Your muscles are constantly breaking down energy, especially after high intensive training like
lifting weights and spinning! Cycling, Zumba and Aerobics, equally deplete you of energy, especially if you enroll with a good trainer.
Intense fatigue will occur immediately after the workout, your body is recovering from the force you exerted.
The body will metabolize the carbohydrates, and present it in the form of glucose and fats in your body. Extra glucose is deposited into the skeletal muscles as glycogen.
The glycogen in your skeletal muscles is very important. It is stored and readily accessible energy that kicks into action when your muscles are in dire need of energy. You have glucose in the blood that converts into energy, but after you run out of it after excess energy. That’s why people feel faint and dizzy after running.
After a long run, when you’re feeling fatigued, and your head literally hurts from the hunger, it’s glucose that’s depleted in your blood cells, and so the glycogen kicks in to provide extra energy.
When the glycogen in your body is completely depleted, it triggers the conversion of fat deposits into energy. This is why people who wish to lose weight will increase their physical work-outs and reduce their food intake because the body uses the fat deposits for energy, which in turn makes the person lose weight.
You’ll notice that when your body is tired from a workout, and you have a meal, or even eat a handful of dried dates, or some yams, or jackfruit (all very high in energy and complex carbohydrates), you’ll actually feel your energy levels shot back up! Its the glucose being replenished in the cells, and glycogen in the skeletal muscle or liver.
Carbs provide Energy
Like we said, carbohydrates provide energy and fats stores energy, every other process is done by the proteins. Proteins form the main parts of the muscles and connective tissues; they make up our enzymes and ion channels and pumps.
Everything that we eat from plants, meat, dairy products was once alive, remember that. Every single cell of these foods contains proteins, so as long as we continue to eat whole foods we will be recharging our protein supplies. Train yourself to cook and eat whole foods, it’s actually cheaper for us Africans. People in Europe and the Americas spend so much money to get fresh whole foods, we are lucky to have them so accessible and close to us!
All of the proteins are made up of 20 amino acids, and the differences between the thousands of unique proteins are in the sequences of the amino acids. DNA is a special molecule that knows which amino acid to put together in a particular order to make a certain protein. For instance, when you consume a beef stew, the protein action in the meat gets catabolized into amino acids, which combines with all the amino acids from the other proteins in the body like collagen, elastin, myosin etc, which are reassembled through anabolic reactions.
