Carbs, fat and Gary Taubes analysis

Topaz63

Gone a bit quiet
Quote from Maintainer
"Topaz-.......You have picked up interesting information though on carbs which you could possibly help us with though. I for one suffer (in the mind) immediately I increase my carbs and usually fall head first into a bucket of food!

Increasing fat isn't something I'd be happy with - a little fair enough yes, but not to the levels some diets countenance." (Maintainer)

I thought this best answered in the main bit rather than in Dukandebut's diary. You are so right about the carbs, it's just what I did yesterday, a marauding state of mind that searches cupboards. Smokers will know what I mean! I'm doing a summary of GT's book, but need to shorten some more. Basically it indicates why the DD diet works even tho we have lots to eat. Insulin is one of the key things. I'll try to sort it to put up later today. DD is not happy about high fat either, he reserves his special sharp tone for high P, high Fat diets.
 
Gary Taubes was my route to Dukan, so I second this.

Insulin is the appetite regulator - and insulin production is stimulated by high GI food intake. So a high GI food like mashed potato creates a higher insulin spike than, say a low GI food like mashed chickpeas.

And the higher the insulin spike, the stronger the craving to eat, and to go on eating. Being full won't stop the urge to eat. And as more and more high GI carbs are eaten (biscuits, sweets, white bread...) the insulin keeps spiking and the insatiable cravings remain, well, insatiable.

And to make this worse about 40% of the population seem to be genetically more susceptible to these triggers and this cycle than others.

This is why we probably all know someone who can eat sweets and not put on weight. It's not the sweets themselves, its the overwhelming upsurge in insulin that makes some people reach for the next snack, and the next, and the next, while those lucky b******ds just finish the sweets, throw the wrapper away and don't need to eat anything else.

On the one hand this means that overeating is not a moral failing.
We are not broken, or lazy, or greedy.

On the other hand it gives us some tools to start to interupt the cycle.

eg.

a.) Avoid High GI food triggers (traditional biscuits, sugar, potatoes, white bread as much as possible)
and
b.) If you do feel that the craving to eat and eat and eat to fill a hole that can never be filled - reach as fast as you can for high protein low carb food, to break the vicious circle.

Ok - that's more than I meant to write, and Topaz will have a more detailed and accurate summary.
 
I keep telling you Atropos, you never quite write enough for me! I understand things better when you explain them to me, and Topaz too explains things well.

Keep it coming...
 
Summary of key points from Gary Taubes

The "calories in, calories out theories" are wrong as a means for dieting. They are true only when the body is fully in balance and can keep the delicate relationship. Because

1. It only takes very few over a period to overeat, calorie wise (20 cals per day, which is almost unmeasurable with normal eating);
2 Many populations who are starving are also overweight (quotes extensive research)
3 If you reduce cals over a period, your body gets good at retrieval, you also get less active, your metabolism slows down and binges are highly likely as cravings for carbohydrate increase.
4. To continue to lose weight therefore using this theory you have to cut calories even further and potentially you could still be overweight on a starvation diet. First chance the body has to build up again it does and you quickly return to where you started. This is why low cal diets fail (85%).

The activity of insulin is crucial:

When insulin in the bloodstream rises, fatty deposits are formed; when insulin falls, fat in the cells begins to be used as fuel by the body
Insulin in the bloodstream is raised by carbohydrates including sugar but also starches.
To lower insulin activity we must reduce starch and sugar intake.

Carbohydrate drives insulin which drives fat. To counter the effects of this, cutting carbs will be effective only if protein and fat are increased, otherwise to get glycogen for energy the muscles are robbed, leading to lethargy and unwellness.

The body burns carbohydrates before it burns fat. If you eat plenty of carbohydrates, your body takes longer to get to the fat and needs to burn less of it, because the insulin uses first what is available as blood sugar before allowing your body to turn to the fat cells.

When we eat a meal, insulin is released immediately in several waves to act on the carbs. When insulin is in the bloodstream the fat cells are effectively locked and the fatty acids can't be drawn out to use for energy as the insulin is busy turning the carbs into energy and fat. When the carbs are mostly dealt with, if there is still insulin in the blood, the cells still can't be used for the energy they should provide, so we get that low blood sugar slump and feel tired and hungry. Our cells are wanting more and say so loudly! This is why carbs on a diet can give problems. Stepping up the protein and fat intake gives energy for muscles and doesn't flood the blood with too much insulin. Insulin is still secreted when we eat protein rich foods but in a more measured way. Insulin ensures that proteins are sent to the muscles. No meal should consist of only carbs, even good ones. So cereal, toast for breakfast without protein is not good, but add an egg or some cheese and ham or smoked salmon and you improve it.

People are more likely to be sedentary because they are fat than fat because they're sedentary. If your muscles are being robbed of glycogen on a low cal diet, you don't feel like exercise either.

Pre-diabetics have raised blood sugar because their bodies are becoming resistant to insulin, so it is less effective at taking the sugars from the blood and putting them into fat stores. This results in more insulin production, higher carbohydrate craving and more storage of sugars as fats. Insulin resistance also affects many people as they get older, promoting more fat storage and carb reliance.

Lipoprotein Lipase. LPL . Attaches itself to cells and draws in the fats from the bloodstream. If attached to muscle cell LPL draws fat into the muscle to burn as energy, if attached to fat cells it draws fat into them to store. Oestrogen inhibits LPL in fat cells. If ovaries are removed, LPL increases and attaches much more to fat cells, so more fat is stored in the body. These fatty cells will remain even under conditions of semi starvation. So women may get fatter with menopause.

Exercise, while good for you in many ways, does not really help you lose weight unless you are using it excessively. During activity, the LPL on your fat cells stops pulling in fatty acid energy and your muscle LPL starts to pull in fats to use. If more is needed then it will be taken from your fat stores. But when the exercise stops, this reverses and LPL starts to pull in fat again into fat cells from the available carbohydrates in your blood. This is why you crave carbs after exercise, but should quickly have protein.

HSL, hormone sensitive lipase. This breaks down the triglycerides in your fat cells so the small molecule fatty acids can go through the cell wall


Insulin again

Insulin and the hormones it influences decide how much will be used, how much stored and where. This varies with heredity from person to person, and also according to circumstances, ages, stages and environmental factors. Also how sensitive to insulin your body is, as this decreases with age anyway. If your body has also been experiencing flooding with insulin because of high carb intake, not only will you be storing fat but you will be pre diabetic as your cells will be desensitising themselves to insulin. Muscle cells are more likely to do this than fat cells, so more of the sugars and fats will be going into fat storage cells than muscle cells.

Fructose and alcohol are slightly different in that they are processed directly in the liver, converted into fats and stored in the cells there. Most sugar has glucose and fructose together, so while one is coking up in your liver the other is raising your adrenalin levels. The more of these we have in our diet the more adept the body gets at converting them to fat. Also, there seems to be a link between higher fructose induced fat in the liver with higher insulin resistance in the muscles, which makes it harder to use the muscles effectively. Alcohol forms citrates in the liver that increases the conversion of fructose to fat.
 
So, (and I must admit all this science is getting beyond me), having a glucose intolerance means that this diet can only be good for me really? - but wouldn't explain my slow losses over the past few months?
 
Mouse - Not an experts (despite the witterings above) I believe a low carb diet and avoidance of all "white" or "processed" carbs (particularly sugar) is one of the primary lifestyle changes recommended for Impaired Glucose Tolerance (aka pre-Diabetes).
 
Mouse - Not an experts (despite the witterings above) I believe a low carb diet and avoidance of all "white" or "processed" carbs (particularly sugar) is one of the primary lifestyle changes recommended for Impaired Glucose Tolerance (aka pre-Diabetes).

Golly - that's a lot of typos!
 
Reminds me of my typos! I just love the way you and Topaz have gone into the science of it all, whereas I have just lazily done as I am told :)
 
Reminds me of my typos! I just love the way you and Topaz have gone into the science of it all, whereas I have just lazily done as I am told :)

And the best thing is - both ways of approaching the diet seem to work!
 
I was thinking about what he says re exercise. I see the point of it not working for weight loss in terms of calories in, calories out. But there are so many things about exercise that should help a dieter indirectly; eg increased circulation, relaxation after it, reduction in depression and stress, stronger bones if weight bearing, vitamin D if outside, looser joints....so it's still important. I know that my swims have sometimes triggered a quick change on the scale, after sts, but only when I've been sticking to the diet too

I was interested recently when reading a Triathlon magazine to see them discussing weightloss for triathletes. Evidently in spite of all that training in three sport disciplines, some triathletes have weight problems. Sort of proves GT's point.
 
there are so many things about exercise that should help a dieter indirectly; eg increased circulation, relaxation after it, reduction in depression and stress, stronger bones if weight bearing, vitamin D if outside, looser joints....so it's still important.

All these benefits (and more) are so important that it almost helps if we separate exercise from weight control.
 
I was told that the benefit to exercise during weight loss was that it increases your metabolism and the daily caloric need for maintenance of muscle versus fat. Plus it helps to keep you from getting saggy :) But the huge carb craving afterwards always made it a hard thing for me (I would normally give in, because all that hard work had earned me a treat, and I was feeling sooo hungry). The walking that I am doing for Dukan doesn't make me near as hungry as my strength training and cardio workout that I would sporadically do. When I get back from a walk, all I want is water. I like the explanation that Topaz summed up, it explains the experience very well - I am going to have to read this book!
 
I'm really glad I clicked on this thread...after days and days of staring at the title and wondering what it was about!
 
LOL Jack...
I read every word, and understand most of it (surprisingly!), and it does make sense.

I agree with everything you say about exercise - my hour long morning speed walk does not impact on my weight (cos I don't gain if it rains and I don't do it) but definitely has other huge advantages such as those you've mentioned.

I'm trying to see how this explanation could help ME understand what happens specifically to ME each time I try to reintroduce carbs. Quite aside from the fact that I have an eating disorder (I'm a compulsive eater...), am very greedy with a humungous appetite, and often think "what the heck!" once I get started EATING (intentional capitals), it's interesting to see that there may be a scientific explanation for my appalling food behaviour once out of Cruise.

Ladies... your thoughts? Why am I such a GREAT Dukan dieter in phases 1 and 2 yet so pathetic once I touch on phase 3... perhaps the fact of being morbidly obese so many years of my life impacts the way my body deals with insulin spikes? I'm regularly blood tested here for diabetes, as my GP thought my sugar binges could have a medical grounding, but all is fine.

Could it be harder for someone who's lost a huge amount of weight, not necessarily with Dukan, to then be able to reintroduce carbs...
 
LOL Jack...

Could it be harder for someone who's lost a huge amount of weight, not necessarily with Dukan, to then be able to reintroduce carbs...

Yes it could and is. I'm no medico but I believe the answer lies in the fat cells that remain even though we have emptied them of their stored fat. They are just waiting to be refilled. And of course the insulin action, as the first thing to happen with carbs is insulin flooding and storage of fats. It may be that you are specially sensitive in the way that it locks your cells to prevent the release of fat, so your blood sugar based energy will go sharply down without the response from your fat cells to compensate. The cells are wanting more to be stored, so you feel ravenous.

This is just a tentative suggestion, but I wonder if Atkins helps a bit on this one, in that once one is on Conso or beyond a snack that uses both egg and cheese might help? It's the sugars and starch we really must avoid, but that is exactly what we crave as it's a quick carb and also triggers a massive response in the brain's pleasure centres.

I'm really bad on this myself. Cheese biscuits are my downfall. The guys on the Atkins section have a really great grated cheese snack, grated cheese baked in blobs. I don't know if that would help.
 
Could it be harder for someone who's lost a huge amount of weight, not necessarily with Dukan, to then be able to reintroduce carbs...

To add to what Topaz says above - it's bound to be complicated, because, we all have a lifetime in which our biology, our environment and our psychology can combine to create certain behaviour.

After all - it may not be that you have problems with carbs simply because you once carried a lot of weight - you may have carried a lot of weight because you were already over-sensitive to carbs...

Carbs have to at least a suspect in this case, just because you seem to find the compulsive eating recurring once you raise the level of carbs in your diet.

Do you know what your specific "trigger" foods might be? And if so, where would they sit on the Glycemic Index?
Glycemic Index | The Food Farce

If you feel brave enough, it might be worth taking a first step into conso chosing only those foods which are very low on the index (say 35 and below) to see if that works.

(I'd also suggest avoiding higher GI foods even for gala meals - so no white bread, potatoes, beer, white pasta, chocolate - boring I know, but perhaps worth the experiment? )
 
I agree with Atropos - one of the things my nutritionist told me was that once I lost the weight I would never be able to go back to including simple carbohydrates in my diet - white rice, white flour, white sugar and that anything that was high on the glycemic index would cause problems for me in maintaining the weight loss, so must be approached with caution and planning. I disregarded her advice after about 6 months and thought I could control it and give myself treats in moderation - I gained back all the weight and ended up here...
 
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