On Internal Balance.

It’s been an awesome NaNoWriMo/DITL day. I suppose I’ll go through pictures tomorrow. Okay, there weren’t that many, but that doesn’t matter. I cranked out 5K before 8PM, which is about three quotas worth. I give Ginger two days before she blows past me and doesn’t look back. She’s on her way to 100K, after all.

As expected, I started with no plot, and managed to write some really good shit. The Darcey/Lisa banter rules. There’s a plotline I intend to follow through which will probably push Xavier to the background for a while. To be expected. Nice thing about Xavier is that he won’t inadvertantly save himself. He just isn’t that lucky. So I can play around with them as much as possible before initiating the primary arch which will refocus around him. In a way, you can learn a lot from what other people are saying.

There’s a lot of me in most characters. Yet, this is to be expected. You can’t be an actor without being the part. In being the voice of characters, I have to be them. They are me. Hence the dreams I had last year. I’m accepting this a bit more, and am willing to take facets of myself and put them in characters. Just makes it easier to understand who they are.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been pondering macronutrient ratios. I’ve followed my nutrition prof so far, up to this point. He claims a good nutritant ratio is 75C/15P/10F. (Carbs/Protein/Fat) I follow his statements on the necessity of fiber. (40-50 grams a day) I follow why saturated fat and trans fat is bad. I follow why simple sugars are bad, and why complex carbohydrates are better. I like my prof because he’s a little crazy. He’s pretty much anti-establishment, and likes talking about how The Man strips food of fiber, and how The Man fills things up with chemicals, and how the government really would let companies get away with things.

He said a week or two ago that “A high protein diet is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.” He has some choice words against the Atkins diet, as well. He got into why an excess of protein is bad last lecture. It made me stop and think, really.

The why, as simple as possible, is that the body can not digest amines in amino acids, these amines combine with CO2, and then form urea, which has to be excreted by the body via the kidneys. The liver also has to do some work in the process.

I’ve read up on this before, and the creation of urea is typically discounted as not mattering. There’s the phenomenon of the Velocity Diet. But. Then I think about everything else nutrition is about. Excess sugar causes reactive hypoglycemia, which just means your blood sugar rebounds higher after a high sugar intake. Intaking human chemicals just means introducing more shit for your liver to deal with. More shit for your kidneys to deal with. My prof pointed out that there seems to be that notion that PROTEIN WILL MAKE YOU HE-UGE, following up with the point that to do so, you have to lift hard to cause anything to grow.

Obviously a protein deficit is pretty bad, as our entire bodies are made up of proteins. DNA is the blueprint for making proteins. I remember the lifting maxim, “One gram of protein per lb of bodyweight!” Prof went over what he claims are the grams per kg of protein at different agegroups. He claims that the adult over 21 needs around 1 gram of protein per kg of bodyweight. It makes me wonder, what if someone misspoke along the way, and interchanged pounds and kilograms? There’s a huge difference between pounds and kilograms, by the order of 2.2. It’s the difference between me intaking 70 grams of protein, and 155 grams.

It’s one thing to have more protein than you need, but it’s quite another to have fully DOUBLE what you need. I’ve done the 155 grams of protein a day. I can assure you, I am not HE-UGE. It’s no magic potion more than anything else.

The way carbohydrates get a bad wrap, it’s ridiculous. If you want your body burning anything, you want it burning glucose. It’s the fuel of choice. Yet in lifting communities, I keep hearing the exact ratios which my prof says are common in this country, 33/33/33. This is a confliction, for sure!

Somewhere in the middle is reality, the truth, or at the very least, a proper meal plan for myself. Lifting is a hobby, it isn’t everything. It’s self-reinforcing, but it’s also a means to an end. To not die unhealthy. In moderation, urea excretion probably isn’t a big deal. But that’s it right there, moderation. There’s a huge difference between 155 grams of protein, and 70 grams. An excess over the average person should be expected if I intend to build muscle. But when you get down to it, a High Protein Diet makes little sense. Our bodies were meant to work a certain way, and I’m trying to work with it, not against it. I want to rid impurities.

The explanation is there for those that care. In essence, I am finding my own path. Bulking never made sense to me, as much as dieting never made sense. And a high protein diet makes about as much sense at the atkins diet. Give me time, it will come to me. And it’ll be complete with ATP, a healthy liver and hypertrophy. Or something.