Why Cutting Carbs Is So Tough
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
What I want to say:
Cutting carbs is difficult for most people because of two things: 1) withdrawal from the sugar-high that you get from eating high-glycemic-load food (like bagels / pasta), and 2) your body needs* some amount of carbs, and people are cutting bad carbs without replacing them with good carbs, and thus experiencing an inescapable craving for carbs.
The vast majority of people in the US equate "carbs" with "grains/sugars/starches", and so when they "cut carbs", they stop consuming almost any carbs (like the author of this article says he did), they then experience discomfort because of the two factors I listed above, and if they get past the sugar-high withdrawal, the constant inescapable/healthy cravings for carbs eventually push them to begin eating grains/sugars/starches again.
My daily diet (when I'm eating "properly") has me consuming carbs in the form of two bags of "steam-in-bag" broccoli and a bag of carrots. Every day. When you've eaten that many vegetables, you experience no craving whatsoever for unhealthy carbs. But for most people, the idea of consuming that many vegetables per day has probably never entered their minds, and that's why they have trouble "cutting carbs".
I highly recommend that people who are interested in this topic watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M74Ao6y4vfg
--------------------------------------
*I'm using 'need' in the sense of "your body needs glucose, and the typical way to get it is from carbs, and so if you eat almost no carbs, you may experience some 'healthy' level of craving for carbs".
Bags can vary greatly in amount, what weight does that represent, is it 150g or 3kg?
Here's the exact brand I've been using most-recently, it's 300g uncooked: https://happyspeedy.com/sites/default/files/steamfresh-brocc...
I think you're mistaken. Carb is the only macronutrient that is not required. The body can make glucose via gluconeogenesis. Take someone who has not eaten a single carb for a month and measure their blood glucose level and you will find a stable 90mg/dL. This is why Type-1 diabetics still need insulin (although much much lesser than otherwise) in spite of being on zero-carb diets.
Carbs were only available in the summer/spring, and food became even more scarce in autum/winter. Thus, humans developed a powerful chemical response to carb intake - we crave carbs because they were the only means to fatten up and avoid starvation and death.
On a keto diet, one can attain < 20g carbs per day with some struggle but to cut it out entirely is really hard without missing some other essential nutrients - because at least some carbs tag along with other things.
If you refuse to consign yourself to the fate that most MD's in the US describe for their diabetic patients (mine told me, "there's nothing you can do to improve it, other than some exercise, take the medicine, annual check ups, and then hope there aren't complications as you age"...I got another general practitioner), then self-support groups like this are the only way to go to find what works for you, IMHO. The Reddit group is also helpful when starting out, but I found them not as hardcore about control as I wanted, which I found in some members of the DD group.
That said, eating only animal products makes keto look tame in comparison.
That said, I'm keto and find it difficult to stay under 30 grams of carbohydrates per-day simply because carbs are in so many foods. I've, a few times, gone "strict" keto i.e 10g< of total carbs per day which includes indigestible fiber and I (anecdata coming at you) felt great.
https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Bernsteins-Diabetes-Solution-Achie...
Are you saying that "She's had several endocrinologists tell her that she needs to eat carbohydrates" is wrong and deadly? (There seems to be no other advice in mcone's post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14812819 to which you are responding.) If so, are you adducing the book you link as your evidence?
Without knowing anything about that book or its author, I think that it's fair to say that any one persons's conclusions should be treated with profound scepticism. That's not the same as saying that they're wrong, but it does mean that calling contrary advice "wrong and deadly" seems very much to be excessively certain.
He is a well-known proponent of cutting carbs for all diabetics, even Type 1's, see his Wikipedia entry for an intro [1]. He's been open about his own Type 1, and:
"As of 2006, Bernstein had an HDL cholesterol of 118, LDL of 53, Triglycerides of 45, and average blood sugar of 83 mg/dl.[3] By 2008, at 74 years of age, Bernstein had surpassed the life expectancy of type 1 diabetics."
I wouldn't go as far as to say any carbohydrates is "wrong and deadly". However, OP you're responding to is correct: there is a metabolic pathway [2] that generates the necessary carbohydrates from fats and proteins in your diet if you don't eat enough. There are challenges with the ketogenic diet if not carefully followed, and it doesn't work for everyone [3].
0.14% of the diabetic population have qualified for a diagnosis of complete remission [4]. There is no cure, but some Type 2's can manage without medication and still diagnostically show no sign of Type 2 via blood glucose and HbA1c tests; those that maintain it for over a couple of years qualify as complete remission. I've found more of these people or diabetics approaching that level of control at the Diabetes Daily site than any other location on the Net [5]. Overwhelmingly, carb restriction is the first go-to they recommend all newly-diagnosed who want to join this small club try as among the first treatment protocols. Even many Type 1's report benefiting from not requiring nearly as much insulin after restricting carbs. It's worth investigating, if only to rule it out if it doesn't happen to work for your wife.
Good luck with your wife's Type 1.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_K._Bernstein
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluconeogenesis
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet
[4] http://www.diabetes.org/research-and-practice/patient-access...
Just for the record, not mine, but mcone's (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14812819).
If you keep your incidental carbs low enough, they will be burned off without taking you out of the ketogenic, fat-burning state.
It is not the incidental carbs in these vegetables for which we might have a nutritional need, but the vitamins and minerals.
That really doesn't increase my confidence
Not true. While it might be true that your body (e.g. your brain) needs some glucose, this can easily be synthesised by your liver from fat as required once you have been running on ketones for a few weeks. You do not need "good" carbs to survive.
This is factually wrong. The human body ~100 grams of protein, ~10 grams of fat, and zero carbs to stay healthy. The minimal amount of glucose required for brain function can be synthesized from protein intake. And carb deficiency is not associated with any impairment or disease.
Could you provide source (studies not blogposts or youtube videos) on this matter?
Also what is your opinion on 80/10/10 or Okinawa diet? Okinavians used to get most of their calories from carbs and they had one of the longest lifespans in the world.
All things considered I am not against the keto diet but the food that people on it eat. Animal based fats, usually heavily processed meats like bacon, sausages etc on which there are peer reviewed studies that show their correlation to cancer and heart deceases. Most of the information can be found here: https://nutritionfacts.org/ the videos linked have their sources provided in the description. And those are mostly peer reviewed studies as well!
I will say that there's interesting research surfacing that is implicating insulin as the big nasty, not specifically carbs. Which would mean to me that if you consume foods that have a more moderate insulin response coupled with regular physical activity and other hormone balancing behaviors that kind of lifestyle would be okay.
Our addiction to convenience as mediated by oil and refined carbohydrates doesn't ground people in their bodies, causing the acceleration towards extremes (obesity or ascetic diets like keto--which I personally follow).
Also "An effective, medically sound diet that lets you eat bacon, eggs, steak, even cheese? It's true!"
Is just wrong. Medically sound my ass. Of course you're going to get people to buy a book that says that you can eat what you want (E.g. lots of animal fats), doesn't make it the right... far from it actually.
As I said before I have nothing against keto/high fat low carb diets but the commonly consumed foods are awful. Basically no micronutrients, mostly animal fats and excessive amounts of protein. Those really aren't doing you much good. If books on keto diet were suggesting nuts, seeds, berries, avocado and some meat that wasn't heavily proccessed as basis of it's diet I wouldn't comment at now I am sure that lots of people are going to look into keto and hop on bacon + eggs all day every day kind of regime.
As a counter to the Okinawans, we can look at the Maasai people of northern Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people#Diet, who exclusively ate meat, milk and blood from cattle yet had no incidence of heart disease, cancer, tooth decay, or obesity.
I think the point here is that we haven't really honed in on what exact macronutrient composition is the perfect one for a human body. Humans appear to adapt well to any macronutrient composition, as shown above by the diets of different cultures (I think if you took a global survey in 1900 of what different societies were eating, you would find all manner of different diets but very low rates of disease in all or most of them). What we have identified is that we're seeing unprecedented levels of cancer, obesity, alzheimers and cardiovascular disease. So the question to ask is "What changed in the past 50 years?" I would say it's a few things (ordered by severity):
1. Sugar. We don't need sugar to survive, yet we eat mountains of it.
2. Refined, high GI carbohydrates.
3. Vegetable oils. Seed oils like canola, sunflower, or palm oil (not Olive/Avocado/Coconut oil) are high in pro-inflammatory Omega-6 fatty acids and polyunsaturated fats.
4. Factory farmed meats, also high in Omega-6 fatty acids.
You can find counterexamples to any macronutrient focused diet, as we did above, but there doesn't exist a society that consumes sugar, refined carbohydrates, or vegetable oils in abundance and still lives long, disease free lives. To date, there is no counterexample that says the modern western diet is in any way healthy.
Regarding the studies you mention, I don't doubt that heavily processed meats like bacon and sausages are bad for you, though it's because of the Omega-6 fatty acids in factory farmed meats which are known cause arterial inflammation and contribute to atherosclerosis (grass fed beef, pork, or pastured chicken does not have this problem). That said, I am heavily skeptical of any studies that show 'links' to cancer. Just because two things correlate doesn't mean that one causes the other. Nutritional studies are notoriously difficult to conduct accurately, and have been plagued with bad logic (correlation != causation), bad statistics, and perverse incentives (such as the incentive to reach an interesting conclusion or risk losing government funding) or conflicts of interest (being funded by the sugar industry or big pharma). You ask for a good source (not blogposts/youtube videos) on what the OP posted; in kind, could you link to the studies that you're talking about?
> And carb deficiency is not associated with any impairment or disease.
This is an entirely false statement. Different people have different reactions to carbohydrate restriction based on genetics, past diet, medical issues, environmental factors, and a boatload of other well understood reasons.
Edit: My mistake, it looks like someone else made the following mistaken argument, first - not you. My apologies.
[ Elsewhere in this thread your invocation of kidney problems was already corrected, and yet you invoke it here, again. This has everything to do with over-consumption of protein, nothing to do with a supposed "carb deficiency". This is not evidence of any alleged "impairment" resulting from insufficient carbohydrates. ]
The phrase carb deficiency is vague. I took it as 0 carb since that was the context of the original comment. But if you take it to mean anything value you want, then that is shifting of the goalposts from 'you can remain healthy with a 0 carb diet' - a claim that has not yet met its burden of proof.
What makes it worse is that the withdrawal from the sugar-high seems to sometimes make the pimples hurt more than they otherwise would, and makes me feel some kind of intense compulsion to pick at the pimples, and so my face ends up looking much worse than it otherwise would if I just left the pimple alone; it honestly reminds me of the descriptions of drug addicts who pick at their own body (I think meth addicts do that?).
The body is perfectly capable of deriving carbohydrates from essential fats and essential proteins.
Beyond the physical addiction there's also a lifestyle addiction, this is a similar problem chronic cigarette smokers who want to quit encounter. Sometimes they do quit and get through the physical discomfort of withdrawal but often fall back in because a pavlovian response has been built into many experiences like socializing, hanging outside and chatting, having a smoke as a break from severe stress, etc.
Because refined carbohydrates have been threaded through almost every food marketed to people in our society there are second order lifestyle addictions too which require clever environmental structuring, determination, and often times social support to overcome.
Social support is key and is often the failure point for most people. Particularly when engaging non-mainstream methods or ideas. Most people across many different social groups think the idea of self experimentation to be an alien or downright stupid idea.
[Edit] the body doesn't derive carbohydrates, it derives glucose.
Research the ketogenic diet which is < 20 (net) carbs a day - usually in the form of just random sneak in carbs from green veggies.
Starting with a low carb diet and transitioning to keto can be done without a lot of pain and I've eaten less than ~30 carbs a day for 6 months with no loss of energy - in fact I think my energy levels have increased since going keto, but I've also lost significant weight.
Weaning off carbs is not hard.
It would be more accurate to say it wasn't hard for you.
I don't recommend going from full carbs to keto. Start out lazy low carb (that looks like carbs I should t eat it) and work your way into fully tracking macros etc.
Easy is relative but I think done correctly it's easier then folks think. It's a pretty lovable lifestyle once you figure it out.
Ultimatley, what kept me on track was the improvements I was seeing in the gym. I did, however, always acknowledge that was fighting the temptation to cheat quite often.
Going keto would mean hating eating forever. Which would be very effective for weight loss, I guess.
On the other hard, weight lifters have complained that being keto has diminished their peak capacity. (They don't seem to care that it increases their stamina.)
As I'm in my 40s, and just exercise for fun and the health benefits, this is a tradeoff I'm more than happy to make. I'd much rather be able to cycle for another 10 miles without thinking about it than to increase my pace from 12 to 14 mph. But it is something to be aware of.
I'm sorry but this is simply not true. Since switching to a ketogenic several months ago I have maintained a very low (< 15g / day) net carb intake and not only have I not experienced any adverse effects from this, I feel much better (better mood, more energy, less hunger cravings) overall. I should also point out that I am a very active person as well (yoga & Crossfit daily), implying that a high fat diet is suitable (in terms of energy requirements) for maintaining an active lifestyle.
Not my intention at all, and honestly I don't see how my comment conveys this.
> Your single data point
Sure, plus the countless others who lead a healthy, low-carb lifestyle.
> 99.9% of humans that ever lived included various sources of carbs in their diets (save famine and other such events), and our bodies have evolved to support such diets
My point wasn't that carbs preclude you from leading a healthy lifestyle, hut rather that they aren't necessarily for leading a healthy lifestyle, as OP's remark suggested.
> We're here because our ancestors ate carbs
Not "because", but "in spite of the fact".
> You should make it clear that you're pushing a position based on your opinion
I'm not "pushing" anything, merely citing a personal experience (my experience, not my opinion).
However, I believe they are technically correct that we "are here because our ancestors ate carbs". This is not to say that carbs are healthy or necessary for modern humans, only that our ability to live on a diversity of energy sources was hugely beneficial, and almost certainly necessary, for the survival of our distant ancestors.
They are not countless though, people who have at some point in time, experimented with keto or low-carb diets are in the extreme minority (I did as well). And an even smaller subset would be the people who have completely switched over to a keto diet on a long term basis.
>Not "because", but "in spite of the fact".
That is merely an opinion. We can't do the experiment of not having a certain adaptation. Having the option of surviving on a variety of diets, including heavy carb (vegetables/fruits) diets, is definitely an evolutionary strength.
> hut rather that they aren't necessarily for leading a healthy lifestyle, as OP's remark suggested.
But practically speaking, the vast majority of healthy people consume carbs. There is no evidence to suggest that a keto diet is capable of providing the same result - in a large portion of the population (comprising of various genetic makeups and other factors), over a large period of time.
Keep in mind that the glycemic index of foods influences how your body reacts. Broccoli is a very low GI food. Carrots are quite a bit higher.
I would guess you can eat quite a bit less broccoli than you can carrots, because the insulin response to carrots is going to be much more severe.
You're on the right track, but what you mean is not the GI of carrots is low, but the glycemic load. For blood sugar and diet considerations, the GL is at least as important as the GI
http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycem...
She tried cutting lactose (milk, cheese), which had a good, but small effect. Would like to try anything else before laser treatments.
Thank you!
Normal human blood sugar [1]: 70-100 milligrams per deciliter of blood.
Blood volume of average human [2]: 5.5 liters
Thus, total blood sugar in non-diabetic human: 3.85 to 5.5 grams
Density of glucose: 1.54 grams per cubic centimeter
Thus, total volume of sugar in average human: 2.5 to 3.6 milliliters
Volume of teaspoon: ~5ml
Your body does its best to cap the amount of sugar flowing through you at about one-half teaspoon. A 12 ounce can of coke has 39 grams of sugar, or 7-10 times what the human body considers normal. It's a tremendous shock to the system - the resulting insulin response sends your body on a roller coaster of hormone regulation.
[1] https://www.virginiamason.org/whatarenormalbloodglucoselevel...
[2] http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=21...
It's not "more relevant", but it is deeply related and important. A low glycemic index food will spike your blood sugar much less than a high GI food.
And the relation of a food to blood-glucose is not fully intuitive. Sure, soda is obvious because it contains pure sugar. But carrots have roughly the same impact as soda.
The issue wouldn't be so much that a coke has a large amount of sugar compared to expected blood glucose levels, but rather whether that can of coke puts a person in a caloric surplus. At any point in time there might be some glucose either coming in or coming out of our bloodstream. Expected blood glucose levels don't tell us much about that. For instance, two people might have the same blood glucose levels but two completely different energetic requirements due to differing levels of physical activity.
At least, that's what I get from the post you're responding to. Mind you, I don't think that a calorie is a calorie: consuming shitloads of sugar might be bad for anyone for other reasons besides inducing caloric surpluses, so energy sources aren't perfect substitutes for one another. But I don't see what insight is to be gained from the relationship between the amount of sugar in a coke can and average blood glucose levels either.
http://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycem...
Assuming both numbers are accurate (I haven't double checked any of the numbers above), the discrepancy could be with time.
Your body doesn't just have sugar in its blood. It uses it. At any given moment "Average blood sugar" needs to be 5grams. However throughout the day your body burns up 97.5 grams (I.e. 39 grams is 40%).
going to the first point, when I decide i want to loose weight, i start with increasing my daily fiber. that alone is often enough for me to loose a few pounds
The current World Health Organization recommendation is less than 6 teaspoons of sugar per day. One softdrink essentially hits that limit all in one shot.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guid...
Is it still a "tremendous shock" for someone in their 80's who's been drinking 5 per day for decades, like Warren Buffet?
You should eat substantially more fat than sugar, yes. But if you don't your body turns excess Sugar into fat.
Afterwards, pizza and bread will look disgusting.
Some other aspects of carbs seem to be not fully investigated, such as the effect of dietary fiber's role in nutrition. While not "essential" (http://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(15)01743-8/abstract) it seems to play a mostly positive role. (If only to prevent constipation...)
At this time, I'd think "fad" of any ketogenic diet advocate that has little vegetable consumption. But as the first link states, "most of the current low-carbohydrate, weight-reducing diets advocate the consumption of low-carbohydrate vegetables". "Eat more veggies" has been a mantra of dietary advice for a while. :)
You can try to counter the point by pointing out that there are ultra-marathoners who are keto. But my two counters against this are:
1) They generally still use some form of carbs during the race, i.e. sugar packets.
2) There is no world class sprinter / 5k / 10k / sprint biker / football player / soccer play that is keto.
So fine, you can make the argument that no carb is a better diet for an office potato with no exercise. But I would argue that bumping your carb intake up 25-40% and doing some exercise is going to lead to a much more healthy body and mind (many studies around on the benefits of exercise).
TLDR: The problem with office potatoes is being an office potato. You are better fixing it via exercise, vs trying to eat a weird diet that lets you stay skinny while an office potato.
When left to her own devices, she will consistently confuse and/or conflate carbs and fats. I think this is because she's from a generation that totally bought into the war on fat, and raised us accordingly. Fat is so evil in her mind that there is a subconscious revulsion to it.
I'm not sure older generations' assembly-level worldviews can be reprogrammed at this point. Carbs will be ubiquitous until younger folks become the predominant consumer power in the economy -- or unless someone actually influences the Boomers somehow, e.g., convinces Dr. Phil or Ellen DeGeneres or Gwyneth Paltrow or Matt Lauer or whoever to come out strongly against carbs.
Modern nutritional science is also showing that the way food is digested and metabolized in the body is strongly influenced by a complex hormonal interchange -- and whether organs like the liver or the gut are predominantly responsible for macronutrient metabolism has a significant effect on, for lack of a better word, "effective calorie counts" in foods. The macronutrient composition of what we eat clearly affects our hormonal reaction, which clearly affects feelings of hunger and satiety. To ignore these feedback loops in favor of strict energy-deficit reductionism is a bit like saying that anyone not programming in binary is wasting his or her time.
Sometimes science literate ppl think these ketoers just don't understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but that's not the point. Its true that the 2nd law determines weight loss, but changing your hormonal response is how you really achieve a healthy lifestyle.
Further, many people would rather not have to track their calories everyday for the rest of their lives in order to maintain a healthy diet. They'd rather condition their body to prefer healthy foods, and to prefer healthy quantities of healthy foods. To do that you have to look at the source of the calories, not just the amount of calories.
You are mostly correct, in terms of effectiveness.
Also good are exercise (building lean muscle mass), reducing carbs (a la keto, paleo), and intermittent fasting (keto).
There are other health benefits to cutting carbs, especially HFCS: reducing obesity, heart disease, diabetes.
Just think of the strategies as complimentary. And do what works for your body (eg consuming too much potassium can worsen some heart conditions).
It's not strictly speaking a rebuttal, but it illustrates a point quite clearly, fat is not the culprit.
Italian people are among the least overweight people in the OECD countries, and have a heavily carb based diet. (I think the same applies to Japanese and Korean, but I think there could be a prevalent genetic factor there.)
That's not to say that fat makes you obese, just that carbs, per se, don't. Eating too much does.
I think it was convenience and her generation always having to be the one to cook for the family.
And who can blame her? I suppose you could live without pasta, but would you call that living? :)
This is like telling an alcoholic that life isn't worth living without tequila. You know what? Turns out you can live a meaningful life without it if you have to.
Do note that pasta is delicious, among the best things in life, and not at all comparable to tequila or with being alcoholic. Your comparison is extreme and unfair!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7b5DITgHCQ
They are low carb, quite healthy, and don't make you miss Pasta.
> which is experienced as a feeling of hunger and a need to have the next meal or a snack
Why is this bad or surprising? Isn't this how things work? You don't eat ==> you get hungry. Similarly with water and thirst. I'm not being flippant, I genuinely want to know why someone would think this is surprising.
Personally I don't like feeling of hunger so I don't do that. Getting hungry just a few hours after a meal is surprising when you got more than enough energy to last you several days already and your body has stored several months worth of energy in fat.
If you're limiting your calorie intake and have no weight issues then it is not, of course. You have used up all the energy from the food you have -> you will starve if you won't get more.
Obviously I can only speak about my own case; it seems like there's a lot of variation in how different people's bodies process and respond to carbs in their diet.
The exceptions tend to be expensive and the kind of thing that makes me feel kinda gross after eating more than a few bites of it anyway. Steak, say. Most meat on its own is like this, really. Just cheese. Veggies and cheese. Meat and cheese. Uck. Veggies and meat can work out OK on its own but, again, kinda expensive and still not as good as if you threw in some wheat products.
I have a suspicion that food without carbs being fairly unappealing is part of why many of the people doing keto lose weight so quickly.
Going vegetarian—and probably even vegan—would be far easier for me than a keto diet.
Agreed, especially since you can prepare pretty tasty (and visually appealing!) vegetarian meals. And I'm saying this as a meat eater!
Try bean / chick pea pasta (or a mix of regular pasta and bean / chick pea pasta).
Also, ketogenic doesn't mean you completely give up on carbs. I take about 2-3 cups of green vegetables everyday. These veggies have very low amount of carbs < 10-20gms. Rest is fiber which has no glycemic load. Also, once you are keto-adapted, all the craving for carb goes away as your brain is well fed on Ketones - much cleaner fuel when compared to glucose.
Full disclaimer: I'm part French. But that's a traditional notion in French culture (and many others): food intake is not just some mechanical action we do before getting on with better things in life; it's an art to itself.
When viewed as an art, moderation is actually a form of balance. We balance quantity with richness and intensity of flavor. I am always amazed at seeing someone who can devour a giant bowl of noodles probably totalling about 1,500 KCal and yet devoid of taste. Mediocre wheat flour topped with sauces made with various commoditized (and bland) ingredients, spiked with sweeteners resulting in an overall bland dish.
Contrast with some real Italian pasta in a small proportion, made with good ingredients and assembled in a way to maximize the taste, as if to assemble a work of art. The nutritional analysis per 100g may be worse than the previous bowl of noodles, but two things stand out: (1) the portion is way smaller and (2) the taste leaves you satisfied. You also consummed that dish slowly, paying attention to the taste and eating it slower than that large bowl.
Now of course everyday life is not made of high-end culinary adventures—most of use can't afford that. But even at a modest scale, one can pay attention to the quality of a simple tomato, a simple loaf of bread, butter from cows grazing fields... eating items slowly so as to appreciate their taste.
Then it's no longer about numbers or labels, it's about taste. Eat your hamburger, but make it with good ingredients and savor it. Eat your fries but slowly and look for the taste of the potato itself. Can't find it? Use better potatoes.
As for soda? Sure, enjoy it but sip a reasonable glass of it like wine, over the course of a meal instead of gulping a large amount with a straw. Of course once you get in the habit of sipping it, you might move on to other beverages that taste better when sipped... :)
The problem is that most diets (in America at least) are made up almost entirely out of carb heavy foods with little macro/micro nutrients.
Personally I shoot for a 45/30/25 (protein/fat/carb) spread which works best for me.
If I had a final meal wish, it would be some crusty bread, and butter. I'm NOT giving up carbs. My coworker does this, and only eats a plate of meat, and fats everyday. It sounds absolutely miserable.
It's like telling an alcoholic to just have one glass of wine a day-- yeah that would be great if it works, but it's not really helpful advice for some people.
You could get most of your calories from table sugar and not gain weight if you do the math correctly. But this diet will eventually severely damage the hormonal regulation in your body.
It's not that much of a stretch to see it that way either: alcohol is nutritionally barren. And instead of raising blood sugar, it lowers it, thus rendering one prone to cravings for poor carbs.
But as someone currently watching his parents and grandparents suffer from the long-term effects of a lifetime of obesity and poor diet, these things can have long term consequences that don't catch up with you until it's too late.
I decided to give the low carb thing a try about 4-5 months ago. I cut out all bread, pasta, rice, starches and sugar I could find on my menu. Replaced it with more meat and learned to love zucchini and cauliflower. I'm far from being on the perfect low carb/keto/paleo diet. I eat cheese, have a morning latte at work, and eat a fruit or two every day. I had few "cheat meals", about once a month.
The scale now shows 10kg less. I was surprised by the ease of the process. I like it.
In the end, it's still calories. I get it, these people have books and speaking engagements to sell, but please. If they'd just say 'not eating carbs makes it easier to stick to a low calorie diet', it'd be fine. It's the deliberate obtuseness that's so annoying.
I mean, if it's not about calories, please:
- show me someone who can eat 1000 Cals a day and not loose weight. - show me someone who can eat 5000 Cals of bacon a day and not gain weight.
Until then - meh.
who is saying that?
> that's what all those others say too
where? the author is talking about energy balance disorder vs insulin hypothesis. first stops at "expend more than you intake and everything will be ok", second goes further and explores difference between sources of calories and why it's wrong to say that caloric number is all you need to care about.
> show me someone who can eat 1000 Cals a day and not loose weight
> show me someone who can eat 5000 Cals of bacon a day and not gain weight
except those are not the claims being made. that's a second strawman in your comment, you really should read up on ketogenic diet before criticizing it.
"The conventional thinking, held by the large proportion of the many researchers and clinicians I’ve interviewed over the years, is that obesity is caused by caloric excess." "The minority position in this field — one that Dr. Ludwig holds, as do I after years of reporting — is that obesity is actually a hormonal regulatory disorder, and the hormone that dominates this process is insulin."
5 or so paragraphs in. Waffling and innuendo about how it's really not about calories, while when you look deeper, it is - but they never acknowledge it as such because if they would, WTF would be so special about it?
"second goes further and explores difference between sources of calories and why it's wrong to say that caloric number is all you need to care about."
Caloric number is all you need to care about. It's just easier to control when your blood sugar levels don't swing all over the place.
Caloric intake is like the first oscillation on a 1D Perlin noise function; cutting back specific foods (not 'sources of calories', but specific compounds that have a certain effect on the body) are a second oscillation, transposed on the first one. So you can cut back all the carbs you want, if you don't get your daily energy intake below your energy expenditure, you'll never lose weight. There are other ways of losing weight too, that would work for everybody, but they're mentally hard(er). You can lose weight by eating a McD hamburger and small portion of fries each day, as long as you don't eat anything else (actually, after those two, you still have a 1000 cal budget left, which you could expend on another two portions of fries, or pure sugar if you'd like, and you'd still loose weight).
"you really should read up on ketogenic diet before criticizing it."
I'm not critizing the low carbs diet itself; it's well-known that cutting back on carbs is a relatively easy way to loose weight. When I used to fight and had to cut weight, it was standard advise to the point that it was obvious to everybody who'd spend any time in the gym, even those who had been doing it since the '80s at least. What I'm critizing is these shysters who peddle this sort of 'advise' as something or somehow magical or more than a trick to make it easier to get you calorie intake down. Because that's all it is. A good trick, sure, but still just a way to get your calorie intake down.
where exactly in this sentence did you read "calories don't matter"?
> Caloric number is all you need to care about
no it is not. calorie source is important. some sources spike your insulin, some don't. insulin spikes are bad.
> just a way to get your calorie intake down
no, it's a way to lower blood glucose and remove insulin spikes. healthy caloric deficit is important for sustainable weight loss, but avoiding foods that cause insulin roller coaster is also important. and to get into ketosis it's literally the only thing that matters.
Oh please. 'Sure I called him a no-good cotton picker, but where did I say he's a lesser human? How dare you call me racist!' It's blatantly obvious that the spin the OP is putting on his message is that it's not the calories that matter, but rather 'where those calories came from', whatever that means. If you're going to play word games (the lowest form of debate), we have nothing to talk about here.
"some sources spike your insulin, some don't. insulin spikes are bad."
Insulin spikes do not cause your weight to go up. They lead to eating more, which is what makes your weight go up.
"but avoiding foods that cause insulin roller coaster is also important."
OK then please describe what is important about it that does not lead back to eating less. And don't say 'just google keto diet' because it's all the same - words and words and more words to not have to deal with the elephant in the room which is caloric intake.
Again, I'm not saying low carb diets don't work. They obviously do, and they're easier for many people to stick to than other diets. What I'm arguing against is the mysticism around a subset of them, the refusal to just call things for what they are. It's a cult thing, it seems.
you're implying that the rest of the message is "eating 1k calories is not going to make you lose weight" and "eating 5k calories is not going to make you gain weight" which is frankly completely false.
the message begins with "given reasonable amount of calories it matters where they come from and here's how".
> Insulin spikes do not cause your weight to go up. They lead to eating more, which is what makes your weight go up.
well you've basically just agreed with OPs thesis here. eating more makes you fat, but the ultimate reason why you eat more is hormonal disorder.
> what is important about it that does not lead back to eating less
eating less
a) reduces your BMR which cancels out a good amount of mental effort you've put in restricting your calories
b) the weight you are losing is in more muscle mass than fat mass due to body's conservation mechanics
and that's not even mentioning all the nasty consequences of spiking insulin, most of which are putting people on a fast track to diabetes (read - more obesity, more health damage, etc).
on keto you can eat the same volume of food and same caloric intake but have increased BMR, effectively burning fats quicker. fat foods are denser in calories so you have more volume for things like fiber. i'm oversimplifying a lot here, but you told me to not just say "google it".
It is true that it is harder to overeat on a high fat, low carb diet, though.
Our bodies cannot, however, produce all of the nutrients we need from a diet that is high in carbs but deficient in other things like proteins.
And yes there is always a change that future work will require us to rework our current understanding, thats how science works after all.
"Foods with lots of carbs" are a very good approximation of the nature of foods that tend to do that. (More accurately, foods with a high glycemic load/glycemic index)
So offhand we can say foods that contain a lot of carbs tend to have a high gylcemic index, some more than others. Eating raw sugar is different than slowly eating al dente pasta with other foods in the mix like butter, cheese, etc, even though they both "have carbs." Think about approximately how long it takes different foods to break down. I hope that's intuitive as an example.
So "carbs are harmful" isn't quite the right picture. You can eat carbs, they're not going to harm you. But if you want to easily maintain a healthy weight, eat mostly fat and lots of protein. And being overweight is harmful, obviously.
(No such thing as fat but fit: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/17/obesity-heal...)
In Sweden we have something called "snabbmakaroner", which is basically macaronis but smaller and with thinner walls to shorten the time needed to boil them. Regular "makaroner", with the thicker walls has a lower GI compared to these thinner-walled ones. Even though they have the same exact ingredients and nutrients. I did a report on this during highschool when I tested it out on a bunch of willing classmates, and I was able to confirm it.
Uniquely damaging for teeth, nobody will disprove that.
There is even a well known problem among professional sportsmen related to energy drinks and parandentosis.
Since there is no discussion about this, carbs must be generally harmful, as to eat anything, you must use your mouth.
Can't recommend a particular course of action, but my approach is to experiment with different diets on yourself and be as methodical as time and will allows in evaluating them: I note (either mentally or writing down) objective and subjective indicators. Objective would be weight, waist width, blood test results, etc, and subjective would be energy, drowsiness, amount of willpower required to stay on diet, environmental pressures for or against (social eating, food availability, cost), etc.
Of course, being this quantified may require significant effort itself. If you stick with it long enough, interesting things usually happen, though: it either becomes automatic and thus low-effort, or at least you train yourself to become mindful enough of your various habits, which is a huge plus itself.
This is really the best answer here. Lower calories is the way to lose weight. It is how someone switches to less calories and maintains that state for their lifetime where problems arise.
Mentally, some people just cannot eat a single cookie. For them they have to avoid cookies all together or else they wreck their caloric intake. Only protein and fat for some people is good because it's easy to follow. Carbs are not evil, unless they make up 70%+ of your diet. Look at all of the people who are very successful on If It Fits Your Macros for example. They have a mix of carbs/fat/protein to hit each day.
edit: I also recommend the rest of the channel (I'm not affiliated in any way, it just explains a lot of things I've learned in the past decade in a very neat way)
edit 2: Sorry, this video doesn't have text version, but "story of fat" does.
The average consumer is not even remotely prepared in a fight against a food industry with thousands of PhD's working to make the food as addictive as possible, the fight isn't even remotely fair. And then we get mad at everyone who fails, and wonder why so many are so horribly obese.
Last I checked though, there's little hard data to back this up.
The other thing that makes the "carbs are fattening us" story seem incomplete (though not necessarily wrong) is that a generation or two ago obesity rates were much lower even in countries where people ate/eat carbohydrate-rich foods routinely (noodles, rice, tortillas, bread). It's not like everyone in Italy was on a ketogenic diet in the 1980s.
It seems like there must be multiple overlapping causes for the rise in obesity rates because all of the One Big Thing stories I've read about it have obvious counterexamples.
It's not One Big Thing. It's several fairly big things, most of which are concentrated heavily in the USA.
And sauces have a ton of added sugar too.
Do you have an example? All I have on hand says 1 gram of sugar per 2oz of dry pasta, with no sugar or corn syrup in the ingredients list.
But obesity rates are rising in America and across the world, and many people obviously have a hard time giving up this lousy food. So it seems like there's a fairly complicated feedback loop around how people acquire/retain tastes for foods and what they find "irresistible." I love garlic bread, french fries, and popcorn but I eat them only a few times a month and don't feel deprived on days that I don't. Pancakes with syrup: yuck, I'd rather go hungry for breakfast. I don't know why I don't experience carb-cravings or have to exercise any particular willpower to avoid sweets while others struggle mightily.
And that's the most insidious part (and why obesity tends to paradoxically trend up toward lower income households). This cheap, shitty food is extremely attractive to the people most vulnerable to the addictive behaviors; people who already lack most luxuries, are often short on extra time or energy (i.e. working two jobs), and people who work with children in the household (often too tired or want time/energy to devote to their children) and don't cook. You can call it irresponsible or what have you (as many do) but I mean, you go out and work a 12 hour day and then go home and spend an hour prepping a healthy meal. Then do it tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day.
I've eaten a very low carb diet for ~3 years, lost over 100 pounds and have kept it off. I don't have cravings, and sticking with my odd diet is preferable to the alternatives (getting fatter by the day and then bulimia) for me.
"Moderation" doesn't work for me because I can't do it. So far in my 42 years, I've never been able to be moderate. This works.
My bloodwork is fine, btw. I have it checked regularly.
It's an immoderate diet for an immoderate guy. For some people, a healthy relationship with food and eating is just a fantasy.
That said, I've experienced all this same stuff with processed carbs and sugar. I'll beat it for a few months and then end up binging/getting right back hooked.
The best recipe I've found for managing weight (personally, since YMMV is super applicable when it comes to fitness) is low-carb, high protein/fat, and weightlifting 3-4 times a week.
I don't really notice much fat being burned on a keto diet without regular exercise.
The author's claims of difficulty derive from treating himself to sweets on occasion. That is like a smoker being a social smoker. They never manage to quit and always have the cravings.
What's weird is I can eat carb-rich foods and get a very different result from what the researchers in this article found. It seems to have more to do with the composition of the meal than the exact nutritional content. A tuna sandwich or a pot pie dumped on a baked potato (both options are ~500 calories) fills me up to the point where I don't even get hungry at a normal meal time.
You'd expect either of those to leave me desperate for more carbs based on the usual low-carb diet sales pitch. I tried the low-carb lifestyle. It left me hungry and tired, no matter how carefully I followed all the good advice or how long I stuck with it.
But you're right about filling up - that's very simply the most important part. Don't eat lots of small high-calorie stuff. Eat a real meal that fills you up. In carbs that would be fiber-heavy, long chain carb stuff, protein does that pretty much by itself.
Didn't happen when I tried it for a couple of years. I guess it didn't help that this was the '90s when hype for the diet was making people irrational, and the people I was dependent on forced it on me. Stress and resentment make anything harder.
Maybe I'll give it another shot in the future. Right now, eating filling meals while avoiding random snacking is working.
As for tired, you might have been low on electrolytes. Your need for electrolytes goes up on low carb.
Whenever I've tried a carb heavy diet, I always felt like I was starving myself to lose any weight at all (usually give up after 15lbs). With low carb, I barely keep track of calories and I still lose weight (although I have struggled through plateaus at times, those required skipping meals to help break through them).
I do have some difficulty staying with low carb perfectly for long periods of time though because I'm surrounded by tasty carbs and sometimes I just want to have a little.
As an example, take Panda Express. In the past I've gotten Chow Mein at 500 calories, and then put Beijing Beef at ~500 calories and Orange Chicken for ~500 calories and I'm at a 1500 calorie meal (yeah, it can get insane).
But I went there recently, got Mixed Vegetables for 80 calories, Mushroom Chicken for 180 calories, and Beef and Broccoli for another 180 calories, and my total calorie count for that meal was only 440 calories.
1500-440 calories = -1060 calorie difference for a SINGLE meal, that I paid the same price for, and it at least appeared to be the same amount of food. But the calorie count was vastly different. And yes I felt hungry again after only a few hours.
So you'll either have to get bigger portions (like double meat, or get an extra side that you'd normally skip) or keep some low carb snacks around to help get you to the next meal. And yeah, that does mean it tends to be a more expensive diet than others, at least if you don't start cooking at home more.
I found always going for the lesser of two evils was a big help. Sweet potato over regular potatoes. Vanilla Haagen-Daz over Ben and Jerry's (has lower sugar and more fat). whole wheat wrap with some sort of high fat salad (e.g. chicken salad) over a roll with just turkey and cheese. You wind up just developing a preference that isn't necessarily one of exclusion.
The preparation and condiments will make a larger difference than the tuber.
(I had looked at it before I posted)
This works the other way around as well. After a few weeks of not eating vegetables, eating a few cups of broccoli doesn't sit well either.
Yesterday, I ate 4 eggs fried in butter (~500 calories), and three cans of sardines (spot across lunch and dinner, ~1000 calories). I also walked about 20,0000 steps, about 10,000 of those was weighted with 30 lbs.
I have actually been drinking a lot of Soylent lately which seems very carb heavy, but people also report success with it in terms of overall health and ability to lose weight when used to control the total number of calories consumed.
When my brother-in-law tried a low-carb diet, he would come over to dinner and say that he couldn't eat lettuce, because lettuce is a carb. Well, it is, but it has few calories, it's mostly water, and it has relatively a lot of micronutrients. Avoiding high-satiety foods rich in micronutrients and antioxidants—such as cabbages, apples, and greens—because you're categorizing them with commercial soda seems insane to me.
People have psychological models of what a meal should consist of, and for most Americans it consists of a large piece of meat as the star, some refined starches on the side, and maybe a small amount of (probably overcooked) vegetables. This is not very healthy: a healthier diet would put vegetables as the base and star of the meal. There is plenty of good evidence that:
vegetable-centered diet > refined starch-centered diet
But where does meat-centered diet fit in there? What negative health consequences are there from these diets? There are individuals who advocate for this kind of diet, but is it really something that can be recommended to the mass public? There is virtually no major culinary traditions built around this style of eating, except maybe for people who subsist upon marine mammals. My brother-in-law ended up eating grilled chicken thighs by himself until he couldn't stand it anymore.
If you are doing the Ketogenic diet, right at the end of Gary Taubes' book entitled "Why we get fat and what to do about it" which is about the diet (and is the same the guy who wrote the linked article) it says this about your daily diet in regards to vegetables:
FOODS THAT MUST BE EATEN EVERY DAY:
Vegetables: 1 cup (measured uncooked) a day. Includes artichokes, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, green beans (string beans), jicama, leeks, mushrooms, okra, onions, peppers, pumpkin, shallots, snow peas, sprouts (bean and alfalfa), sugar snap peas, summer squash, tomatoes, rhubarb, wax beans, zucchini.
The vegetables that he says you need to stay away from: "...“starchy” vegetables such as slow-cooked beans (pinto, lima, black beans), carrots, parsnips, corn, peas, potatoes, French fries, potato chips."
So clearly the guy who wouldn't eat lettuce didn't do his research or just heard "to cut all carbs is what you must do".
The book is a great read, very enlightening, and I've successfully done Keto several times and lost a lot of weight and body fat using it, all the while feeling better. I surely do not eat that many vegetables a day, if any, because I hate most allowed vegetables (I just have Caesar salads occasionally), but I still manage to feel good and lose weight. This feels like a lot of vegetables suggested for a "meat only" viewed diet, and it seems like more than I'm sure most people eat daily anyways, which I guess is probably sad, but hey.
One last pitch for reading the book, it's essentially just science of the body and fat and talk about the history of various studies and how they relate to the science you just learned until the very end where in the appendix it basically says, ok here is how you actually do it, if you didn't figure it out by now (at least that's how I remember it).
Ordinary members of the public get the message "only eat chicken thighs, and don't eat lettuce". That's a long way from a diet that's healthy for ordinary people.
If all you read about low-carb diets is the first paragraph about any popular news story about them, then what you know is that low-carb diets are the ones where you can eat lots of meat and you should shun any foods with sugar or starches.
The typical advice I've seen is to limit 'net carbs' which is the difference between the total carbohydrates and 'dietary fiber'.
Also, a serving of lettuce contains a very small amount of carbs, e.g. 1.2 g per cup for butterhead lettuce. Low carb diets seem to usually consist of less than 50 g of 'net carbs' per day so eating even lots of lettuce seems entirely compatible with them.
Overall tho, nutrition just seems like an inherently 'causally dense' subject, i.e. there are lots of seemingly plausible explanations for any phenomenon. Maybe there is no one simple explanation for everyone everywhere, in general.
It doesn't, though. Low carb diets focus on net carbs, which is carbs minus dietary fiber, and guess what: nutritious vegetables have a lot of dietary fiber and a lot fewer carbohydrates than refined sugar products.
An optimal low carb diet is mostly protein, vegetables and greens (especially nutrient dense ones like kale, spinach, collard greens, etc). It seems like your brother-in-law was just ill-informed about his diet.
As far as a meat-centered goes, protein is the only absolutely essential macronutrient. You can live without fat and/or carbohydrates, assuming you get your other micronutrients (vitamins, electrolytes, etc). You cannot live without protein.
However, everyone has different tolerance to carbs so the pattern is not uniform, but as recent studies and data shows, most of us are not that lucky
If you can't manage that because you love rice or pasta or bread, at least replace processed and refined carbs with whole grains and you'll be much better off.
And don't eat sweets or sugars, which are garbage. Have fruit or high quality dark chocolate if you want something sweet or indulgent.
Carbs are the most commercially profitable food to produce - sourced from subsidized corn or wheat and have a high shelf life.