Carbs or Fats?

Every fat-loss diet in the world hinges upon one basic principle – eating less than you are burning up each day. There are no miracle weight loss techniques that allow you to eat as much food as you normally do and still lose weight. Sorry, that magic does not exist. Can you eat the same junk foods you always have eaten and still lose weight? Sure, as long as you eat a whole lot less of it. Can you tweak the opposite end of the equation by ramping up how much you burn each day to promote weight loss? Sure you can. That is what the TV show The Biggest Loser did and it worked. But as soon as you stop the insane levels of exercise, your weight comes right back on again. What about the latest craze with semiglutide injections? Essentially they just make you less hungry, so you eat less. One way or another, you have to use up more energy than you are replenishing with food to force your body to burn energy stored as fat.

The two biggest diet movements of the last 60 years revolve around a single macronutrient restriction, specifically low-fat or low-carbohydrate diets. Now one particular confusion I would like to clear up right now is the attempt people in the nutrition community try to make comparing weight loss diets to health-promoting longevity diets. There have been a load of studies comparing various diet styles and proclaiming that Mediterranean or Nordic diets are the healthiest. The conclusion they try to push is that if you have unhealthy weight levels eating these healthy diets will fix it. They are using backward thinking. If you ate one of these healthy diets your entire life, you would be less likely to be overweight. This is probably true, but this in no way means that eating this way after you are obese will help you lose weight.

So let’s make one thing clear, a weight loss diet is not a healthy diet. It is an artificial protocol to force the body to burn stored fat. The final objective may be to improve health, but the diet to get there is likely not ideal for health. Once you have eliminated the excess fat storage, then you can focus on what works to improve your health best. This is important to understand because there are any number of diseases or health conditions that you may have that need to be addressed before you consider weight loss. If you have an active infection, cancer, an injury, kidney disease, or anything that needs energy to heal, this needs to be resolved before you try restricting your energy consumption to force the body to start burning its stored energy.

Also, understand that weight loss is hormonally controlled. The primary hormone involved is insulin. A perfect example of this is someone with type 1 diabetes, in which the body progressively is not able to produce insulin. These people can not put on weight for love or money. They can eat huge amounts of food and never gain a pound. Unfortunately, they gradually waste away and die. They literally starve to death even though they can eat tons of food. The insulin opens the door handles into the body’s cells that let the food into the cells. When there is no insulin, none of the food they eat can nourish their cells. This gives us a clear target for promoting weight loss. We need to lower our fasting insulin levels to the healthy range of 2 to 5 micro IU/dL. The average American is running 8 to 9 mIU/dL. An obese person may be 12 to 24 or even higher.

What controls our insulin levels? The simple answer is blood sugar – glucose. A moderate amount of insulin is released in response to amino acids from protein foods. But mostly it is our blood sugar that triggers the release of insulin from our pancreas. This is the biochemical rationale for low carbohydrate diets. Carbohydrates (including sugars) are what turn into blood sugar and raise our insulin levels. So if our insulin levels are too high, then the obvious answer to this is to eliminate carbohydrates. The first popular diet that promoted this was the Adkin’s diet in the 60s.

On the other hand, there is the obvious reality that if you are eating fats, your body will burn those fats and not the fat stored in your fat cells. Thus, a low-carb diet that is full of butter and bacon is not going to help you lose fat weight. A high-carb diet will cause you to carry 5 to 7 pounds of extra water because of how burning carbs produces a byproduct of excess water. So switching to a low-carb diet will produce a rapid loss of water weight initially. But to lose fat weight, you still have to eat less than you burn. That is the only thing that will prompt the body to dip into its stored fat energy. The desire to avoid fats in the diet results in a high-carb and low-fat diet protocol. If the carbs you are eating are slow carbs that do not stimulate a big surge in insulin, then this dieting protocol will also work for many people – not all, but many.

What are slow carbs? These are complex carbohydrates that have a lot of fiber and resistant starch in them. Such things as low-starch vegetables, legumes, some root vegetables, and some fruits fit into this category. These are the folks that diet by having a chicken breast on top of a big salad seasoned with a non-fat dressing. This works fine for many folks. What is conspicuously missing from this protocol is any sugar, bread, grains, starchy vegetables, and sweet fruits, as well as any type of fat. The goal is to have very little sugar entering the body at any one time to keep the insulin levels low.

In a head-to-head comparison between low-carb and low-fat diets, there is a slight edge to the low-carb diet simply because it eliminates any insulin triggers from the diet. But in reality, either diet will work if you follow it very strictly. The low-carbohydrate approach works only if you avoid all the excess fat. That means the anticipation of being able to eat all the cheese, bacon, butter, and meat fat you want is a lie if you want to lose weight. Your ketone test strips may be saying you are burning a ton of fat, but that will just be the fat you ate, not the fat you stored if you are eating all those things. Likewise, a low-fat carb diet will work if you avoid all the sugars, bread, pastries, pasta, candies, sweet fruits (like mangos, figs, dates, and pineapple), as well as high-carbohydrate foods like potatoes, rice, corn, wheat, oats, etc. Basically, if it tastes good then don’t eat it.

The one food macronutrient I have not mentioned is protein. Except for severe kidney disease cases, you never want to avoid protein. That choice will kill you. Your body is essentially made from protein and a little fat. The average person needs about a pound of protein food every day. I say that because most protein foods are only 25% protein. The rest is water and fat. You need about 4 ounces of pure protein (100 grams) on average every day. As you get older, that number goes up because you do not digest your food as well as you used to. This number is typically easily met on a low-carbohydrate diet, but it can be a challenge on a low-fat diet. For instance, if you are getting protein from beans, you would need about 7 cups a day. That would give you 280 grams of carbohydrate per day. Even though that may be a slow carb, the huge bulk of carbs will probably induce way too much insulin release. Low-fat meat or protein powders are the easy answer, but protein is always a challenge if you are following a vegetarian or vegan diet. It can be done, but it takes knowledge and effort.

A brief notice about micro nutrients when dieting. You need to pay attention to your need for vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, and fibers when dieting. How well you cover your bases in this area is a big measure of how healthy or unhealthy your weight loss journey will be. If you can get these needs met, you can approximate the benefits of a Mediterranean or Nordic diet. Additionally it is a good idea to regularly ramp up your metabolic rate with exercise to increase the amount of energy you use every day. Even simple fidgeting burns up energy. You can use exotic techniques to up your metabolism like cold exposure or common methods like drinking coffee and tea. Anything that increases the energy you burn will speed your progress along. However, exercise, like the micro nutrients, will increase your day to day health. Ultimately that is the bigger goal.

David

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Ellen

is always good to keep up connections with family.