THE CARB MYTH: DO CARBS MAKE YOU FAT?

THE CARB MYTH: Eating Low Carb or No Carb Will Make You Thin 

Lately, we’ve heard a lot about carbs. They’ve had a bad rap, and we’ve been told to avoid them at all costs.

Here’s a common carb cutting scenario.

Take Kevin - he’s a 36 year old real estate agent. He’s been researching different diets, and thought he had reached his dietary dream when he heard he could feast on eggs and sausage, ribs, and a big T-bone steak, put heavy cream in his coffee, and not feel guilty. He could eat as much as he wanted and lose weight.

Kevin might lose 20lbs...initially.

But he’ll feel tired. And he’ll probably get bored with his bacon and cream diet.

Not only that, he’ll increase his risk of developing cancer, heart disease, kidney failure, and osteoporosis.

If he modifies what he’s eating to include some whole foods, change his meats to higher quality varieties (range, grass-fed and organic meats), add in plenty of fiber, vitamins, and minerals (which can quickly become deficient in a person who is on an all animal protein/fat diet), and slow absorbing low-glycemic-load carbohydrates, his energy would increase. His hemorrhoids and constipation would go away, he’d lose his bad breath, and he’d lose weight more effectively.  

The point I’m making is that carbohydrates are important.

What Is a Carbohydrate? 

Before going further, let’s define carbs.  

Carbohydrates are one of three major energy-producing substances that we consume. The other two are fat and protein. You probably have some idea of what fat and protein are. 

Fat is . . . well, fat. 

Protein is found in both animals and plants. Amino acids are the basic building blocks of life and they come from protein. 

The major sources in our current diets are meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, fish, beans, seeds, and nuts. 

Carbohydrates are essentially everything else. It is estimated that 70 to 80 percent of all the calories consumed by human beings the world over are carbs. Americans currently get only about 50 percent of their caloric intake in the form of carbohydrates (study). 

When most Americans think of carbs, they of processed foods, like the above mentioned bread, pasts, rice and sugar. But the world of carbs is actually much larger. 

Keep in mind that vegetables are carbohydrates as well. So are fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds. Each of these is a critical component to the human diet and has been for a long time.

Why carbohydrates are the most important foods in your diet 

The thing is, we can’t lump all carbs into a single category. Not all carbs are created equal.  

Just like with fats, there are different types of carbs, which all interact differently with your genes, resulting in very different effects on your metabolism. 

I’ll go as far as saying carbohydrates are the single most important food in your diet for long term health.

How can I make this claim? 

Without carbohydrates, you’d die.

Carbohydrates, in their natural form, contain most of the essential nutrients and specialized chemicals that keep you healthy and fire up your metabolism. 

The problem is, most of the carbohydrates in modern culture are highly processed, and humans are not capable of metabolizing this stuff. Think bread, pasta, and sugar.  

Carbs that are processed and refined slow your metabolism down. Not only that, they also contribute to the major diseases associated with aging, including diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and cancer. 

How do carbs do this? Why are certain carbs so doggone important?

Because of phytonutrients. 

What are Phytonutrients??

Phytonutrients are healing plant chemicals found only in certain types of carbohydrates and are critical for good health. They help turn on genes that make you burn fat and age more slowly. 

They are the source of nature's most powerful antioxidants - by reducing oxidative stress, it helps reduce inflammation and mitochondrial damage. Each of these factors affects your metabolism. 

Do we get enough phytonutrients?  

The sad thing is, western diets have no phytonutrients. And from an evolutionary perspective, that’s bad. Phytonutrients are critical parts of our diet.  

The phytonutrients in our diet are required for controlling gene messages that affect both our health and our weight. This is one of the major reasons to eat a predominantly plant-based diet of whole foods. These phytonutrients turn the genes that control weight and metabolism on and off and help prevent every known chronic disease of modern civilization. 

More disease-fighting phytonutrients are being discovered in foods every day. For instance, here are some examples: isoflavones in soy foods, lignans in flaxseeds, catechins in green tea, polyphenols in cocoa, glucosinolates in broccoli, carnosol in rosemary, resveratrol in red wine. 

All of these compounds fight disease and obesity through a variety of mechanisms. 

Back in the day

Our ancestors foraged for wild food—wild berries, grasses, roots, and mushrooms. The greater variety and the deeper the color of the plant foods you eat, the higher the concentration of phytonutrients in your diet and the greater their power to prevent disease and promote weight loss. For example, fresh vegetables score fairly high on the phytonutrient index, while typical pastas and breads don't even make the list. This tells us that fresh vegetables are higher in healing phytonutrients than refined or processed carbs. 

Processed carbs and why they suck

When carbs are processed, many of their important phytonutrient properties are removed - which means you’re basically eating empty calories. They lack vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients contained in whole plant foods.

But there are other reasons why processed carbs are terrible.

The types of carbs you eat have a major impact on how quickly you metabolize food and how healthy you are, and only part of this is revealed by looking at the phytonutrient index. 

To get a full picture, let’s have a brief discussion on how you metabolize sugar. 

The insulin resistance cycle...aka metabolic cycle

Carbohydrates are a major source of energy in our diets. The surrounding foods will affect the carbs on our metabolism. If they are isolated, such as in a soda, they are very damaging to our metabolism. If they are found in good company, such as in beans, along with the fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients that are always found in whole, unprocessed foods, they have beneficial effects and help us lose weight.

Sugars found alone in the diet are terrible because they enter your bloodstream rapidly, starting a dangerous cascade of molecules that triggers hunger and weight gain. On the other hand, when they are found in good company, they enter your bloodstream more slowly and stabilize your metabolism.

I know what you’re thinking - but Alex, what about glycemic index (GI)?  

If you’ve spent time in the diet world, you’ll likely have heard about glycemic index, and how it measures the rate at which carbs are absorbed into your bloodstream.  

But the truth is, you can just forget about glycemic index!

Glycemic index and why it's misunderstood

The old way of thinking is that fast digesting carbs, with a low GI, will spike our insulin levels, causing us to gain fat.   

The problem is the concept of this index is outdated.  

The index should take into account how rich the carbohydrates are in phytonutrients. This new index is called the phytonutrient index (PI).

This new way of thinking about food has not yet been widely adopted, but is much more realistic. Not only that, but it is the easiest way to judge the quality of food. 

When you want to eat a certain food, ask yourself if it is a food your ancestors might have eaten. If so, dig in. If not, put it down. 

Just think of plants in their unadulterated state—fresh, whole, and unprocessed—vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, seeds, whole grains, and think color and variety. Almost all refined oils, refined sugars, refined grains, potato products, hard liquors, and animal products—are highly refined.

While we’re on the topic of insulin spikes, let's talk about how it impacts our ability to lose weight.  

Insulin’s role and how it impacts weight loss

Let's discuss what happens when you eat any type of sugar from carbohydrates. When you eat sugar of any kind, your pancreas produces a master metabolism hormone called insulin. Insulin's job is to help sugar move into your cells. Once sugar is in the cells, it can be converted to energy by your mitochondria (the energy-burning factories in your cells). So insulin is designed to help you use the sugar you eat, or, if you eat more than you need, store it for later use. 

At its best, the interaction between your insulin level and the sugar in your blood is a finely tuned machine. You eat some sugar, and your body produces just enough insulin to metabolize it. Later you eat a little more sugar, and the same thing happens again. It is a smooth, harmonious cycle that the healthy body carries out every day without your slightest awareness. 

However, problems can occur when there is too much sugar in your diet. When you regularly eat a lot of sugar, especially sugars that are quickly absorbed, the insulin levels in your blood become elevated. Over time, you can become resistant to the effects of insulin and thus need more and more of it to do the same job. This insulin resistance has some very serious health implications as well as a direct impact on your appetite. 

Insulin resistance can be thought of as a drug addiction. When you are addicted to a drug, you develop a tolerance to it and hence need more and more to get high. 

When you consistently have a high level of insulin in your blood, you develop a tolerance, As a result, your body's tissues stop responding normally to the hormone. Hence your pancreas produces more of it, elevating your insulin levels even more in your body's attempt to overcome this resistance. 

The problem is, this becomes a vicious cycle very quickly. 

When you have more insulin in your blood than you do sugar, your body signals you to eat some sugar to balance things out. But every time you eat the sugar you cause your insulin levels to increase even more, causing you to want more sugar, and on and on the cycle continues.

What does this have to do with weight loss?

This condition directly impacts your ability to lose weight. All the excess sugar is stored as fat, which slows down your metabolism. Or even worse, you’re increasing your risk for heart disease, dementia, and cancer. This is a condition known as prediabetes (aka metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance).

This is why it’s critical to eat the right types of carbohydrates! What you eat has a direct impact on how quickly and to what degree you develop insulin resistance. Different types of carbs turn into sugar at different rates in your body. When your body is flooded with sugar, your insulin levels spike. This is a bad thing. It drives you down the road to insulin resistance much more quickly. 

The solution?

Remember, how we mentioned that certain types of carbs burn more slowly. It takes them longer to turn into sugar in your body? Well this is what we want, because it keeps your insulin levels more consistent over time. This is a much healthier way to eat, and it keeps your metabolism running optimally. 

So which carbs should I eat, and which ones should I stay away from? 

The answer is not entirely straight forward. We can’t look at the carb dish by itself. The key to look at the entire meal. When we do this, we have what’s called the Glycemic Load.

A new method to understanding carbs: THE GLYCEMIC LOAD

As we discussed above, the glycemic index is the outdated way of evaluating carbs and how it impacts weight gain.  

The latest research indicates that we should really be looking at the glycemic load (GL). Looking at the glycemic load (GL) allows us to evaluate the meal composition, and carbohydrates in a way that is practical for weight loss.  

What is the glycemic load?

The glycemic load measures the real response of your blood sugar (and hence your insulin level) to an entire meal. The glycemic load is the effect a total meal has on your blood sugar and is not only related to the original form of the carbohydrate. In fact, if you put three tablespoons of psyllium (Metamucil) into a cola, you could change it from a high-GL to a low-GL drink! 

The reason is because everything you eat in that meal (protein, fat, and fiber) affects how quickly or slowly you absorb the sugars in food. The glycemic load is the best measure of this. It takes into account all the factors, including the effect that mixing carbohydrates, fats, protein, and fiber has on your metabolism. 

Eating meals that have a high glycemic load means that the combination of foods that you eat will cause all the carbohydrates in the meal to be absorbed very quickly and raise your blood sugar just as quickly. On the other hand, a low-glycemic-load meal contains a combination of foods that either don't have many carbs to begin with or whose carbs are absorbed slowly and don't lead to the rapidly rising and high blood sugar levels that promote obesity and aging. 

Let’s look at some examples

Consider your standard pasta dinner: spaghetti with tomato sauce, garlic bread, and an iceberg lettuce side salad. 

As amazing as this meal may sound, it’s terrible for you if you want to lose weight or stay healthy. This meal is heavy in carbs that turn into sugar in your body immediately. Eating white bread along with pasta is like adding a tablespoon of sugar to a Coca cola. The proportion of protein and fat is miniscule, which means there is nothing in this meal that is going to slow the rate at which these carbs turn into sugar.

Now let's consider another meal that is equally high in carbohydrates but has a low glycemic load: chili beans with a side of fresh steamed vegetables drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Beans of any kind are actually very high in carbs but have a very low glycemic load because of all the fiber. Add to this a side of fresh vegetables, and you have a meal that has more carbs than you might expect. However, this meal has a low glycemic load because the beans contain a tremendous amount of fiber, which slows down the rate at which carbohydrates are absorbed. If you eat this meal, you are still consuming a high carbohydrate load, but these carbs burn long and slow inside your body, allowing it to healthily generate insulin and digest these sugars at a slower rate and without triggering the metabolic signals that promote hunger and weight gain. 

The weight gain trap

When it comes to food, we don't always make the best choices. The issue is, when we get into the cycle of eating high-GL meals, our appetite spins out of control. That’s why in the US obesity, heart disease, dementia, diabetes and cancer are such major issues.

The most important nutrition rules to follow: low GL and high PI 

The foundations of the nutritional principles and the food I recommend are two simple ideas that can guide all your food choices. These are the glycemic load (GL) and the phytonutrient index (PI). 

Eat foods with a low GL and a high PI, and you will ensure a healthy metabolism and optimal health. 

What a high-glycemic-load Diet has been slowly killing Americans 

Our Obesity rate has tripled since 1960. Interestingly, this date corresponds directly to two major dietary changes in our culture. This was right about the time the concept of a low fat diet being good started being promoted by the government, food corporations, and the pharmaceutical industry. As unfounded as that shift was, it had an enormous impact on the health of the American people. 

For the first time since the industrial revolution, the life expectancy of the average American is declining despite all our medical and public health advances. This is a very scary thought and directly related to the increasing rates of obesity. Obesity will take nine years off the life of the average person.  

When the amount of fat in our diet was reduced so dramatically, what do you think it was replaced with? 

If you guessed high-glycemic-load carbs, you are right! This was the second major shift in the American diet that happened around this time. The removal of fat meant that we had to fill that slot in our diets with something. That something was highly processed carbohydrates that are cheap to produce and of course very profitable. 

This whole issue was reinforced and our intake of these bad carbs soared in the 1990s, when the U.S. government pushed the food pyramid out to the people, which recommended that high-glycemic-load carbs in the form of bread, rice, and cereal should be the single biggest component of your diet. 

The result? 

Today two thirds of our population is overweight and obesity will soon overtake smoking as the single greatest cause of death in the country. 

Yep. Not good.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the famous Atkins diet. Dr. Atkins was all about low carb dieting.  

But did he have it right? 

Was Dr. Atkins Right? 

Was Dr. Atkins’ low-carb, high-fat diet the right approach? 

Unfortunately, that is the wrong question. It all depends on the type of fat you eat and the type of carbohydrates you eat. If you eat bacon, cream, and steak, you will not get the same weight loss benefits as you would if you ate other, healthier fats, such as olive oil, nuts, and fish. And you may create a whole new set of problems, including an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stress on your blood vessels, bones, and kidneys, not to mention constipation, bad breath, and hemorrhoids. 

If you eat high-glycemic-load foods and meals made up of brownies, bagels, and soda, your metabolism will be quite different than if you eat whole, unrefined carbohydrates such as vegetables, beans, nuts, seeds, fruit and whole grains.  

So Dr. Atkins wasn't quite right. But his approach was good - he tried to simplify how to eat a good diet.  

And there is one simple rule that will help you effortlessly eat food that has a low glycemic load and is high in phytonutrients—the perfect prescription for a healthy metabolism, for sustained weight loss. 

The importance of a whole-food diet: the key to understanding carbs

You don't have to memorize what good foods are. All you have to do is remember this simple rule: carbs should come from whole, unprocessed plant foods.

Whole foods come in various forms —high fat, low-fat, high- carb, low-carb, high-glycemic index, low-glycemic index, complex carbs—and they are all good.  

The key is to eat whole, real, unprocessed food, as close to its natural state as possible. If you've been eating mountains of highly processed foods such as candies and crackers and decide to make a switch to whole, real unprocessed foods such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, olive oil, organic, range, or grass-fed animal products (poultry, lamb, beef, pork, eggs), and wild, smaller fish such as salmon, starting right now, you will lose weight. 

These foods contain an abundance of obesity-fighting chemicals, vitamins, and minerals that will accelerate your metabolism and plenty of fiber that will slow the absorption of sugar into your bloodstream. 

This brings us to fiber. Is fiber needed?

The impact of fiber 

One critical key to the glycemic load is fiber. Fiber slows the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream? 

Let's examine it further.

The impact of fiber and the secret of the glycemic load 

As we have been discussing, the whole issue of whether a low-fat or low-carb diet is better or whether you should eat Atkins, Ornish, the Zone, or South Beach misses the point entirely. The secret factor behind the glycemic load that hardly anyone talks about is fiber. 

Some studies have shown that low-carb diets result in more weight loss than low-fat diets, while some studies show exactly the opposite. 

How can that be? 

It’s because of fiber.  

Fiber is a powerful substance that has the ability to help you lose weight, lower your blood sugar/cholesterol, reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease/diabetes and reduce inflammation.  

Fiber is like a sponge that soaks up fat and sugar in your gut and both slows and prevents some of their absorption.  

Think about the difference between eating an apple and drinking apple juice. They contain the same basic nutrients, but the apple, in its whole, high-fiber form, requires more breakdown time and metabolic effort. That means the whole apple has a lower glycemic load than the apple juice. A high-fiber diet lowers the glycemic load of any meal by slowing the rate at which the sugars you are eating are digesting, improving your metabolism.  

Fiber is one of the main factors that influence the glycemic load of a meal and how this will impact your waistline.

Remember when we discussed beans versus pasta? The reason the beans have a lower glycemic load is that they are packed with fiber. It takes your body much longer to digest beans full of fiber than to digest pasta full of quickly digested sugars. 

Can You Eat a Low-Fat, High-Carb Diet and Still Lose Weight? 

One study recently discredited the low-carb craze. The study compared a low-fat diet to a low-carb diet. The low-fat diet group did better in every way. But the author never really played up what was hidden in the fine print: he gave the low-fat group a special supplemental fiber shake a few times a day, which provided them with more than 60 grams of fiber. The average American consumes 8 to 12 grams per day, and the American Heart Association recommends 25 grams a day. 

The weight loss in that study had nothing to do with the amount of fat or carbohydrates; it was the fiber that made all the difference. Why? Because it lowered the glycemic load of the diet. The fiber, not the low-fat diet, was the secret of that study. In another study, Dr. Ludwig again showed that people who ate more fiber lost more weight and lowered their insulin and cholesterol levels and clotting factors, all of which promote heart disease (study). The fiber intake was more significant than the total fat intake. 

What does this all mean?  

As popular as the Atkins diet became, it’s decline over the last several years has signaled that most Americans have realized that we cannot live on meat alone. 

Despite that, it seems every major food producer has created a line of "low-carb" food, and I think that is still very popular in today’s culture.  

The good news is that you don't have to worry about fat and carbs anymore because ...

You can eat both a high-fat and a high-carbohydrate diet if you want, or any combination thereof, as long as it has both a low glycemic load and a high phytonutrient index. 

In fact, you can forget just about everything in this article, as long as you choose whole, unprocessed foods that are full of fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and healthy fats.  

If you choose to eat them instead of the highly processed, nutrient-depleted foods consumed by most Americans, I guarantee you will see results.

BOTTOM LINE 

Carbohydrates are the single most important food you can eat for long-term health. 

Low-carb diets are no more effective in causing weight loss than low-fat diets are. Most good carbs come from whole plant food. The key to eating good carbs is eating whole, unprocessed food. 

These plant foods are filled with important phytonutrients that can't be replaced by any other food. All the terminology related to the low-carb craze is outdated. There is only one concept you need to focus on: the glycemic load of your meals. Always go with carbs that have a low glycemic load, and you will feel healthier and lose weight faster.