Eating too many carbs?

No sugar, no white/ refined carbs, limit highly processed wheat flour products like commercial breakfast cereal and many breads,

MYTH

Best tell that to all the authors of published research papers and textbooks I read for my last degree then. And all the dieticians and other medical professionals that agree highly processed carbs and sugars have deleterious health effects.

Dose and context should always be considered before making blanket statements. Recommending the complete elimination of sugar or refined carbs can be a recipe for disaster in terms of dietary adherence.

Additionally, have you seen any research suggesting that in the presence of a nutrient rich diet, the inclusion of white bread is detrimental? Consider dose and context here. How much white bread is "bad"?

In a hypocaloric diet that consists of "mostly" nutrient dense and whole foods, I have yet to see anything suggesting that a moderate amount of processed food is harmful in any way.

Agreed, except for the last part. High GI carbs are great for post-workout insulin spike and faster recovery.

Can you tell me what you mean by this?

Spiking insulin will rapidly replenish muscle glycogen. Whether or not you need to do this would depend on muscle glycogen status (are you depleted to begin with?) and whether or not you are performing another glycogen depleting event within the next day (applicable for endurance athletes in some conditions, irrelevant for most of the population).

No sugar, no white/ refined carbs, limit highly processed wheat flour products like commercial breakfast cereal and many breads,

MYTH

Best tell that to all the authors of published research papers and textbooks I read for my last degree then. And all the dieticians and other medical professionals that agree highly processed carbs and sugars have deleterious health effects.

Would you care to share those papers that state that processed carbs are deleterious to health, regardless of context, dosage, and the rest of the diet? I'm very interested in seeing those, especially in a textbook, as I have never read a single paper that has made such a generic, blanket statement like that. I've also never talked to a registered dietician that has held that point of view either. Processed carbs for someone with a metabolic syndrome that doesn't eat enough protein, sure, but someone who is healthy and eats a wide variety of foods, including some processes carbs? Hogwash. Please, prove me wrong, because I honestly think you are making your entire post up.

Everyone is different. If I ate the level of carbs you ate, I would be hungry all the time. Personally for me, I do best with Carbs / Protein / Fat at 15% / 25% / 60% for losing weight. For maintaining my weight, I do best with at these levels: 20% / 25% / 55%.

Not much of a variation, but I get my carbs from vegetables first, then nuts and seeds and lastly fruit. I no longer eat any legumes or grains.

Your intake of fat is 60% ?

[Spiking insulin will rapidly replenish muscle glycogen. Whether or not you need to do this would depend on muscle glycogen status (are you depleted to begin with?) and whether or not you are performing another glycogen depleting event within the next day (applicable for endurance athletes in some conditions, irrelevant for most of the population).

Thank you.

How would I know what my muscle glycogen status is?

Keep in mind that everyone processes carbs differently. Some people are negatively sensitive to grain carbs. Then there's the whole "wheat belly" topic. Listen to your body and figure out the combination that works best for YOU.

Sun 12/16/12 08:48 AMQUOTE:

Everyone is different. If I ate the level of carbs you ate, I would be hungry all the time. Personally for me, I do best with Carbs / Protein / Fat at 15% / 25% / 60% for losing weight. For maintaining my weight, I do best with at these levels: 20% / 25% / 55%.

Not much of a variation, but I get my carbs from vegetables first, then nuts and seeds and lastly fruit. I no longer eat any legumes or grains.



Your intake of fat is 60% ?

Probably a ketogenic diet.

Would you care to share those papers that state that processed carbs are deleterious to health, regardless of context, dosage, and the rest of the diet? I'm very interested in seeing those, especially in a textbook, as I have never read a single paper that has made such a generic, blanket statement like that. I've also never talked to a registered dietician that has held that point of view either. Processed carbs for someone with a metabolic syndrome that doesn't eat enough protein, sure, but someone who is healthy and eats a wide variety of foods, including some processes carbs? Hogwash. Please, prove me wrong, because I honestly think you are making your entire post up.

Below you will find several peer-reviewed research studies published in reputable scientific journals. No soccer mom blog references here. I have focused on articles that highlight the positives of a low-carbohydrate diet rather than the negatives of eating carbohydrates. My reasoning for that is as follows:

What I will point out, that many people in this thread seem to be overlooking, is that individual body chemistry varies greatly person-to-person.

I personally have done both low-fat (and therefore low calorie due to fat restriction), and low-carbohydrate (as not-calorie-counting, and low-calorie) and can say with 100% confidence that my body reacts favorably to a lower-carbohydrate diet. I have several older family members that are obese and have Type-2 diabetes, and thus genetically I am likely to be predisposed to that kind of metabolic difficulty.

Likewise, I feel like very super-skinny person who eats a boatload of crap (of which we can all agree is crap- fast food, cake, soda, etc.) and stays skinny automatically assumes that anyone fatter than them must also be eating worse than them, and trust me that is not the case! I am here to lose weight, but frankly my non-dieting diet was really not that terrible. Soda? Less than once a month. Dessert? Only on a birthday or holiday. 3 meals a day including packing a nutritious lunch for work. Yet the pounds keep coming on. I am learning that my body just does not react well to carbohydrates, and I will likely need to restrict them my entire life in order to maintain a healthy weight and blood chemistry.

I have a bachelors degree in biochemistry and a doctorate in microbiology, and from both those educational paths I have learned a lot about how different diets work (biochemistry), how individual body chemistries vary person-to-person (biochemistry), and most interestingly, how an individuals microbiota (the microorganisms that live within your gut) greatly influence your metabolism, likely based on how they help/hurt when you are digesting food and obtaining nutrients from that food.

Here are some studies on low-carbohydrate diets and their affects on blood chemistry and weight loss:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716748/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15051841

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18377783


Here are some studies on human microbiota and weightloss:

http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/pdf/10.2217/fmb.11.142

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19615307

[Spiking insulin will rapidly replenish muscle glycogen. Whether or not you need to do this would depend on muscle glycogen status (are you depleted to begin with?) and whether or not you are performing another glycogen depleting event within the next day (applicable for endurance athletes in some conditions, irrelevant for most of the population).

Thank you.

How would I know what my muscle glycogen status is?

If your dieting, you're never going to have a full tank of glycogen, not even close, ever. And for glycogen to be full, a boat load of carbs are needed. The first course of action for that insulin spike is to supply ATP for immediate energy and all cellular function, the left over glucose is then sent to our muscles.

Would you care to share those papers that state that processed carbs are deleterious to health, regardless of context, dosage, and the rest of the diet? I'm very interested in seeing those, especially in a textbook, as I have never read a single paper that has made such a generic, blanket statement like that. I've also never talked to a registered dietician that has held that point of view either. Processed carbs for someone with a metabolic syndrome that doesn't eat enough protein, sure, but someone who is healthy and eats a wide variety of foods, including some processes carbs? Hogwash. Please, prove me wrong, because I honestly think you are making your entire post up.

Below you will find several peer-reviewed research studies published in reputable scientific journals. No soccer mom blog references here. I have focused on articles that highlight the positives of a low-carbohydrate diet rather than the negatives of eating carbohydrates. My reasoning for that is as follows:

What I will point out, that many people in this thread seem to be overlooking, is that individual body chemistry varies greatly person-to-person.

I personally have done both low-fat (and therefore low calorie due to fat restriction), and low-carbohydrate (as not-calorie-counting, and low-calorie) and can say with 100% confidence that my body reacts favorably to a lower-carbohydrate diet. I have several older family members that are obese and have Type-2 diabetes, and thus genetically I am likely to be predisposed to that kind of metabolic difficulty.

Likewise, I feel like very super-skinny person who eats a boatload of crap (of which we can all agree is crap- fast food, cake, soda, etc.) and stays skinny automatically assumes that anyone fatter than them must also be eating worse than them, and trust me that is not the case! I am here to lose weight, but frankly my non-dieting diet was really not that terrible. Soda? Less than once a month. Dessert? Only on a birthday or holiday. 3 meals a day including packing a nutritious lunch for work. Yet the pounds keep coming on. I am learning that my body just does not react well to carbohydrates, and I will likely need to restrict them my entire life in order to maintain a healthy weight and blood chemistry.

I have a bachelors degree in biochemistry and a doctorate in microbiology, and from both those educational paths I have learned a lot about how different diets work (biochemistry), how individual body chemistries vary person-to-person (biochemistry), and most interestingly, how an individuals microbiota (the microorganisms that live within your gut) greatly influence your metabolism, likely based on how they help/hurt when you are digesting food and obtaining nutrients from that food.

Here are some studies on low-carbohydrate diets and their affects on blood chemistry and weight loss:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2716748/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15051841

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18377783


Here are some studies on human microbiota and weightloss:

http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/pdf/10.2217/fmb.11.142

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19615307

Interesting studies, but questionable. For one thing, the only real conclusions they drew were that ketogenic diets are good for people with insulin resistance and diabetes. That's pretty common knowledge. The first study I don't particularly like much, as it never mentions calories, or even the amount of fat used in the diet, only the ratio of saturated fat to unsaturated fat. Then they also gave the subjects a micronutrient capsule that contained wheat germ oil and lecithin, both cholesterol improvement supplements. That alone makes the improvement in cholesterol numbers suspect, as how can you attribute it to a ketogenic diet alone, when they were specifically given supplements designed to improve their cholesterol? There's no control group to compare it to. The second study's abstract even showed that a low fat diet was better at improving cholesterol than a low carb diet, and in that study, the low carb diet did better at improving symptoms of insulin resistance (again, not something that's in question.)

I got a sense of confirmation bias from those studies, that they got the results they wanted, rather than the results that were there. The second study also failed to hold protein constant, as the low carb diet consumed higher amounts of protein. Again, is it the lower carb, or the higher protein that led to the results?

Like I said, the studies are interesting, but have way too many holes in them to call them at all conclusive.

Er, somehow I double-posted, but it won't let me erase so..

:-) Have a nice day everyone.

Just be sure you are choosing healthy, whole carbs that have a gentle effect on the blood sugar levels and are reasonably nutritious. No sugar, no white/ refined carbs, limit highly processed wheat flour products like commercial breakfast cereal and many breads, eat more low sugar fruits, non starchy vegetables, beans and lentils.

Agreed, except for the last part. High GI carbs are great for post-workout insulin spike and faster recovery.

That doesn't really matter unless you're in intensive sports.

what do you categorise as intensive sports?

Just be sure you are choosing healthy, whole carbs that have a gentle effect on the blood sugar levels and are reasonably nutritious. No sugar, no white/ refined carbs, limit highly processed wheat flour products like commercial breakfast cereal and many breads, eat more low sugar fruits, non starchy vegetables, beans and lentils.

Agreed, except for the last part. High GI carbs are great for post-workout insulin spike and faster recovery.

That doesn't really matter unless you're in intensive sports.

what do you categorise as intensive sports?

Marathon racing, exercising at high intensity multiple times a day, things of that sort.

Marathon running I agree, carb loading and back loading is beneficial. I'm not a marathon runner im not too schooled in such sports. I am a bodybuilder, hypertrophy training 6 times a week, going into my forth year training, from experience, anyone who resistence trains even as low as 3 times a week will reap the benefits of the insulin spike from High Glycemic Index carbs for post work-out recovery in conjunction with faster muscle protein synthesis.

Never had a problem eating carbs, mine are set to 45%, but then I bike ride a lot, over hilly terrain and that seems to keep my weight in check. I have never been overweight, even when I used to eat more carbs, including more refined types, so I am presuming my body has no issue dealing with carbs. My father did, however, have type 2 diabetes for some years, reversed by diet, but he was also overweight. I do less well on higher protein than on higher carbs, oddly. I felt drained and not so able to keep up my exercise when I was consuming 130g + of protein everday and less carbs. As for fat, I couldn't even contemplate having anything near 65% of fat in my diet, I think that anything taken to an extreme level, will prove unhealthy in the long run, whether that be sooner or later.