Discussion Board

Here is an email from a workout site that I follow. Once in a while these so called "experts" come up with these new tricks to help lose fat. I'm starting to wonder if these tricks just trick you into thinking you're losing fat when in reality it's more than likely just water weight. I emailed a couple of these "Experts" back and asked them to read a few books, but of course they had scientific answers for me and told me that I was on a one way track to staying fat. Good way to support your clients, I thought! LOL....Anyways enjoy the read and please feel free to leave comments;


Happy Day, Justin --

Did you know that there's really no such thing as "good" carbs or "bad" carbs.
All carbs are inherently "bad" (at least when it comes to body composition).

When it comes to body composition, it's really all about controlling insulin.
As humans we can really only store so many carbs as glyocogen before
they start to spill over into "fat-town". For most, it's about 100 grams of carbs
in our liver, and about 300-400 grams of carbs in our muscles.
Once we have filled up these "carb buckets", then insulin will drive all other
incoming carbs into our fat cells!

Total insulin production and carb consumption is still total insulin production and
carb consumption - no matter where you get your carbs from. So 100 grams of carbs
from oatmeal (which should be avoid since it is a grain) is equally detrimental as 100
grams of carbs from pasta or white bread.

See where I'm going with this?

The key to fat loss is limited carb intake, controlling your insulin levels,
and making sure that you empty our your "carb buckets" (with exercise protocols so that they don't overflow into fat town!

There's no need to complicate it any futher than that!

Avoid grains.

Avoid sugars and processed carbs.

Limit total carb intake to less than 100 grams a day at least,
and consume most of your carbs at night!

And exercise!

Rutty,

This is lo-carb speak of which we are all familiar. I don't see any mention of how fats in the diet hamper the function of insulin, an important consideration.

From Dr. McDougall's interview in the Press-Democrat:

"How does the low-carbohydrate Atkins diet work?
“During extreme carbohydrate deprivation, you go into ketosis (a metabolic state where the body uses up fat for energy) and you get sick, so you lose your appetite."

Your body also releases water that binds to carbohydrate, which show up rapidly on the scale, when you cut the carbs back so drastically.

Here are many more referenced links:

http://www.drmcdougall.com/med_hot_highprotein.html

It seems we will never tire of the quick-fix promise which keeps appearing as lo-carb in one outfit or another. The focus should be on building health, and that is done with a whole-foods, plant-based, low-fat diet. Yes, there seem to be few fitness sources willing to counter this prevailing bad-advice. But we're out there - and here!

Salud,
Lani

Not an expert, but I run into these guys constantly!

500 grams of glycogen is roughly 2000 calories. Which interestingly enough is about the same generally as the amount of calories one burns in a day if not sedentary, not including workouts. If you consumed roughly 2000 calories daily you would basically stay the same weight. Eat less, you lose, eat more you gain. Or you could burn more through workouts and lose weight if you ate the same. Typically you work out, you consume more calories in proportion to what you burn through exercise.

I don't know about you, but eating MWL-style, I find it a challenge to eat enough to account for exercise on top of daily diet because the calorie density of the diet is so low. I have to really chow down.

Most likely they have never even read any of the Ornish or McDougall literature because they and the people that train them assume fat consumption. When you say low fat you probably mean McDougall. When they say low fat, they probably mean 20-30% of calories from fat. These fitness guys, and most other experts making recommendations, build in an assumption that you are eating a more typical diet that has more fat in it. Since these are such high calorie density type foods, when you add them to the diet it now becomes very easy to eat more calories than you burn. The fitness guys solution is to blame carbs. If you read through the McDougall threads, Dr McD likes to say "the fat you eat is the fat you wear" because amongst other reasons, fat and higher calorie density foods are much more directly responsible for overeating than carbs. That is unless you eat loaves of bread, which I find easy to overeat!

Also since they assume you eat fat, they also assume you have the effects of eating fat, such as insulin resistance. All of their arguments build that in and vilify the carbs for insulin spikes not the fat/meat.

You likley won't change any minds, even if you get them to review very low fat diets, like 10% calories from fat - they may move on to the next argument (how do you get your protein?) or agree but tell you no one can eat like that long term! At least they think they can't, they like meat too much. And some of them do get results in terms of weight loss because if you did indeed not eat any carbs, now you can eat a lot of meat and asparagus and not overeat too much. And its enticing to be able to indulge in fatty foods AND lose weight. But frankly no one can eat like that long term. I have seen the biggest meat heads lose it because they missed spaghetti or bread or a baked potato!

Am I missing something or are the low carb guys missing the fact that not only can carbs be stored as fat but they are used as fuel for energy aren't they? And to heat the body? And don't they metabolize into water and CO2 or what? If your carbs are all stored as fat then how does the brain get its fuel which I understand is glucose.

Didi

Didi,

I've heard lo-carbers explain brain energy on lo-carb to be provided by ketosis, which is actually a state of emergency in the body, to put it simply.

More from McDougall on ketosis:

http://www.earthsave.org/support/High_protein.pdf

I'm not an expert on the lo-carb process yet there are resources such as this one to study for yourself.

Perhaps of interest:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874681/

Lani