Nutritional Nerd Out

Mechanisms. How stuff actually works. Pick a topic — no need to scroll for days. Compulsory if you are me.

Herein lies a rabbit hole of nutritional and physiologic nerditude. The “why” behind so many things related to our health and how to navigate through it all.

Why won’t I shut up about protein? What do I mean by energy? What actually causes type 2 diabetes, and can I reverse it?

How do we grow muscle? Don’t care about growing muscle? Why you should care about growing muscle. (No, I’m not saying you have to be jacked and tan.) Muscle serves countless beneficial purposes, and we should at least get it some flowers and let it know we care every once in a while.

But seriously, I love this stuff. You don’t have to, but I think you’ll be happy you stuck around by the end of it.

Protein foods becoming amino acids, then muscle fibers.

What’s special about protein

Lifting with muscle fibers under tension — train, then the tissue rebuilds.

How do we grow muscle?

Amino acids falling through an hourglass into muscle fiber — growth takes time.

How fast can you build muscle?

An older hiker with heart, muscle, and bone shown — independence, not just size.

Why should we care about muscle growth?

Protein builds the machine. Carb and fat fill the tanks.

What do we mean by “energy”? Part 1

A mitochondrion burning carbs and fat into ATP.

What do we mean by “energy”? Part 2

Walking on fat, sprinting on glycogen — the fuel mix shifts with the work.

How does my body decide which fuel?

Fat flowing through a limited valve into mitochondria — a speed limit on fat burn.

Your body has a fat-burning speed limit

A carbon atom cycling from air to a plant to food to a breath of CO2.

Everything is carbon. You’re carbon. I’m carbon. It’s all carbon.

A scale: a pile of whole food versus a burger and fries, with the body in the middle.

How much you eat matters more than what you eat

Sweet signal to the brain, almost no fuel — sugar crystals versus a diet drink.

But it's fake! What are nonnutritive sweeteners exactly?

Fat overflowing into the liver and pancreas — the personal fat threshold.

What actually causes type 2 diabetes

A red blood cell opened to show hemoglobin with sugar attached.

What is hemoglobin A1c?

Emptying extra fat so the liver and pancreas can work — type 2 can reverse.

How to reverse type 2 diabetes (for most)

An artery wall with cholesterol particles and plaque building up.

Understanding Cholesterol

A meal becoming molecules, then muscle, fat, and the rest of you.

You are what you eat

A figure made of stars, with Earth and a galaxy behind them.

You are made of stardust

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General education, not a personal treatment plan. If you have a medical condition — kidneys, pregnancy, disordered eating, anything your clinician is already following — talk with them before you overhaul how you eat.