Do carbs make you fat?

Carbs are magically delicious

It depends on your metabolism, there is no hard and fast rule.

Over the last 60 years there has been an increased consumption of carbohydrates and a corresponding increase in metabolic syndrome problems (obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke). There has also been an increase in consumption of processed foods which are also high in carbohydrates.

If you want to dig into the science on this stuff read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. It documents the science and history behind a bunch of the issues around macro nutrients and health. It is highly researched, and it is NOT a diet book, just a book on the history of nutrition and key health issues.

In terms of which "carbs" you eat it is largely irrelevant, all carbohydrates eaten in quantity cause insulin spikes. In some cases fruit (oranges for example) will cause you as hard an insulin spike as coke. Any time you get your blood sugar above a certain threshold you risk serious health complications (like comas) so your body uses insulin as an emergency valve to keep you alive. Insulin pushes all the nutrients out of your blood into fat, so eating carbs and insulin spiking causes you to gain and retain weight. Insulin also plays hob with your entire biochemistry because it is a biological panic hormone, and drowns out dozens of other hormones. Glycemic Index is a good basic indicator of how hard your insulin will spike eating a food.

Now the relative part is that some people can eat more carbohydrates without severe long or short term problems, it is entirely dependant on your metabolic reactions to carbohydrates. Some people will have insulin spiking at 20 grams of carbs a day, others can eat 300+ grams a day.

Anecdotally obesity has been treated with low carbohydrate diets very successfully, with no long term health issues. I for one eat low carb and sometimes ketogenic, I rarely go above 75g of carbohydrates a day, and try to keep it below 50g. I have been low carb for 3 years now, and my blood work is very good, so this works for me. What works for someone else will be different entirely, and you have to figure that out on your own.

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This!

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Nope.

Curious why you so no....this is exactly what my doctor and I have been discussing in regards to my insulin resistance and elevated A1C. Different people do respond to carbs differently.

To make long story short, let's assume everything said until the part where an insulin spike flushes all the macros out of your bloodstream and puts them into fat storages is true, since I don't know the specifics of that and the important part comes afterwards anyway.
That doesn't make your body stop needing energy to work. Since there's no nutrients in your blood anymore your body has to get them from somewhere else. Like the newly made fat storages from before.
The energy is needed, no way around it. If the energy is already in your blood or has to be taken from your stores, no (significant) difference.

Well. It only took 3 pages for this thread to become a full blown insulin resistance thread. Not surprised it did, am surprised it took so long.