Low Carb Theories

mellypeters09

Hello All,

I am terrible at maintaining a diet and usually don't look into anything for it. Generally, I eat fairly okay so I more focus on exercise.

But one of my coworkers was discussing with me the theory of not eating carbs in the morning because you are "fasting" which is causing your body to use your fat for energy. If you eat carbs, then your body will start using the carbs for energy and will no longer burn fat because carbs are easier. So I have been attempting to eat only eggs (hard boiled) for breakfast and it seems to be going well...but I don't know how well this is long term.

Anybody have any thoughts or comments?

yesimpson

Lost 30lbs and kept it off for 6 years by eating carby breakfasts - cereal, porridge, toast etc.

Assuming you don't have a medical condition of some kind I can't see how when you eat a particular type of food can make a difference. You will lose weight (and therefore body fat) if you eat less calories overall than the amount your body needs to maintain its current weight.

Josh_lol

Carbs or no carbs, if your body is using more energy that you're eating in total (ie in a deficit), your body will use fat stores to fuel itself. Your body will resort to using some of your lean mass as well as you lose more weight. This is why people encourage weight lifting and eating a decent amount of protein to maintain as much of your lean muscle mass as possible while losing fat.

But if you enjoy carbs, you won't lose any more weight from not eating them in a morning.

McCloud33

The main reason that ppl lose more weight on a low carb diet is water retention. For every gram of carb you eat, your body holds onto ~4 grams of water. I do a lower carb diet when trying to cut weight more because I focus on protein and I just feel fuller on a higher fat/protein diet.

Yi5hedr3

Your friend is 100% correct. Eggs and/or BulletProof Coffee are grate choices!

muscleandbeard

Rather than avoiding carbs altogether, try avoiding sugar and processed carbs.

SingingSingleTracker

mellypeters09 wrote: »

Hello All,

I am terrible at maintaining a diet and usually don't look into anything for it. Generally, I eat fairly okay so I more focus on exercise.

But one of my coworkers was discussing with me the theory of not eating carbs in the morning because you are "fasting" which is causing your body to use your fat for energy. If you eat carbs, then your body will start using the carbs for energy and will no longer burn fat because carbs are easier. So I have been attempting to eat only eggs (hard boiled) for breakfast and it seems to be going well...but I don't know how well this is long term.

Anybody have any thoughts or comments?

No matter what the "diet" or "fad" - they all boil down to eating fewer calories than your body burns to lose weight. Low carb can work if you eat fewer calories than you burn in the CICO equation, but it's much easier to simply log what you eat in a very true and honest manner, and make sure it is less than your body needs to fuel itself per day to lose weight. If you don't do that, you'll simply hop from diet to diet, fad to fad and continue to call yourself a person who is "terrible at maintaining a diet".

It's simply math which we all learned in grade school.

AngryGangrel

In the end, all carbs get broken down into sugar. It just happens a lot faster with, say, jellybeans, than it does for complex, fiber-dense carb like whole grain toast with some peanut butter. The latter breaks down into sugar a little slower, has more nutritional bang for the calorie buck, and fills you up better. But your body does not say, "Oh, these calories are coming from an egg, I'd better pull some energy from stored fat instead," nor does it say "Here come some carb calories. Better put those in storage." Calories are calories, whether they come from bacon or pancakes.

There are legitimate reasons for some people to portion or limit their carbs very carefully--diabetes being an obvious example. Different people react differently to a sugar dump, but that's an insulin issue, not a fat-burning one. If someone wants to lose fat, they just need to limit calories.

So what's the best diet? The one you can live with for the rest of your life.

lemurcat12

mellypeters09 wrote: »

Anybody have any thoughts or comments?

It will make no difference. You are always using a mix of carbs and fat, and whether you end up adding to or deducting from your fat stores over the course of a day or week depends on calorie deficit. You aren't changing the overall amount you are taking in or the overall amount your body needs to run on.

I eat a low-ish carb breakfast currently, more often than not (personal preference), and in the past have eaten a much higher carb breakfast. There was no difference in my apparent maintenance calories or ease of losing based on either.