What is this about?
This is about harnessing and controlling one of, if not THE most anabolic hormones present within the human body. Control of insulin is paramount if the leanest gains possible are to be made. I will also touch upon a little macronutrient timing.
What is insulin?
As mentioned above insulin is one of the most potent anabolic hormones in the human body. Released in quantities from the pancreas upon consuming food, it’s primary function is to take Glucose, amino acids and fats broken down from food and deliver/push them into various cells of the body. These cells could be desirable like muscle cells or less desirable ones like fat cells. Yes you read correctly, insulin is a double edged sword! One side of the blade will help you grow more muscular but the other will help make you fatter.
What is insulin sensitivity?
As the title suggests, it’s nothing more than how sensitive your body’s cells are to the effects of insulin. The more sensitive muscle cells are to insulin the better as less is needed to promote a positive anabolic response. As such fat storage will also be minimised due to less amounts of the hormone being released.
The opposite of insulin sensitivity is insulin resistance. Resistance is indeed the opposite of sensitivity. Cells become a lot less responsive to insulin’s anabolic effects and become less efficient at storing nutrients. To combat this situation the body will release even more insulin to sledgehammer home the nutrients as best it can into the resistant cells. Prolonged elevation of insulin levels can contribute to large gains in fat mass as well as the development of Type 2 Diabetes.
How does one raise sensitivity levels?
Repeated viewing of Bambi is known to do the trick! Well perhaps on an emotional but not on a cellular level. The first call is to include cardio alongside your weight training if you’re not doing so already.
Cardio should ideally be done on a non-weight training day. Although insulin is released at every meal we can control the amount released by choosing our macronutrient breakdown of a meal with care. An example of this is the heavily acclaimed Pro+Carb and Pro+Fat meal combos. Pro and Carb meals are selected to give an anabolic boost at critical times when needed like breakfast, PWO and PPWO. Such meals will also undoubtedly turn off the fat burning ability. Therefore these meals should be limited. On the other side of the coin are pro and fat meals, making up the times when Pro and carb is not employed. These are utilised to help promote insulin sensitivity by keeping insulin low whilst also supplying another helping of protein and energy for growth and repair. The ingestion of this type of meal has been show to also aid the body in being more efficient with fat as a fuel source.
It’s probably becoming clear to the reader right now that when you eat (Micronutrient timing) is just as important as what you eat. The combination of the two is paramount in creating an improved body composition. Let’s consider the Glycaemic index...
A little on the Glycaemic Index(GI)
The Glycaemic Index is no more than a fancy title applied to list of foods and how fast these foods are boken down into blood glucose. The scale is from 0-100 with 0 being the lowest GI and 100 being the highest. Its useless talking about the scale without how it affects us, the aspiring Charles Atlas.
We are all told the glycaemic index is a way of classifying if a meal.Usually a carb based meal is conducive to a diet where improved body composition is the number 1 goal. Whilst I will subscribe to this statement in a general sense that it can help the masses choose a “better” source. I will however say that it’s generally the insulin release from these foods which is important.
Typically it is shown that the GI index is a fair indicator of a foods effect on insulin (i.e High GI = High Insulin release). This is the reason for me why the GI Index is useful! Foodstuff such as milk has a low GI rating, check the label for yourself next time you’re raiding the fridge. However due to the protein content of milk it ends up releasing a lot of insulin. GI is a suitable method for rating carbs but we rarely eat a carb only meal (shudder). Both protein and fat will lower the GI rating of a food but various proteins are known to work with carbs to promote a synergistic release and thus raise insulin a little higher! This should be taken into consideration when selecting suitable sources for consumption as it’s clear that although the GI index is fairly accurate in classifying a food, anomalies exist and will lurk on the shelves of your local supermarket.
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