iamgeekfit

A carbohydrate is a molecule: it's a combination of groups of sugars (glucose, sucrose and starch). it's a nutrient. It's not a food. This point is important.

It's very difficult to find a whole food or even a prepared food like pasta that is *only* a carbohydrate. For that, you'd have to leave the world of *whole* foods, and go refined, eg refined sugar. Look at the nutrient breakdown of this refined, processed product, and you have solid carb. Is that natural? Likewise, white flour (that is, refined wheat flour) is pretty close to all carb - it's hard not to find "enriched" versions because of this that mechanically put back nutrients stripped out. Whole wheat (that is less refined; more whole grain) has considerably more protein and even fat. Checking by brand is important if you're interested in a greater nutrient mix.

The point is, you have to do some engineering to reduce a food to a single nutrient, bereft too of any micronutrients (minerals and vitamins) found in whole foods.

Carbs are found in vegetables, fruits, grains, and legumes primarily. When they're in food, they're inset with other nutrients (protein and/or fat) and some kind of vitamin/mineral profile.

So when people talk about carbs what do they mean?

First Fallacy: separating veggies as a separate category from grains

Some diet discussions and diet books i've looked at lately have created this implicit separation of vegetables from other foods with carbs in them. Indeed they talk about "vegetables" explicitly and "carbs" explicitly, as if carbs are a food on their own.

It seems what is usually meant in this case is an old and more or less devalued distinction between what are known as "simple" and "complex" carbohydrates. Simple carbs have no bonds to break down to be digested. Complex carbs, built up of the simpler sugar groups into "starch" take more enzymatic action to break down. But so what? we'll come back to that.

Examples of simple carbs are usually those found in fruits and cruciferous veg (like spinach and broccoli). The Spud is a super example of a complex carb holding, starchy food. Grain based foods are also usually on the starchier side.

So these separators of veggies from "carbs" usually means simple/complex.

Now why would anyone want to separate out these types of foods into their carbohydrate groups?

That's a mystery to me as no one is quite explicit about this, suggesting their own analysis is a little fuzzy, but there are a couple of possibilities, and these take us from the world of carbohydrates to the world of insulin.

Maybe you've heard the term "insulin sensitivity"? Being insulin sensitive is a good thing, but explaining the concept is beyond the scope of this piece. Suffice it to say that insulin, a key hormone in our lives, gets triggered when glucose - the simple fuel source, gets released into the blood stream as fuel. Insulin is involved in saying what of that sugar gets shunted for fuel into the muscle (yup, muscles store glycogen - a form of that glucose), and what is considered excess and gets appropriately processed to be stored as fat.

As humans, carbs are important for certain types of energy, and for muscle health, but they are NOT our main source of fuel. As we know, the body's main, most significantly used fuel source is fat.

So here's the thing to get back to that simple vs complex division that ends up as "veggies" discussed on one hand and "carbs" (meaning potatoes an bread) on the other happens - at least this is my hypothesis, and it is two fold:

starchy carbs found in foods like potatoes or pasta are both (a) calorically dense (compared to a bunch of greens or a beet) so they just have a big whopping amount of calories in them (again compared to that salad alternative) and (b) often (not always) trigger a big insulin response. Here's why on part b.

While starchy carbs may require more enzyme action to break down those starches into sugars, honey, this happens fast. And because there's such a high percentage of sugars in that food getting released into the blood stream AT ONCE after digestion, insulin kicks in desperately trying to find a place to put all this fuel.

As you can imagine, if you have a food that is refined so that only carb is left - like that ooo so tempting krispy kream donut - then it's gonna race into the bloodstream all dressed up with no where to go. Too much of this refined non-whole-food (aka crap) and we get into a loss of insulin sensitivity that leads to TypeII diabetes. Again, why is for another article.

So, you might ask, what about veggies and fruits? if they are already in their simple form of sugars, why are they in this separate "non-evil carb" category? Won't they hit the digestive system even faster than the starches which need some time to be broken down?

That is an excellent question. Simple should mean fast. And as we see, once liberated from their complex form, simple IS fast. BUT, those carbs in those whole foods are NOT refined, denuded from their natural context. They're included in carriers that are rife with other components: fiber, protein, fat, micronutrients, all sorts of stuff that hits the digestive system at the same time, slowing down the release of those sugars into the blood stream. That's one.

The other points are that veggies are (a) less carbs aka sugar dense (diff between a veg and a fruit is sugar content, afterall) and (b) veggies are generally simply less calorically dense (fewer calories) than the equivalent serving of grains (whole or otherwise) or legumes.

So, what do we know? Our bodies prefer carbs as the source of *certain* kinds of energy. We don't need a lot of them (130g for an adult male - on average; that's 520 calories). So, we can get these fuel sources from a variety of foods, from spinach to potatoes.

The complex carb foods, like potatoes and pastas may simply have more carbs in them than we need, but that's not the only reason complex carb foods are relegated away from the simple carb "veg" foods, which leads us to the second fallacy about carbs.

Falacy II all "complex" carbs are created equal

Complex carb foods, we may hypothesize, are relegated from the simple carb "veggie" pile in diet discussions "oh i don't mean vegetables, i mean pasta and potatoes" because there is a belief that, because these starchy carbs (a) get absorbed quickly which means stored quickly, either in muscle or fat and that (b) they trigger a Great Big Insulin Response and that means insulin response stops being as effective and again, we come back to fat gain.

The thing is, not all complex carbs trigger a great big insulin response, while some things we wouldn't suspect of doing so, do. How fast blood glucose does rise after a food is eaten Glycemic Index (GI); how big an insulin response this food produces (the big concern) is scored in the Insulin index (II). Here's a site that sorta puts both side by each. And this is where there can be some surprises

To quote John Berardi from an article called Lean Eatin' (Part II):

interestingly, while the glycemic and insulin indices of many foods were similar, some foods caused unpredicted responses...foods like yogurt and milk had relatively low-glycemic indices, but very high insulin indices. White and brown rice, on the other hand, had high-glycemic indices, but low insulin indices. The point here is that if you want to effectively manage body composition, you should choose your carbohydrates based on both the glycemic and insulin indices.

So what we're looking for in carb sources, ideally, is not to cut them out, but to try to manage (a) how much of a limited required fuel source is available at a given time and (b) how big an insulin spike occurs when eating them.

It should start to be pretty clear from these points that veggies sound like a pretty great way to get carbs: they're low calorie, nutrient and micro nutrient rich, so the carbs there will come into the blood stream not in a rush but in a nicer flow, and will have other properties to help manage insulin spiking. All great, especially if you're trying to lose weight. Something that sprouted grain bagel with humus may just be too much for - but maybe not because of any insulin or glucose rush, but just because it's too high cal for you right now. But if you're a skinny bastard, yum yum. They can handle it. Which leads us to fallacy no. 3

Fallacy III: all eaters are created equal when it comes to carbs.

If you're a skinny bastard, and you know who you are, you can eat them complex carbs rich foods and smile and not gain weight. Why? your system happens to burn through this fuel source like it's not even there. Nothing's left to get stored. These buggers practically have to eat to make themselves sick to start gaining weight. Can you imagine? This changes later in life. So be patient: they'll get theirs.

That said, this fact doesn't mean that skinny bastards don't have to think about their nutrition like the rest of us: everyone still needs to eat a range of foods to ensure we get all the good stuff we need from a mix of protein, fats, carbs, minerals and vitamins.

For those of us who can't eat these foods without consequences, this doesn't mean these foods are verboten; just that if we care about our weight, we need to think a little more strategically about eating them. One of the big suggestions from Berardi's Precision Nutrition, and from Bernadot's work has been "nutrient timing" which in part refers to taking on types of food when we can best make use of what they have to offer us.

For folks trying to lose weight, Berardi suggests the only time you might want to take on higher glycemic/insulin index foods is post workout: at this time, especially our muscle's stores of sugars have been depleted and the body is yelling for energy sources to be available for replenishment. Post workout pasta time. Not pig out, but time to replenish. Makes us, according to Dave Barr, way more carb-fuel efficient.

And that brings us to another expression: carb tolerance.

You may not be a skinny bastard, but you might not be a total carbophobe, to coin a phrase, either. You may find that if you're trying to lose weight, say, having that bowl of oatmeal in the AM rather than after a workout, is just fine. For others, fat management is just easier if sticking to starchy carbs only after an intense workout. Indeed for some whose focus *is* fat loss, sticking with carb source just from nutrient rich, less calorie dense sources like veggies, is a good idea. It's what works for them.

Some folks talk about this as learning to eat for your body type: ecto, endo, meso morphic

Not gonna get into thinking about diet by body type right now, but just want to make the point that we need to learn about ourselves and how we individually react to different foods/fuel types under different conditions.

Y'all know i am a fan of precision nutrition: here's another reason why. It's a great way to get at what our base line metabolism is. This is why it talks about habits (here's a pdf overview for free of the whole program): it says take five 5 weeks to follow these habits to 90% compliance for that period - not ramp up to it in five weeks but practice it for five weeks. That's enough time to get a baseline of how an individual practices food intake such that the tweaking can begin - tweaking such as really understanding your own kinds of carb tolerance.

What's interesting is that carb tolerance (insulin sensitivity) can be adjusted based on practice: work out more, do resistance training, cardio and intervals, and you will reshape your insulin sensitivity and your carb sensitivity. That's what Barr describes, and that's what the research shows. So if just looking at a bagel makes you balloon right now, getting right with nutrition, getting an understanding of how we react with different foods, and working out regularly, can make us a much meaner carb burning machine.

Carbs are good. Not eating them will not make us lose weight. Which takes us to the Final Fallacy, no. 4

Carb Fallacy IV: eliminating carbs = losing fat.

If we cut out all carbs from our diet, and do nothing else, we will possibly lose weight. Why? Two reasons:

1. we may at that point simply be in what's known as a caloric deficit.
2. we will lose water (not fat)

In the first case, if we eat fewer calories than we need to maintain our current weight, we'll start to lose weight. Simple thermodynamics on that one. Now, if cutting out carbs, we're still eating sufficiently over what we need for maintenance that even that reduction does not put us into caloric deficit, then weight loss won't happen.

In the second case, carbs are necessary for our skeletal muscle in that they help hold sufficient water in the muscle for the muscle to function. Really - hydrated muscles are critical to be able to perform effectively. we'll come back to this another time. So, take carbs out of the diet, and water leaves the muscle tissue, weight loss, not fat loss occurs. This is why some athletes to "make weight" will take a diuretic for a period before a weigh in.

The only way to lose fat is to burn it for fuel. The only way to get more fat used as fuel is to induce a caloric deficit. That is, either take in less food - eat below maintenance - or increase energy demand by doing some kind of fuel demanding activity like exercise, or do some combination of both calorie reduction and exercise.

Am i saying that a diet of twinkies, if a person ate under their caloric maintenance level would result in weight loss?
YES.
You might end up sick like a dog from not getting sufficient vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, but you'd lose weight.

Indeed a recent survey of weight loss approaches - low fat vs low carb - showed that the differences in any losses of fat between the two approaches was in the noise level, not significant. Bottom line: want to lose weight? eat less than you need for your energy demands. What that "less" is we've looked at elsewhere. Here's the conclusion from that survey:

We conclude that a calorie is a calorie. From a purely thermodynamic point of view, this is clear because the human body or, indeed, any living organism cannot create or destroy energy but can only convert energy from one form to another. In comparing energy balance between dietary treatments, however, it must be remembered that the units of dietary energy are metabolizable energy and not gross energy. This is perhaps unfortunate because metabolizable energy is much more difficult to determine than is gross energy, because the Atwater factors used in calculating metabolizable energy are not exact. As such, our food tables are not perfect, and small errors are associated with their use.

In addition, we concede that the substitution of one macronutrient for another has been shown in some studies to have a statistically significant effect on the expenditure half of the energy balance equation. This has been observed most often for high-protein diets. Evidence indicates, however, that the difference in energy expenditure is small and can potentially account for less than one-third of the differences in weight loss that have been reported between high-protein or low-carbohydrate diets and high-carbohydrate or low-fat diets. As such, a calorie is a calorie. Further research is needed to identify the mechanisms that result in greater weight loss with one diet than with another.

So that's the nifty bit: what *seems* to make some weight loss approaches work better, longer than others, is an interesting question - after all, we're complex organisms, as our different tolerances for carbs show, eh? But bottom line, we lose FAT because we're burning it in caloric deficit, not because one nutrient or the other is more present.

This is not to say that there aren't nutritional reasons to moderate the balance AND TIMING of different kinds of nutrients, but i like PN's habits: eat some protein source and some greens source at every feeding; make sure to get good fats in there a few times a day, too; avoid starchy carbs until after a work out. Michael Pollan in In Defence of Food puts it similarly: "eat food, not too much mostly plants."

BOTTOM LINE: Eat real, whole food; lose weight.

The bottom line that seems to be shown time and time again is that the stuff that induces "western diseases" of obesity, typeII diabetes, various dental diseases, and so on, is highly correlated not with eating real, whole food, but with the amount and kind of crap that is an accepted part of a normal diet: that is refined, processed foods.

IF you're not sure what refined and processed foods are, do a color check. If it's not part of a cooked animal and it's white it's refined. Likewise if it's a completely unnatural colour, like those found in fruit loops, it's refined. If it's really yellow, it's likely dyed and refined.

Adulterated foods are also problematic: higher cals, less value, and that includes things that *look* like real foods - factory farmed meat is a completely different animal in terms of health profile AND TASTE from free range/mixed grains for instance.

Leaving that aside because we're talking predominantly carb sources rather than protein, the point is CARBS of any stripe - simple or complex - are not bad. The best place to get them is from whole foods, whole grains. The best time to eat these different kinds will be a matter of carb tolerance relative to what a good nutrient mix is for you - do you need more protein; do you need more fat?

The interesting thing is that while this sounds complicated, after practicing for awhile, the heuristics get easier: is there lots of natural color on the plate at each eating? Is there an absence of refined/processed foods? Yes and Yes? chances are you're in the right space for healthy eating. If you want to lose weight, try eating a little less at each meal, and/or exercise a little more, too, for two weeks and see what happens. Adjust as needed.

So, don't vilify the poor carbohydrate molecule in your life - we haven't even talked about how essential it is if you're working out - keep it in there. Love your simple and complex carbs. Just think about where in a day they'll work for you. And work for you, they really, truly will.