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You're right, it's not complex at all. You have to reduce your caloric intake to lose weight. Most foods, with and without carbs, have calories. Many calorie-rich foods have little or no carbs at all. If you are replacing carbs with low-carb/high calorie, you will still not lose weight.
If you switch out that pizza with a bucket of low-carb fried chicken, you're not going to lose weight.
If you replace the cookies with low-carb deep-fried oatbran pancakes drizzled with a low-carb teaspoon of agave nectar, you're not going to lose weight.
Carbs don't make people fat. OVEREATING makes people fat.
Carbs indirectly make people fat. This is really important to understand. The body doesn't store carbs in fat cells if it can help it, it stores them in the liver and muscles as glycogen.
However, carbs produce the strongest insulin response in the body amongst the macro's(high carb/low protein is the worst insulin spiking combination by far). Fat doesn't have any influence, and protein by itself has a influence, but not on the same level as carbs.
Insulin, while fine and good in "normal" quantities, becomes an issue when a person becomes insulin resistant through long term over eating of carbs. Everyone is different too, some can eat carbs all day every day and never come close to hypertension/high BP/diabetes/premature death, others can't even look at a donut without getting hypertensive. So there's that to keep in mind. Also, it sneaks up on you. You can appear to be fine for years and years and then you hit the tipping point and disease shows up. You can't feel insulin resistance building, it's kind of like cancer in that regard. By the time you see symptoms it's been cooking for awhile.
For those who don't know, when you become resistant to insulin, your body has to produce and release more of it into your blood to keep blood sugar levels where they need to be. Diabetes (the self inflicted type) is the ultimate destination, where your body can no longer balance blood sugar, the cells are too resistant to insulin to get the job done. Not a good place to be.
Insulin has other effects besides keeping blood sugar levels in the green zone, although that is its MAJOR use, the one that takes precedence. If blood sugar gets out of whack you die shortly thereafter, so as far as the body is concerned blood sugar levels are most important.
Insulin also: Shifts metabolism into what could be called "storage and build mode", converts dietary fat to storage, removes fat from blood and transports it into fat cells, increases the body's production of cholesterol, stimulates the growth of arterial smooth muscle cells, stimulates the use of glucose for energy...
You can see how, while none of that is bad in moderation(and if you are trying to build muscle, strategic use of insulin is your friend for building new cells), if one spends most of their time in a insulin dominant state, high C, high BP, fat storage all result. Carbs=increase in insulin, which ='s increased storage of dietary fat, which is usually eaten in conjunction with carbs. So carbs indirectly make you fat.
You can see how, while none of that is bad in moderation, if one spends most of their time in a insulin dominant state, high C, high BP, fat storage all result.
You can see how your second statement conflicts with your first statement.
None of that is bad in moderation. That is the key.
Carbs - eaten in moderation - will not make people fat.
As should be done I was speaking in terms of calories not weight, fat has more than twice as many calories per gram than carbohydrates. So a cookie that is 28 grams carbohydrate and 14 gram fat is more than 50% fat.
A cheese pizza is around 40% fat, but people typically put fatty toppings on their pizza (e.g. pepperoni) and that can push it up to the 55~65% fat range.
So as I said, people often think of these foods as carbohydrate rich but they are typically very high in fat so associating them with carbohydrates, and not fats as well, makes little sense.
And you're still wrong, there are more calories from carbs than fat in all three instances.
You can see how your second statement conflicts with your first statement.
None of that is bad in moderation. That is the key.
Carbs - eaten in moderation - will not make people fat.
geez, way to nitpick word usage. How about you add "can" in between carbs and indirectly. Feel better now?
And seriously, fat people didn't eat in moderation to get there. Over eating carbs indirectly makes people fat, in the ways I just described. While energy in-out is very important, you can't ignore how the different macro's impact the body when eaten.
There is a reason why low carb diets work so well for obese people, and it isn't just the drop in energy intake. The problem is people tend to label carbs as inherently evil, insulin as inherently evil. They aren't, just don't abuse them. And if you have been abusing them(as fat people do), you need to spend some time doing the opposite to give your body the space to recover/repair itself.
Again, carbs=increase in insulin, insulin=bias towards storage and building, specifically storage of dietary fat and fat that is present in the blood. Most modern food that has lots of carbs also has a good deal of fat (think pizza, ice cream, and so on). Carbs are like the key to the fat storage door(due to their influence on insulin), dietary fat is whats thrown in the open door.
On the flipside, glucagon is the hormone that works in opposition to insulin. It raises low blood sugar, shifts metabolism into burning mode, converts protein and fat to glucose as needed, converts dietary fat to ketones, releases fat from fat cells into the blood for use as energy, decreases the bodies production of cholesterol, stimulates the use of fat for energy.
And this is why my Central Eurpoean ancestors never got fat or got heart disease eating tons of livestock and plants from their farm (including all the duck, chicken and pork grease), until my now obese cousin changed everything by consuming more plain flour products like bread and potatoes.
And you're still wrong, there are more calories from carbs than fat in all three instances.
Nope and I didn't say anything about soda. If a cookie has 28 grams of carbohydrate and 14 grams of fat then 112 calories would come from carbohydrate and 126 calories from fat. Obviously 126 is more than 112. But this is what I originally said:
"Its common for people to associate pizza, cookies, etc with carbohydrates but these foods are usually very high in fat and often have more fat than carbohydrates."
As you can see, I didn't claim that the fat content is always higher than the carbohydrate content just that those types of foods are usually very high in fat. And they are. Most of the foods people associate with "carbs" are foods that are both high in carbohydrates and fat.
Seems directly for me. I can lose weight on Atkins wonderfully, but if I break the carb tolerance level I seem to swell up like I swallowed a CO2 cartridge and it went off.
However, carbs produce the strongest insulin response in the body amongst the macro's(high carb/low protein is the worst insulin spiking combination by far). Fat doesn't have any influence, and protein by itself has a influence, but not on the same level as carbs.
One's insulin control is greatly impacted on a diet, someone eating a lower fat diet rich in whole foods and low in saturated fat will have great insulin control and as such need much less insulin than someone eating an unhealthful diet.
Fat doesn't increase your blood sugar, but it does have an influence because your fat intake, in particular the composition of fats, impacts your insulin sensitivity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tofur
Insulin, while fine and good in "normal" quantities, becomes an issue when a person becomes insulin resistant through long term over eating of carbs.
Insulin resistance is not cased by eating carbohydrates, you don't see that in clinical nor in population studies.
Insulin resistance is not cased by eating carbohydrates, you don't see that in clinical nor in population studies.
No, but observationally it appears that sugar or HFCS is the triggering mechanism that makes all carbohydrates, complex or simple, automatically fattening. So, if you live a vegan diet from cradle to grave and generally avoided sugar all your life, I suppose you could argue what you're arguing.
The world is loaded with people on true low-fat diets rich in complex carbs who cannot take off the weight, possibly for the this reason.
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