CLUB NEWS
Article three (3) Eating the Enemy |
Posted by Administrator (admin) on Jun 04 2009 |
Low fat versus low carb
There is a continual stream of multimedia information bombarding us
about diet. Advertisements from companies with vested interests
exhorting the benefits of their new breakfast cereal [highly processed
starches and sugars with a few added vitamins], health experts on
lifestyle shows promoting low fat as healthy; to athletes endorsing
sugar-laden sports drinks, the source of their astounding energy and
performance. What to do, who to believe or what works is the dilemma of
many people. The usual recommendations by many orthodox nutritionists
and dietitians over the past few decades concerning nutrition go
something along the lines of the following:
• Eat a balanced diet
• Eat a diet low in fat [less than 30% of total calories as fat and less
than 10% as saturated fat]
• Cut back on red meat. Eat lean meats. If you eat chicken take the
skin off.
• Eat more fruit, vegetables and whole grain products such as bread.
• Keep dietary cholesterol intake to less than 300 milligrams each
day.
• Keep egg consumption down to 1-2 a day and avoid full fat dairy
products.
• Maintain a normal body weight and exercise daily.
If you subscribe to these dietary guidelines and are getting the results you
want, then look no further. There are plenty of books, brochures,
magazine articles and institutional literature to verify the above. There
are also plenty of nutritionists, dietitians, doctors and experts who
subscribe to these ways of eating, and that\'s OK if it works for them and
you.
But if the above does not work for you then perhaps you should open
your mind to shifting the balance of the food groups you are eating. This
can involve approaches that seem less orthodox or mainstream than
others, but every body is different and needs to be treated as such.
Balancing protein, carbohydrates and fats
I have adopted the following methodology. Many of my clients who have not had success with orthodox methods of eating have also used this with
great success. At this point I would like to qualify that changing to this
methodology alone without accompanying changes in activity has
success over the long haul and, for some, quite dramatic fat loss over the
short term. This success is mainly confined to body fat reduction and not
necessarily to changes in muscle gain and shape, which require an
increase in activity.
The concept is a lowered carbohydrate not no carbohydrate diet with
adequate protein and moderate increases in healthy fats. The intake
percentages are approximately 20% carbohydrates [including sugars]
40% protein and 40% fats. This is a great starting point for people aiming
to burn body fat, but keep in mind that every body is different. Activity
levels and base metabolic rate (your body\'s rate of metabolism while
sleeping or inactive) play key roles.
The role of carbohydrate in regulating body fat
Keeping your intake of carbohydrates at 20% or less reduces the amount
of insulin release. Insulin can be classed as a storage hormone in that it
helps to put nutrients and energy sources into cells. Having some insulin
release is important for this reason. For some people though, eating large
quantities of sugars and carbohydrates throughout the day at each meal
can result in high levels of insulin in the system. Even three large
carbohydrate meals can keep insulin high for most of the day.
Insulin is instrumental in fat being put into fat cells. So when insulin is high,
fat storage can be occurring and the double whammy is that fat is not
being released from storage. Eating carbohydrates also increases the
amount of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase [LPL] in your fat cells and
reduces it in your muscle cells. This enzyme has interesting properties. It
regulates fat metabolism, and fat metabolism regulates carbohydrate
metabolism. If LPL increases in the body fat then it decreases in the
muscles and visa versa. So as carbohydrates increase LPL in fat, they
drop LPL in muscle. The result is instead of muscle cells taking up fat to be
used as energy, the fat cells are taking it in and storing it for later and you
get fatter.
Now there is another hormone glucagon, this one\'s the good guy when it
comes to getting fat out of cells to be used as energy. Glucagon can be
classed as an energy-releasing hormone. It also helps release blood sugar
from liver and muscle stores and the conversion of proteins to energy.
When insulin is high glucagon is low, when insulin is low glucagon is high.
Both are important hormones and necessary for metabolism to occur. It is
the balance of the two that can designate whether you are going to be
storing fat or burning it.
If you think you can escape getting fat by not eating fat, and eating
carbohydrates instead, forget it. Your body can still make fats out of
carbohydrates. So if you have a big meal of starches and you do not burn them off after your meal, some of that starch can be converted to
fat ASAP by your liver and transported to the fats cells - remember what
the LPL does when carbohydrates are high. Remember that eating more
than your body is burning no matter whether carbohydrates, fat or
protein you will gain weight. You can lose weight on a low fat diet if the
calorie intake is lower than the calorie output, but what I have noticed is
that the weight loss can be from muscle and fat. This is not the way to go.
You want to keep the muscle and lose the fat, right?
Fat as fuel
Fat is the preferred fuel for the body, not carbohydrates. As we move
around day to day doing our daily activities and during light to moderate
activity, which is what most of the population does, your body supplies
your muscle with fuel. Only 10-15% of the population do enough activity
to be of any benefit to them, 50% avoid activity, and the rest do some
activity but not enough to be of any health benefit, and in that top 10%
there are only about 1% or less who are athletic with low body fat and
more muscle than the average person. Contrary to popular belief, the
primary fuel for our daily activities is fat, not carbohydrates. This excludes
the brain and nervous system unless there is no carbohydrate available,
then it gets energy from ketones, an energy source produced from the
breakdown of fats.
I have come across some articles by well known dieticians saying that
ketones are dangerous and that they will cause the blood to become
acidic and lead to acidosis. First they have not differentiated between
ketosis and acidosis. These are two different states. Acidosis is associated
with a pathological state such as diabetes and ketosis is a normal
physiological process. Ketones can be used as an energy source by the
body when carbohydrates are low. If you\'re in mild ketosis you are
definitely burning fat.
Up to 80-90% of total energy at rest and from 50-75% during exercise
comes from fat, not carbohydrate. These are figures quoted in exercise
physiology books. Thank God for that, because if we only burned
carbohydrate as energy we would never lose weight. To those of you
who are exercising to lose body fat, what do you want to burn when you
are exercising - fat or carbohydrates? I suspect it\'s fat.
So if you keep on shoveling down the carbohydrates recommended by
the \'experts\' what are you going to burn? Hmmmmm! So if most of the
time you are moving around is light to moderate activity and doing some
harder activity such as weights or exercise classes just a few times per
week, what are you primarily burning as fuel? Fat! Even if you were a
high-level endurance athlete it would be far more advantageous to be
tuned to burning fat as fuel.
You can only store a limited amount of carbohydrates in the body but
you can store heaps of fat for energy. What prevents most athletes from using stored fat is a continual high carbohydrate diet and we know what
that does to burning fat. In conjunction with sugars and starches, eating
fat is bad for you. This is not because of the fat but because of the sugars
and starches preventing the body from processing and burning the fat.
When the carbohydrates are low [20% or less] the body can convert
excess fats to ketones to be used as energy or excreted in the urine. This
is the body\'s safety mechanism to prevent a build up of fats in the blood.
This does not occur when carbohydrates are high. Glucagon, the good
guy hormone also helps prevent the build up of fatty deposits in the
blood vessels.
Did you know that your own body fat is saturated fat? Whenever you get
fat out of storage you are pouring saturated fat into your blood.
However, the body knows how to handle this fat, and yet we are told
that saturated fat is the bad fat. When a person is overweight and loses
body fat, about 10 or more kilos of fat goes into the bloodstream to be
used as energy. That\'s a lot of fat going into the blood. Yet what happens
is that person\'s cholesterol and triglyceride count drops as they continue
to lose weight with all that fat pouring into the blood. So if we can stand
all that saturated fat going into the bloodstream, why can\'t we eat some
as well? I told you it was not the orthodox point of view.
Last changed: Jun 04 2009 at 10:13 AM
Back