No one eats carbs alone

lemurcat12

Saying eating lots of white flour and sugar (not sure why the color of the sugar matters) often on its own, makes me feel not so great or experience crashes after eating is a vastly different thing from claiming that "eating carbs" does. I'm not saying this is true for anyone in this discussion -- again, if people enjoy low carb eating, go for it! -- but I see very often on MFP people going from extremely poor and just not very sensible diets, filled with lots of sugary snacks, low protein, highly processed, fiberless carb heavy foods and not much else other than maybe some fatty fast food stuff, to low carb or the like and then claiming that it was "carbs" that made them feel bad or caused their weight gain or poor results on medical tests.

I suspect if they'd been eating better fats, a proper amount of protein, and--especially--balanced meals with carbs like vegetables, legumes, whole grains or other sources with more fiber, and fruit that they would not have experienced the prior problems. Similarly, traditional diets don't seem to be less healthy if they are higher carb, and some are able to perform really well on even high carb diets like 80-10-10. It's the misattribution of the health issues to "carbs" that I find needs rebutting. Doesn't seem like it's often truly tried to eat well with carbs.

Not saying anyone should if they find a diet low in carbs more appealing to them, etc. But when making general claims I do think you should expect push-back.

umayster

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Saying eating lots of white flour and sugar (not sure why the color of the sugar matters) often on its own, makes me feel not so great or experience crashes after eating is a vastly different thing from claiming that "eating carbs" does. I'm not saying this is true for anyone in this discussion -- again, if people enjoy low carb eating, go for it! -- but I see very often on MFP people going from extremely poor and just not very sensible diets, filled with lots of sugary snacks, low protein, highly processed, fiberless carb heavy foods and not much else other than maybe some fatty fast food stuff, to low carb or the like and then claiming that it was "carbs" that made them feel bad or caused their weight gain or poor results on medical tests.

I suspect if they'd been eating better fats, a proper amount of protein, and--especially--balanced meals with carbs like vegetables, legumes, whole grains or other sources with more fiber, and fruit that they would not have experienced the prior problems. Similarly, traditional diets don't seem to be less healthy if they are higher carb, and some are able to perform really well on even high carb diets like 80-10-10. It's the misattribution of the health issues to "carbs" that I find needs rebutting. Doesn't seem like it's often truly tried to eat well with carbs.

Not saying anyone should if they find a diet low in carbs more appealing to them, etc. But when making general claims I do think you should expect push-back.

I understood what 'limit white flour & white sugar' meant and it was easy to implement.

It's difficult to go low carb successfully! Mostly those who do seem to have a pretty good grounding on nutritional understanding and are not going straight from extreme crap to extreme low carb diet.

lemurcat12

umayster wrote: »

It's difficult to go low carb successfully! Mostly those who do seem to have a pretty good grounding on nutritional understanding and are not going straight from extreme crap to extreme low carb diet.

You are probably right with those who do it successfully. There are tons of posts about people doing it who don't seem to even know what carbs are, though, but have just heard it's a magical (or necessary) way to lose weight. These are the people I think need to be told that you don't need to cut carbs, there's nothing wrong with carbs, although I also send them to the low carb thread to learn to do it right from those who have been doing it for a long time.

Many people also seem to want to do low fat AND low carb (I mean in a real sense, not just vs. the SAD), and that shows a misunderstanding. I try to address that too, and again send them to learn from successful low carbers (by which I mean someone who has been doing it for some time).

I do know in person people who lost weight doing low carb and later gained it back (yeah, that's not unique to low carb and not claiming it is). They were able to implement Atkins or the like without knowing much about nutrition. (It is true they did not go from "extreme crap" to Atkins induction, although they did go from pretty standard diets.)

I'll note that I don't think I know ANYONE in real life who eats like I caricatured above, but that seems the way that many here assume those of us who got fat ate, and is a way of eating that I've seen on MFP from time to time and which other MFP users sometimes say is similar to how they used to eat (mostly those who have made extreme changes, in fact).