To be confused about carb heavy diet?

[GreenestValley]

Just reading a thread on here about weight loss and diet. Many posters commenting that the Op in that thread has a very carb heavy diet.

I feel quite confused about it as I always thought carbs were an important part of a balanced diet and a source of energy. Obviously not too much white bread, white pasta etc, but from a personal perspective I have to have a fairly carb based diet or else I get hungry and end up snacking. And I’ve always had a normal weight.
I was also under the impression that the “low carb” diets of the early 2000s eg Atkins etc that were very popular, were kind of debunked now.
Am I missing something? Do carbs affect some people differently to others? Would welcome a bit of de mystifying here if anyone has expertise just for my own understanding!

chic I think this is the problem, for the majority of people low carb simply means ditching large portions of rice, pasta, potatoes, bread with every meal and upping vegetables (and variety) in the diet.

Yes, I understand ditching large amounts of white or refined carbs, good idea, no problem with that. But there's Low Carb and then there's Low Carb High Fat where you go into ketosis (now known as Keto, previously Atkins was a proponent) which is a far more extreme woe. And I think often people get these definitions muddled up.

demanding the eating of a lot of animal protein, avocadoes and unseasonal salad veg.

What low carb diet demands that you eat compulsory avocados? And I can't see any reason why unseasonal salad would be a requirement. As far as I'm aware you also don't have to eat meat. There are vegetarian low carbers - I think they eat full fat dairy and eggs and maybe some nuts.

chic i agree to a point. However anyone who is overweight is going to need to be in ketosis for at least some of the time in order to lose weight, it's how the body turns fat into energy.

I eat high fat because in a low carb diet that's how I get the calories I need and it is filling. Fat sources are also good sources of many nutrients. I find it sad that fat is blamed for the damage done by sugar!

I think there's a difference between keto zealots who religiously count carbs and won't ever eat a carrot because of the carbs, and those who eat healthily including plenty of good fats. I think the former are a minority.

I can't see the attraction of the keto diet. For me low carb is about being healthy, maintaining a healthy weight, and feeling well in myself without having to count anything or restrict myself. Keto would feel too much like 'a diet'!

What's wrong with being in ketosis? If you have a lot of excess weight to lose, doesn't it just mean your body is burning fat instead of excess sugar?

In RL there are women who eat toast, sandwiches, potatoes, pasta and rice and yet remain fit and healthy.

Yet on MN, there are women who do large amounts of exercise (running for hours a day, numerous HIIT classes etc and yet somehow survive on lean protein and veg/salad along with fasting and a daily calorie intake that wouldn't look out of place in a concentration camp.

Surely one of the points of copious amounts of exercise is the ability to burn off calories and therefore not have to restrict your diet?

Or am I missing something?

@THisbackwithavengeance

In RL there are women who eat toast, sandwiches, potatoes, pasta and rice and yet remain fit and healthy.

Yet on MN, there are women who do large amounts of exercise (running for hours a day, numerous HIIT classes etc and yet somehow survive on lean protein and veg/salad along with fasting and a daily calorie intake that wouldn't look out of place in a concentration camp.

Surely one of the points of copious amounts of exercise is the ability to burn off calories and therefore not have to restrict your diet?

Or am I missing something?

This. And obsessed with everything being 'filling'. Anything not keto won't 'fill you up'. And yy, fasting more than monks during Lent but still running marathons.

I think Carbs = evil is an easy way to stop Joe Blocks from eating highly processed "white" carbs and sugar, which are rightly not good for our figure or health.
Carbs like the humble potato, whole grain pasta and bread along with all the fruit and vegetables are actually good for you. Cutting these things from our diets, is a big fat lie of : yes I can loose weight and still eat as much as I want!!
The root causes of obesity are complex, a low carb diet just masks the real issues...

This. And obsessed with everything being 'filling'. Anything not keto won't 'fill you up'. And yy, fasting more than monks during Lent but still running marathons.

Without the hyperbole, yes, satiety is an important feature of low carb diets. Too many carbs especially sugars and simple carbs actually can make people a lot more hungry. It's the first thing I noticed 20 years ago when I successfully dieted using a low carb diet. I just wasn't particularly hungry. This is compared to previously being frequently ravenous.

Regarding the marathon training and fasting / low carbing. A fair few ultra runners are finding MAF (maximum aerobic function) training helps them become 'fat adapted' which means their body happily burns fat for fuel. So the need for constant food consumption (not ideal whilst running long distances) is not such an issue. They just need enough fat reserves to sustain them.

Again, I can't see what's wrong with with eating food that is filling - the point of being on a diet is to lose weight. If there's a way of doing that which doesn't leave a person hungry (and therefore more likely to stop dieting) then that's a good thing.
And if you can break the cravings for bread and other processed/sugary food, why wouldn't you?

@MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously

Again, I can't see what's wrong with with eating food that is filling - the point of being on a diet is to lose weight. If there's a way of doing that which doesn't leave a person hungry (and therefore more likely to stop dieting) then that's a good thing. And if you can break the cravings for bread and other processed/sugary food, why wouldn't you?

Maybe because you enjoy all types of food in moderation and you don't see any food as bad or if you fancy it as a craving that must be broken. You see eating as a pleasure not just to 'fill you up' and diets as something that aren't good for the body. Demonising food is a shit way to live, IMO.

Maybe because you enjoy all types of food in moderation and you don't see any food as bad or if you fancy it as a craving that must be broken. You see eating as a pleasure not just to 'fill you up' and diets as something that aren't good for the body. Demonising food is a shit way to live, IMO.

The enjoying in moderation is a moot point with people who have uncontrollable cravings for sugar and simple carbs. I felt liberated once I got over this through a low carb diet. So then I could savour and enjoy food properly (in more moderation) without being hindered by compulsion and worrying about too much weight gain.

@Batshitbeautycosmeticsltd maybe some people can’t eat everything in moderation. Many people can’t drink in moderation. Nor can they shop
In moderation, smoke in moderation, take co-codamol in moderation etc.

For those people advising them to eat a small portion of carbs and then stop is not going to work. If it works for you - marvellous! But it never worked for me, nor does it work for many people who are currently overweight and wondering why they’re always hungry and can’t atop eating.

[quote frumpety]@SpuriouserAndSpuriouser

Obviously his methods may be effective for some, but I don’t think that that sort of restrictive diet is healthy or sustainable in the long term, physically or mentally.

But what is absolutely restricted on the diets he proposes other than simple processed carbs ? Sure the calorie count is restricted on some but only for a short period or intermittently.[/quote]
...
Mosely himself has not practiced medicine,
but he created his Intermittent Fasting diets by using the years of peer-reviewed research by scientists active in the fields of anti-aging and combatting diabetes

e.g. His Fast800 / BSD is based on the research and human trials by Prof Taylor of Newcastle Uni, who won the Diabetes UK Banting prize for his work,
which the NHS is now using as an intervention to reverse T2
Taylor wrote the foreward for Mosely's BSD book

Intermittent fasting diets, not just Mosely's, have a huge amount of research supporting it

@THisbackwithavengeance

In RL there are women who eat toast, sandwiches, potatoes, pasta and rice and yet remain fit and healthy.

Yet on MN, there are women who do large amounts of exercise (running for hours a day, numerous HIIT classes etc and yet somehow survive on lean protein and veg/salad along with fasting and a daily calorie intake that wouldn't look out of place in a concentration camp.

Surely one of the points of copious amounts of exercise is the ability to burn off calories and therefore not have to restrict your diet?

Or am I missing something?

In RL there are women who eat toast, sandwiches, potatoes, pasta and rice and remain fit and healthy until they reach middle age.

There is an acceptance that people just put on weight as soon as they hit 45. In reality, this is actually insulin resistance that has built up over a long period of time by eating high carbohydrate diets full of such foods. Eating high carb will be fine while you are young, but the drip drip effect of always having high blood sugar levels eventually catches up with most, if not all, people.

Re the exercise thing, your comment about concentration camps is so strange. Protein can be converted to glucose in the body - 100 g of protein can produce ~50 g of glucose. You don't necessarily need carbohydrate for exercise. I actually do often eat some before a long hilly bike ride because it does give you extra (fast) power but I don't need it, I would still get up the hills.

Exercise doesn't burn off calories how it is perceived by your statement, it is not a calories in: calories out simple equation. The body regulates how much energy it will put out with hormones. So when you 'burn a lot of energy' by exercising, it may reserve some other energy it has by, for example, putting less energy into growth, hair, skin, keeping warm. This obviously reduces the amount of energy it 'lets out', scuppering the simple equation that people expect when exercising. Also why so many people don't lose weight by exercising.

And obsessed with everything being 'filling'

Filling is important, because it makes you so much less likely to reach for the biscuit tin. I don't run marathons or eat concentration camp portions. I'm still a bit overweight. And I failed to stick to real low carb, back when I tried it, because it was annoying and restrictive. But I do know beyond the shadow of a doubt that eating mostly protein, veg and good fats curbs my appetite and massively reduces my insatiable desire for sweet things.

I know full well that things like wholemeal bread and pasta are not inherently bad for me and do not inherently make me fat. But avoiding them or at least eating them infrequently and in much smaller quantities, makes me better at regulating my eating habits. Eating lower carb makes me feel like my body/appetite is 'in neutral' for most of the time between meals, rather than always either full or craving a snack/thinking about the next meal.

Healthy low carb diets include veg, nuts, seeds which provide plenty of fibre

Mosely's Mediteranean low carb also includes beans, peas & lentils, which have been proven to help stabilise blood sugar

Cutting tight back on processed junk and keeping to NHS alcohol limits is enough for some people,
especially younger ones, to maintain a healthy weight

However, about ⅓ of overweight people have insulin resistance / preT2 / T2,
so their bodies cannot handle large amounts of even "healthy" minimally processed starches

It’s about common sense, surely?

I think it’s a pretty uncontentious fact that we are all getting fat (most of us anyway) because of the huge amounts of sugar and processed carbs that we are eating - a diet which is nothing like the diet humans had at any other point in the history of humankind. People talk about the junk they might have eaten growing up in the 1970s - but it was still not in such huge quantities as today.

I am constantly amazed how much people will defend eating highly processed carbohydrate based food (junk)

Continual snacking between meals is another cause of rising obesity
and was not a custom when I was growing up in the 1960s - when almost noone under middle age was overweight, let alone kids

Even most "healthy" snacks - like fruit or dipping veg - keep insulin raised and hence reduce the time in which your body can burn fat.
And the most common / tempting snacks are junky carbs

Also, human studies show that most people consume more calories in a 24-hour period if they snack,
because the reduction in meal size (if any) is usually less than the calories contained in all the snacks.

Snacks are ok for those who need to gain weight, e.g. underweight DC - but this applies to only a few in the West

Each 24 hour day with snacks becomes insulin-dominant (graph 2) instead of fasting-dominant (graph 1), see graphs from Dr Jason Fung:

@Sinuhe

I think Carbs = evil is an easy way to stop Joe Blocks from eating highly processed "white" carbs and sugar, which are rightly not good for our figure or health. Carbs like the humble potato, whole grain pasta and bread along with all the fruit and vegetables are actually good for you. Cutting these things from our diets, is a big fat lie of : yes I can loose weight and still eat as much as I want!! The root causes of obesity are complex, a low carb diet just masks the real issues...

Evidence for that claim?

@BigChocFrenzy

Continual snacking between meals is another cause of rising obesity and was not a custom when I was growing up in the 1960s - when almost noone under middle age was overweight, let alone kids

Even most "healthy" snacks - like fruit or dipping veg - keep insulin raised and hence reduce the time in which your body can burn fat.
And the most common / tempting snacks are junky carbs

Also, human studies show that most people consume more calories in a 24-hour period if they snack,
because the reduction in meal size (if any) is usually less than the calories contained in all the snacks.

Snacks are ok for those who need to gain weight, e.g. underweight DC - but this applies to only a few in the West

Each 24 hour day with snacks becomes insulin-dominant (graph 2) instead of fasting-dominant (graph 1), see graphs from Dr Jason Fung:

The snacking culture in modern times is just so dreadful for health.

People seem to think that getting your body into a state of ketosis might cause you to die.

These graphs are so powerful because it starts to support the concept that you have to allow your blood sugars to drop - and whether you do that by fasting or low carb, it doesn't really matter, but consitently raised blood sugars like on the second graph will pretty much always lead to bad health outcomes (obesity, T2, hypertension etc - all the metabolic diseases)

Cutting these things from our diets, is a big fat lie of : yes I can loose weight and still eat as much as I want!!
The root causes of obesity are complex, a low carb diet just masks the real issues...

That makes no sense. How does people choosing to eat low carb 'mask' anything? How can cutting something from your diet be 'a lie'? And nobody is denying the root causes of obesity are complex.

Our brain and body runs on glucose. A lot of people are trying to train their bodies to run on fats but it's a long process and can cause kidney damage, horrendous breath and mental breakdown.
Any diet that restricts a healthy food group such as complex carbs which are full of minerals and vitamins is an eating disorder.
Faddy diets do my head in.
Just eat clean and healthy majority of time with a few naughty days and get up off your arse and enjoy life 🙄.