Shakeology Cleanse, Day 3

So the first and most obvious downside to finishing the cleanse on the last day of the work week--you're not motivated to do a write-up of it on the weekend!  I've gotta get my thoughts down before I forget the experience though, so here goes.

The hunger on Day 3 was comparable to Day 2, but for whatever reason I wasn't as hungry when I woke up the third day than I was the second.  Sticking to the diet for the third day wasn't significantly challenging, but the guys at work don't offer the best social support.  They opened a box of Girl Scout cookies and insisted that I eat some.  I left the office for a little bit only to find that they saved one for me.  I tucked it away in my desk.  I recognize that one cookie wouldn't make that much of a difference, but that's not the point.  The point is that I can always find a way to justify the things that are easy or instantly gratifying.  Finding reasons to do the hard thing and sticking to one's commitment is the defining characteristic of success.

However, I agreed to meet up with some of the fellas from the office in the evening to say goodbye to our outgoing boss.  Everyone had beers and bar snacks, so I thought a fruit juice would be an acceptable compromise since fruit is not entirely off-limits during the cleanse.  All-in-all, I would say that I had a successful three days.

Now, there is an upside to waiting a few days to write about the last day.  Now I get to write about my post-cleanse experience.  Unfortunately this wasn't as good.

Friday I kept my diet somewhat under control...until dinner.  I really didn't go ridiculously overboard with like a whole pizza and a pint of ice cream or anything, but I did have 1 cup of chicken tikka masala over 2 cups of basmati rice with a side of Na'an bread.  Not the worst possible meal, but certainly not the healthiest way I could have ended the day.  My immediate post-cleanse weight was 171.x, but my weigh-in following my Friday meals jumped back to 174.x.  I did pretty good Saturday too, but I did treat myself to some hot-fresh-now Krispy Kreme original glazed donuts, which I don't get to do very often.  Unfortunately as of Sunday morning's weigh-in, I'm back to my pre-cleanse weight.

So here are my take-aways from this round of the Shakeology 3-Day Cleanse:
--The "cleanse" is really more of a fast, which I will call it from now on.  I didn't have any more frequent trips to the bathroom, nor do I feel any differently than before starting the regimen.
--Speaking of which, I'm dealing with a huge bout of constipation now.  I can't say for sure it's due to the fast or if the fast was contributing to the condition in any way, but no matter how you look at it, the Shakeology fast didn't do me any favors.  One of the alleged benefits of Shakeology in general is that it's supposed to help keep you regular.  In all fairness I understand that fasts in general tend to result in some form of constipation, and suffice it to say that a Shakeology fast seems to be no different.
--The fast is significantly more beneficial the more weight you have to lose.  This might seem like a no-brainer, but I can now confirm it with my own experience.  Last time I started the cleanse at 181.x, got down to around 175, and the subsequent return to normal eating didn't send me right back to my original weight.  That was not my experience this time around.  True, I could have controlled my diet restoration a little more tightly, but I don't assess that I did anything significantly different from the last time I did the cleanse.
--The Shakeology fast doesn't seem to be significantly different from other fasting protocols, or from consistently healthy eating.  I didn't seem to lose significantly more weight from one day to the next on this fast compared from the 24 hour weekend fasts I've done, and the rate of weight loss was only moderately more noticeable than when I'm eating a normal, healthy diet.

Conclusion:  The Shakeology 3-day fast can be an effective tool for enhancing weight loss, especially during an initial weight-loss phase where someone is achieving new standards in body comp.  It is less effective in people who are otherwise eating healthy and are already close to their body comp goals.  Additionally, the Shakeology fast is reasonable to maintain in terms of dealing with hunger; however, recognize that there is nothing significantly different or uniquely beneficial to doing a Shakeology fast vice other fasting protocols.

As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this fast, fasting protocols, or any other questions about nutrition.

Shakeology Cleanse, Day 1

So I've decided to do the Shakeology 3-day cleanse...again.  This round was partly planned yet partly spontaneous.  I planned at the outset of this round of P90X to do a Shakeology cleanse between Phases 2 and 3, but when I finally made it to the Phase 2 recovery week, I was no longer sure.  Last time I did the cleanse I was in the low 180s and used the cleanse to effectively get myself below the 180# threshold, and it worked; I haven't been back to 180 since.  However, this time around I'm in the mid 170s and am still gradually losing weight on my diet, so I'm concerned that a cleanse now won't be as worthwhile.

So at the beginning of the week I was no longer sure that I was going to do a cleanse like I had planned, and that's where the spontaneous part comes into play.  I got on the scale this morning and weighed in at 174.x pounds, down from 176.x yesterday, and decided to go for it.  If my weight is on a downward trend, then now is the perfect time to ride that trend out.  Plus starting now gives me two days over the weekend to recover to more normal eating habits.  I learned last time that going straight off of the cleanse into Phase 3 is not a good idea.

At any rate, I'm 3 shakes down into Day 1 of the cleanse, and so far so good.  It's important when doing this regimen to effectively employ your meal timing.  After all, you only get four meals a day (three shakes and a salad), so the spacing of those meals becomes important.  For some reason I wasn't planning properly and was somehow adding in an extra meal.  It wasn't until I put it on paper that I realized what my meal timing needed to be: 7a, 11a, 3p, and 7p.  I'll get to eat my salad in a little less than two hours now, and I've got to say that I'm looking forward to eating some solid food.  I'm also curious to see how satiated that salad will leave me between 7p and when I go to bed three hours later.

I'm not feeling particularly hungry, but the thought of not being able to eat again till 7p is more annoying than anything.  For someone who has been fasting every weekend for 24h, this is not too bad, but again, it's the thought that I "can't" eat something that bothers me the most.  Not that it's hugely different from when I'm eating normally; after all, when I eat at 1p I tell myself I can't eat again until 5p.  Then again, I'm typically not hungry until 5p when eating normally.

I'm modifying from the strictest sense of the cleanse a little--I'm mixing my Shakeology with 1 cup of low-fat milk.  It ups the calorie content a little (though I'm still below 1200 cal/day), but more importantly, it ups the protein content of each meal to almost 30g.  One of the things I want to make sure of is that I don't neglect my daily protein needs.

Other than that, I was concerned about how low my carb intake would be every day--119 g/day.  It's really not that far off from the 130 g/day minimum recommended by the American Dietetic Association, but such a low carb intake might explain why I was feeling the way I was when I did this the first time.

Well, I'll log in tomorrow and write about my Day 2 experience, but so far so good!

Mmmmmmm....coal tar!

Have you had your coal tar today?  No?  If you took your multivitamin today, chances are you did!  Yay!!!

I'm starting to realize that I am pretty ignorant about my supplements.  I'd like to think I'm not alone.  Let's face it, it's almost cliché to think of a daily multivitamin as "insurance" against a sub-par diet, and of course, every American diet is sub-par, right?  Even if you think you eat a healthy diet, can you really be sure you're getting all of your Vitamin D3, zinc, or molybdenum?  And let's not forget coal tar!

How many of you knew that vitamins fall under one of six categories?  I didn't.  All vitamin supplements can be classified as "strictly synthetic," "nature-identical synthetic," "natural source," "food cultured," "food based," or "bacterial fermentation."  Not surprisingly, most vitamin supplements are either strictly synthetic or nature-identical synthetic, both of which are synonymous for "made in a lab."  The key difference between strictly synthetic and nature-identical synthetic is something called optical activity.  Optical activity is a technical term that refers to the shape of the molecular chain that comprises a particular vitamin.  While a synthetic vitamin might have the same chemical composition as the real deal, it's shape might not conform with a form that is compatible with the enzymes our bodies use to process it.  Therefore, since the optical activity of strictly synthetic vitamins differs from natural or even nature-identical synthetic vitamins, the bioavailability of strictly synthetic vitamins is lower than other forms.

But just because a vitamin is nature-identical doesn't mean it's all that great for us.  As you probably know, most Vitamin C supplements are comprised of ascorbic acid.  Guess where we get ascorbic acid from?  Oranges?  No.  Coal tar?  No, but I'm getting to that.  Corn!  That's right, ascorbic acid is typically derived chemically from corn/rice starch or corn sugar.

Coal tar is where we synthetically get Vitamin B-1 (thiamin).  Hydrochloric acid, the strongest of acids, is added to coal tar to cause it to precipitate.  The precipitant is collected and processed to create thiamin.  Yum!

The point here is that, just like I haven't given any thought to to my insurance coverages and deductibles (and probably should), I've never given any thought to my diet "insurance" until now.  We've always known that honest-to-goodness whole food is far superior to anything we can get out of a bottle, but maybe it's time we started to really look into the bottle.  Maybe we'll start to see that, not only are supplemental vitimans NOT a reasonable substitute for the vitamins and minerals we don't get due to our poor diets, but we'll start to see that they're light-years apart.

(BTW: if you're interested in reading about this topic in depth, check out the article All About Where Our Vitamin Supplements Come From.  I credit all of the information I wrote in this post to Ryan Andrews, who authored this article.  Any errors are my own.)

Now it's time to figure out if I should lower my deductibles!

The best Omega-3 money can buy...from krill?

That's right, krill--the tiny crustacean that whales eat by the ton.  Apparently it really is as good for you as the marketing hype, but read on, because it's not without it's fair share of concerns.

A friend of mine had questions about the glucosamine post regarding MSM (methylsulfonylmethane, an inflammation reducer often found in glucosamine/chondroitin supplements).  He was wondering how MSM combined with Omega-3, which got us on the topic of Omega-3 supplements.  I had mentioned that I've been getting my Omega-3 from krill oil, but during the course of our discussion, I realized that I really don't know all that much about krill oil.  I decided to change that.

I bought krill oil from GNC when I ran out of my fish oil supplements.  I saw it on the same shelf with the resto of the Omega-3 products, and it looked interesting.  While I prefer to research something using the internet, I often find that I educate myself on the spot (spoken "impulse buying")--not my best quality.  Anyway, I was surprised to read that a published study showed that krill oil caused a significant decrease (increase?) in C-Reactive Protein (CRP), which is a marker for general inflammation in the body.  I learned earlier this year that inflammation is perhaps the most damaging of bodily responses over time, so I decided to go with the krill.

So is there any truth to the claim that krill oil reduces CRP, and is it really a good source of Omega-3?  I called on Dr. Weil for advice.  From his Q&A Library (published 7/3/2007):

A study involving 120 people at McGill University in Canada found that one to three grams of krill oil per day reduced LDL ("bad") cholesterol by 34 percent and boosted HDL ("good") cholesterol by 43.5 percent compared to placebo. In contrast, here is the effect of fish oil seen in this study: a 4.6 percent reduction of LDL and an HDL increase of 4.2 percent compared to placebo.

As for the claim about inflammation, he had this to say in the same article:

A study published in the February 2007 issue of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that a daily dose of 300 mg of krill oil inhibited inflammation and reduced the symptoms of arthritis within seven to 14 days among the 90 patients participating.

Seems that krill oil is the perfect Omega-3 supplement, but it is not without it's opponents.  Krill oil is not nearly as well researched as fish oil, so it's a little more difficult to find reliable information about it.  Wikipedia cautions that toxic residues have been found in krill oil, citing an article published in 1987 regarding the contamination of penguine food with organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs).  Now I have no idea what these things are, but I'm not a fan of consuming contaminated ANYTHING.  Unfortunately, fish oil is not without the same concern, as wikipedia also cites a study (in the krill oil article) published in 2007 that found anthropogenic and naturally occurring organobrominated compounds in fish oil supplements.  Ugh!!!

Of the few resources out there that discuss krill independent of marketing, healthyomega3.com seems to offer some good insight.  They appear to be a not-for-profit, informational website about Omega-3.  They make a strong (if not thorougly supported) argument for supplementing with fish oil.  They claim that, while both krill oil and fish oil have the potential for contamination, only fish oil undergoes a decontamination process.  While this is not true of ALL fish oil supplements, they recommend that you look for the certificate of analysis when considering any fish oil supplement, which should be posted on the company's website.

Another argument that healthyomega3.com makes is that krill oil supplements are typically low on DHA, which they claim is the more important aspect of Omega-3 supplementation (over EPA, which fish oil tends to be high in).  I don't know enough about this claim to weigh in yet, so stand by...

WebMD actually has some good info about krill oil.  While krill oil seems fairly safe, they recommend you avoid it if you're pregnant or breast feeding, as not enough is known about krill oil to make any conclusions.  Since krill oil obviously is derrived from a crustacean, you should not supplement with it if you are alergic to shellfish.  And apparently all Omega-3 supplemets have blood-thinning properties, you should discontinue use 2 weeks prior to surgery and consult your doctor if you are on any sort of blood thinning medication or are on an aspirin regimin.  Also, WebMD states that krill oil "seems to be safe for most adults when used appropriately for a short amount of time (up to three months)."  It's the only site that I've seen so far that recommends a term of use for krill oil.

So what's the bottom line?  I think I'll continue to use the krill oil that I have while looking for a better Omega-3 supplement.  Krill oil really does seem to offer significant benefits over traditional fish oil, but being a nitche product--the majority of the attention and money going to fish oil supplements--I'm concerned that the supplement is underfunded in general.  This could result in a lower quality product, regardless of what the companies claim.  I'm not uber-concerned about the contamination right now, but that's probably because I'm only on my second month of the supplement.  And if I find something that I like better before I finish my second month, you can bet I'll be switching to that.  Stay tuned...

Glucosamine

I decided Sunday to start taking a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement.  Since the Insanity program is plyo-heavy, I feel that I can use all the support I can get, which means great shoes for jumping up and down, and great supplements for joint health.

Naturally the idea of supplementing with glucosamine raised some questions.  Do I really need glucosamine at my age?  Is glucosamine suitable as a long-term supplement?  Is there any harm in supplemting with it?

I started by going to a number of my "go-to" sites.  From wikipedia I learned that a study performed in 2009 showed that glucosamine, or a glucosamine/chondroitin combination, fared no better than a placebo in easing joint pain.  However, Dr. Weil addressed this study specifically, going into more depth and helping to clarify the study's results.  In his conclusion he recommends supplementing with a glucosamine/chondroitin combination.

The doctors of Realage.com, Drs. Oz and Roizen, wrote extensively about glucosamine/chondroitin in their book, You: The Owner's Manual.  They liken glucosamine to either rain or wiper fluid for your windshield wipers--to prevent your wiper blades from burning up, they need some sort of lubrication.  While there is no age recommendation for supplementing with glucosamine, the impression I get from reading their book is that supplementing with it is generally a good idea.

As far as side effects go, glucosamine appears to be relatively safe.  About.com's alternative medicine lists a number of low-grade side effects, all of which can be aleviated by discontinuing use.  More significantly, in rare cases, glucosamine causes high blood pressure and/or heart palpatations.  Of course, you wouldn't notice the high blood pressure unless you monitor regularly, and if you get heart palpatations, then you probably should stop taking it.  About.com also says that glucosamine can theoretically cause increased risk of bleeding, so if you're on any kind of blood thinning medication or are supplementing with something that can already cause increased risk of bleeding, proceed with caution.  I've been supplementing with garlic, one of the supplements that supposedly increases the risk of bleeding, so I'll have to re-evaluate that aspect of my supplement plan.

I also learned that standard glucosamine supplements are made using the shells of shellfish.  The use of glucosamine is actually debatable if you have a shellfish alergy; one side argues that the alergy is triggered by the meat of the shellfish, in which case glucosamine derrived from the shells shoudl be fine.  The other side argues that you should just avoid glucosamine altogether if you have a shellfish alergy, as there are non-shellfish derivatives on the market.

Finally, there used to be a concern that glucosamine, being a amine sugar (glucosamine = glucose + amine), could contribute to insulin resistance/diabetes.  Several studies have since concluded that glucosamine does not cause insulin resistance/diabetes, and the concern currently appears to be a non-issue.

I came across a message board where a 23 year old, who was experiencing no joint pain, was taking glucosamine as a preventative measure and was wondering if he should continue supplementing with it.  The response he received was very helpful.  A man in his 60s, who had a family history of joint issues, started supplementing with glucosamine/chondroitin in his 50s as a preventative measure.  After suffering a minor knee injury 10 years later, his orthopedic surgeon reported that his joint cartilidge was in good shape and that he would probably never have to undergo the same joint replacements that his parents did.

So call me an old fart, but I think I'm going to continue supplementing with glucosamine/chondroitin as a daily preventative measure.  After doing some quick math, the cost of this routine supplement would run me about $5k over the next 30 years.  I don't know how much a hip or knee replacement costs, but can you really put a price on never needing a joint replaced?