ASK THE GURU ARCHIVES – Daniel Duchaine continued…

Now what? In Valerie’s case, since she wasn’t on low calories at the time, she has two choices; either eliminate the clenbuterol or supplement the deficient T3 with an oral T3 thryoid medication. Being in France, her choices are Cytomel, the synthetic T3, or Triacana, the quasi T3. Since Triacana won’t show up on a blood test and Valerie is willing to submit further thyroid tests, Cytomel is the best choice. Of course, the easiest solution is to simply stop taking the clenbuterol. But not everybody has a flexible timetable, especially if there is a competition in the immediate future.

The same logic applies to dieting. Most diets stop working somewhere after the five-week mark. After this time, the T3 and body temperature are reduced. Something else just as significant happens. Lowered T3 levels affect your muscle cells’ insulin sensitivity. Simply, the longer a person diets and requires further calorie reductions to lose bodyfat, the less the body likes carbohydrate calories. This switch over is somewhat benign as the lowered cell insulin sensitivity makes more glucose available to the brain. Remember, glucose is primarily brain food.

So what? This lowered insulin sensitivity from deficient T3 results in less muscle glycogen storage, so more glucose is transported into fat cells. Also, more insulin is secreted to compensate and hammer the glucose in. On low-calorie diets, excess insulin interferes with the stubborn fat disassemby, especially in the lower-body fat areas in women. All this, if you have been following the logic, explains why women dieters do so poorly losing lower-body fat on a low-fat, high-carb diet that lasts longer than four weeks or so.

So the advice for dieters to avoid the mess of T3 deficiences is to simply stop dieting after four to five weeks and adjust calories slightly upward to optimize the thyroid levels. You could be more precise and take morning body temperature readings daily. At some point in the dieting this morning reading will lower by at least a degree or more indicating lower T3 thryoid. The more adventurous will consider adding T3 oral daily medication, especially if some kind of time factor is involved. And then there will be those who have to plug on with the diet without a break and no extra thyroid drug intake. In this case, I recommend a significant reduction of carbohydrates, substituting them with mostly fat calories and some protein. And of course, the BODYOPUS plan with virtually no carb intake for five days is the most effective.

In closing out this question, Valeries’s morning body temperature even with clenbuterol is still too low. Most doctors would say that a morning reading of 97.2° is “normal”. Normal, yes, optimal, no. Ideal morning body temperature for a bodybuilder is in the range of 97.8° to 98.2°. If an individual is below this while on maintenance calories, then some kind of thyroid deficiency is happening. Perhaps the values are all within the normal ranges, but they are not optimal. Such people will not be able to eat much food, and carb calories will easily turn into fat. So in Valerie’s case, she must raise serum T3 levels enough to elevate body temperature to at least 97.8° in the morning. Once adjusted, she will be able to eat more than a measly 2,000 calories a day with an added bonus of better repartitioning of her dietary carbohydrates.

GURU: What’s the 411 on super high-protein diets for weight loss? I’m hearing amounts like 500+ grams per day.

Gee, it’s convenient to see these mega-gram protein diets when so many new protein supplements are hitting the market. Considering that I formulated a whey protein and make some money off it’s sales, I certainly would benefit financially in recommending more-more-more protein. But, I wouldn’t be so crass. Increasing protein on a low-calorie diet is an ass-backwards way to supply energy calories without raising insulin levels. It’s not so much the higher protein levels contributing to diet success but the reduction of dietary carbohydrates. You could replace most of the excess protein with dietary fat and achieve the same results. I’ve found that high carbohydrate diets and low calories don’t do well with dieters who are already below 15% bodyfat and traveling down to single-digit fat percentages. That doesn’t mean the carbs should be replaced with mostly protein. Fat works better because all the calories are usable energy calories. Much of the protein calories will not be converted to energy. In the past, I’ve been named the Steroid Guru, but you might find in the coming years I may become the Fat Guru. Dietary fats should be solely judged on quality, not quantity.

Dan Duchaine is the author of :: Militant BodyOpus :: Original Underground Steroid Handbook, the ::  Underground Steroid Handbook II :: the Underground Steroid Handbook 1992 Update and numerous articles in the health and bodybuilding magazines for over 25 years! He has gained worldwide notoriety as the “Steroid Guru” due to his outspoken opinions on the use of performance enhancing drugs, and he has appeared on 20/20, Geraldo, The Ron Reagan Show, Now it Can Be Told, and even 60 Minutes. Duchaine is regarded as one of the most knowledgeable experts on real world facts about bodybuilding. Daniel Duchaine passed away on January 13th, 2000. RIP.