discussing, secretes out a little bit of acetylcholine, and that triggers this reaction in the muscle cell to cause this hook pull of actin and myosin. → So actin and myosin are again those two major proteins in myocytes or muscle cells and we've got this hook pull mechanism happening. → And because that pull and relaxation keeps occurring repetitively we have a shortening of the sarcomere back and forth, back and forth. → And so this is essentially how our muscles contract. 2.) Now we're not going to get too much into type 1, type 2 fibers but how it works is that your brain gets this idea of how much power it needs because it's ready to lift something. → In the case of lifting weights your brain is kind of ready for how much power it should recruit and you go to lift that dumbbell and it recruits a group of muscle fibers. → So for that kind of muscle contraction it's going to usually elicit and group and recruit type 2 fibers or glycolytic fibers. → Now if you're like on a nice little leisurely jog, in our regular resting daily activities we're using mostly type 1 muscle fibers. And these guys are oxidative, they like oxygen, where the type 2 guys they don't need it. 3.) So muscle contraction and this shortening is immediately and in the short-term stored by stored phosphagens and what stored phosphagens are we haven't got to these yet, but one is ATP. → So the muscle has a little bit of ATP in it and it's a phosphagen because of the P. → A little bit in there to sustain muscle contraction, so for like, I'm talking like split seconds right. So you're contracting ATP, storing some of it.

Sustained Anaerobic Exercise

Sustained aerobic exercise, so now that initial burst of energy is out of the way, I mean we're talking, we recruited like some powerful, really strong powerful contracting muscles and so now we're moving on to recruiting ones that aren't quite as powerful but a little more time has passed and we're in that 2 to 10 second zone, we're going to start recruiting our glycolytic system. 1.) And the glycolytic system is also anaerobic, so it is able to do it without oxygen around, and it's going to use 100% glucose. → Now again because it doesn't have oxygen it's going to fatigue quickly, and I'll get to why right here. So the process goes that glucose is broken down, glucose is broken down to pyruvate, pyruvate in the absence of oxygen is converted to lactate. 2.) Now lactate is converted to lactic acid which really burns our muscle. So the lactic acid burns our muscle and then we clear that out of the muscle, and it goes into the blood and we process it and we get rid of it. → But we do have this threshold for how much of it we can build up and if I had graphs up here you could see how quickly it accumulates. → So really high intensity exercises it accumulates faster and so it makes the muscles stop contracting, it's like no, no, no, no you're not going to do anymore. → So one of the things that people take thinking it might help are what's called buffers and buffers like bicarbonate or any other type of base solution will be able to go into your blood and make your blood more basic so that that lactic acid is neutralized a little bit better. → We've played around here in our labs doing experiments on buffers and looking at lactic acid and I don't myself believe that they really work for lots of reasons.

Muscle Protein Synthesis

This is the muscle protein synthesis pathway and this is the part where I get to highlight why a lot of the other supplements are taken. 1.) So basically the process starts with the amino acid leucine triggering the mTOR system, so mTOR stimulates muscle protein synthesis → And again that requires insulin there at that cell and igf-1 which is a growth factor. → So some people take branched chain amino acids because leucine is one and they also take leucine alone. And sometimes they take HMB, so HMB beta hydroxy butyrate is a metabolite of leucine and some people say that it stimulates muscle protein synthesis even better than leucine. → So I haven't really seen any huge outcomes in research to say if it's like hypertrophic or muscle building, but some athletes do take it or bodybuilders. 2.) We also see people supplement amino acids that are involved in human growth hormone synthesis 3.) And also people take precursors or even steroids themselves, like testosterone to stimulate muscle protein synthesis directly.

Enhanced Muscle Efficiency

We also have enhanced muscle efficiency and by efficiency we look at the carbohydrate utilization and other things but we'll start with that. 1.) We're able to utilize carbohydrates better by a number of mechanisms. We can store glycogen better, during exercise we spare our glycogen better so that it doesn't run out, and then we also have a way when we get our muscle efficiency enhanced we can utilize carbohydrates and take them up into this cell much better. 2.) Now just as a little reminder, the muscle, the liver and the blood hold the carbohydrate. 3.) Looking at the effects of high-carbohydrate versus low-carbohydrate diet: → It's looking at different bouts of exercise. And on the low-carbohydrate diet glycogen never repleted quite as high as it did when carbohydrate intake was high. → After exercise a huge depletion, depletion repletion, depletion repletion. So low-carbohydrate intake is depleted and never really repleted. → The next time we worked out it got even lower and never really repleted, it got depleted even more and now we're seeing that there's a huge change in the amount of energy that we'll have for endurance. 4.) Carbohydrate with protein adequate in the diet also stimulates the amount of muscle glycogen that we can store. We can see that it was most versus carbohydrate, protein high diets alone. 5.) This is also just to kind of show that an endurance athlete even at the most trained level can say hold about 135 millimoles of glucose in the muscle. → Looking at a carbohydrate loaded muscle it's more than double that. So even in endurance athletes it makes a big difference. 6.) Also, we see differences with nutrition with lactate tolerance. So as we train and with adequate intake we can tolerate more lactate and also nutrition supports enhanced thermal regulation and it supports enhanced thermal regulation because one compound called glycerin that I didn't really highlight which I should have, helps hyper hydration in the cell. → Another way is obviously we sweat by losing water, the way our body cools ourselves is through a water mechanism and if we are dehydrated we are not able to do that as effectively 7.) And what these outcomes would be in a performance setting is more power, more endurance and delayed fatigue and I say delayed fatigue and I put a happy face by it because it just means that exercise if it is just exercise and not a performance it's just more enjoyable. 8.) This is looking at high versus low-carb diets at a fixed workload. You can see that exercise time is much higher for people that have the high-carb diet so that again it lasted longer. And here you can kind of see the same thing that when we're replenishing carbohydrates during exercise you can see that that they never fall enough and we just get to keep going, we have longer levels to go, and a longer time to fatigue. 9.) One other thing I didn't discuss too much in processing, but branched chain amino acids are also important for maintaining a blood-brain barrier balance. → They say that when you're exercising for the long-term and you're using branched chain amino acids in the muscle, like I showed you earlier for gluconeogenesis or even when they're directly oxidized in long exercise. → When we're using those it could create that imbalance in that brain barrier and so this, they say, it causes a change in the amount of serotonin that we release and that this causes us to feel tired → So this is called the central fatigue hypothesis but essentially people say that if you supplement branched chain amino acids you're less likely to have that phenomenon occur, at least in that long endurance exercise.

Nutrition for Exercise

We're going to talk in this part about nutrition for exercise. 1.) Exercise is one type of physical activity. So physical activity, humans do it all the time, every day. → We do it just to transport ourselves from point A to point B. → We do it to take care of our self-sufficiency needs, like eating and grooming and shopping for groceries. → If you have kids you do it to take care of your kids or take care of your parents. → We even do it in our jobs or our occupations. → Sometimes we do it because we have to as part of physical education or PE. → Sometimes we even do it because we like it, we want to compete, maybe we get paid for it even but we'd like to do sports and then for most of the time we do physical activity because we like to exercise. 2.) So when we think of nutrition and how it can support physical activity we're really looking at the topic of exercise and before we can talk about how nutrition supports exercise we have to look at the different types and really the foundation for how we discern between those types for laying down the nutritional strategies.