Why are people scared of carbs?

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  • littlekitty3
    littlekitty3 Posts: 265 Member
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    Low carb = fad diet. Just eat whole foods filled with vitamins and minerals and you'll be ok.
    Also carbs = diabetes....eh....I beg to differ. I know two people who've gotten diabetes after doing low carb. The one managed to reverse it with a "high carb" diet while the other one still is following low carb and suffering.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    Same reason people were scared of fat for 30 years.
    Is the answer Dr. Oz?
    No, her name was different than that....
  • jonnythan
    jonnythan Posts: 10,161 Member
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    People are scared of carbs because somewhere along the line, they heard about the deleterious effects of eating refined carbohydrates. Many have confused eating an isolated macro-nutrient with eating whole food that contains the vilified macro-nutrient.

    Oh is that what it is? They just confused the fake evil for the real evil. lols.
  • tycho_mx
    tycho_mx Posts: 426 Member
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    Simple carbs are bad, complex carbs are good. Some people don't understand the difference and cut them all out.

    Nah. Everything in its time and place.

    Simple carbs will save your life if you are a hypoglycaemic diabetic. And they are the best calorie/volume fuel for athletes. Which is why elite runners, cyclists, triathletes, etc. use gels, sports drinks, etc. If you tried to eat the same amount of calories for a 5 hour ride in beans you'd be doubled up with stomach cramps on the side of the road. (I had a hard 80 km race today. 2300 calories. I only ate about 700 + 1,000 cal. breakfast. I didn't make the final selection 2 hours in - needed to eat more but the pace was to hard for me).

    If you're not working out, you're probably better off consuming complex carbs. But I assure you, putting 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in your tea is not going to turn you into a blob.
  • ottermotorcycle
    ottermotorcycle Posts: 654 Member
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    Personally, I think people are afraid of how amazing carbs are. They're afraid they will eat too many if they have any at all.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    In
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  • janelann222
    janelann222 Posts: 13
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    I agree with you that everything has its time or place. I love sweets but I have to limit them. I also love fruit, that has to be limited to. Yes carb loading is good/used before a competition for an elite athlete and of course putting a small amount of sugar will not hurt anyone. The problem is most americans are not elite athletes, and many don't get a fraction of the activity yet eat more calories or carbs per day than one. All the processed food shoved into our faces are terrible nutritionally speaking. When you constantly eat like that it can cause a multitude of problems, obesity only one of them. I know it's hard, I too struggle with fighting the foods we are faced with daily. For most people, they should be cutting a significant portion of these foods out of their life for weight, skin, health, everything. It is a fact that eating to many carbs makes it harder to burn fat. No one should ever be on a no carb diet, but adding more protein and decreasing carb intake can go a long way.
  • Quarkles
    Quarkles Posts: 69 Member
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    In
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    Oh man, this is just like when people ask if rice and potatoes have gluten in them. They don't even know what foods they're trying to be scared of.
  • TwoBrokeLowCarbersNeta
    TwoBrokeLowCarbersNeta Posts: 5 Member
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    I have personally dropped 160 pounds on a low carb diet.

    A low carb diet helps with a heap of issues people might have. However, in order to do a low carb diet right, you need to be 100% clean foods. This means not to eat processed junk and this is a rule for every way of eating, if you want it to work and regain your health.

    From the top of my head, these are my benefits :

    Stable blood sugar doesn't cause sudden exhaustions,
    You're able to get out of bed without hitting the snooze button 10 times
    You know when you're hungry and when you're "tempted"
    It's easy to maintain
    It's easy on your wallet
    It's easy on your bowels
    You're using fat for energy which has 9 calories/gram which is more than double the carb energy content which is 4 calories/gram. You have more energy.


    I'm satisfied with my food. I do not get tempted, i do not drool over junk food. After a while junk food loses its glamour and even though it might smell good, well.. so does my cat's food but i'm not tempted to eat my cat's food.

    It's also a very forgiving way of eating. I went high-carb-low-fat-raw-vegan for a while, gained 40 pounds and was told constantly that i had metabolic damage. However, as soon as i returned to low-carb I dropped 20 out of 40 pounds, so i'm guessing my metabolic damage didn't really exist.

    Haven't been keeping my diet to a T however, i'm still dropping weight.
  • AwesomeGuy37
    AwesomeGuy37 Posts: 436 Member
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    I do low(er) carb for controlling my blood sugar, but nothing as extreme as Atkins. I tried Atkins for a while just to see if it lived up to the hype. (and I needed to get my Type 2 under control) I was peeing on the keto-sticks and everything. I just ate way too much to lose anything significant. Don't tell a big guy he can eat all he wants, because he will. I did drop 5 lbs. my first week after eating 2 all you can eat buffets of sausage, steak and other meats the same week. That was just the glycogen release, water weight, I dropped.
  • Dragonwolf
    Dragonwolf Posts: 5,600 Member
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    While lots of people say calories in = calories out - that is true for a robot.
    But I have not met many robotic people.
    Two other confounding factors are appetite; and your brain (very complex).
    Higher protein suppresses appetite. So science shows in studies that if one group eats a high carb meal, and another eats a protein / fat meal (same calories); at the next meal the people who have eaten the carb will eat more food. (Hence the reason that a lower carb meal will make it easier to "diet".
    A second reason is that we also like to "feel good". The endocrinology system responds to sugar / fat (eg. chocolate) and makes us feel good. So if you are feeling a bit down, a snack of a short length carb (such as sugar) picks us up (not a hunger / appetite response). Works in the same area of the brain - the hypothalamus.

    Thirdly, we have to eat protein - there are some essential amino acids we need. We have to eat fat. There are fats we cannot synthesis. But there is no "carb" we actually need. Yes - there are some vitamins in complex carbs such as green leafy vegetables, but these are not carbs - they just happen to be there, and you can get them elsewhere.

    Back to the start. Calories are calories, but that ignores we are people with very complex physical, mental and social interactions.

    This is the best answer in this thread.

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