Sugar's not toxic, if you're an Olympian

[elfs]

A good article in the New York Times today about How Sugar Affects the Body in Motion, illustrates the main issue I've been dealing with in the lifestyle changes I've been trying to do with my diet.

The article is about recharging the body's energy store for high-performance athletics, and for those who run marathons, or mountain bike for hours on end (hello), and so on, a 2-to-1 mixture of glucose/fructose in water can restore efficiency and energy levels for competitive achievement. This is a different goal from fat loss, and as the article points out doesn't affect the basic message that's been falling out of nutritional research for the past five years: sugar is a powerful chemical that average, non-competitive Americans have been consuming in unquestionably toxic doses for the better part of thirty years.

My goals are body recomposition, fat loss and muscle-building: a high-protein diet with moderate fat and moderate, highly complex carbohydrates, combined with an intense workout that consists primarily of weights and body-weight exercises is the way to do that. I did 30 TGU's yesterday with 20 pounds as my central exercise.

The article also points out something else I've read elsewhere: a very brief workout just before eating can open alternative insulin processing channels in the muscles, resulting in muscle building rather than visceral fat deposition. How brief? Just two minutes of burpees (about 40 to 60, depending on your speed) five minutes before sitting down to eat can completely change your body over to muscle building. I love how the article warns that you'll lose visceral fat if you do this, but will probably not lose weight. Of course not: you're channeling your caloric intake into building muscle.

Comments

[zanfur.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. As I understand it, the largest problem of fructose (over other simple carbohydrates or glucose) is that it's processed pretty much solely in the liver, causing nasty byproducts because the liver stores are already full. If you've depleted the store in the liver, it just replenishes the liver stores instead. However, it's rather difficult to deplete the liver stores, because that's the "emergency" 3-day energy store your body has for dealing with starvation.

There are a lot of sugars. Which ones do you say are toxic? Or in toxic amounts?