Today we’re going to go over the importance of the amino acid, glycine. Though it’s not an essential amino acid, it’s absolutely critical for fat loss.

This is particularly important because most people are not getting enough glycine in their diets. Not even close.

The problem is that people are eating too much muscle meat. When doing this, there will be an unbalanced amino acid profile in their diet. This is actually a huge problem.

An Unbalanced Amino Acid Profile Won’t Just Impair Fat Loss, It’ll Destroy Your Life

Today you’re going to learn:

• Why Aminos Should be Balanced
• The Benefits of Eating Connective Tissue
• The Easiest Way to Get Glycine

Why Amino Acids Should be Balanced

When humans used to hunt for their food, every part of the animal was consumed - meat, connective tissue, organs. Everything.

Today, most people living in a modern society are only consuming muscle meat. Here’s why this is a problem.

Connective tissue and collagen make up a significant portion of an animal's body, ranging from 25% to 35% of the total body protein content.

Here is a breakdown of the percentage of connective tissue and collagen in different types of animal tissues:

• Skin: 70-80%
• Tendons: 90-95%
• Ligaments: 80-90%
• Muscle: 1-2%
• Bone: 30-40%

It appears that if we’re only consuming muscle meats (which we generally are), we’re not consuming enough connective tissue and collagen. By default, we won't be getting enough glycine.

The Benefits of Eating Connective Tissue

Muscle meat primarily provides a significant amount of specific amino acids, such as methionine, tryptophan, and cysteine, while providing inadequate amounts of glycine and proline. This imbalance in amino acids can have negative health consequences, potentially leading to issues like inflammation, poor collagen synthesis, and disrupted metabolic processes, which are all related to weight gain.

Let’s go over some of the benefits of glycine (increasing connective tissue consumption):

• Glycine helps to improve mitochondrial function. Glycine helps increase ATP production, reduce and oxidative stress.
• Glycine helps regulate blood sugar levels. Elevated levels of blood sugar are an indicator of impaired glucose metabolism. Since glycine helps improve mitochondrial function, this will help improve glucose metabolism.
• Glycine helps to reduce inflammation. It has anti-inflammatory properties, which can help to reduce fat accumulation. It specifically combats methionine, cysteine, and tryptophan which can be considered pro-inflammatory amino acids.
• Glycine helps to improve sleep quality. Sleep is critical for fat loss. When you don't get enough sleep, your body produces more of the stress hormone cortisol, which can lead to fat accumulation. Therefore, it has a cortisol lowering effect.
• Glycine helps to support muscle growth. Muscle is metabolically active, meaning that it can help increase your metabolic rate.
• Glycine can mimic methionine restriction. Research has actually shown that methionine restriction can actually improve longevity. Increasing glycine can mimic this effect without restricting methionine
• Glycine can help reduce endotoxin. Reducing endotoxin helps improve leaky gut. Research has shown that lowering endotoxin levels helps with fat loss.
• Glycine helps make glutathione which is one of our bodies most powerful antioxidants.

The Easiest Way to Get Glycine

So we’ve established that glycine is pretty important, but how much should we get? This is the easiest way to figure it out without thinking about it too much is that 20-30% of your protein should be coming from connective tissue type foods. There are many ways to do this:

• Bone broth - 1 cup = 9-10g of protein
• Grass-fed beef gelatin - 1 T = 7g protein
• Collagen powder - 1T = 6g protein
• Glycine powder - 1 scoop = 3g glycine

Keep this in mind:

Bone Broth > Beef Gelatin > Collagen > Glycine Supplement

Why?

Bone broth includes numerous micronutrients, beef gelatin is heated which increases protein bioavailability, and collagen isn’t heated which reduces protein bioavailability. It's also hard to find a high quality glycine supplement that I trust. 

Making your own bone broth is also preferred, but labor intensive.

I personally mix bone broth and grass-fed beef gelatin and drink it once or twice every day.

If you want to try to increase your glycine/connective tissue consumption here’s the gelatin that I use: https://amzn.to/46IhRBI

Finding a glycine supplement is more challenging. I've never actually taken one. Most of the capsules contain additives/fillers that I don't like. But if you're desperate and want something without additives and is in the L-form (better absorbed) you can try this - https://amzn.to/3SoWJMm. I would personally pick the gelatin 10/10 times though.

I’m also such a huge believer in this that I’m considering making a grass-fed bone broth powder or a grass-fed beef gelatin powder. It’s just so underutilized and wildly helpful. It can really help a lot of people.

Actionable Tip for the Week:

⭐️ Increase the amount of "connective tissue" that you're consuming to maximize glycine uptake ⭐️

⭐️ BONUS - Add your bone broth or bone broth/gelatin combo to one or two of the meals in the 7-day meal plan ⭐️ 

Hope you have a great Saturday! Talk to you next week.

Cheers,

Tim

PS: I take requests and suggestions. Let me know if there's anything you want me to write about or make a video about. Would love to hear from you!