The real 101 guide to insulin and Bodybuilding – Part 2

Does insulin make you fat?
No insulin does not make you fat. If this was the case then every diabetic out there who continues to eat shit would be growing at insanely rapid rates and we would all be able to tell the diabetics apart by them all being 800lbs. Considering the fact that a common diabetic will use insulin in the hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of IU a day. Most of us can’t tell a diabetic from a non-diabetic, well simply you can’t actually. And if it were also true, there would be no such thing as type 1 diabetic bodybuilders who have insulin in them 24/7 and able to compete at stage ready bodyfat levels.

Diet makes you fat, plain and simple. You eat you make insulin, you don’t eat, you still make insulin. Yet we can all get lean. Yes, insulin does drive nutrients into the cells, but what is insulin resistance, diabetes? It is a decrease in insulin sensitivity to the muscles. Fat and muscle have DIFFERENT sensitivities believe it or not. So no insulin isn’t going to have the same effect on everyone’s fat and muscle naturally or synthetically. And you can use specific items/supplements to increase insulin sensitivity to the muscles and decrease it to the fat cells (glutamine is one such item). So you are driving more nutrients to the muscle then fat, which again if you were resistant in the first place, your natural production would be making you fat anyways. As an example with made-up figures: let’s say naturally if you are put on 20lbs of muscle and 2lbs of fat over 6 months, with insulin it would be 40lbs muscle and 4lbs of fat 4lbs fat (remember these are arbitrary figures for an example). So what did you just do? You doubled your muscle and fat gain. Is the ratio ANY different then what you would have achieved naturally? No not at all. Sure you gained double the fat, but double the muscle, something you would have done anyway at the 1-year mark, you just attained it sooner. (Again, to restate this before anyone gets the idea that I am saying this is what will happen, I am not. I am showing a point in how insulin sensitivity at the different sites and diet play a role and insulin is doing the same job it would have done anyways.)

Diet on insulin.
Tied into the last topic above, keep your saturated fats low. If you read my macros post on dieting it goes a little more into detail. Saturated fats are one of the worst at decreasing insulin sensitivity and adding fat gain in a surplus vs fats like PUFA fats. Which were shown to add almost all muscle gain. PUFA fats also have the benefit of increasing insulin sensitivity and helping prevent white fat gain and decreasing skin fat thickness. Never go zero fats on insulin, it will hurt your muscle growth severely and it is not optimal for keeping fat off as well.

How to eat while taking insulin
I’m not going to go into crazy detail on this because it is way too big of a topic to cover. You can read my other post about diet in general and why I dislike any junk food and empty-nutrient foods. Nutrients build muscle and are needed to utilize your protein carbs and fats, and higher nutrients of many micronutrients were shown to enhance muscle growth without adding calories and help fat loss without reducing calories. A calorie is simply not a calorie, read my phosphorus article and see how adding phosphorus to the diet can have an effect (phosphorous is mainly in protein food sources, example: 100g of one meat may contain 200mg phosphorous while the next may contain 600mg, x3 the amount).

So food choices DO matter. It’s the same with carbs, eat all the carbs you want but it requires a specific amount of potassium per gram to be stored as glycogen. Like many have seen my guys who increase potassium without altering diet somehow have their weight shoot up and look much thicker due to properly holding an optimal amount of glycogen than before, which is a much more anabolic muscle. So again, nutrients matter, don’t go eating empty sugar calories on insulin use. Eat your normal meals, and add inuslin to your meals, don’t work your meals around insulin, insulin works around your meals. 100g carbs potato, 250g meat some veggies good fats, work your insulin dose around this. Don’t go adding some random crappy empty calorie dextrose or sugar drink that doesn’t support nutrient utilization of protein, carbs or fats and doesn’t aid the very complex muscle repair process. Again, read my other articles on macro dieting and why it’s bad.

Carb sources on insulin.
Fructose inhibits vasodilation and does not replace glycogen as good as glucose, But glucose solo also does not restore glycogen as well as glucose-fructose combo. But only a little fructose is needed to fulfill this job. So keeping glucose as the majority of your carb intake with a little fructose is the best scenario. We want this if we want our veins to look extra big.

Summary:
– Basically, there are 3 types of insulin: short acting, medium acting, and fast acting.
– For normal people ideally you want to take a slow acting once in the morning AND a fast acting with every meal. The slow acting provides a low-level dose in the background keeping you anabolic all day and the fast-acting is needed for high spikes during meals. However, if you can only take one then either can be used, both have their ups and downs.
– Dosages vary. Trial and error depending on feel and BG levels.

That about sums it up. Putting to rest a lot of misconceptions, such as the dangers of our insulin use compared to what the reality is. Why using once a day is not optimal and doesn’t make sense from an optimal growth perspective. The bogus claims on how all insulins are the same and their effects. I hope I didn’t forget anything but I am sure I did since I just threw this together on a whim. But I will update if any more facts pop in my head on each topic here.

Also, the display picture is a good example here of insulin used optimally in just one cycle. The time length I won’t even mention as it will likely just cause a huge fight if it is true or not.

Disclaimer; This is not medical advice or advice in general. This is for educational purposes only.