It's been a while since I have been able to write. I weighed in this morning at 273.6. Pretty good. At the one week mark I weighed in at 275, which was last Friday. That made for a 10 pound loss the first week. I think that is pretty good. I have been trying to keep up with my exercise but it has been hard because of my feet problems.
Upon reading the Atkins forums (which are a great source of information regarding the diet) I discovered that Atkins says not to have nuts of any kind during induction. I also read that many people have had problems with Atkins bars in regards to decreasing their ketosis or curbing their weight loss. I have been using both, but my ketosis has been strong every day according to the ketostix; the effect on my weight loss I cannot determine though. Therefore, I have decided to eliminate nuts and use bars only in emergencies for the time being. I am curious to see if this springboards my weight loss even more.
I decided it would be good for me to start chronicling my food intake everyday in my blog. This may be boring for the reader, but it will be good for me and I don't have any readers at this point anyways. Today I am writing in the morning so I will chronicle my meals from yesterday, and tomorrow I hope to be back to writing at night and will chronicle that days food. I had scrambled eggs with cheese and a few strips of real bacon for breakfast. I had grilled broccoli and cauliflower and smoked turkey lunch meat for lunch. I had 2 hard boiled eggs and cheese sticks for snacks. For dinner I had half a burger patty and 2 sausage links with fancy cheese. I did the biggest loser workout for 30 minutes. Man, it is rough. Cardiovascularly I am fine doing it, but my muscles are really weak when it comes to things like the yoga and pushups. Yesterday was my first day of no nuts or bars. I think the scale showed an improvement today, so it will be interesting if this will continue to be a trend or just a fluke. Day to day weight loss monitoring is hit or miss, the trend is what is important.
Another point I want to stress, is that I have tried many diets, and above all, this one leads me to be much less hungry than all others. I have virtually no hanger pangs at all. I think it was a good choice for many reasons to start with this diet.
I wanted to talk about the answers to my first biochemical question: what pathways does the Atkins diet repress. The first, most important, and most obvious are the insulin pathways. I don't know of any others but if I find them I will discuss them in another post.
Eating carbohydrates (most carbohydrates, but not all) increase the level of blood glucose. The glucose makes its way to the pancreas. This signals the beta cells in the islets of Langerhans to unleash insulin. Insulin is technically classified as a hormone, but it is not a classical hormone in the sense that estrogen and testosterone are hormones. Insulin is a peptide composed of amino acids, it is a protein, whereas typical hormones such as estrogen and testosterone are small organic compounds often with multiple rings. Insulin is a very small protein. It is composed of two chains that are 20-30 amino acids in length. The structure of Insulin was first elucidated in 1972 by Blundell. Since then, the structure has been solved a hundred times over. Looking at the pdb, I found a high resolution one quickly, it was accession code 3i3z. Looking at it, it is a simple fold made of 3-4 helices and 3-4 loops. This is reinforcement that Nature's most powerful entities are often its most simple.
From here insulin targets its receptor, the insulin receptor. The insulin receptor is found in a number of cells, most importantly muscle, liver, and adipose tissue. The insulin receptor is a tetramer composed of two identical alpha and tow identical beta strands. It is a transmembrane protein that has an extracellular domain, and transmembrane domain, and intracellular domain. Insulin binding causes autophosphorylation of the receptor. This is the beginning of the onset of many, many different biochemical cascades. These cascades are triggered mainly by interaction with the Insulin Receptor Substrate (IRS) proteins of which there are six different ones. The cascades that follow include tyrosine phosphorylation, interactions with SH2 proteins, kinases, as well as others. Some key proteins include: Pl3K, PDK, PIP3, Akt, Grb, MEK, ERK, Jak, and many other well known proteins. These pathways have multiple endpoints and therefore multiple effects.
The effects of insulin can be thought of as essentially anabolic for the most part. The insulin signal is a "grow" signal. This includes many things. Perhaps most importantly for the person trying to lose weight it means decreased lipolysis and increased lipid synthesis. It means an increase in protein synthesis to keep up with the growth. Glycogen synthesis also is upregulated to put the glucose away in another form. Gluconeogeneis is also decreased, which seems obvious. It also leads to the cutting off of apoptosis.
So, cutting off carbohydrate intake by means of the Atkins diet should reverse to some large degree the above mentioned results of insulin signaling. Sounds great, right? So what is the downside? There has to be a downside to this somewhere. At this point I don't know what it is, but I will look for it. Is any of this bad for you somehow?
Transforming biochemistry knowledge into weight loss:
This page was begun as an experiment. An experiment I was conducting on myself. An experiment to test which conditions would allow me to loose weight. Now that I have been at it for a while I realize this page serves as more. It serves as a means for me to research. It is a way for me to pick health topics of interest, research them from a biochemistry stand point, and then share them with the world. Sharing them with you gives me an official feeling and keeps me motivated. However, as described below, I am still experimenting on myself.
How did this happen? I don't know exactly although I am almost sure it boils down to diet and exercise. I hope to find the answers as I explore my journey through weight loss on this blog. I was not always fat. Therefore, I know that I can be unfat again.
I am a biochemist. I should have known better. Of all people, I should have known how to avoid this predicament I am in now. I now wish to harness my scientific knowledge to experiment on myself as well as explore the chemical basis for weight loss methods.
Methods:
I will try new diets. I will experiment on myself. The diets will be chosen from among the most popular in our society. I will chronicle the results and my general experience in my blog here. I will also explore the biochemical basis for these diets as well as evaluate their effectiveness and truthfulness. I will also exercise as regularly as possible, 3-5 times per week, to avoid biasing the results. I will try to keep everything constant in my life except the diet. My method is not perfect. I don't necessarily want to lose raw pounds, but rather gain an understanding of what methods work best for me to permanently regain my health.
Hypothesis:
1. No diet will be clearly better than the others. Conversely, each diet will offer some truth, some piece of knowledge or methodology that I can take away with me to help myself. I think that in the end, I will be able to formulate my own diet based on a synthesis of all the things I have learned from all of these diets.
2. I have been on diets before, lost weight, and then regained it. I wasn't born fat. Given that, I think that my main problem will be shown to be psychological. I think that I may have compulsive eating problems- compulsive eating problems associated with very unhealthy foods.
3. I will lose quite a bit of weight. My blog will help keep my motivation levels high.
4. There will be a lack of clear scientific basis to many of the diets.
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