| Q&As: Ask the Nutritionist (Last updated: 27 Oct 2006) If you have a question on supplement, nutrition or training to ask, email to questions@ultimatesg.com |
| Q) Does fasting has any bodybuilding benefits? A) Many skinny beginner bodybuilders made a mistake of eating too little. On the other hand, there are some that are stuffing themselves with many and big meals a day. Eating too much is as big a mistake as eating too little. One should eat till they feel full and no more, let your body guide you. After eating heavily for a few days, it the body will signal you that it need a break from all the heavy eating. This is a time you should eat lighter with nutritious food choices for a day or so. I will recommend eating light but not fasting to give the digestive system a rest and to normalise the body hormone levels. Q) Is it a must to sweat to get a good workout? A) In the past I would have say no. But now I believe there is some truth in this. Ever since I cut my rest time between into half, I have never experienced a workout without sweating profusely (even in a cold air con room). Sweating is an indication that you are training hard enough and that you are spending most of the time in the gym with your muscles under tension. Q) What is Maltose? Is it any good compare to glucose? A) Maltose consist of 2 molecules of glucose joined together. It is only half as sweet as sugar and also less sweet than honey. Glycaemically, it is slightly faster than glucose. I am not aware of any bodybuilding or health for taking Maltose. Q) Besides fish soup what are other low fat choice when eating outside? A) Teow Chew porridge is also good choice where you can get some vegetables and steamed fish or meat. Q) Which is a better bodybuilding food? Beef or eggs? A) Both are good. These are among the best muscle building food I know of. Q) I am trying to put on weight as fast as possible. I train weights 3 times a week and eat as much as I can 6 meals a day. I feel very sluggish and my recovery is slow. Any advice to speed up my recovery? A) You are eating way too much. Just eat to the point where you feel full and you should never force feed yourself. By eating less you will find that you feel more energetic and need to sleep less. Once your energy level improve I suggest you train 4 times a week hitting each body part twice a week. Q) I am doing just standing calve raise for my calve, is there any way I can do seated calve with a barbell effectively, since my gym do not have a machine for that? A) Doing seated calves with a barbell can be very difficult having to balance the bar on the thighs near the knee caps. Also you will not be able to use enough weight to benefit from the exercise. The only better way I know of, is to use certain type of lying leg curl machine (if you are in luck your gym may have it) by sitting at the end of the bench and place your thighs under the padding while your feet is on a block. From this position, you can actually perform seated calve raise very effectively to target the soleus. Good soleus development is responsible for "diamond" shape of the calves when view from the front or back. Q) How does your new Inner Armour 6lb Whey compare to your popular ISS Whey powders? A) I just want to say that the new Inner Armour Whey 6lbers are of extremely high standards base on their taste, texture and mixing properties. Customers who bought it have feedback that they like it. Believe it or not, some even bought 3 tubs of all three flavours in the same order. Q) Why didn't Ultimatesg carry Sesamin in the product line? A) Sesamin is a sesamin seed lignan claimed to increase fat oxidation in the liver. Looking through the scientific literature, I find that there are just too many common food compounds that are capable of doing this. For example, fish oil, flaxseed oil, even corn oil and probably many other poly-unsaturated oil containing omega 6 or omega 3 fat. I am also not in favour of any theory that is of "taking a fat to increase the burning body fat" nature. It just do not make sense. Last but not least, Sesamin is a lignan which is found to be estrogenic, not good. Q) Does Creatine ester has better bioavailability (meanining it is absorbed better)? A) Esterification means that another molecules is joined chemically to the parent molecule. A professor in nutrition science once told me that she doubt these ester-linkage will be able to remain unbroken in the digestive system. For example, Ester-C is a Calcium joined to Calcium, fat are fatty acids esterified to a glycerol, both ester linkages are broken down in the stomach in order for absorption to take place. So I doubt that there is any increase in bioavailability at all by esterification. There seem to be a trend in esterification of many nutrients in supplements like amino acids etc, which I do not understand what is the science behind that. Q) I have switched to liquid amino because I hate swallowing pills, is that better than pills? A) All the liquid amino acid products I know of are actually made from gelatin (hydrolysed protein). They are actually cheap and inferior protein. It is not a good idea to rely on them as a protein supplement unless you really like the taste. Q) Which one, food grade fish oil versus pharmaceutical fish oil do you honestly think is better? A) Of course based on price food grade fish oil may be more economical. But they undergo little molecular distillation, a process that remove all the impurities and saturated fat. In fact, food grade fish oil only undergo 1/10 the time of molecular distillation (to remove some of the saturated fat) compared to pharmaceutical fish oil went through 10 times more of such process. In a time like nowadays where there are many pollutions, I would personally stick to the higher grade, pharmaceutical fish oil. Q) Why are White kidney bean sold as carb blocker? Any science behind it? Many beans contains chemicals that prevent carbohydrate-digesting enzymes to work in the intestines. This is why many people let out gas when taking baked bean for example. Resorting to raw grinded bean powder to prevent carbohydrate absorption is probably unhealthy, unnatural and socially-unfriendly. Definitely not the way I will recommend to lose weight. Q) What do you think of ATP supplement, will it work well with Creatine? A) Oral ATP (subligual or not) has zero bioavailability (absorption). ATP has a complex structure that is very delicate. There are many scientific trials since 1960's on ATP supplementation to boost performance, but none passed through the test of the digestive enzymes. Manufacturers of ATP supplements obviously do not know what they are producing or maybe they just could not care less. Intravenous ATP adminstration may work to a certain extent, but I am not exactly sure to what extent. Your best bet will still be Creatine Monohydrate which has passed numerous stringent human performance trials. Q) Do you recommend Flax seed Oil or fish oil or a combination of both? A) I recommend fish oil because they have EPA and DHA which are the activated form of Omega 3 which the body can use. Flax seed Oil need extra conversion before your body can use them, something the body has limited ability to do so and you will need to take so much that excessive lipid peroxidation in the body. will be inevitable. Lipid peroxidation is chain-effect of free radicals production. It is like oil which turned spoil and smell rancid, you will not want this process to go extensively in your body. Q) Why is your Super Vitamin Pak selling so cheap? Are they of poor quality? A) I will increase the price if there are enough requests for me to do so (laugh). But this product is purposely priced low so that more customers can benefit from it. I can assure you that ISS Research is very confident of the quality of its products. I have personally done a disintegration test with a pack of Super Vitamin Pak which shows that all the pills disintegrate totally after 10 mins or so. This is also one of the few multi-vit supplement that contains 400iu of Vit E and 1000mg of vit C in a single convenient dose that is of high anti-oxidant value to active athletes. Q) I am an marathon athletes, if I take lots of green leafy vegetable, will that increase my red blood cells since chlorophyll has the same structure as haemoglobins (red blood cells)? A) Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that our body is able displace the magnesium in dietary chlorophyll with an iron atom successfully. when green vegetables are cooked, the heat damages the structure of the plant cells to allow acid to come into contact with the chlorophyll. This causes hydrogen ions to replace the magnesium atoms in the cholorophyll for the vegetables to lose their bright green coloration. Q) I am going to try to diet with limited solid food? Any advice? A) I would suggest you include some highly nutritious food in your coming diet plan and a good multi vitamin and mineral supplement like Super Vitamin Pak or V/M complete. As for the limited solid food that you will be taking, I will suggest you add some of each of these: citrus fruit, broccoli, lean red meat, 1 table spoon of oil rich in Omega-6 (Sunflower or Soybean Oil), 3-6 capsules of molecularly distilled Omega 3 supplement. Q) What is worse? Trans fat or saturated fat? A) Definitely trans fat for sure! Trans fat have structure that is unnatural and our body has a problem of dealing with them. As for saturated fat, biochemically dietary fatty acids (when fatty acids are still joined to a glycerol, they are collectively known as fat) has to be converted to saturated fatty acids before they can be burned off as energy in our cells. This means the ill- effect of taking saturated fat can at least be balanced off by extra physical activities. Saturated fat is also more stable in frying process as compare to polyunsaturated fat, meaning they generate less free radicals. Certain saturated fat are also found to have a less profound effect on cholesterol level like palm oil. Q) Does MCT (Medium Chain Triglycerides) help to burn body fat? A) Definitely no. That is a very ridiculous claim! |
Above (Product X): Whey not
instanised properly. Float on top
after being added.
instanised properly. Float on top
after being added.
Above (Product X): After stirring
for 30 seconds vigorously in
125mL of room temperature
water. Lots of undissolved
clumps and globs....
for 30 seconds vigorously in
125mL of room temperature
water. Lots of undissolved
clumps and globs....
Compare this with
Below: ISS
Research....
Complete Whey
Below: ISS
Research....
Complete Whey
Above (ISS Research Complete
Whey): After stirring for just 5-10
seconds vigorously in 125mL of
room temperature water. No
clumps, no globs, completely
dissolved! Super smooth! Full
details below.
Whey): After stirring for just 5-10
seconds vigorously in 125mL of
room temperature water. No
clumps, no globs, completely
dissolved! Super smooth! Full
details below.
Need HELP?
Shopping Guide
is here!
Gain size?
Gainer Matrix +
Creatine Power +
Super Vitamin Pak +
Max DHA
Muscle Definition?
Micellar Matrix +
Lean Green +
Super Vitamin Pak +
Max DHA
Increase Stamina?
Lean Green +
Super Vitamin Pak +
Complete Whey +
EPA-DHA Balance
Shopping Guide
is here!
Gain size?
Gainer Matrix +
Creatine Power +
Super Vitamin Pak +
Max DHA
Muscle Definition?
Micellar Matrix +
Lean Green +
Super Vitamin Pak +
Max DHA
Increase Stamina?
Lean Green +
Super Vitamin Pak +
Complete Whey +
EPA-DHA Balance
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