Carbs Will Kill You

The Straight Facts on Carbs

By James LaValle, RPh, ND, CCN

If you’re a carb lover, now’s the time to get a handle on how many carbs you should be eating every day. This information is not just important for your waistline. It’s also important to control the potential for disease-causing inflammation that increases with high levels of circulating insulin and blood sugar – and that may cause cancer.

That was the result of a recent analysis of 39 studies that found that the greater a person’s intake of high glycemic index and high glycemic load foods, the greater the risks of certain types of cancer (endometrial and colon).1

Every time you eat a carbohydrate-rich food like pasta, rice, potatoes, table sugar, pure glucose, cereals, or even whole grain bread it raises both your blood sugar and insulin levels. The potential for inflammation, insulin resistance, and obesity increases when these foods are eaten in quantities beyond those our bodies can use.

Total daily activity, current body weight, and nutrient status all influence how well our body can process these foods. When you eat high carbohydrate foods, the amount of carbohydrate it contains is either used immediately for energy or stored as fat, depending on those factors.

If you’re sitting in a meeting eating bagels or donuts, chances are that most of your energy-rich breakfast is circulating in your bloodstream looking for a home. If you’re overweight, the scenario turns bleaker. In overweight people, insulin, the hormone needed for glucose entry into the cells for energy, is less efficient and causes blood glucose to rise and remain elevated for a longer duration.

Physical activity helps you utilize extra blood sugar, but for those of us who sit at a desk for most of the day or who get only a half hour on the treadmill per day, there is not nearly enough activity to utilize excess blood sugar. In fact, it would take days of hard physical labor to process the amount of carbohydrates consumed by much of the American population.

To make matters worse, reduced intake and body stores of nutrients like magnesium, chromium, zinc, and alpha-lipoic acid that aid the body in carbohydrate metabolism also contribute to insulin resistance and even a reduced ability to burn carbs during exercise. We have seen patients exercise intensely with the help of a personal trainer for 1 to 2 hours, five or six days a week and still not lose weight. Once we can replete them with these nutrients, they often lose weight with less exercise.

So how many carbs should you eat? At LMI, we have used a guideline of no more than 20 to 30% of calories as carbs for years. This is not too restrictive and is successful in most of our clients. The best way to determine how well your body is handling carbs is a post-prandial glucose and insulin test which measures blood glucose and insulin levels after eating a specified high carbohydrate food.

If one or both of these values are elevated, glycemic load intake should be immediately reduced. Taking the nutrients mentioned above has also helped many of our patients to eventually increase their carbohydrate intake somewhat without negative effects on their weight, blood glucose, or insulin levels.

Eating a diet rich in non-starchy vegetables like lettuce and kale, high-fiber legumes like lentils and beans, organically raised meats, and high-quality fats will help you burn fat, lose weight, and reduce your risk for many inflammatory conditions.

So swap your pasta, sweets, and excessive fruit for a few extra servings of vegetables and know that you’re making a difference not only in your weight but in your overall health. As an easy reference, you can visit the University of Sydney’s database to look up the GL/GI values of foods.2

References

Gnagnarella et al. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2008;(87):1793-1801.

http://www.glycemicindex.com.

Screw THAT

[quote]FightingScott wrote:
Screw THAT[/quote]

I think its kind of true for the majority who don’t put the carbs to use. My mum for example; cereal and milk with tea for breakfast with spice mix. sandwich of some variety for lunch and indian bread with cottage cheese/chicken etc or even cereal at night. this plus the fruits and spice mix spread out through the day.

The result: Deep vein Thrombosis in her leg, caused by inflammations and blood clotting. Clotting caused by the excess of omega-6 from all the grains.

The Solution: i intervened, bought her flax enriched, low GI, high protein cereals, sliced almonds for breakfast, spinach + various greens for meals, low GI fruits, and presto inflammation going down without meds.

I wonder how many years of this sort of information being disseminated it will take for the high carb/low fat mantra of the USDA ‘food pyramid’ to get turned around.

[quote]atg410 wrote:
I wonder how many years of this sort of information being disseminated it will take for the high carb/low fat mantra of the USDA ‘food pyramid’ to get turned around.[/quote]

You know whats really interesting??
a) the daily carb requirement is calculated by imposing a limit on proteins and fats and then taking the remaining calories and portioning them to carbs!! oh and the sugar lobby assures we need 20 gm of pure sugar atleast (WHO says no more than 10gm a day at the most!!!)

b) If you follow the food pyramid’s advice, then a pizza is the perfect food since it’s on a huge base of starch, next the vegetables and fruits, then small portion of meat and then dairy and fats on top!!!

[quote]Evil1 wrote:
atg410 wrote:
I wonder how many years of this sort of information being disseminated it will take for the high carb/low fat mantra of the USDA ‘food pyramid’ to get turned around.

You know whats really interesting??
a) the daily carb requirement is calculated by imposing a limit on proteins and fats and then taking the remaining calories and portioning them to carbs!! oh and the sugar lobby assures we need 20 gm of pure sugar atleast (WHO says no more than 10gm a day at the most!!!)

b) If you follow the food pyramid’s advice, then a pizza is the perfect food since it’s on a huge base of starch, next the vegetables and fruits, then small portion of meat and then dairy and fats on top!!![/quote]

Hahah, I’ve never thought about the pizza as a reference model for the food pyramid, but it so is. Amazing. I’ve seen so many people follow diets based around the USDA guide lines and do nothing but get fat and weak. Everyone I know that has lost weight, kept weight off and gained muscle in the process has done it with some amount of carbohydrate reduction. I’ve basically cut all simple sugars out of my diet other than fruit and PWO shake, and I really only eat non fruit/vegetable carbs early in the AM or post workout at all and I feel great. When I bothered to count carbs, they were around 100g daily from starch, grains and non fruit sugars…much lower percentage than USDA recomendations.

You guys know they modified the food pyramid, right?

the new food pyramid is better, but still bad.

still WAY too carb heavy.

but i thought meat and fat were the devil and i needed to consume a kilo of TEH WHOLE GRAINZ every day ?

are you telling me that they were deceiving me ? damn…

and yes the new food pyramid is still a joke, the grains category should just be removed entirely and should consist of two categories

are you active the vast majority of the waking part of your day (no slow walking from place to place does not count) ? then you don’t deserve to eat grains

higher: meat/cheese/dairy/fats/protein
lower: veggies

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
You guys know they modified the food pyramid, right?[/quote]

Not sure if this link will show, but this is from the USDA’s mypyramid.com website, basically an online diet planner based on the pyramid. This is as up to date as their info gets.

Upon entering my details(5’9", 240lbs, very active, male), their program first pointed me to pages like this
http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/active.htm
to help deal with my weight

and then this is the diet break down it gave me
http://www.mypyramid.gov/mypyramid/results.html?name=undefined&age=26&gender=male&weight=155&heightfeet=5&heightinch=9&activity=active&originalweight=240&validweight=1&validheight=1&weightN=155&heightfeetN=5&heightinchN=9&option=1
If that nasty link doesn’t work, the breakdown is
10 ounces of grains daily
4 cups of vegetables
2.5 cups of fruit
3 cups of milk
7 ounces of meat and beans

note, eggs aren’t even on the list any more, healthy fats are relegated to a foot note, seeds are nowhere to be seen and carbs from grains are still the single most recommended macro nutrient.

The new pyramid is just as crap as the old. It’s essentially recommending the subway diet, lots of bread(whole grain of course!) with some amount of vegetables, meat of indiscriminate origin, and unspecified trace amounts of dietary fat with a fruit juice on the side.

I get less then 30g of carbs a day. Woo Hoo!

LR

[quote]atg410 wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:
You guys know they modified the food pyramid, right?

Not sure if this link will show, but this is from the USDA’s mypyramid.com website, basically an online diet planner based on the pyramid. This is as up to date as their info gets.

Upon entering my details(5’9", 240lbs, very active, male), their program first pointed me to pages like this
http://win.niddk.nih.gov/publications/active.htm
to help deal with my weight

and then this is the diet break down it gave me
http://www.mypyramid.gov/mypyramid/results.html?name=undefined&age=26&gender=male&weight=155&heightfeet=5&heightinch=9&activity=active&originalweight=240&validweight=1&validheight=1&weightN=155&heightfeetN=5&heightinchN=9&option=1
If that nasty link doesn’t work, the breakdown is
10 ounces of grains daily
4 cups of vegetables
2.5 cups of fruit
3 cups of milk
7 ounces of meat and beans

note, eggs aren’t even on the list any more, healthy fats are relegated to a foot note, seeds are nowhere to be seen and carbs from grains are still the single most recommended macro nutrient.

The new pyramid is just as crap as the old. It’s essentially recommending the subway diet, lots of bread(whole grain of course!) with some amount of vegetables, meat of indiscriminate origin, and unspecified trace amounts of dietary fat with a fruit juice on the side.[/quote]

How many grams of carbs are in 10 oz of grain? About 160? The recommendations are pretty good - a little light on the protein, but pretty good.

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:

How many grams of carbs are in 10 oz of grain? About 160? The recommendations are pretty good - a little light on the protein, but pretty good.
[/quote]

To each their own I suppose, I know personally that most grains make me crash, and more than 100g a day stalls fat loss fast for me.

[quote]atg410 wrote:
PRCalDude wrote:

How many grams of carbs are in 10 oz of grain? About 160? The recommendations are pretty good - a little light on the protein, but pretty good.

To each their own I suppose, I know personally that most grains make me crash, and more than 100g a day stalls fat loss fast for me.

[/quote]

I can’t tolerate a lot either.

Sorry for the long rant, but I want to expound on my argument against the food pyramid…

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
I can’t tolerate a lot either. [/quote]

See, and theres the rub. When you start asking people, you find that a LOT of people can’t tolerate them, or at least not the grains typical to the American diet. Right off hand I can think of at least 7 people that I know immediately who fall into some special population or another when it comes to grain intolerance. Everything from carb intolerant to celiacs.

If I look at a broader group, and think about otherwise healthy people I know who eat diets high in starchy carb sources I see a trend, they and their kids are prone to weight gain disproportional to their activity levels.

Everyone I know who has dieted down on a carb dominant diet has failed.
I understand that this is all anecdotal, but it seems like an anecdotal experience that a LOT of people have.

If you look at the mypyramid website, grains are treated with kid gloves. The ONLY recommendation in selection of grain sources is to look for ‘whole grains’, as if somehow that is a magic cure for the problems associated with grain consumption…besides, half of your grain intake can still come from bleached shit according to those same recommendations.

It’s important to remember that the USDA is not only a health advisory agency, they are also lobbyists in chief for the massive US agricultural industry, which is made up wait for it almost entirely of grain growers.

Yes, certain recommendations from the USDA have improved, or at least their new recommendations provide a little more insight into food selection, but by and large, they are still severely lacking.

[quote]atg410 wrote:

Sorry for the long rant, but I want to expound on my argument against the food pyramid…

PRCalDude wrote:
I can’t tolerate a lot either.

See, and theres the rub. When you start asking people, you find that a LOT of people can’t tolerate them, or at least not the grains typical to the American diet. Right off hand I can think of at least 7 people that I know immediately who fall into some special population or another when it comes to grain intolerance. Everything from carb intolerant to celiacs.

[/quote]

I don’t know a single person in real life that has stuck to a low carb lifestyle. I know people that have lost significant weight on Atkins but they gained it back.

The only people I know that have lost weight and kept it off eat a generally “balanced” diet with carbs as the main fuel source and exercise.

The problem is inactive people eat too much. HFCS and the like don’t help matters but the fact is that people take in way more calories than they used to.

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
atg410 wrote:

Sorry for the long rant, but I want to expound on my argument against the food pyramid…

PRCalDude wrote:
I can’t tolerate a lot either.

See, and theres the rub. When you start asking people, you find that a LOT of people can’t tolerate them, or at least not the grains typical to the American diet. Right off hand I can think of at least 7 people that I know immediately who fall into some special population or another when it comes to grain intolerance. Everything from carb intolerant to celiacs.

I don’t know a single person in real life that has stuck to a low carb lifestyle. I know people that have lost significant weight on Atkins but they gained it back.

The only people I know that have lost weight and kept it off eat a generally “balanced” diet with carbs as the main fuel source and exercise.

The problem is inactive people eat too much. HFCS and the like don’t help matters but the fact is that people take in way more calories than they used to.[/quote]

Thank you.

Once you’ve figured out your protein and fat needs, you need to cut your calories in order to lose weight. The protein and fat requirements can’t go below a certain amount in order to keep muscle and keep hormones normal. So where does the rest of the calorie restriction come from? Carbohydrates. That said, you should still be eating them in order to lose weight - probably about 30-40% of your diet. Otherwise, you’ll just be losing water and glycogen. The fat loss itself comes from calorie restriction, and there’s no way around it. Even Lyle McDonald says that.

If you want to add mass, you add those carbohydrates back in and then some, until you’re eating at least 40-50% carbohydrates.

Even though I don’t eat a lot of grain (because my metabolism isn’t that fast), I still eat high-glycemic carbs post workout and still eat grain. My wife has been eating grains on her diet and she’s doing great with her fat loss.

There isn’t some cabal of grain producers running the ADA. 10 oz of grain isn’t very much and is a sensible recommendation for someone of the specs mentioned above.

We’re all getting fat because we’re eating too much, and it doesn’t matter that much where the excess calories are coming from.

This is blasphemy on T-Nation, I’m sure, but fat loss for me has been fastest with a low fat diet and low-intensity cardio. Well, relatively low fat, not Ornish diet low fat but probably less than 20% of calories from fat and what fat I do eat being primarily olive oil and fish oil, about 40% from protein and the rest from carbs mostly “complex” carbs from legumes and non-starchy vegetables. I eat some fruit and just a little bit of bread.

I’ve tried the Anabolic diet and I’ve tried long-term low carb non-keto diets and neither has worked extremely well for me.

[quote]Wimpy wrote:
This is blasphemy on T-Nation, I’m sure, but fat loss for me has been fastest with a low fat diet and low-intensity cardio. Well, relatively low fat, not Ornish diet low fat but probably less than 20% of calories from fat and what fat I do eat being primarily olive oil and fish oil, about 40% from protein and the rest from carbs mostly “complex” carbs from legumes and non-starchy vegetables. I eat some fruit and just a little bit of bread.

I’ve tried the Anabolic diet and I’ve tried long-term low carb non-keto diets and neither has worked extremely well for me. [/quote]

Heresy!

Seriously though, may I inquire about the number of days you stuck with the AD?

[quote]lixy wrote:
Wimpy wrote:
This is blasphemy on T-Nation, I’m sure, but fat loss for me has been fastest with a low fat diet and low-intensity cardio. Well, relatively low fat, not Ornish diet low fat but probably less than 20% of calories from fat and what fat I do eat being primarily olive oil and fish oil, about 40% from protein and the rest from carbs mostly “complex” carbs from legumes and non-starchy vegetables. I eat some fruit and just a little bit of bread.

I’ve tried the Anabolic diet and I’ve tried long-term low carb non-keto diets and neither has worked extremely well for me.

Heresy!

Seriously though, may I inquire about the number of days you stuck with the AD?[/quote]

I only followed the AD for 10 weeks or so. Maybe 3 months but definitely not longer than that. I may not have given it enough time to work. I think the high-carb weekends threw me off. As boring as it sounds I prefer to be able to eat the same things every day, especially when “dieting” and particularly when I’m spending 60 hours a week in class, labs and working.