The Reason High Carb Diets Won’t Work

Reading various posts, there seems to be considerable backlash against low-carb diets. The Atkins diet, popular in the 1970s as a low-carb, fat-burning answer to weight loss, has made a comeback in some circles, with many publications coming back with the argument that it won’t work for long-term fat loss. We agree. But the argument seems to be that if low carbs are a bad thing, high carb diets are a good thing, especially for athletes who train for endurance. We would like to illustrate why high carb diets don’t work.

From what we’ve been told over the years, carbohydrates are the good guys of nutrition. As a result, people have been devouring breads, cereals and pastas to increase their percentage of carbohydrates to greater than 75% total calories and reduce fat. The result is that people eat less fat and gain weight. Eating excessive amounts of carbohydrates, when converted to sugars, are easily converted to storage in excess body fat, as the total that can be stored as glycogen before it is converted to fat, even for trained athletes, is only a few 1200 calories. For the average person, perhaps 400 grams can be stored in the muscle and another 70 to 90 grams in the liver. So why would you want to consume more than you are capable of storing?

So what really happens when you start eating those carbs? First, glycogen levels are replenished for both the muscle, to promote growth and repair, and the liver, for the brain to function properly. As we noted earlier, that doesn’t amount to much, maybe a couple of cups of pasta. After that, everything is surplus. With the rapid rise in blood glucose, the pancreas secretes additional amounts of the hormone insulin into the bloodstream. Since insulin’s job is to get it out of the bloodstream, it sends it to long-term storage, which is fat cells. The result is that even though you haven’t eaten a single bite of fat, and carbs themselves are fat-free, your body does store fat, which is why high-carb diets don’t work. To make matters worse, because insulin levels tell the body to store more fat, because it thinks it’s in starvation mode, it won’t release the fat it already has stored.

Wondering why you feel hungry maybe two hours after a high-carb meal? As noted, insulin’s job is to quickly lower blood sugar. With that accomplished, blood sugar is low and cravings, usually for sweets, kick in. If you don’t satisfy those cravings, your mood turns sour and you feel like crashing, while not burning stored fat as your energy levels plummet. So the answer to why high carb diets don’t work is because they don’t moderate the insulin response. By limiting or eliminating your intake of refined sugars and keeping carbohydrates to a moderate level, around 40% of your diet, you can avoid those disastrous insulin spikes. Generally, foods without carbohydrates, that is, proteins and the so-called good fats, do not produce as much insulin. Also, natural fiber can minimize the insulin response.

In the final analysis, high-carb diets won’t work, but neither will low-carb or no-carb diets. Carbohydrates are neither the devil nor the panacea for fat loss, but they must be balanced with the rest of your diet. But remember, carbohydrates don’t just come from sweets and pasta, they also come from fruits and vegetables, as well as a number of different foods, and most, if not all, have other characteristics that have more positive qualities overall. . We hope you will use them to the greatest advantage.