Dear Mark: Seed Oils in Canned Mussels, IF and Muscle Gain, and Menopause Weight gain

It’s time for another round of answering your Q&As. Read on for the answers.

First off, Joel, confirm that the sunflower oil is high PUFA. Give a call or drop an email to the company’s customer service line and determine whether it’s high PUFA sunflower oil or high MUFA sunflower oil. The high MUFA (monounsaturated fat) sunflower oils are pretty benign as oils go and are much closer to olive oil or avocado oil than other seed oils rich in linoleic acid. More and more companies are using the high MUFA stuff, so confirm before you worry.

Another thing you can do is not worry about it. Drain the oil, shaking off what you can, and rest assured that the omega-3s in mussels (and other shellfish) are especially potent, as they are bound to phospholipids which provide far more “bang for the buck” than omega-3s from fatty fish. You may well be coming out ahead on net by eating the mussels even if a little linoleic acid comes along for the ride. It reminds me of how eating farmed salmon has a powerful effect on red blood cell omega-3/omega-6 balance, despite farmed salmon being much higher in linoleic acid than wild. The big dose of omega-3s matters most.

But if you really want to limit the sunflower oil without ruining the flavor, you can roll them around in a paper towel to blot most of the oil. This is a little extreme and probably unnecessary, and I wouldn’t do it myself, but it will work.

You gotta be honest with yourself. Have you been gaining muscle doing IF, or haven’t you?

IF certainly isn’t “optimal” for gaining muscle, if that’s your primary goal. The older you are, the more frequent your protein feeding should be. Our ability to utilize protein declines as we age, and we need “more” for the same “effect.” The dose of protein that maximized muscle protein synthesis at age 30 might need to be doubled at age 77 to get the same effect. Eating once or twice a day makes getting enough protein very difficult, especially if your appetite isn’t what it once was.

I gained most of my muscle not doing IF. I wasn’t eating six small meals a day or anything extreme like that, but I was eating at least 3 meals a day. I was also younger, so my ability to utilize protein was still high. But then I was able to transition to shorter eating windows and had no trouble maintaining the muscle.

Fasting can work for maintaining muscle. It’s not great for gaining, unless you are meticulous in your calorie intake and food timing. You have to eat big on workout days. You have to be able to consume a ton of calories. It can become very clinical and regimented. I’ve seen it work in younger people, especially those taking anabolic steroids. It gets really hard the older you are.

My advice? Eat normally on workout days. Don’t fast on training days. Eat breakfast, eat lunch, have pre and post-workout snacks and meals. That’s when your food requirements are highest, that’s when your body and muscles are crying out for nourishment; take advantage of them. Eat, and eat big. Use IF on rest days when absolute fuel requirements aren’t so high.

If you really want to maintain your fasting regimen, here’s what I’d do:

Instead of going totally fasted into workouts, take 30 grams of whey isolate pre workout. This “breaks” the fast, but it’s not overwhelming. You’ll still get most of the same benefits for metabolism and gut health while allowing a bit of muscle protein synthesis. You can also take 12 grams of branch chain amino acids. I consider these mostly interchangeable. The point is that training increases amino acid utilization, so you might as well provide exogenous amino acids rather than endogenous ones.

After menopause, everything gets a little harder. Things that worked before might not work as well, and getting even stricter with what worked might actually work against you. Here’s what I’d recommend.

You’re an active woman, so you can tolerate more carbohydrates. Every time you work out hard or have an active day, you are earning carbs. I always say that you should eat the carbs you earn. If you’re depleting glycogen (glucose stored in muscle tissue), you should replenish it. There’s no harm in doing so. Either you’ll replenish it through conversion of protein into glucose (gluconeogenesis) or you can replenish it by eating carbs directly. I see no reason not to eat them directly. Cut out the middle man.

On days you don’t train, continue eating low carb Primal or keto. On days you do train, reduce the fat and eat more carbs. Eat high protein on all days. This is sometimes called cyclical ketogenic dieting, where you cycle in carbs (and drop fats) on workout days. It’s often more sustainable, especially after menopause and especially when you’re stalled. The extra bolus of carbs on training days will help boost leptin levels, which increases energy expenditure and kickstarts metabolism and fat loss.

If you want to put this into actionable numbers:

On training days: 150-200 grams carbs (from things like fruit, potatoes, rice, oats, squash), 120-150 grams protein, 30-50 grams fat

On rest days: 20-100 grams carbs, 120-150 grams protein, 50-70 grams fat

These aren’t hard and fast numbers to follow. They’re back of the napkin figures. Another way to think about it is to prioritize protein on all days, get “extra” carbs on workout days. Fat comes along for the ride in meat, eggs, fish, etc, but don’t go crazy with added fat.

I’d also consider hormone replacement therapy. If you do it right, taking the right amounts of bioidentical estrogen, progesterone, and even a little bit of testosterone can improve quality of life and help you reduce stress and get better sleep by reducing the symptoms of menopause. This is often enough to help you get a handle on weight gain simply because you’re sleeping better and aren’t bathing in so much cortisol.