Quick take — If you diet or are planning to start a diet, understanding the relationship between bodyweight and glycogen (Glycogen is carbohydrates as stored by your body) depletion is paramount.

Your body stores energy as fat and glycogen. Whereas fat stores can vary dramatically from person to person, your body can only store so much energy as glycogen.

Glycogen requires water to be stored. In the initial stages of diet/caloric restriction and exercise, your body depletes these glycogen stores, reducing your bodyweight from the elimination of both the weight of the stored glycogen and the weight of the water. Note that nowhere in this process is the much-desired loss of fat!

Thus, even as it will feel good to shed 5 - 10 lbs. simply from a few days of exercise mixed with a caloric-restricted diet, the weight loss will be primarily from a reduction in glycogen stores and water. In other words, what you’ll have lost in the beginning is really little more than water weight.

Take heart in understanding the relationship between glycogen stores and bodyweight as an improved understanding will help you set realistic expectations on whatever diet or exercise regiment you are undertaking in 2009.

A deeper dive:

I first learned about the relationship between stored carbohydrates and water retention from Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories. The gist is that for every gram of stored carbohydrate (Stored as glycogen) in your body, there is a set amount of additional water storage that is required.

Taubes had pinned the carb/water storage ratio at two grams of water per one gram of carbohydrate. A random Googled source pins it at 2.7 gram water per gram of glycogen. I found a research paper titled, Glycogen storage: illusions of easy weight loss, excessive
weight regain, and distortions in estimates of body composition, which offers the following data on the ratio:

Glycogen is stored in the liver, muscles, and fat cells in hydrated form (three to four parts water) associated with potassium (0.45 mmol K/g glycogen). . . .

Glycogen losses or gains are reported to be associated with an additional three to four parts water, so that as much as 5 kg weight change might not be associated with any fat loss.

Lyle McDonald of Body Recomposition has also weighed in on this subject:

Carbohydrate (stored in your muscles and liver as glycogen) is accompanied by a good bit of water. For every gram of glycogen stored, you store anywhere from 3-4 grams of water with it.

How does this relationship affect bodyweight? In short, diet and exercise will deplete glycogen stores. If your diet is working, the depletion will occur early and have a significant impact on your bodyweight without impacting a permanent change in your body composition.

Let’s take me as an example. I estimate that I have around 155 - 160 pounds of lean tissue. Tack on another 12 - 17 pounds of fat. After a week or two of being on a low-carbohydrate diet that involves intermittent fasting and plenty of exercise (see here), my liver and muscle glycogen stores will be completely depleted. I’ll weigh about 172.

If I go on to eat a bunch of carbohydrates — cookies, pretzels, breads, fruits and other starchy foods (by eating a bunch, I mean consuming something on the order of 1000 grams of carbohydrates over the course of 24 hours, which is about 4000 calories), I will fully replenish my glycogen stores. In the process of replenishment, the 1000 grams of carbohydrates will require anywhere from 3000 to 4000 grams of water for storage! Converting from grams to pounds, the impact on my bodyweight should be an increase of 9 to 11 pounds, taking my weight up to 183*! Of course, the same change would happen in reverse: re-depleting glycogen stores would drop my weigh back to the low 170s.

Mike over at the IF life alluded to this fact in three bullets back on his Trainer Tells All post:

Muscle size is mostly glycogen and water . . . I can go up and down 10lbs in a week easily depending on glycogen and water balance . . . The first big amount of lbs you lose in the first week dieting is mostly water

Mike’s anecdotal experience is explained by the storage ratio between glycogen and water. What it means is that in the early stages of a diet, the magical drop in bodyweight will be mostly water weight.

Another implication of the water/glycogen relationship on bodyweight is that whereas the first 4000 calorie deficit you create will reduce your weight some ten pounds, the next 4000 calorie deficit is likely only going to reduce your bodyweight a paltry two pounds! This is because a pound of fat stores 3500 calories and requires about a pound of water for storage. Thus, the initial weight-loss will seem easy compared to the drudging continued weight-loss when you’re actually burning stored fat.

Failing to understand what is going on with glycogen stores and water retention will set yourself up for a shock when you inevitably “fall off the wagon” – even if the “fall” is only for a day or two of heavy-carb or more “normal” eating.

Understanding the impact of glycogen depletion/repletion on bodyweight is just one more reason why merely weighing yourself on a scale provides a poor indication of your body composition. You’re better served by taking some physical measurements (waist size, for example). Or even better, take some periodic camera phone self-portraits — over time, you should be able to compare them and get a great feel for your progress (or lack thereof).

* I’ve witnessed this fluctuation on numerous occasions over the past year, but I didn’t quite fully understand it until today. You see, I was fully glycogen depleted going into New Year’s Eve. I proceeded to go on a pre-planned “refeed” (that just happpened to coincide with NYE, of course!). The refeed involved eating plenty of pretzels, chips, breads, fruits, cookies, cereal, donuts, etc. Some incredibly unhealthy, albeit tasty, foods. I also drank a good bit of Pinot Noir NYE, which is the opposite of what you should do if you are re-feeding in that your body will be needing water and alcohol will dehydrate you past certain levels of intake. Anyway, after a 24 hour refeed, my bodyweight went from 172 to 184. Hard to believe unless you understand what is going on. And this kind of fluctuation would be entirely disheartening to the ignorant dieter who might feel they just blew their diet in one day! As it is, I expect I’ll be back in the low 170s within five days after I do a fast and get two or three workouts in.

Having returned from India and a month-long hiatus from eating healthy and working out, I started brewing on a strategy to “get back at it” and continue working to my ultimate goal, which is achieving never-before-seen (on me) lean-ness and vasculature.

My approach for most of the summer had been working out about five days a week (doing CrossFit) with daily fasting (i.e. 16 hour fasts daily). I tracked a lot of my daily workouts via my workout blog.

Unfortunately, I ran into any number setbacks as I had a couple long periods where I couldn’t manage to eat right or workout (A two week stint out west and a three week stint in India).

That brings me back to today. I’m going “back to basics,” which for me, was eating breakfast/lunch and the fasting until dinner the following day, with a weight-lifting oriented workout an hour or two before breaking my fast. This method worked for me the first time, stripping away a great deal of fat and focusing my diet/weight-training efforts. This time around, the only tweak I’m implementing is that I will do two fasts per week, lifting on days I break the fast, working out on days I eat, and resting on any day I begin a fast. Per usual, my diet will be carb-light, which means no breads, rices, cereals or starchy vegetables while still allowing for most fruits (apples and berries being preferred), some cheats (ice cream), and alcohol.

Goal is to try this for three weeks, track my progress daily and see how I come out on the other end. Stay tuned.

Cortisol has been a bit of a mystery to me. Things I’ve gathered about cortisol include:

• Cortisol is a hormone
• Cortisol is elevated by exercising
• Cortisol is elevated by drinking alcohol
• The presence of cortisol spurs weight gain, and specifically, fat accumulation in the gut for men
• Cortisol can impair the immune system
• Vitamin C before bed (And getting plenty of sleep) can reduce cortisol (See Robb Wolf’s comments on this post)

Some reading on cortisol from the usual suspects:

• Mark Sisson: How Stress Can Make You Fat — The Definitive Guide to Stress, Cortisol, and the Adrenals: When ‘Fight or Flight’ Meets the Modern World
• Robb Wolf: Exercise: Ineffective for Weight Loss — Robb speaks specifically to those CrossFitters who are also training for endurance-type events.
• Arthur Devany: Mass - Here Art says something about weight lifting for more than 30 minutes at a high pace will elevate cortisol levels.
• Lyle McDonald: How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need - “As few as 15 grams of carbohydrates per day has been shown to limit nitrogen loss and 50 grams of carbohydrate per day severely limits the need for the body to use amino acids for gluoconeogenesis. Not only will it maintain blood glucose and insulin at a slightly higher level (thus inhibiting cortisol release)”

There’s a lot of information out there on the subject of cortisol. As someone who is exercising and periodically imbibing alcohol, how should I deal with cortisol to mitigate its detrimental effects on my goals?

And what is overexercising anyway? What is over-training? If you tack on some low to medium intensity cardiovascular exercise to weight lifting / high-intensity exercise, do you cross the line between “just right” and “too much"? I have no doubt that the answers to these questions are case-specific.

What is a good mix of exercise for a relatively sedentary web entrepreneur?

Rusty, founder of Fitness Black Book, tells us that when it comes to lifting weights and building strength, the key is “slow and steady” (See his most recent post, Strength Training Rep). In short, rather than lifting heavy weights in a jerky fashion, which is best exemplified by the near chest bounce on the bench press, you’re better off going through the weight lifting motions in a slow, controlled fashion.

The benefits of slowness in weight lifting include reducing the chance of injury and, according to Rusty, more lasting strength creation. Actually, in reading through the aforelinked post, I’m reminded of Rusty’s post on “Mastering the Weight“, which I particularly found interesting.

Both are good reads with some solid food for thought. For me, the jury is out on this subject and there are all sorts of conflicting opinions. Arthur De Vany seems to be an advocate of more explosive lifting. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to track down the posts where Art advocates as much as it seems Google’s indexing of his site is broken (arthurdevany.com recently underwent a sitewide “upgrade", and it seems that some posts were lost in the change). Art’s argument, if I recall correctly, is that explosive movements are more in keeping with function — i.e. we don’t sprint in slow motion. On the flipside, dead lifting in real life is hardly explosive.

Isn’t there room for both? Methinks yes.

Back to Rusty’s Strength Training Rep post — he had a great explanation on using irradiation to boost muscular definition and strength. Check it out:

The Skill of Generating Tension in the Muscle

Strength is largely determined by your ability to generate tension in a muscle. The harder you can contract a muscle the better strength you can demonstrate in that muscle. Did you know that you can contract a muscle much harder if you also contract the muscles surrounding it? I learned about this principle called “Irradiation” from Soviet Special Forces Trainer, Pavel Tsatsouline. Here is how he explains it.

1. Try flexing your bicep as hard as possible without making a fist.
2. Now try and flex your bicep as hard as possible while making as tight as fist as possible and squeezing.
3. You should be able to contract your bicep much harder when making a tight fist.
4. This is called “irradiation"…what is happening is that the nerve impulses of surrounding muscles can amplify the effect of that muscle.

How to Become a Master at Generating Tension

Here is the craziest thing about the principle of Irradiation. You can actually create stronger contractions in a muscle by flexing a bigger chain of surrounding muscles. Take that bicep example above. Try contracting you bicep as hard as possible but this time don’t only squeeze your fist, but contract your pecs and abs as hard as possible as well. Did you notice a difference? After a while you will become a master at irradiation to reach high levels of strength.

Anyway, some food for thought on this fine Friday. I like Rusty’s site and you should check it out. I’ve been particularly interested in his (and Lyle McDonald’s) approach to stubborn fat loss. You can check Rusty’s mini-book on it here (it is free!).

I stumbled across a blog post titled Conflicting Cardio that pondered aloud the following:

As I read Mark’s essay, I distinctly remembered hearing advice somewhere that completely contradicted what he was saying. I remembered reading that we were actually genetically designed to run long, slow distances, and that the way our ancestors hunted was not in short sprints (antelope would outrun us no problem), but rather in long, slow jogs, waiting for the animal’s body temperature to overheat. At that point, the animal simply passed out from heat exhaustion, and we moved in for the kill. This is based on the premise that human beings evolved an evaporative cooling system, whereas animals didn’t; they don’t sweat, and thus, they’re terribly inefficient at cooling their bodies during exercise.

Fortunately for you, I have a spectacular memory. The article I’m referencing was from an issue of Men’s Health that ran about a year ago, titled Yes, You Were Born to Run. The author, Richard Conniff, based the article on research conducted by Daniel Lieberman PhD, a University of Utah biologist.

I find this situation particularly hilarious because it illustrates perfectly the dilemma that the typical North American finds itself in when attempting to establish what, exactly, is good for us in terms of our health. Is it low-fat or low-carb? Steady-state cardio exercise, or HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)? 12-15 reps or 6-8? The amount of conflicting information published is astounding.

What is the right combination of cardiovascular exercise and strength-training? Is one better than the other? Is endurance exercise healthy? These are important questions to ask.

Here is my brief take, which is cross-posted as a comment on Becoming Adonis:

Thought-provoking post.

Seems to me that any “cardio” should be conducted at low-intensity. “Intensity” is incredibly vague, so for my purposes, I am defining it as whatever rate at which my body burns mostly fat for energy. For most of us, I imagine fairly low levels of exercise — probably less than jogging but greater than walking (Though walking with weight could serve in a pinch). For individuals who train for endurance, the level will be higher as their bodies are more efficient at burning fat for energy — I’m thinking specifically of Ironman athletes or other high endurance individuals who necessarily blow through all of the glycogen stores in their bodies and simply must burn fat for fuel. For a discussion on this, see Mark Twight’s write-up on endurance and fat (here).

Based on a number of articles about endurance exercise (See More Reading below), I don’t see a lot of benefits in endurance training. I’ll save further discussion on that topic for another time.

Meanwhile, HIIT and/or weight lifting is right up the alley of most all of us mere mortals for the very reasons Mark Sisson and you describe (Sprints being a great example).

How do we put all of this together? Do we just ditch cardio/endurance exercise altogether?

Modern man is scarcely active relative to our ancient ancestors. Hunting/gathering at the grocery store is hardly going to require a lot of energy nor is typing 90wpm or clicking a mouse. The big incongruity is simply a lack of basic, low-intensity activity that would have been a matter of course to paleo man but is a foreign concept to us bloggers.

So what is the solution? We should simply seek to be more active at low-levels of intensity. This means more walking (perhaps weighted) or perhaps low-intensity biking or mountain biking. I imagine there are a number of competitive sports that could also fit the bill here. Mix these activities with HIIT and weight-lifting and you’ve got an optimal combination.

More reading:

• Did you happen to see this post by De Vany on sweating? Totally jives with the evaporative cooling mechanism discussion in your post.
• The Men’s Health article referenced can be found here

And a bevvy of articles on endurance exercise, most which question its health benefits:

• Recent Triathlon Deaths Have Experts Searching for Answers (NY Times)
• Death by Exercise (Men’s Health)
• The Legacy of Jim Fixx (halhigdon.com)
• Running Yourself to Death (The Voice of Prophecy)
• They’ve made it! Seven marathons in seven continents in seven days to help fight heart disease (British Heart Foundation)
• Art De Vany: Top Ten Reasons not to Run Marathons — Coronary Heart Disease in (you guessed it) Marathon Runners — Marathoners and Other Sick People

“What are you wearing? Some kind of aqua shoes?”

That’s a common reaction I get to my Vibram Five Fingers. Others include, “Hey can you run in those?” (Yes). Or, “Do they feel weird? Is it hard to adjust to them?” (Not really and No — its like being barefoot!). And of course, “What are those? And where can I get them?”

Five Fingers are shoes. Or slippers. Or socks with flexible Vibram rubber soles on the bottom. They have five toe cutouts and absolutely no arch support or traditional foam padding in the soles. They come in a few varieties (some providing more foot coverage, one intended for aquatic uses, a couple with straps, or the simplest, the “classic", which has a bungie type operation that keeps them from falling off when used in more engaging activities.

I’ve been using my Five Fingers for about three months now. So far, I’ve used them for:

• Kettlebell lifting (In action: Front Squats)
• All varieties of CrossFit workouts (In action: Burpees), which often include doing squats, cleans, jerks, pull-ups, dips, presses, etc.
• Rowing on an Ergometer (Concept 2)
• Getting around a dock and boat
• Going for walks
• Short jogs
• Hill sprints (pic)
• Frisbee throwing
• Grocery shopping!
• Lounging around in the house, grilling outside on the deck
• Hacky-sacking

Five Fingers have helped me be a kid again: as a kid, I never wore shoes, preferring always to be barefoot everywhere. Even today, I rarely wear shoes, preferring Birkenstock sandals in the summer or clogs in the winter (or just wearing flip-flops). Five Fingers are great in that they allow me to do all sorts of active things outside, no matter what the surface while still protecting my feet against wayward sharp objects on the ground.

Five Fingers take my feet back to basics. I wasn’t born with shoes on my feet. From an evolutionary perspective, human beings existed for countless millenia hunting and gathering, running from prey, lifting and carrying loads — all without the latest brand of Nike’s. It stands to reason that our feet evolved over time to withstand the freedoms (both good and bad) that result from going barefoot everywhere.

Our ancient ancestors likely had tough, calloused feet, ready to withstand sprints (or walking) across all sorts of terrain. Furthermore, they likely ran lightly on their feet (and almost certainly had little reason to ever “go for a jog"). Shoeless running would necessarily minimize contact between the foot and the ground. Just imagine a cat or dog sprinting and you get the idea. Contrast running on the balls of your feet with the pervasive long-stride, heel-striking (inherently inefficient), sneaker-clad foot-roll. This style is clumsy, and the by-product of the thick-soles of modern sneakers, which mute important feedback between foot and ground (See You Walk Wrong, referenced below).

Vibram Five Fingers minimize feedback-interference by having an almost insignifnicant rubber sole. When I wear my Five Fingers outside, I feel the curvature of the grass-covered ground. I feel rocks under my heels and get a real sense of the varying textures beneath me.

When I do olympic-lifts, I feel all the stabilizers in my feet activate (Like you might encounter in CrossFit). I feel reconnected to the ground, an empowering feeling when you’re trying to squat 250 pounds or stabilize whilst doing 1.5 pood kettlebell swings. When I do hill sprints in my Five Fingers, I am considerably less likely to roll my ankle upon hitting a dip in the ground.

Going about “virtually barefoot” may seem odd to our sneaker-crazed modern world, but why not take a break from restrictive, clunky shoes and sneakers and traverse the earth as evolution intended (Well, as close as you can get while still maintaining some protection!)? Plus, being active and “barefoot” will build stronger ankles and leg muscles and improve your agility.

Mind, the day after running “barefoot” for the first time (virtually so with Five Fingers), you’re bound to be sore in all sorts of previously forgotten ankle, foot and calve muscles. So be prepared. However, this general foot/ankle weakness should tell you something about how much your regular footwear has been subsidizing your strength.

The bottom line: if you like being active and barefoot, you’re almost certainly going to like Five Fingers.

Finally, there are a few other benefits of Five Fingers I thought I’d share:

• Five Fingers are incredibly light and compact. This makes them supremely packable for traveling.
• They are machine washable! Yeah, you can just throw them in the washing machine, then hang them out to dry.
• Wet sports. This goes hand in hand with their machine wash-ability. Doing something in wet grass? Regular sneakers will get soaking wet and could end up smelling of mold. With my Five Fingers, if they get wet, its okay! They’ll dry fast. If they get muddy? Just wash them off and throw them in the washing machine. Easy.

Okay, you’ve sold me. So what now?

If you’re interested in picking up a pair, I recommend checking out some style specifics at the official Five Fingers website so you can figure out which style is right for you. I like my “classics“, which run about $70 and can be picked up with free shipping at kayakshed.com. I had no need or desire for a strap over the top of my feet (like in the “sprint” style — and I sprint in my classics all the time!). Sizing is always a question. My size happened to be the same as my Birkenstocks (European 43), but there’s some sizing info based on foot measurements available here. I actually ordered a 44 and 43 from kayakshed.com, and just returned the 44s for a full refund.

Buyer beware: friends and family might chide your weird-looking footwear, but don’t be surprised when they order their own pair shortly thereafter (To date: I know two CrossFitters who are looking to buy them after seeing me use them, and one CrossFitter who has already taken the plunge).

If you have any questions about anything I didn’t cover, let me know!

Further reading:

• You Walk Wrong.

  Look, it’s not your fault. It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk. In fact, your feet—your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet—are getting trounced in a war that’s been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet.

• POSE running and Vibram Five Fingers (POSE is a method of running that uses gravity to propel you forward, running on the balls of your feet, so it stands to reason that Five Fingers would be a natural complement). Note: I’m not a runner/jogger (just sprints and short-distance running for me, thanks)

Check out my new “Workout Blog” here. This is mostly just to track progress with individual workouts as well as CrossFit. We’ll see how long I can keep it up. I’ve got a sidebar widget dedicated to listing the last ten posts. Might be good for any of you who are looking for workout ideas. Otherwise, you just ignore it!

Traveling has an uncanny tendency to thwart healthy routines. It is difficult both to make time for exercise and to eat healthy amidst the bevy of fast food restaurants, hotels, free food, abundant spirits and people who eat differently than me. How do you navigate these health obstructions while on the road?

I’m hardly an expert, but here is how I’m managing to maintain a low-carb diet replete with activity while being away from home:

• Be active. Some Hollywood star has the following motto: “I try to break a sweat everyday.” (H/T IF Life) This just seems like a robust life-motto that reverberates in my head — a life where you exert enough effort to break a sweat every day just seems right to me.

  On the road, it can be difficult to do this with limited equipment. I like having a kettlebell around, but if you’re flying, you can forget about taking a 35 lb. or 53 lb. kettlebell along for the ride.

  This means you have to improvise. Good ways I’ve found to improvise include running sprints, doing push-ups, and air squats. I’m still trying to find a good pull-up substitute that can be performed with everyday furniture (Any ideas?).

• Skip a meal or two. Fasting is such a powerful tool to recenter/refocus after finding yourself lost in the bad habits that result from traveling. I’ve found the easiest way to fast is to skip breakfast. Depending on how you’re feeling around lunchtime, feel free to skip lunch, too. I did this yesterday, not eating anything until dinner and I felt great all day and even managed a nice workout compliments of a treadmill and one of those all-in-one weightlifting machines (Improvise!).
• Go for level-two fast food. I just made up that Level II distinction. What I mean by it is that you should take the extra ten minutes to seek out local restaurants that can serve up some healthier takeout dishes. For me, I’ve eaten a few greek salads with gyro meat or chicken. It’s not ideal but its better than getting a number five combo from McDonald’s.
• Don’t strive for perfection. When you inevitably cave to cravings and eat that fresh-baked cinnamon bun that was calling your name at the hotel breakfast bar, let it go. Striving to acheive a perfect maintenance of your healthy habits while on the road is a recipe for failure. It’s okay to deviate — just take steps to get back on track (i.e. trying a mini-fast or having an intense workout in the hotel gym).

So that is what I’ve come up with so far. I’m interested to hear any ideas from any readers regarding other ways to be healthy “on the road". Please comment if you think of something you’d like to share!

Finally, one of the hardest parts about breaking routines is getting back on track after the traveling is over. That topic remains a discussion for another day: though I will say that I’ve found fasting to be an excellent way to “re-rail” post-vacation.

Last week was my pseudo-vacation with my family at Lake Oconee (so-blogged: 1 2). Good times were had by all though my vacation was accompanied by a normal workweek thanks to the lakehouse’s wifi (Thus, the “psuedo-vacation").

I returned to Augusta this past Saturday, and on Monday I joined my adopted family for a road trip to Michigan — we have a wedding to attend this Saturday.

Unlike the last, I don’t consider this week vacation and am having a fairly reasonable time staying connected and on top of work. I also don’t feel the stress of making an attempt at vacation and work (Balancing the two is an exercise in futility — I suppose that should have been obvious!).

Working from the road can be frustrating due to the unavoidable connectivity hindrances, but even with these speedbumps, that I am able to have a normal workweek while being completely away from the home office is a testament to the mobility afforded by abundant technology.

And thanks to the packability (driving anyway) of kettlebells and Vibram five fingers, I’ve got my exercise covered, too. Speaking of exercise … off to check out the gym here at the Holiday Inn Express!

Here was our lake front CrossFit-worthy workout today:

2 minute plank
50 53 lb. kettlebell swings
2 minute plank
50 lunges
2 minute plank
50 burpees
2 minute plank
Time: 21 minutes

My sister managed to capture the photo below where my wife and I were momentarily synchronized in our burpees (the jump part). And even more, the picture documents that I was at least a few inches off the ground on my jump!

Note the Five Fingers! I’ve learned this week that they make great lake footwear (Deck, boat, etc.).

The workout was tough and I immediately jumped in the lake upon completion.