Metabolic Health
How to Retain Metabolic Flexibility and Insulin Sensitivity with Anabolic and Catabolic Balance
Five customizable methods to creating metabolic flexibility to burn excess visceral fat and maintain lean muscles as we age
Purpose of the Article
This article introduces five practical and customizable ways to create a delicate balance between anabolic and catabolic states to keep lean muscles while decreasing visceral fat.
My goal is to highlight the importance of muscle anabolism and fat catabolism to create metabolic flexibility by adjusting diet, exercise, and recovery.
This article is not health advice. It is for information, inspiration, and awareness purposes to improve metabolic and mental health via healthy lifestyle habits.
Delicate Balance of Anabolism and Catabolism for Insulin Sensitivity for Metabolic Health
The muscle is our longevity organ with critical functions for our survival and well-being. Skeletal muscle is extra vital as we get older. Sarcopenia (muscle loss) is a metabolic risk for the aging population.
To prevent sarcopenia, we need to keep our body anabolic. But we also need to induce catabolism carefully to burn visceral fat as its accumulated amount is a root cause of metabolic disorders.
For example, the accumulation of excess visceral fat can lead to type II diabetes, fatty liver, heart disease, stroke, cancers, and neurodegenerative diseases (such as dementia).
The key to metabolic health is using visceral fat as an energy source to feed muscles and keep them functioning. In other words, by burning visceral fat, we can maintain a lean muscle mass by having a fat-adapted metabolism.
As insulin resistance is a known cause of metabolic disorders, the optimal solution is to make our bodies insulin sensitive without compromising the anabolic state.
Insulin resistance happens when our muscle cells stop responding to insulin signals due to excessive calories in the body. When the body becomes insulin resistant, blood glucose is transferred to fat cells, making them bigger and causing obesity.
The following sections explain how to create a delicate balance between anabolism and catabolism while keeping the body insulin sensitive for better metabolic flexibility. As it is a broad topic, I only focus on the critical items and link my previous articles to those who are interested in details.
Here’s how to stay anabolic and catabolic simultaneously while retaining insulin sensitivity for metabolic flexibility.
In this section, I organize my points under five broad topics covering essential items without going into scientific details.
1 — Smart Arrangement of Macronutrients
Three macronutrients, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, supply energy to our cells. However, the major role of protein is to serve as a building block for cell growth and maintenance. Therefore, we need to focus on carbs and fats to create the necessary energy for the body.
The body goes into a catabolic state when we eat fewer carbs or fats than our daily energy requirements. In this state, a biological mechanism called mTOR in our muscle cells is activated if we consume sufficient proteins, such as 30 grams or more.
Interestingly, while keeping an anabolic state from a muscle retention perspective, the body is in a catabolic state from the fat-burning point of view as the lipolysis process happens to mobilize fats and use them as an energy source.
Energy balance is essential to keep anabolism in the long term. Therefore, we need to provide the necessary energy to our cells to maintain muscle mass. However, while calories play a role in this balance, our hormones such as insulin, leptin, growth hormone, sex hormones, and cortisol also play a critical role.
In addition to the arrangement of macronutrients, the delicate balance between anabolism and catabolism to burn visceral fat and maintain lean muscle might require changing our eating windows. I will cover it in the subsequent section.
2 — Balancing Feeding and Fasting Windows
When we keep feeding the body with carbs, fats, and protein in each meal, the calories, as soon as digested, immediately go to the bloodstream in the form of glucose and triglycerides.
As the bloodstream allows only a tiny amount of glucose at a given time, it calls the insulin hormone to distribute the sugar to various body parts that require energy.
The priority is given to our muscle cells as the body sees them as vital for our survival. However, if muscle cells don’t need glucose, they shut down and ignore insulin signals. In this case, insulin distributes the excess glucose to fat cells, which are turned into fat molecules for further storage.
A well-proven method to keep muscle cells receptive to insulin is to consume our food in a specific window. This will allow glucose utilization during the fasted period. When we don’t consume carbs, fats, or proteins for several hours, the muscle cells might be more receptive to glucose in the next meal.
When the body is in the fasted state, it increases the growth hormone to maintain muscles and other hormones to mobilize fat. Thus, time-restricted eating is an excellent way to make the body more insulin sensitive while keeping lean muscles and utilizing stored fat.
To further enhance insulin sensitivity, fat burning, and muscle synthesis, the next viable solution is to utilize the power of exercise.
3 — Customizing Workouts for Fat Burning and Muscle Building
While exercise is usually seen as an energy-spending activity, specific exercises such as resistance and high-intensity training enable muscle synthesis.
So adequate protein and resistance training are two critical mechanisms to activate mTOR for muscle growth and retention. Another mechanism to activate mTOR is allowing insulin release at specific times. Therefore, insulin is an essential hormone to keep muscle anabolism.
As exercise activates muscles, glucose utilization by muscle cells significantly increases during and after the process. Therefore, excess calories and glucose in the bloodstream are supplied to muscles.
If we don’t eat in a specific window, the body first uses the glycogen stores to supply required glucose to the muscles during the exercise. As glycogen stores are limited, as soon as they get empty, the body taps into the stored fat, mobilizing them as an energy source for the body.
In addition, the liver creates the gluconeogenesis process to supply glucose to the muscles. This process might be catabolic as the body uses amino acids and some fat molecules to generate glucose.
However, when we consume adequate calories in our next meal, the glycogen stores are filled, and the excess calories are burned by muscle cells activated during the exercise. Therefore, time-restricted eating and resistance training together can create a delicate balance of desired catabolism and anabolism.
People with excess visceral fat use fasted exercise to tap into fat stores. Short fasted-cardio works for some people to lose visceral fat. However, in my experience, fasted resistance training provides a better hormonal profile to create the balance of fat catabolism and muscle anabolism.
4 — Managing Stress and Inflammation with Lifestyle Choices
After nutrition and exercise, physical and mental stress is another critical factor for balancing catabolism and anabolism for metabolic flexibility.
Both nutrition and exercise create stress in the body via various mechanisms. Our muscles need stress to grow and stay healthy. However, when the stress passes the threshold, the body elevates the stress hormone (cortisol), which is a catabolic process.
Even though catabolism is necessary, as I mentioned in previous sections, cortisol creates a tricky situation for our metabolism. Unfortunately, it is catabolic for muscles and anabolic for fat cells, which is an undesirable situation.
In simple terms, it is not possible to tap into stored fat when cortisol levels are high. Since the body needs energy, the cortisol hormone might trigger the use of glucose from the muscles during excessive stress. Therefore, we need to optimize the cortisol hormone to balance this process.
Like stress, the body also needs inflammation to recover from the effects of workouts. While adequate inflammation is essential, chronic inflammation might cause complications in the body. Similar to sugar, excess inflammation can be toxic to the body.
The solution is to recover the muscle damage after each exercise. Therefore, we should not perform the exercise until our muscles are fully recovered. Recovery is critical to preventing chronic stress and chronic inflammation.
5 — Regular Adjustments for Metabolic Flexibility
Metabolic flexibility is maintained with nutritional and workout adjustments. From a nutritional perspective, using carbs and fats in different ratios can contribute to this flexibility.
For example, increasing carbs can be significantly burned by muscles as an energy source after intense workout sessions, creating an anabolic effect. And increasing fats after fasted windows can increase satiety, creating more leptin and preventing insulin spikes while giving the body necessary energy.
So adjusting our macronutrients, carbs, fats, and proteins in specific windows can create a hormonal balance and might help us to create the delicate balance of catabolism and anabolism.
Like nutrition, we must adjust our workouts to create metabolic flexibility. People with excess visceral fat might need more cardio for fat mobilization and burning. People with lower visceral fat might benefit from resistance training to maintain lean muscle mass.
Therefore, metabolic flexibility varies from person to person. Some people might need more cardio, some more resistance training, and some both. Even though cardio is vital for vitality, cardiovascular health, and various other reasons, as we age, resistance training becomes critical to keep our lean muscles and prevent sarcopenia.
Conclusions and Takeaways
Human metabolism is highly complex, requiring a delicate balance between anabolism and catabolism. The critical point is to leverage anabolism to grow and maintain lean muscles and leverage catabolism to lower visceral fat.
Diet, exercise, sleep, and rest are critical in maintaining this delicate balance. While a fed state puts us in an anabolic position, the fasted state puts us in a catabolic one.
Likewise, exercise can be anabolic by activating mTOR and catabolic by mobilizing fat molecules for energy utilization. Exercise can also make our bodies more insulin sensitive.
Sleep and rest can also be anabolic by increasing growth hormone and decreasing cortisol. In addition, sleep and rest might be catabolic in a fasted state for fat mobilization and burning.
So, as you can see, we can use food, exercise, sleep, and rest to create a functional balance between the anabolism of muscles and the catabolism of visceral fat to create a flexible metabolism.
These regimes depend on our body types, genetics, and goals. Healthy adults can create the required balance between anabolic and catabolic activities. However, people with underlying health conditions need the support of qualified healthcare professionals.
To conclude, anabolism is critical to maintaining our muscles as we get older. However, we also need catabolism to burn visceral fat as an energy source and create autophagy and mitophagy to maintain our cellular and mitochondrial health.
Too much catabolism or anabolism is unhealthy for the body. We need both in adequate amounts by adjusting our nutritional, exercise, and recovery regimens.
Therefore, despite having no excessive visceral fat in my body, I still use a ketogenetic diet with intermittent fasting to create this delicate balance to maintain my metabolic and mental health. These regimens keep my metabolism flexible and fat-adapted.
I documented my reviews, observations, and experiences with metabolic health, particularly maintaining lean muscles and melting visceral fat via healthy lifestyle habits. I link a few stories for new readers.
Lose Visceral Fat by Understanding the Intricacies of Six Critical Hormones
Reduce Abdominal Fat and Increase Lean Muscles with Two Practical Steps
Three Tips to Eliminate Insulin Resistance and Shrink Waistline
Three Tips for Retaining Lean Muscles While Losing Visceral Fat Steadily
In another story, I elaborated on details, giving a broader perspective on eliminating loose skin.
Here’s How I Got Healthier and Smoother Skin via 5 Lifestyle and Holistic Health Methods.
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As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
Petechiae, ALS, Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and urinary track disorders.
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As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
Sample Humorous Stories
Finally, After Burning Her House, Georgia Found Enlightenment
Hilarious Tips to Prevent Brain Atrophy and Keep the Gray Matter Giggling
8 Psychological Points I Had to Unlearn and Relearn the Opposite
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