To not understand why my healthy (I think) way of eating isn't making me feel energetic and fabulous

[LindyFoo]

AIBU to consider this is a healthy daily diet (not looking to lose weight as already a healthy weight). I want to feel more energetic and fabulous :-). Don't eat meat or drink alcohol. In my 60s, fit and well, very minimal stress.

AM
Smoothie with banana, kale, milk, peanut butter, avacado, skimmed milk powder, greek yoghurt
SNACK
Sourdough bread with peanut butter
MIDDAY
2 egg with onion, peppers, cheese and a mixed salad with olive oil dressing
5PM
Salmon with salad or brown rice with prawns and lots of vegetables and spices

What is missing? Or not helping?

Yes. That is a an Internet page peddling product. It is not a source you should depend on to evidence a point. The actual quality evidence posted by mistake says the complete opposite. And not only supports my point that carbs are bad, but also that I am competent to draw that conclusion and weigh evidence, and critique a source. And if you think that page is a good source you definitely aren't. Which would be fine - we all have different skills - but you are saying you are and I'm not and am posting 'insane' things.

Ok, now do these claims:

"[carbs] have nothing you need"
"[carbs] are not a natural food group"
"all carbs are heavily processed"
"grains ... really do have limited nutritional value"

I am absolutely not a nutritionist, but given that all grains come from plants (ie they are natural) and that grains of one kind or another have been eaten for thousands of years by all civilisations, and that we are all the descendants of people who have survived and reproduced for years while sustaining themselves eating grains, I think it's safe to say that grains have some nutritional value.

It's not my turn. I'm not seeing anyone else backing up their points with good evidence and it's unreasonable to insult my argument and discredit me, when I am the only person who has backed up a claim with reputable evidence. It's fair to ask me to, and I will post in good faith. But I ask for investment from others in return.

Also, as you seem to have omitted it, I have added I mean starchy grains and not fruits and vegetables.

Well, you're the one who made the claims I listed above, and you're also now claiming that you are competent to weigh the evidence and draw those conclusions, so I'm asking you for your sources for the above specific claims, as you did to someone else earlier in the thread.

I would suggest that making such claims without being willing to back them up because it's not "[your] turn" is the opposite of posting in good faith, but then I'm a big believer in the maxim he who asserts must prove.

Benefits of grains:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22983848/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23645316/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23038174/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27724985/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26690472/

In our study, frequent consumption of foods with a high glycemic index showed a positive association with fT3 and fT4 levels and a negative association with TSH levels, whereas foods rich in saturated fatty acids and with a high protein concentration showed a negative association with fT3 and fT4 levels

so the high glycemic foods are negative on TSH and positive on T3 & T4, so as TSH is the cue that lets out T4 thats not good and T4 produces T3

but protein and saturated fatty acids are negatives on T3 and T4 which isn't great

That study says EXACTLY the opposite. That carbs have a negative effect on thyroid function and high protein and fat a positive effect. I don't want to be a dick, but it proves you flat out wrong. Am I missing something about your point?

its not the opposite though, its not straight forward, there are three measurements of the thyroid and different outcomes

TSH high GI foods have a negative affect
T4, T3 High GI foods have a positive affect

high protein and saturated fats have a negative affect on T4 and T3

😂🤣😅
Egg recommendations vary over the years. A GP once said no more than 3 a week. The BHF says no more than 1 a day.
Same with red wine, sometimes there are advisory notes saying dont drink it, sometimes its good for your heart!
Now chocolate eggs-as many as you like!!😁😅🤣

You have proved with your previous apparent inability to distinguish complex carbohydrate from Kit Kats, that you are no more competent to weigh evidence than any of the other people, including those with clearly disordered eating, on this thread.

If you google, there are plenty of studies. While the evidence is too scant to draw large scale conclusions, the overall opinion seems to be that a low carbohydrate diet, as part of an AIP protocol (which is meant to be a short term measure), may reduce inflammation. The downside is that studies also seem to show that while a low carb diet might be beneficial in terms of TSH, it can also reduce circulating T3. As anyone who is hypothyroid will tell you, T3 is much more relevant to who you feel than TSH, which is a broad brush marker. It also helps to differentiate between what might benefit people who have elevated levels of TPOAb and TgAb but are not yet hypothyroid and people who are already hypothyroid.

Both my consultant endocrinologist and my mother, who is a doctor, feel that on balance, the evidence is, if you are already hypothyroid, a keto or very low carbohydrate diet is not recommended. By that, they of course, do not mean that people should be wolfing down the foods that you seem to believe represent the whole of the carbohydrate food group.

The only thing with sugar in the smoothie is the banana and the fat from the avocado and peanut butter will slow down its absorption. So no, definitely not high in sugar. Moderate at most.

Peanut butter on sourdough is not high in sugar either and definitely healthier than a upf rice cracker.

I'm not getting what you mean here. I think your interpretation of the relationship between TSH and T3/T3 is confused. But it isn't clear from the way you've phrased it. Can you explain further?

I stopped taking any notice when you wrote: All carbs are heavily processed and refined, and have minimal nutritional value.

REALLY?

TSH is the thyroid stimulating hormone, it tells the thyroid to produce t4 and is regulated by the pituitary gland

why do you think my interpretation of the relationship between TSH and t4 is confused

I have not even mentioned Kit Kats. I did not say that all carbohydrates are equally bad and there is nothing to distinguish between them. And I AM more qualified to weigh evidence. I have a science degree. That's the whole point of a science degree! (I also know that doctors have minimal, if any nutritional training, and that health degrees contain comparatively little science, because I have one of those as well. So I DO have and idea what I'm talking about. Certainly compared to anyone without those qualifications. You can't your mother's qualifications give your claims validity and discount mine). I am not reliant on second hand qualifications. I studied for my own.

And I have done low carb diet and it did make me feel MUCH better. The OP's question was how to have more energy. I had WAY more energy on low carb. this is my ACTUAL FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE. It won't hurt her to try it for a month or two and see for herself, if she wants to. I do respect people asking for evidence, although they could be a lot more polite about it. (I'M not calling people 'insane') but I also have a life, and I don't have the time or the inclination to write a book from memory about something I studied in my free time five years ago. It's fair to be asked for sources, but not to expect someone to do all the work for you. I've already been told to google it, so I'm not feeling this is very reciprocal. I will come back over the next few days with more information, IF I feel people engage with good faith and time allows. Like I said, it's fair to ask. And I also acknowledge that I was pretty brief and flippant, and that's unhelpful.

Is she? I only see sourdough and brown rice, which is a complex carb with protein.

So, this a good place to start. I don't have evidence for any of this. I'm not asking for to be just taken on faith. It's contextual background knowledge, not really citeable evidence. I DO habitually check and critique sources and I don't just believe anything I read, and I DO have a good knowledge base. But this isn't my job and I don't record and remember everything.

Grains come from heavily modified and intensely bred plants that do not grow in nature. They grow in agricultural monocultures and require intense inputs of fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides. These days they are pretty heavily genetically modified as well. They've been bred from natural plants, yes. But they are in no way natural.

They have been eaten for thousands of years. But that isn't really a long time in terms of human bodies and evolution. We are fundamentally stoneage people. And we have stoneage digestion and metabolism. We are not evolved to eat grain. Nothing is, because grains only occur sporadically in small quantities in nature. There is nothing natural about agriculture and it's evolutionarily recent. Ironically, that is one reason humans are so successful - because we can store grain and survive bad years and it's very transportable when dry. And that's what modern food industries exploit to make money from you and I via carbs.

Most of the reason why carbs are so popular and profitable is that they are non-perishable, easily packaged and transported. They are very convenient calories and easy to flavour. You cannot discount profit as a factor here.

🙃🙃 kallo plain rice crackers quite easy to buy...non upf but ok then.

Because it's wasn't clear from the context if you were using positive meaning 'good' or meaning 'higher'. And those are not the same thing in the case of TSH, where it being raised is not good - as it's trying to push T3 up via T4 (which can't be used, and must be converted to T3). T3 isn't rising, though, or the feedback loop would maintain homeostatic balance and inhibit further TSH secretion. So TSH down and T3 up is the desirable outcome. They need to go in opposite directions. A mixed picture is the ideal, not the 'not straightforward' conclusion you drew. And not the conclusion the authors drew. I have only skimmed the full article though, so I may gave missed some of the nuance. (I'm a bit fed of thyroid at the moment. Mine is a pain in the neck and I'm tired! Hence why I asked for the citation)

Admittedly the plain kallo ones aren’t upf but a lot of rice cakes are. That said, they’re not exactly nutritious or filling. I would consider sourdough and peanut butter (assuming this is just peanuts) to be a much healthier and more filling snack.

So, firstly I have already clarified I meant grains, and not fruits and vegetables. (I've stopped thinking of them of carbs now). Even starchy ones like sweet potatoes. I realise that's mislead people. (I'm not even going to go there with sugar. I'd already assumed people know I don't mean Kit Kats!). I will also acknowledge that I stated the point flippantly, and that was unhelpful. It was intended to be brief and conversational.

I am talking about eating meat, vegetables (not potatoes) fats and dairy. I don't eat fruit myself. (Dairy is controversial, but I'm not giving it up and I don't care what the evidence says)

"[carbs] have nothing you need".....that you can't get from other food groups with less processing, in higher quantities, without a lot of carb.

They don't. Really. You NEED fat. You NEED protein. You NEED fibre. You NEED vitamins and minerals. If you cut them out you'll die. You don't NEED carbs themselves. You can derive energy from fat and protein. Yes, they have energy, and yes you CAN use the energy from them. But it's not necessary. You can derive what you need from protein, fat and fibre. And while they do have smaller quantities of other micro-nutrients, they are not the best sources of any of them. If you're eating vegetables instead of carbs, you're getting plenty of fibre. If you're eating red meat you're getting plenty of B vitamins and protein. And you're not getting carb as well. Which IS just joined up sugar. That your body breaks down into sugar. The carbs don't add anything else.

"[carbs] are not a natural food group" bearing in mind I am talking about grain. Not fruits and vegetables.

I've covered this quite a lot above. But they aren't, as we produce them now. If Stoneage man ate a mammoth, he got fat and protein in a pretty similar format to if we eat meat now. But you can't say the same about rice. Even if its brown. Let alone cornflakes. It didn't exist. You can't chew on an ear of wheat. Even if you cook it. But THAT didn't exist. It was just grass seed. That hairy stuff you see in grass fields. You'd spend a lifetime picking out the itty bitty grass seed, or chewing on hairy grass. And we aren't ruminants. We can't digest grass.

"all carbs are heavily processed"

Again, bearing in mind I'm talking about grain, not fruits and vegetables. And they are. They are all at least threshed, hulled, and milled. Even the brown stuff. Even Quinoa. And that's AFTER the agricultural point above. I've grown quinoa. I've actually processed it (it takes ages. Don't do it. It's a right pain) grains are very processed. Sure brown stuff is LESS processed. But its still not much like the stuff on the plant.

"grains ... really do have limited nutritional value"

The difference between complex carbs and simple ones is largely fibre, but not a lot. And yes fibre is a good thing in itself, but mostly to mitigate the bad carbyness. But if you don't have the bad carbyness you don't need to slow down glycemic load with fibre. Because you don't have the glycemic load. And they don't ADD anything to a diet that already contains enough fibre and vitamins from vegetables which don't have the carbs (in anything like the same quantities) and aren't processed (even a sweet potato or a squash. You can just bake them and eat them) and protein and fat from meat and dairy.

Carbs just don't do anything other foods don't do better, without the drawbacks.

A typical days food for me on low carb would have been

Breakfast: Two large coffees with full fat lactose free milk. I hate breakfast.

Brunch: 2 egg omelette with spinach and ricotta (11 ish)
Dinner: steak, mushrooms in butter, peas, onions in olive oil, steamed broccoli, courgettes, with garlic and herbs. (5ish)
snack - cheese and cashew nuts (10ish)
cocoa with full fat lactose free milk and no sugar.

I drank water and herbal tea. Occasionally had dark chocolate. I didn't eat any carb substitutes (except the lactose free milk). Sometimes I'd have soup for lunch as well, with cheese. or cooked veg with herb butter or oil ( I'm not really a salad fan)I was STUFFED.

That is 112g of protein. 84g of fat and 66g of carbs 15g fibre. I'm happy with that. It's not 'massive slabs of meat' just normal amounts. Plenty of veg. Fibre is fine for me. Yes, there is extra fat, but it's not swimming, and it's below my recommended cholesterol intake. And it's around 1600 calories - 200 more than my fitness pal reckons I need. It's actually really hard to overeat in terms of calories if you don't eat grains and sugar. You just can't put away enough food! Apparently this doesn't meet my iron (75%) or calcium (56%) RDAs. (There's two pints of milk in there! I don't know how accurate MFP is for micrinutrients though) Let's add these ESSENTIAL complex carbs and see if that fixes it....

A cup of brown rice adds 238 calories I don't need in the form of 46 grams of carbohydrate. 5g of protein I don't need. 1.98g of fat I don't need. 2g of fibre I don't need. no vitamin C, 2 percent of my calcium RDA, which isn't significant. 5 percent of my iron RDA, which isn't a game changer. Really why would I bother? It its just calories. And I had enough energy. I have never felt better. And DD didn't sleep through then.

I monitored my blood sugar. It was never low, because I have a functioning pancreas. (That is what it does. If you don't, you are diabetic). I wasn't tired. I didn't get carb flu. I had plenty of energy. I felt a damn sight better than I do now. My unmedicated thyroid wasn't noticeable (bloody is now!). I wasn't anemic. (am now). I lost weight (maybe a stone and a half) until I hit a healthy weight and then I didn't lose any more. Haven't gained it back. I don't have any bloods from the period (which is telling. Because I have bloods so often the surgery phlebotomist knows me by sight and has threatened to put a tap in!) But it actually was the last time I felt well. And that was new.

I know there's no clever citations. I mostly wanted to get the numbers down. I'll look some up tomorrow. If anyone wades through it all.

positive and negative is being used in the same context as in the article, you can’t swap positive for good as TSH needs to be balanced - it’s detrimental and can be dangerous to move in either direction to excess.

I didn’t draw a straightforward conclusion, it’s not my research. What I’m suggesting is that your original statement that the opposite is true is not the case

There is so much to unpack here, but the long and short of it is that you're still peddling potentially dangerous "advice" on the internet.

Firstly, nobody is misled about the grains point. You seem to think you are vastly more intelligent and informed than the rest of us, but please rest assured that everyone knows you are talking about grains and you're still way off.

"[carbs] have nothing you need".....that you can't get from other food groups...

Right. So your original statement was wrong? Will you edit it now, in case someone reads your incorrect diet "advice"?

You could also say this about many other foods. Mushrooms don't contain anything that you can't get from other food groups either. It's just a silly argument. Foods are building blocks to an overall diet.

Your whole shtick about whether something is natural or not is equally bizarre. Grains are plants. I don't know what your definition of natural is but the idea that something isn't natural if you have to husk it first is at best unusual and at worst ridiculous.

You can't chew on an ear of wheat.

So what? You can't chew on an egg with shell either, or a raw sweet potato, or a whole coconut, or a raw chicken breast. Again, silly argument. And it just shows how much kool aid is being drunk on the extreme fringes of the anti-UPF movement.

As for your personal anecdata - well, surely with your science degrees you can see that the experience of one person doesn't constitute robust evidence that can be repeated across a population, so again, you're completely out of order to start handing this out as "advice" on the internet.

Besides, I'll point out some of the ways in which your logic is questionable:

1. if My Fitness Pal says that your maintenance calories are 1400 but you were losing weight on 1600, then there's a flaw in the system somewhere;

2. if your maintenance calories are indeed 1400 then you are either shorter, slighter, or far more sedentary than most of the adult population, meaning that again, you shouldn't be trotting out your "advice" as though it would apply to everyone;

3. if you were so healthy and thriving on a low-carb diet, why are you speaking about it in the past tense?

It is just calories

Well no, as I stated upthread. But even so, calories aren't evil. They provide energy to do work, which most of us need.

You're coming across as a zealot.

The avocado is missing an o.
Does that help? 😋

The difference between complex carbs and simple ones is largely fibre, but not a lot. And yes fibre is a good thing in itself, but mostly to mitigate the bad carbyness.

Fibre, soluble and insoluble, is an essential part of a healthy diet for many reasons - including reducing cancer risk, impact on cholesterol levels, reduced risk of diverticulitis, increased beneficial gut bacterium, likely beneficial impact on heart disease, reducing inflammation, reducing diabetes risk etc. It's nonsense to suggest that's it's mostly to mitigate against the 'bad carbyness' whatever that might be.