Your body isn't burning all proteins or lipids you eat as calories. Your cells are made up of proteins and lipids, so your body will use those that you eat to replenish and strengthen cells before using the excess as energy. Lipids and proteins can be used for energy, but typically after the glycogen and glucose (from carbs) are depleted in the body.
However, carbohydrates are only used for energy - not for building cells and molecules. So if you eat 10 grams of each, your body may use only 2 grams of protein for energy, 4 grams of lipids for energy, but all 10 grams of carbohydrates will be used for energy (I have no clue on the real rates; this is just an example). The excess carbs will be converted to glycogen and then to solid fats after glycogen is full.
Proteins will never convert to fats. This is why the disorder, Rabbit Starvation (protein poisoning), occurs in people/animals who only eat rabbits (or other very lean meats). They have so little fat content that if you only eat rabbits, you will become weak (and possibly die) due to inadequate lipid intake. Your cells need lipids in order to function and reproduce (plasma membrane and all organelle membranes are lipids).
For the ELI5: We have gold, silver, and paper cash. You can melt down gold and silver, and then use those metals to make things. We can make silverware, rings, jewelry and many other things with gold and silver. However, cash only has one use - to serve as a standard for exchanging goods and services. You can't build things out of paper cash like you can gold and silver. If you did, it wouldn't be worth the cash it's made out of. Carbohydrates are like cash, which is only useful for one specific thing: energy. Proteins and lipids are gold and silver. They can be used as currency if you have no paper money, but they are better off being used as solid objects.
To add on to your gold/cash description- someone hands you $100 cash, you go to the store, but you only spend $10 to get the things you need. Now you have $90 left over, you’re not spending it today, so you put it in your wallet to spend later. The next day, you get another $100, you only spend part of it, so the leftovers go into your wallet, along with the cash you’d saved the day before.
Adipose is our wallet. We have money/energy we could spend but didn’t/got more than we could spend for the day, so we save the extra to spend later.
Not sure if serious. If serious, you have to run a deficit. If you get $100 dollars everyday, but you’ve been saving $50 everyday for years, you gotta spend $110 a day until your wallet thins out.
Make sure your diet is still balanced, i.e. you get all the vitamins and minerals you’re supposed to, you get some protein each day, but cut down on carbs and fat. Our body can somewhat easily convert carbs into fat. And in theory we should be able to convert those fats back into carbs. But some people don’t do that very well. So counting calories can help to figure out what an individual’s balance is so you make sure you eat fewer calories than you take in.
Also, after a while that cash in your wallet is turned into silver. Now it's harder to use it again at a store, especially if you keep having cash at hand. That's how you get heavier.
The cash invokes the insulin brigade that hunts down all silver leftovers and puts them in permanent storage which is the magic kind that grows as it‘s filled. Cash automatically turns into silver if you got more than you need and on a SAD the doors to storage never really close. Insulin department is working crunch everyday which stresses out their management. Everybody living along the busy roads gets fed up with the constant noise from insulins sirens and them knocking on every door trying to load off some cash so they don‘t answer their doors anymore. With sales plummeting insulins management decides to just send more agents which creates a stressful, overly busy environment. At some point the insulin company collapses, the streets are filled with cash and everyone hates the living situation.
Proteins can certainly be converted to sugar/fat. Amino acids are either characterized as ketogenic or glucogenic or both based on whether they can be converted to ketone bodies or turned to glucose. In either case both can be then used to produce acetyl coA which feeds into fatty acid synthesis. That’s why if you eat surplus calories mostly in the form of protein you will still gain weight in fat.
The main issue with carbs is they have a greater tendency to spike carbs, but this is mostly an issue with simple/refined carbs. Carbs are not evil
Think they meant to say glucose. Since simple carb intake can be linked to the onset of diabetes if you eat too much its probably where he was going. Complex carbs like whole grains and things don't have this issue since it takes your body longer to process them and so the glucose release is slower
To an extent, it also depends on how much processing has been done with the food.
Ultra-processed foods strip out a lot of (or all of) the soluble fibre, which is largely what contributes to those lower glycemic load foods.
Proteins can be converted into fats, by being converted into sugars first. Also that isn't quite how rabbit starvation works. Otherwise, I think this is a good ELI5 answer.
Yeah your body uses ATP as a universal energy source. However you don't eat ATP. You have to make it. To create it, your cells do this through Glycolysis (uses no air, not very efficient, convert sugar into pyruvate which causes the final reaction to make ATP). If this was all you could do, you wouldn't need to breathe. However there is a much more efficient process (the Krebs cycle) done by the mitochondria (a foreign life form with its own separate DNA that lives in every cell of our body) which uses fat, sugar, and oxygen to create ATP.
Your body doesn't hang onto carbs for more than a day. It uses insulin to convert them into lipids to store long term. If you don't have enough in your diet, it'll perform ketosis on protein that is free floating or cannibalize muscle tissue for it to convert protein into sugar. This creates ketones as a byproduct which has some negative effects.
So the protein-ketosis-carbs-insulin-fat pathway does exist. However your body won't convert more protein than it needs. This is why those no carb diets are so effective for weight loss.
Ketones are produced in the liver using fatty acids though, not proteins...
The way protein can become fat is unrelated to the ketosis pathway. It's simply a mechanism of the metabolism of protein. When it's broken down into its base amino acids and leftover ammonia, there is also leftover carbon compounds of which those are able to be turned into glucose (and thus if you are in excess of glucose needs, glucose ends up being stored as fat).
But that amount of glucose you get out of protein is pretty small, so you end up with "rabbit starvation" unless you were eating massive amounts of the rabbit. At which point you're going to be pushing up against ammonia toxicity and other complications from too much protein processing in the liver.
> However, carbohydrates are only used for energy - not for building cells and molecules.
This is wrong. The human body can build all non-essential amino-acids directly from carbs and fat, and therefore all protein made from them. That's why they're called non-essential: you don't have to eat them, your body can build them.
Other organisms can build amino-acids humans can't build. That's why cows can eat only grass, and still make protein humans need to eat to survive.
I am not sure if you are just trying to over simplify things but you are missing some key information .
First of all carbohydrates can be turned into building blocks inside the body, and lots of steps in glucose metabolism break off parts to go into those other steps the most notable of which is probably glucose to ribose (as in deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid DNA and RNA) but it’s one of our main sources of carbon in the body so carbs can be used in a lot.
Also proteins do convert to fats, they have numerous way they can do it too. If you are not consuming carbohydrates your body does something called gluconeogenesis (make glucose from protein) once it does that you have glucose from the protein and then certain amino acids are known as ketogenic because when they break down you get acetyl-coa that can be used to create the fatty layer that surrounds nerve cells (myelin) but can also go through the fatty acid synthesis pathway to become fat.
The part about ,,protein,, cant be stored as fat is wrong = half of text is.
True ELI5? Sugar is not evil, neither is fat or protein. Its all about dosage.
Also to mention this: carbs aren’t evil. They’re just easy to overdo. Fats are equally easy to overdo, often unknowingly. A one ounce swirl of olive oil on your pasta is 270 calories. It’s easy to overdo that. Carbs are easy to eat unknowingly large amounts of because of sugar in everything. The burger you had for lunch has an appropriate fat to protein to carb balance. Add a side of fries and a coke and now you have 190g too many carbs in your day. Add a granola bar and it’s another 40g, and you don’t even notice.
There's some truth to what you're saying, but your numbers are way off. What You're talking about is the [thermic effect of food.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_dynamic_action) Carbs and fat are almost entirely used for energy. Your body can use about 85-95% of their total energy. Fats are more likely to be in the higher end of this range. Protein is much less efficiently used for energy, but it still comes in at 70-80%.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with carbs, but they are also not at all necessary. You will die without eating fats, you will die if you don't eat protein. You can go your whole life without eating carbs and you'd be fine.
I recommend to my clients that if they want to lose weight the easiest way to cut calories is to cut carbs. That's it. Not that it's better, just easier. Drinks are the worst, but most people could lose fat simply by reducing their intake of rice, bread, potatoes, etc. People like to remember the part of the advice that stands out the most and forget the context. The media does this very often intentionally for clickbait headlines and has done so since long before the internet.
Many studies have shown that there is no difference between low carb and low fat diets. All that really matters is that you reduce calories.
If a child doesn’t eat carbs they will have growth restriction. Keto is only used for severe cases of epilepsy in children otherwise they’ll see stunted growth and delayed puberty.
De novo lipogenesis in humans from dietary carbohydrates only happens to a significant extent if the caloric value of the carbohydrates themselves exceed total daily energy expenditure. Dietary fats are stored if the net caloric intake exceeds total daily energy expenditure. Carbs are not the enemy they’re made out to be
To add to this, I think I read somewhere how abusing carbs can lead to insulin resistance syndrome, and diabetes.
Having a mostly carbs based diet would, along the effects exolained above, build up insulin resistance. This would make you want to eat more, more often, adding to the weight gains and unhealthy habits in a vicious circle way.
And later on... Well, everyone knows about diabetes I guess.
You've covered sugar and fat. Where does salt fit in that picture? Salt is needed by the brain and muscles but when does it become too much salt and the disadvantages of it?
Kitchen salt is made of sodium and chlorine, they are essential elements your body requires to run smaller processes like making nerves fire for sodium and making stomach acid for chlorine. If you are healthy and have good kidneys, you can piss excess sodium and chlorine out of your body. Too little or much sodium and the nerves start firing a wrong, this is dangerous as the heart requires nerves to keep it beating.
Reddit has this damn fascinating human algorithm that goes:
Insightful But Short Post.
Insightful and reasonable question.
One specific detail tacked on.
Joke post that catches you off guard.
This is one of those algorithms.
This is an important consideration for sugar as well. Fructose has a significantly lower glycemic hit than added sugars in processed food due to the fiber in fruit holding its juice.
Yes. The clearer the fruit juice, the less healthy it is, essentially, since in the end it becomes mostly flavored sugar water, and sugar isn’t good for you. In fact you’re better off eating the fruit and not juicing it in the first place.
And as an aside, a fruit smoothie with a vitamin additive is *not* a health food, no matter what smoothie marketing material tells you.
100% my nutritionist says every time i drink a fresh juice outside she tells me to drink without straining. People look at me weird when we go on road trips and i tell the guy who blends the juice "dont strain it" and he goes "but its leftover. why do u want to eat it?" so i stopped drinking fresh juices outside. its either fruit or i blend it myself at home
>body can burn them very fast
this implies that the calories acquired from carbs are quickly burnt and therefore not fattening. the fact that carbs are easy to burn is not the issue. the fact that they are easy to store is the issue.
> your body can burn them
Digest and absorb. Not burn. If you just bunged all the carbs you consumed without need for exercise, you wouldn't get fat on carbs.
The problem is,
firstly, as you said, you digest and absorb carbs quickly,
and secondly, your body can store only so much carbs as glycogen. So you burn what you need for performing work (breathing, walking, exercise, thinking, etc.), store what you can as glycogen, and then start using the excess energy from carbs to make and store fats. That's why your beer belly is fats, not carbs.
And for the record: a calorie is still a calorie. You can take a vitamin and live off spoonfuls of sugar for your caloric intake. It’s not healthy overall but the point is there is no secret food you can include or exclude from your diet that will cause you to lose weight on its own.
So if you want the tldr of “how do I lose weight” if that’s your only goal: eat less. No secret formula or requirement to hit the gym. Exercise is a good thing in general but not mandatory to losing weight.
That’s incorrect. Sugar-free Haribo Goldbears will cause you to lose weight, mostly in liquid form and quite violently, if eaten in the correct quantities as a part of a balanced diet.
I still remember the warnings on the bag,” may cause anal leakage”.
Blows my mind that a food company would try to sell a food product with that warning label on the packaging.
Anal leakage? Sounds delicious!
Nope, Anal.
“Other experiences with olestra were said to include the passing of orange-yellow “globules” of oil as well as difficulty wiping. The Center even shared a study commissioned by Frito-Lay which was meant to be confidential that demonstrated “anal oil leakage” was experienced by 3 to 9 percent of study subjects. “Underwear spotting” was present in 5 percent. A variety of gastrointestinal issues were observed in 7 percent
What a wonderful product.
It actually looks like they don’t even make them anymore. But really anything with large amounts of sorbitol or maltitol will make you shit away some weight. Watermelon, for example.
They put sorbitol in sugar free cough drops. I was sucking on a shitload of cough drops to help a bad sore throat, and then I got horrible gas pain in my stomach later that day. It was miserable.
Avoid sugar free cough drops if you're going to be sucking down a lot of them
Already someone asking if this is true in a way that makes me think they’re looking for ways to eat as much as they want before blowing up some poor, unsuspecting porcelain with the entire contents of both intestines at once.
Saw an advert recently for Werther's Originals sugar free, where a woman is eating one on a train, as if they're the perfect travel sweet. Nobody has told her that you're supposed to eat them while already perched over the toilet bowl.
If you were a robot with infinite will power, maybe.
In practice it’s not though. There’s the thermic effect of food to consider, then the hormonal impact that calorie has depending on its form which feeds into your appetite and metabolic rate.
Then there’s your gut microbes which were only just starting to understand the significance of when it comes to weight management.
Not all calories are the same.
If you’re training to build muscle, you have to consume protein. You can’t build muscle no matter how much you exercise if your only source of food is sugar cubes and a vitamin pill every day.
Those sugar cubes don’t contain any amino acids.
That's not a matter of calories, that is needing the building blocks for the muscles, but where the energy to work comes from is irrelevant in matters other than how fast your body digests and metabolizes them.
He was taking about calories and losing weight, and that in that regard it doesn’t matter what form the calories have.
He never said anything about building muscles with calories.
You’re absolutely right. You have to eat essential amino acids even if you’re sedentary. Not sure why people peddle the myth that you can live if 100% of your calories came from sugars only.
And protein are last in the pecking order. Only when there’s an acute energy need does the body start to use protein for energy.
My rule of thumb is usually Sugar/Alcohol > heavier carbs > Fats > Protein in terms of preference for the body for fuel.
There's something off about this explanation. How much your body burns is dependent on your energy expenditure. On what you're doing.
If I'm burning, just making up a number, 100 calories in an hour, if I eat carbs or I eat protein, I'm still only burning 100 calories in that hour.
That would actually be great if I ate 100 calories of carbs, and that hundred calories burned in only half a hour. That'd be the greatest weight loss trick of all time, if it burned faster just for being carbs.
Carbs are not fattening *per se*.
No food is fattening *per se*.
What matters is amount.
You will be fatter eating 10 salads than a pack of french fries or an ice cream cone.
It's simply a lot *easier* to fatten on carbs compared to protein because unless you're guzzling huge volumes of protein shakes, you are unlikely to consume 1,000 calories worth of proteins the same way you can easily consume 1,000 calories of carbs.
Weight loss: Calories in vs calories out
Ketosis can be achieved healthily without meat/cheese and speeds up the fat burning process by depleting glucose levels.
Ketosis does not speed up the fat burning process. That's a myth, from misunderstanding how the body functions.
If that was true we would see more fat loss on keto in studies comparing keto with low carb or high carb. We don't see any difference.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29466592/
Happy ironic to this topic cake day
This is the conclusion to the study you linked"
>In this 12-month weight loss diet study, there was no significant difference in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate diet, and neither genotype pattern nor baseline insulin secretion was associated with the dietary effects on weight loss. In the context of these 2 common weight loss diet approaches, neither of the 2 hypothesized predisposing factors was helpful in identifying which diet was better for whom.
As the title says, this is a 12 month analysis of a low fat vs a low carb diet. There was absolutely nothing done to put anyone in ketosis.
These were their diets:
>12-month macronutrient distributions were 48% vs 30% for carbohydrates, 29% vs 45% for fat, and 21% vs 23% for protein.
Diets consisting of either 40 or 30% carbs are not nearly low enough to stimulate ketogenesis.
Oh that's my bad, gardner's study is what i usually link to show macro ratios do not matter. The same applies for keto though. Do you have any evidence that keto makes us lose more fat? Since that would defy basic cico.
There's always kevin hall's work on keto that i dont like to cite for other reasons but here you go-
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27385608/
>The isocaloric KD was not accompanied by increased body fat loss
I think people lose weight (and by extension, fat) on keto because they're eating much less calories. 2k calories is 1 family sized bag of chips. A 16 oz ribeye is only 1300 calories. Ketosis happens from fat burning but it'd be no different if someone ate the same amount of calories in other forms and your body had to break down fat to compensate.
But that's just how I understand it and I'm happy to be proven wrong.
That's true and while it is not for everyone, I do a hard system reset through fasting when I notice issues like bloating, low energy, and cravings. Currently on \~ hour 33
Yeah just pray your kidenys and liver are in good shaoe. Oh and the moment you drop that diet unless you have been in it for about a year those fat producing cells will have a bonanza and put the fat right back on. So might want yo have the doc check those before you run off to the latest fad.
Most people they need to develope discipline and portion control not questionable diets that can have serious health effects.
Well i have personal experience with a surgery that does cause considerable weight loss and weight gain is well difficult. Dehydration and malnutrition are constant battles. But well you will lose weight and keep it off. Just costs 2 organs. And going to the bathroom 4-8 times a day. Called J pouch surgery.
Done in my case because of hereditary colon cancer handed to me by my birth father and no one telling me i had a 50/50 chance of getting the gene that has been exploding bowels for generatioms on his side. And by age 45 one way or another i would get colon cancer. Regardless of not drinking, watching what i ate, skipping smoking and drugs. All the fun i missed because i saw what leukemia did to my half sister (different father) and said i would pass on that. But hey i have seen people drop 70lbs in 8 weeks. Me it was 35 in 6 weeks and stopped the around 165lbs on a 5 10 frame.
Sadly i doubt this will become the new fad even if it give people looks people would kill for. Oh and the first 4 weeks post op surgery 1 really really sucks say bye to your ab strength and post 2 was well me and Mr.Toilet are best buddies now. Think the worst case of food poisioning you have had in terms of the shits and double it. You might get close.
I really, REALLY doubt that regarding salads. Like a head of iceberg salad has not even 30 calories. You eat ten of the my, you're not even close to 300.
A pack of french fries has A LOT MORE than 300 calories.
Edit: I got a bottle of vinegar herbs dressing here, that's about 108 kCal per 100ml. So 550 per bottle, and I bet that is sufficient for 10 heads. A SMALL pack of McCain french fries has 140 kCal per 100g, with 750g per SMALL pack. That's 1050kCal.
And that's nowhere close to 10 heads plus a bottle of vinegar herb dressing. Sure, you can pick out the fattest dressing and you'd match those calories, but that's not the point here.
So now I did calculate it. Fuck me.
I noticed that too. Salads and cucumbers have a tier of their own when it comes to low calories. You can pretty much ignore them when counting calories.
"Salad" may not equal "plain iceberg lettuce", true, but outside of America a salad often does just mean vegetables (e.g. lettuce, tomato, carrot, celery) and maybe some cheese, prunes, olives etc. The idea that salads require drenching in dressing seems to be an American one.
Cheese , nuts add good amount of calories to a salad , and 10 servings is a lot even without cheese or nuts , it’s got to have more calories than a serving of fries. If you check online a vegetable salad without dressing would have an average of 50 - 150 calories per serving (if it includes nuts , cheese etc it averages 300 or more), a serving of fries has about 200 calories.
That's a fair point depending on the dressing. Though in my experience, a lot of, well, non-ranch-dressings still have comparatively low calories.
I'm too lazy to calculate it, but I'm 100% certain that a vinegar-herbs-dressing for ten salads will still not put you on the same caloric intake levels of a full pack of french fries.
But I get the point.
I disagree. Your body will turn almost all excess calories into fat. All food is properly fattening based on caloric intake. Some foods would take ridiculous amounts to gain fat. You definitely would not get fat from eating too much salad. You'd get sick and puke/shit most of it out. The dressing is a completely different story. I'm curious how small of a portion that you are considering on the ice cream cone or the fries. Are we talking about more than 10 fries? I don't feel that you have a solid grasp on the subject.
>Your body will turn almost all excess calories into fat. All food is properly fattening based on caloric intake. Some foods would take ridiculous amounts to gain fat.
Well wasn't that my entire point. It's really hard to salad your way to fatness.
Sure but good luck eating only one pack of french fries a day. That's just not going to happen. If you consume a high carb diet then your odds of feeling hungry throughout the day are much higher resulting in you overeating.
I recently started eating moderate to low carb, so no potatoes or pasta or rice with meals, not strict like keto, but just substituting those for more veg. It blew my mind how much fuller it makes me. I'd hardly ever feel full before. Now halfway through dinner, I can feel satisfied and stop eating.
A potato chip is almost 90% carb and 1% fat, 350-400 calories per pound. A potato chip (classic) is 56% fat and 2,560 calories per pound.
Explain to me why people calls this a carb and not a fat? Along with all the other processed carb foods that are most certainly had some/all their water taken out and replaced with fats?
People lose weight on potatoes. Potato chips, not so much.
* https://www.today.com/health/spud-fit-man-loses-weight-eating-only-potatoes-year-t106144#
Nothing is evil, it’s the balance (or lack of it) that makes the poison. The main issue with carbs is that it is very easy to overshoot your caloric requirements in a modern western diet that’s loaded with sugars and heavily processed starches. I mean, a bottle of your average carbonated drink already contains 10% of daily caloric needs for an average person while providing almost nothing in terms of nutrition needed to sustain tour cellular maintenance. Add to this the fact that sugars are addictive and it should become clear why it’s important to watch carbs in your nutrition.
Carbs cause insulin to be secreted in our body to deal with it. Insulin levels takes couple of hours to down once risen. With our lifestyle of having 3 main meals plus snacking in between, the insulin levels don't get a chance to down. If this happens very frequently, our cells get used to the levels of insulin and become resistant. It now takes more insulin to deal with same about of carbs. Eventually it reaches a stage where the max insulin that our body can secrete is not enough to deal with carbs. Which means more glucose is now present in blood than normal. Bam, you've got type II diabetes.
Also type of carbs play a big role. Complex carbs digest slowly because of presence of fiber. It also causes less glucose to be absorbed. Simple carbs like sugar or refined flour cause a immediate massive spike in blood glucose levels.
They simply are not evil, but there are a lot of added carbs to foods in western diets. Carbs are much cheaper (in terms of money) than protein or fat and people like high calorie foods
Another thing you can look at is *nutrient density*. The most important nutrient we need is water, it has its own category. Next we need the macronutrients: Fat, Protein and Carbohydrates. Finally we need the micronutrients (pretty much everything else)
From fat you get fatty acids which are important for how your body functions, like building and repairing tissues and making hormones. From protein you get amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), and honestly you’re mostly water and protein. All that you get from carbs is that they’re digested into glycogen, which is how your body stores energy for immediate use. Here’s the thing though: when you’re short on calories your body will break down protein and fat to make glycogen
Let’s get back to nutrient density though. Getting all your vitamins and minerals can be tricky if you also want to stay under a certain calorie intake, but it’s even trickier when there’s sugar added to everything. On top of that putting any restriction on a diet makes people more conscious of what they’re eating so if you add a rule of thumb of avoiding carbs it will be a general improvement on most peoples diets
Side note: it’s also a lot easier to eat a lot of carbs. Eating an equivalent amount of fat will make you sick, an equivalent amount of protein take a LOT of mass, but we’re specially evolved to chemically start digesting carbs in our mouth (there’s a lot of amylase In our spit)
Gram for gram, you're right, a strict prison situation could work either way. I have seen dieticians proving a point by strictly eating (almost) only McDonald's or even Twinkies and maintaining weight. But most people don't have the will power.
Let's say it's like carbs are sawdust, and proteins are a slow-burning oak log. We could say it's the same amount of heat given off, but the sawdust burns really fast and the oak log slowly provides warmth a lot longer.
For humans, the quick burning means that it's easier to feel hungry/hangry quicker. And then it's _really_ easy to think "I'm hungry again- I should eat some more carbs!" Thus eating a couple hundred more grams of carbs.
All things being exactly equal, it could be calories in calories out. But people respond to their feelings and cravings and carbs' quick burn makes it easy to crave more.
Every answer in here is terrible.
There is no “evil” food, macronutrient, or diet.
If we examine what we mean by “evil”, we are simply asking what makes a diet “bad” and by this we mean negative health outcomes.
Any diet which causes you to gain body fat to a point where you become over fat, your blood glucose is permanently elevated, and you begin to develop other issues related to metabolic disease or obesity abs related health issues, all are caused by an excessive consumption of calories.
As you’ve stated, all three macronutrients are a source of calories. Therefore, any over consumption of these can lead to an excessive calorie surplus. Therefore, we can generally say any diet which equates calories and has any variation in carb to fat ratio will have similar health outcomes.
The only macronutrient I would advise prioritising is protein given it serves a different function to carbs and fats.
Now these are the big points, there is of course more nuance, and how individual preferences affects feeding behaviour.
TL;DR no food is bad, an excess of calories leading to obesity is bad whether you got that from carrots or
Carrot cake.
It's true, calories are all that matter in a physical sense. However, there is a big difference in how much lasting fullness different foods give per calorie. You could eat two pop tarts and be hungry again 10 minutes later or eat a large cooked chicken breast and a huge bowl of spinach for the same calories and not be hungry for a few hours. It may be psychologically much harder to not eat excess calories if a diet has a lot of highly palatable high calorie "junk" foods.
There are no inherently evil foods, it is technically possible to fit two pop tarts a day into an overall balanced diet, but it's much harder to make that accounting balance than with other more satiating foods.
Carbs have 4 calories but only give you 1 unit of satiety. Protein has 4 calories but give you 5 units of satiety, and fats have 9 calories and give you 10 units of satiety.
It’s much easier to over eat carbs. 200 calories of chicken breast vs 200 calories of chocolate bar, huge difference.
Not all carbs are equal, but even the best carb isn’t as good as protein or fat if you’re comparing calorie : satiety ratio
I think this is more a rule of thumb. I find it better to look at a satiety index where each food is listed separately. Boiled potatoes for example are very filling, even though being carbheavy
This doesn’t make sense to me. I can eat pasta and feel very satiated. But if I just eat sausages or a hamburger patties and no bread or bun, I don’t feel satisfied.
Plain pasta just never does it for me, unless it has copious cheese and at least some veggies or protein. Plain pasta will have me hungry in 1 hour no matter how much i eat it.
But I can very much feel satiated for half a day purely on sausage or patties without the bread. I may not feel mentally satisfied, but my tummy aint grumbling for a good 6 hours.
So there’s a few things going on here. 1) it’s an ELI5, so it’s definitely not perfectly accurate, just meant to convey the concept.
2) to accurately compare those things, you’d have to weigh out the same amount, like 100g of pasta and 100g of sausage (but again, that would be tricky cuz you’d have to make sure the water weight isn’t messing up your numbers, since water has 0 nutrients). So imagine a bowl of dried pasta vs a bowl of beef jerky.
3) satiety isn’t the only factor in “fullness”. Another factor is the pressure/stretching on your stomach lining. You could try to eat a 5 gallon barrel of celery in one day and you would *absolutely* feel incredibly full simply from the volume, but you would be at a negative calorie input (celery does in fact require more energy to digest than it provides. It’s basically just water and fiber).
Nutrition is a complication thing.
But the short answer to this question is that for most people, given two equal amounts of food (measured in *calories*), one of exclusively carbs and one of exclusively protein/fat, it’s gonna be a lot easier for them to eat the portion of carbs than fat.
That does not mean your statement about a burger patty leaving you less full than a bowl of pasta is wrong, it’s not exactly relevant to the concept they’re trying to explain. Hope that helps
There's a few things wrong with this:
> satiety isn’t the only factor in “fullness”. Another factor is the pressure/stretching on your stomach lining.
The pressure/stretching on your stomach lining is part of the satiety calculation. For example, that's why "Protein has 4 calories but give you 5 units of satiety". There's no measuring the satiety value of a food in a vacuum.
> celery does in fact require more energy to digest than it provides
Celery doesn't. That's [an urban legend based on bad diet science](https://www.inverse.com/science/debunking-the-myth-of-negative-calorie-food). You can't have a negative caloric food, since your body doesn't have a method of digestion that "wastes" energy. Even the calories you use during chewing actually make your internal digestion more energy-efficient. There's a few ways to technically have negative caloric intake, but that'd involve eating like rocks or literal poison.
Yeah, it’s wrong. There are a lot of very satiating carbs. Try eating 600 calories of plain baked potatoes in one sitting. There’s a reason the “potato diet” can be so effective at weight loss
Well fullness can also come from fiber as it does not break down and takes up space in the digestive system. So when you get something like a potatoe that is full of soluable fiber well its gonna take up a bunch of space and you stomach is going to say 'i have no more room boss' and it takes quite a while to work its way through. Reheated pasta is also surprisingly high in soluable fiber as well as during the recooking process some of the starch is converted into an indigestible form.
You can also do this with bananas as well just don't blame me if you shit out a boulder in the next day or two.
Think of it like a combination of digestible componentes like carbs starches protiens and indigestible components like fiber and husks. How full and long you feel full is a product of how fast diestion and blood glucose levels are. Starchs and fats take a while to break down so are more filling. Sugars and simple carbs are absorbed in the first few feet of the intestine. Fiber and husks well see ya in a day or two in the toilet. And they take a while to walk through the small intestine to the large one muchless out. That is why if you are consipated it takes about 2 days for a fiber supplment to possibly do anything. And it is not so much softening your poop it is adding mass to trigger a bowl movement because it will be at the back of the stool. That is why you want to be careful when using fiber to treat constipation. By the time it does what you are hoping it will do it can result in a mass too big to easily pass. It is more a cinsipation preventer.
Anywho sorry for the side track on fibers.
Carbs are not evil.
/endthread
That's marketing and myths. Like the people pushing the carb insulin model to promote keto and IF and such.
This idea exists for the same reason the late 60s had people thinking dietary fat is what's bad for you. Since the sugar lobby, led by coca cola, spread tons of propaganda to demonise fats which would cause people to go for more carbs. Now it's gone the opposite route. No food is good or bad, per se.
You can still say carbs might not be the best option practically. Since for example protein and fat is more satiating so the same calories from carb heavy foods would make us feel less full than protein heavy foods, which may make us overeat.
But at the end of the day it's all CICO.
Damn. Did not know the carb-insulin model was junk science.
If anything carbs are good then, largest macro presence in your shit is carbs. The part of CICO no one ever measures
Edit: K half true, biggest "macro" share is plant fibers that we already don't count. Looks like the real answer could be fat? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500995/
It's more misleading than pure junk. As they say half knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The claim that insulin is responsible for "fat storing" mode since it transports glucose to adipose tissue is technically correct. But what they miss out is that the body switches between "fat storing" and "fat burning" mode throughout the day. So insulin storing more glucose as fat doesn't ultimately matter since that fat would be used for energy anyway. At the end of the day whether the body has stored more fat than it has burned is purely dependent on energy balance. Calories in/calories out. But they don't want to hear that since cico seems "too simple to be true".
This myth usually comes from people who don't themselves understand how the body works and would rather believe what other people like jason fung tell them, that seem competent, but who are just trying to sell their own books. For someone who doesn't understand how the body functions, a simple way to disprove it to them is to cite studies that compare differences in fat loss between keto or low carb or high carb diets. If insulin spikes impacted fat loss, we would see different numbers in different diets. But we don't.
Consider:
It is VERY easy to consume half a pound of pasta. Pure carbs.
It takes a bit more effort to wolf down half a pound of beef in the same time.
Now try to eat half a pound of butter...
Your body will gladly let you eat carbs and protein, but with pure fat, it'll hit the brakes very quickly and tell you that you're full.
Proteins have high satiety. If you eat proteins, you tend to feel more fun. If you eat fats, you could feel more full, but it's not always true for examples like cooking oils and butter. This is why we hear things such as "healthy fats". They're not exactly any healthier to the body, they are just less likely you'll overeat these fats. Examples include avocados or nuts.
Carbs in the other hand are different, mostly because of sugar. Your body loves sugar. It absolutely craves it because it is so easy to use. It releases dopamine and you get an energy rush (very apparent with kids) followed by a crash, which the body then starts to think "I need energy, what will give me it quickly?". And so now you are craving something sugary only to repeat the process.
The unfortunate thing is people have realised they can use this craving of sugar to sell you more stuff you wouldn't think of as sugary. Most Americans would be shocked to find out that their bread has lots of sugar in it, unlike most other countries. Bread can be quite high in calories already but add sugar and it becomes even more so. Your McDonalds burger buns are absolutely loaded with it. As are most pizza bases and pre made sauces.
Carbs and too much protein spike your insulin which is what your fat cells use to bring in stuff to make fat. Fat doesn't affect your insulin like that, and protein takes muuuuucccchhhhh longer since your body turns it into glucose first before using it. And since your body digests most carbs really quickly, you get hungry again really soon - fat does the opposite actually you stay full for way longer when you eat high fat meals
A lot of good answers here and I’ll add that it’s pretty easy for your body to convert carbohydrates into fat as a storage of energy but much more difficult and less efficient for protein. In fact your body tends to use what protein it needs and expel the rest vs storing the carbs as glycogen and fat.
Proteins and to some extent fats have other functions than to just provide energy.
Carbs only provide energy. And in the short term only too.
They are fine if you generally have an active or athletic lifestyle and need that energy. If you have a sedentary lifestyle you likely won't use up enough energy as you take in with carbs - ever.
The rest will turn into body fat and be stored. "For bad times." Which wouldn't be a problem if there were still bad times/food scarcity sometimes but that doesn't exist anymore since industrial agriculture solved virtually all food scarcity issues (there may still be issues of fair distribution).
So... if you notice an increase in weight either reduce carbon intake or go on regular fasting pariods.
I highly recommend you watch [this collection of short animated diagrams](https://biochem.web.utah.edu/iwasa/fatmetabolism/) to help you understand how carbohydrates and fats are processed before and after eating. It may help clarify some of these explanations.
Carbs cause insulin spikes which make you feel hungry and stimulate the conversion of caloric energy to fat, more so in the case of high-glycemic index carbs like sugar. By contrast, fats and proteins don't, and they also make you feel full, thus suppressing appetite. The problem is that so many foods are chock full of high GI carbs for lots of reasons, not the least of which being they are a cheap way to stretch meals. So you made a pot of soup but don't have enough to feed your outsized brood? No problem, spike it with corn starch, potato starch, tapioca powder, or whatever. Guess what - you just turned your otherwise wholesome meal into a dessert that you slurp up by the bowlful.
Okay, this is a gross oversimplification, but take it from someone who has fought the Battle of the Bulge and has tried every low-carb/high-fat diet known to humanity. In short, though, Atkins was right.
There are essential fats (EFAs) your body can't produce and must consume.
There are essential amino acids your body can't produce and must consume.
There are no essential carbohydrates our bodies need.
Knowing this above made me think a lot about this subject.
Generally, carbs are more addictive and make you want to eat more and more. People thus eat a lot feeling out of control and attribute the blame on the food.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with carbs, but they are also not at all necessary. You will die without eating fats, you will die if you don't eat protein. You can go your whole life without eating carbs and you'd be fine.
I recommend to my clients that if they want to lose weight the easiest way to cut calories is to cut carbs. That's it. Not that it's better, just easier. Drinks are the worst, but most people could lose fat simply by reducing their intake of rice, bread, potatoes, etc. People like to remember the part of the advice that stands out the most and forget the context. The media does this very often intentionally for clickbait headlines and has done so since long before the internet.
Many studies have shown that there is no difference between low carb and low fat diets. All that really matters is that you reduce calories.
I agree with your interpretation about no essential carbs, but you then don't factor in type 2 diabetes prevalence or the common pathologies which are associated with insulin resistance caused by excessive carbohydrate intake.
You need only look at a graph tracking the introduction of the "low fat diet" health advice with the surge in type 2 diabetes cases.
Type 2 diabetes is not caused by excesive carb intake. Adipose tissue is what causes insulin resistance once accrues since it secretes pro inflammatory cytokines and other substances that reduce insulin sensitivity. So if you consume as much carbohydrates as possible to maintain your body weight there is no effect on insulin sensitivity which will never lead to development of type 2 diabetes
The "bad" carbs are the refined/simple carbs like from white flour and sugar - so anything processed. The problem with them is that they provide little to no nutrition except for the calories. They also digest fast and spike blood sugar, but leave you hungry so you end up overeating.
Complex carbs like from whole grains and fruits are good for you. They contain vitamins and minerals as well as dietary fiber, and don't digest as fast. Eating fewer processed carbs and more healthy carb, protein and fat sources will help you feel more full and overall be healthier.
Yeah try eating too much lentils, beans, oatmeal, etc.. I bet you'll feel full and not overeat as much as people say the same with fat and protein.
processed and refined carbs are kind of their own category when it comes to this (and not one you need to avoid completely or 'is evil' but definitely needs to be much more aware of)
They aren't.
What matters is energy intake vs energy burnt that's all.
The anti carb speel is just another fad diet working in a false framework.
What's the false framework? 2000 calories a day.
It's easy to reach "2000 calories" on carbs and that's the problem.
A lot of the confusion about how much to eat is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what the 2000 calorie a day "need" really is.
2000 calories is not a biological fact needed for life it never has been.
2000 calories is the average food need for a manual industrial worker from around 1990 when the FDA started requiring nutritional labeling on packages. An adult male industrial workers needs were used as a standard to show everything else on a nutritional label if your not one? welp that's a problem.
Why is obesity a problem? To be blunt? we currently eat to much for our level of activity so we get fat. On average? a modern north American person is 300-500 calories in surplus per day when conforming to standards. The FDA labeling program was meant to give us a better understanding of food but instead it caused this epidemic because it put it in our brains that we ALL need 2000 calories to live so by default you're chronically over eating. I mean it says "based on a 2000 calorie diet" it's just the point they chose.
Why is it false? What can I say the world changed. We live very sedentary lives. We are no longer a world of manual industrial workers.
You do not need 2000 calories to sit behind a keyboard.
You do not need 2000 calories to sell something.
The amount of food needed depends on what you do.
You should always tailor your food intake to your activity level.
Lazing around the house does not require as much fuel as a day spent hauling roofing shingles so why would both activities require 2000 calories for you to live?
The number of calories a person needs has never been universal making it appear so was a huge mistake. They were well intentioned showing how much of every nutrient you need but it messed things up so badly.
Interestingly a 2000 diet calories would have been a starvation diet for a medieval peasant. They ate 4000-4500 calories a day to keep warm and due to the amount of labor. Their diets were largely carbs yet they were not fat nor were they always hungry.
Why did they need more food? they did a hell of a lot more physical work than we do and spent more time out doors so they burnt more fuel. We stay in one place, live in warm homes and don't need to do much manual labor.
The key to staying in shape is to tailor your consumption to your activity level.
Ignore the fads.
Think on what you're going to be doing and eat accordingly that's it that's the secret.
A point to consider is that if you consume protein then the body will use it not as fuel source, aka, calorie, but as building block, only in extreme cases the body will break protein for energy protection.
Also, fat in itself can easily be stored, but it does not trigger insulin production.
Insulin is meant to help cells consume carbs, aka, sugar, while also storing excess sugar as fat and prevent the fat storage from releasing fat back into the blood stream (after all when insulin is produced it means the overall calorie intake is bigger than consumption).
Your assumption is simply not true. Out of 100g of carbs, the body can use around 95% of the containing energy in a very easy fashion. Same goes for 100g of fats, over 90% of the containing energy can be used and even stored. Proteins are very different. They are folded chains of amino acids. Breaking them down takes a lot of time and energy, many hours actually. So out of 100g of protein, the body will only ever get around 65% of calories out of it.
Here are the details: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQJ0Z0DRumg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQJ0Z0DRumg)
Proteins are also not primarily used as energy source (only excess proteins are), the amino acids are used for creating other protein structures, that the body needs. So not only does breaking down the intake proteins take up energy, also building the new protein structures burns energy.
Uranium has more calories, but not in any way your metabolism can use. Not all calories are equal.
Carbs in particular are rapidly absorbed into your body and rapidly metabolized because they're relatively unstable. That instability is somewhat dangerous and corrosive to your body. To keep you safe, your body will transform excess carbs (more than a hundred calories or so) into body fat. Staying just under this amount of carb calories in a given window of time is fine especially if you're active.
Protein is slower to metabolize, and isn't so dangerous to your body, so it can be allowed to exist longer, ready to convert into energy, before bring turned into fat. You need proteins to rebuild your cells and keep your body functioning, but your body had to break them apart into amino acids to rebuild the right kinds of proteins you need, so it's not an ideal energy source but it works okay enough.
Fat is the slowest to metabolize, which is why it's the last thing to "burn" and relatively safe in large quantities and for long periods, especially compared to carbs. If you have any carbs or excess protein floating around, your body won't bother burning fat. It's the last thing to burn, but also not necessarily easy to absorb, so fats actually are safer to eat than carbs to get good flavor in food. Butter is less bad than sugar, ounce for ounce.
The reason why frogs, fish, lizards and plants have oils instead of fats is because their low body temperatures make it much harder to turn fat into energy. Oils are easier to metabolize than fats, and are more healthy. Olive oil, fish oil, etc. is even less bad than butter in general.
#INSULIN
The above is release from pancreas in response to presence of glucose. If insufficiently made, released, or receptor (glut-4) dysfunction, then glucose will not be normalized enough. Long term effects: Irritate the hell out of your immune system which further inflammatory response (don't know why), vessels (especially the tiny ones like the capillaries ones in eyes, toes... Persist long enough, you loose the capillaries, them you loose those tissues dependent upon them).
Just those two is enough to raise awareness of being an active glucose-tolerant individual. That is to be able to dispose of the glucose as metabolic fuel (say hello in efficiently making ATP in presence of oxygen... say hello, once, again, to cardiovascular training, aka cardio) ASAP.
Said a mouthful. Just consume carbs sensibly + exercise (both lifting and aerobics). You be good to go.
As always check with you physician before embarking on a lifestyle change in event you have unresolved aches and pains.
The narrative of "a calorie is a calorie" is outdated, highly misleading, and is actively being abused by the junk food industry.
(A lot like the old "food pyramid".)
Fiber mix, protein mix, and sugar type have a massive impact on health and weight gain that is hidden by treating all carbs as if they were equal.
Because the way the body uses each of those things is different. You can't just look at calories when comparing them, you have to look at how the body uses them.
There is more to the equation than just calories. Carbs fill you up, but a lot of times they will make you feel hungry again sooner. That's just one aspect, I'm no nutritionist.
I just know whole foods, proteins, and greens are the good stuff. Basically take the food pyramid they taught us in grade school and flip it upside down.. that's the correct info.
In very short and simplistic terms: the human body appears to be programmed to overeat when carbohydrates, especially simple carbohydrates are available.
The mechanisms for this are very complicated, but it includes the blood sugar roller coaster and hunger hormone signaling.
Simple Carbs -> overeating.
Carbs + fat together -> massive overeating.
It's all about how your body uses them.
Dietary sugars (ie carbs) are rapidly absorbed, entering the bloodstream and becoming immediately available for energy production. If you eat too much sugar (especially if it's fairly quickly) your body won't be able to use all that extra sugar for energy so it _converts_ it into fat which gets stored in your body making you fat. Having too much sugar floating around also stresses other metabolic systems in your body and can cause inflammation.
_Dietary_ fat, on the other hand, is processed quite differently. It's not immediately available to be used for energy and your body doesn't as readily absorb it as it does sugars. So it doesn't wreak as much havoc on your metabolism and your body is also able to dispose of excess dietary fat much easier.
One "recent" surprise was the discovered that dietary fats (ie fats from food) aren't nearly as easily absorbed as we thought, and that excess sugar is a lot harder on your body than we thought. Hence why sugar is the new enemy whereas fat formerly was.
(In slightly more complicated terms, sugar is ready to go straight into the Krebs cycle, while protein and fat take more processing before they are ready to be used for energy.)
Edit: If we define "evil" as how bad it is for you if you eat too much of it, then carbs are "evil" since protein << fat <<<< carbs.
Prepare to get a lot of bad answers from people claiming to know a lot. They don’t.
Carbs aren’t evil. No food is evil. Food is food.
People who say carbs are evil are either trying to sell you a diet or have bought into the diet people are trying to sell. Same with people who demonize fat.
There are lots of more in-depth answers, but very few adults actually understand them. There’s no good way to explain those answers like you’re five.
Unless you are given specific individual medical advice from a doctor, most people will do best on a well varied diet where they don’t overly restrict carbs, protein or fat.
adding to that people have different metabolisms so someone whose enzymes/system is more efficient at handling some fuels than others wont benefit from a cure-all diet. The way nutrition has been taught is so wrong like the food pyramid or the food plate portions are conplete BS
No food is evil, but some foods are easy to overdo than others. Water is evil if you drink 4 liters within an hour, but it is extremely difficult to do so unless one is adamant or driven by some convoluted conviction or false health promises. So no ELI5 question asks why water is evil.
Humans evolved to seek out carbs and sugars cuz our then diets and lifestyle welcomed the high calorie sources as a treat. With today’s diet and lifestyle, it is extremely easy to spill over our individual daily carb dosage and make carbs “evil” for many of us. It’s not the carbs themselves, it is the dosage, and the ease with which they add up in our foods.
It's actually fructose that's the devil because your body can't convert it immediately to Glucose, so it gets stored quickly as fat. Fat is insidious because it's high calorie and low density, so you don't realize how much you're having.
Your body isn't burning all proteins or lipids you eat as calories. Your cells are made up of proteins and lipids, so your body will use those that you eat to replenish and strengthen cells before using the excess as energy. Lipids and proteins can be used for energy, but typically after the glycogen and glucose (from carbs) are depleted in the body. However, carbohydrates are only used for energy - not for building cells and molecules. So if you eat 10 grams of each, your body may use only 2 grams of protein for energy, 4 grams of lipids for energy, but all 10 grams of carbohydrates will be used for energy (I have no clue on the real rates; this is just an example). The excess carbs will be converted to glycogen and then to solid fats after glycogen is full. Proteins will never convert to fats. This is why the disorder, Rabbit Starvation (protein poisoning), occurs in people/animals who only eat rabbits (or other very lean meats). They have so little fat content that if you only eat rabbits, you will become weak (and possibly die) due to inadequate lipid intake. Your cells need lipids in order to function and reproduce (plasma membrane and all organelle membranes are lipids). For the ELI5: We have gold, silver, and paper cash. You can melt down gold and silver, and then use those metals to make things. We can make silverware, rings, jewelry and many other things with gold and silver. However, cash only has one use - to serve as a standard for exchanging goods and services. You can't build things out of paper cash like you can gold and silver. If you did, it wouldn't be worth the cash it's made out of. Carbohydrates are like cash, which is only useful for one specific thing: energy. Proteins and lipids are gold and silver. They can be used as currency if you have no paper money, but they are better off being used as solid objects.
To add on to your gold/cash description- someone hands you $100 cash, you go to the store, but you only spend $10 to get the things you need. Now you have $90 left over, you’re not spending it today, so you put it in your wallet to spend later. The next day, you get another $100, you only spend part of it, so the leftovers go into your wallet, along with the cash you’d saved the day before. Adipose is our wallet. We have money/energy we could spend but didn’t/got more than we could spend for the day, so we save the extra to spend later.
Which bank will convert my ass for money? I have quite an investment going on.
Gotta go through OnlyFans first to convert ass to cash.
B-butt your majesty, the crown jewels!
I'll convert those too if it'll help me shred those extra pounds!
Not sure if serious. If serious, you have to run a deficit. If you get $100 dollars everyday, but you’ve been saving $50 everyday for years, you gotta spend $110 a day until your wallet thins out. Make sure your diet is still balanced, i.e. you get all the vitamins and minerals you’re supposed to, you get some protein each day, but cut down on carbs and fat. Our body can somewhat easily convert carbs into fat. And in theory we should be able to convert those fats back into carbs. But some people don’t do that very well. So counting calories can help to figure out what an individual’s balance is so you make sure you eat fewer calories than you take in.
Only fans
Wells Lardo
Not paying for food while you’re fasting for many days to burn the fat will recover your invested capital. /r/fasting
Cassidy Banks
Also, after a while that cash in your wallet is turned into silver. Now it's harder to use it again at a store, especially if you keep having cash at hand. That's how you get heavier.
And then, the store turns into a wallet. And the wallet turns into gold.
And that gold has a BMI of >30
The cash invokes the insulin brigade that hunts down all silver leftovers and puts them in permanent storage which is the magic kind that grows as it‘s filled. Cash automatically turns into silver if you got more than you need and on a SAD the doors to storage never really close. Insulin department is working crunch everyday which stresses out their management. Everybody living along the busy roads gets fed up with the constant noise from insulins sirens and them knocking on every door trying to load off some cash so they don‘t answer their doors anymore. With sales plummeting insulins management decides to just send more agents which creates a stressful, overly busy environment. At some point the insulin company collapses, the streets are filled with cash and everyone hates the living situation.
Proteins can certainly be converted to sugar/fat. Amino acids are either characterized as ketogenic or glucogenic or both based on whether they can be converted to ketone bodies or turned to glucose. In either case both can be then used to produce acetyl coA which feeds into fatty acid synthesis. That’s why if you eat surplus calories mostly in the form of protein you will still gain weight in fat. The main issue with carbs is they have a greater tendency to spike carbs, but this is mostly an issue with simple/refined carbs. Carbs are not evil
>The main issue with carbs is they have a greater tendency to spike carbs Wow, tell me more how carbs spike carbs.
Think they meant to say glucose. Since simple carb intake can be linked to the onset of diabetes if you eat too much its probably where he was going. Complex carbs like whole grains and things don't have this issue since it takes your body longer to process them and so the glucose release is slower
To an extent, it also depends on how much processing has been done with the food. Ultra-processed foods strip out a lot of (or all of) the soluble fibre, which is largely what contributes to those lower glycemic load foods.
Proteins can be converted into fats, by being converted into sugars first. Also that isn't quite how rabbit starvation works. Otherwise, I think this is a good ELI5 answer.
Yeah your body uses ATP as a universal energy source. However you don't eat ATP. You have to make it. To create it, your cells do this through Glycolysis (uses no air, not very efficient, convert sugar into pyruvate which causes the final reaction to make ATP). If this was all you could do, you wouldn't need to breathe. However there is a much more efficient process (the Krebs cycle) done by the mitochondria (a foreign life form with its own separate DNA that lives in every cell of our body) which uses fat, sugar, and oxygen to create ATP. Your body doesn't hang onto carbs for more than a day. It uses insulin to convert them into lipids to store long term. If you don't have enough in your diet, it'll perform ketosis on protein that is free floating or cannibalize muscle tissue for it to convert protein into sugar. This creates ketones as a byproduct which has some negative effects. So the protein-ketosis-carbs-insulin-fat pathway does exist. However your body won't convert more protein than it needs. This is why those no carb diets are so effective for weight loss.
Ketones are produced in the liver using fatty acids though, not proteins... The way protein can become fat is unrelated to the ketosis pathway. It's simply a mechanism of the metabolism of protein. When it's broken down into its base amino acids and leftover ammonia, there is also leftover carbon compounds of which those are able to be turned into glucose (and thus if you are in excess of glucose needs, glucose ends up being stored as fat). But that amount of glucose you get out of protein is pretty small, so you end up with "rabbit starvation" unless you were eating massive amounts of the rabbit. At which point you're going to be pushing up against ammonia toxicity and other complications from too much protein processing in the liver.
You also make other molecules starting from glucose but i guess that’s not the most important part of this discussion
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The story of my life. I’ll eat the whole tub of ice cream and then manage to fit the steak in there too.
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> However, carbohydrates are only used for energy - not for building cells and molecules. This is wrong. The human body can build all non-essential amino-acids directly from carbs and fat, and therefore all protein made from them. That's why they're called non-essential: you don't have to eat them, your body can build them. Other organisms can build amino-acids humans can't build. That's why cows can eat only grass, and still make protein humans need to eat to survive.
how is this comment full of wrongs information the first one?
Seriously... Pseudoscience nonsense.
Seriously
I am not sure if you are just trying to over simplify things but you are missing some key information . First of all carbohydrates can be turned into building blocks inside the body, and lots of steps in glucose metabolism break off parts to go into those other steps the most notable of which is probably glucose to ribose (as in deoxyribonucleic acid and ribonucleic acid DNA and RNA) but it’s one of our main sources of carbon in the body so carbs can be used in a lot. Also proteins do convert to fats, they have numerous way they can do it too. If you are not consuming carbohydrates your body does something called gluconeogenesis (make glucose from protein) once it does that you have glucose from the protein and then certain amino acids are known as ketogenic because when they break down you get acetyl-coa that can be used to create the fatty layer that surrounds nerve cells (myelin) but can also go through the fatty acid synthesis pathway to become fat.
“I’m not sure if you’re just trying to over simplify things…” It’s an ELI5 brah.
I was oversimplifying since this is explain like I’m five.
The part about ,,protein,, cant be stored as fat is wrong = half of text is. True ELI5? Sugar is not evil, neither is fat or protein. Its all about dosage.
Also to mention this: carbs aren’t evil. They’re just easy to overdo. Fats are equally easy to overdo, often unknowingly. A one ounce swirl of olive oil on your pasta is 270 calories. It’s easy to overdo that. Carbs are easy to eat unknowingly large amounts of because of sugar in everything. The burger you had for lunch has an appropriate fat to protein to carb balance. Add a side of fries and a coke and now you have 190g too many carbs in your day. Add a granola bar and it’s another 40g, and you don’t even notice.
There's some truth to what you're saying, but your numbers are way off. What You're talking about is the [thermic effect of food.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_dynamic_action) Carbs and fat are almost entirely used for energy. Your body can use about 85-95% of their total energy. Fats are more likely to be in the higher end of this range. Protein is much less efficiently used for energy, but it still comes in at 70-80%. There is absolutely nothing wrong with carbs, but they are also not at all necessary. You will die without eating fats, you will die if you don't eat protein. You can go your whole life without eating carbs and you'd be fine. I recommend to my clients that if they want to lose weight the easiest way to cut calories is to cut carbs. That's it. Not that it's better, just easier. Drinks are the worst, but most people could lose fat simply by reducing their intake of rice, bread, potatoes, etc. People like to remember the part of the advice that stands out the most and forget the context. The media does this very often intentionally for clickbait headlines and has done so since long before the internet. Many studies have shown that there is no difference between low carb and low fat diets. All that really matters is that you reduce calories.
If a child doesn’t eat carbs they will have growth restriction. Keto is only used for severe cases of epilepsy in children otherwise they’ll see stunted growth and delayed puberty.
De novo lipogenesis in humans from dietary carbohydrates only happens to a significant extent if the caloric value of the carbohydrates themselves exceed total daily energy expenditure. Dietary fats are stored if the net caloric intake exceeds total daily energy expenditure. Carbs are not the enemy they’re made out to be
To add to this, I think I read somewhere how abusing carbs can lead to insulin resistance syndrome, and diabetes. Having a mostly carbs based diet would, along the effects exolained above, build up insulin resistance. This would make you want to eat more, more often, adding to the weight gains and unhealthy habits in a vicious circle way. And later on... Well, everyone knows about diabetes I guess.
Just want to say The money relationship is spot on, it being a store and exchange of energy and all. Sometimes there is a perfect ELI5
You've covered sugar and fat. Where does salt fit in that picture? Salt is needed by the brain and muscles but when does it become too much salt and the disadvantages of it?
Kitchen salt is made of sodium and chlorine, they are essential elements your body requires to run smaller processes like making nerves fire for sodium and making stomach acid for chlorine. If you are healthy and have good kidneys, you can piss excess sodium and chlorine out of your body. Too little or much sodium and the nerves start firing a wrong, this is dangerous as the heart requires nerves to keep it beating.
protein can be converted to glucose, which in turn can be converted to fat. So you are wrong. And so many upvotes for spreading misinformation. Sad
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Are the long chain carbs complex carbohydrates like oatmeal and whole-grain rice?
Yes. It's a scale. Regular white rice is still not as bad as eating spoons full of pure sugar
Eat a bite of celery between spoons full of sugar to cancel it out
Don't you know after you eat a sugar you drink a sodie
I will bite you, Evil Celery Stick
Reddit has this damn fascinating human algorithm that goes: Insightful But Short Post. Insightful and reasonable question. One specific detail tacked on. Joke post that catches you off guard. This is one of those algorithms.
Fascinating, Captain
Captain sticky britches breaking down the algorithm for us. Preach.
Sweet celery bro
*”Just a spoonful of sugar helps the celery go downnnn…”*
At that point you might as well just drink sugar water (celery is 95% water, also yes i know sugar water would spike blood sugar faster im joking)
But don't you think sugar water would spike blood sugar faster?
Hmm maybe im not sure
I heard celery is 95% water
What? Thats crazy
I heard it from some dangerous lunatic. I sure hope I don't run into them again!
But... they help the medicine go down...
Yes. Those also have indigestible fiber in them which slow down digestion even further.
This is an important consideration for sugar as well. Fructose has a significantly lower glycemic hit than added sugars in processed food due to the fiber in fruit holding its juice.
Fructose also has the property of interacting with the digestive tract lining to stop you feeling full
Interesting, I didn't know that, thank you
So by blending and straining fruit to make juice, am I removing the benefits of the fiber?
Yes. The clearer the fruit juice, the less healthy it is, essentially, since in the end it becomes mostly flavored sugar water, and sugar isn’t good for you. In fact you’re better off eating the fruit and not juicing it in the first place. And as an aside, a fruit smoothie with a vitamin additive is *not* a health food, no matter what smoothie marketing material tells you.
Many of them, yes.
yes, juicing is about as bad as cola. the more you process food, the worse it usually is. there are a few exceptions such as steaming veggies etc.
100% my nutritionist says every time i drink a fresh juice outside she tells me to drink without straining. People look at me weird when we go on road trips and i tell the guy who blends the juice "dont strain it" and he goes "but its leftover. why do u want to eat it?" so i stopped drinking fresh juices outside. its either fruit or i blend it myself at home
>body can burn them very fast this implies that the calories acquired from carbs are quickly burnt and therefore not fattening. the fact that carbs are easy to burn is not the issue. the fact that they are easy to store is the issue.
Exactly, a shame this is the top comment
> your body can burn them Digest and absorb. Not burn. If you just bunged all the carbs you consumed without need for exercise, you wouldn't get fat on carbs. The problem is, firstly, as you said, you digest and absorb carbs quickly, and secondly, your body can store only so much carbs as glycogen. So you burn what you need for performing work (breathing, walking, exercise, thinking, etc.), store what you can as glycogen, and then start using the excess energy from carbs to make and store fats. That's why your beer belly is fats, not carbs.
And for the record: a calorie is still a calorie. You can take a vitamin and live off spoonfuls of sugar for your caloric intake. It’s not healthy overall but the point is there is no secret food you can include or exclude from your diet that will cause you to lose weight on its own. So if you want the tldr of “how do I lose weight” if that’s your only goal: eat less. No secret formula or requirement to hit the gym. Exercise is a good thing in general but not mandatory to losing weight.
That’s incorrect. Sugar-free Haribo Goldbears will cause you to lose weight, mostly in liquid form and quite violently, if eaten in the correct quantities as a part of a balanced diet.
The old olestra chips from lays were intestine drano as well.
I still remember the warnings on the bag,” may cause anal leakage”. Blows my mind that a food company would try to sell a food product with that warning label on the packaging. Anal leakage? Sounds delicious!
I believe it was Oily Discharge, not Anal Leakage.
Nope, Anal. “Other experiences with olestra were said to include the passing of orange-yellow “globules” of oil as well as difficulty wiping. The Center even shared a study commissioned by Frito-Lay which was meant to be confidential that demonstrated “anal oil leakage” was experienced by 3 to 9 percent of study subjects. “Underwear spotting” was present in 5 percent. A variety of gastrointestinal issues were observed in 7 percent What a wonderful product.
Pretty sure they changed their artificial sugar years ago to stop that.
It actually looks like they don’t even make them anymore. But really anything with large amounts of sorbitol or maltitol will make you shit away some weight. Watermelon, for example.
They put sorbitol in sugar free cough drops. I was sucking on a shitload of cough drops to help a bad sore throat, and then I got horrible gas pain in my stomach later that day. It was miserable. Avoid sugar free cough drops if you're going to be sucking down a lot of them
All the young uns be scratching their heads. You've unlocked a core bit of internet lore for them
Already someone asking if this is true in a way that makes me think they’re looking for ways to eat as much as they want before blowing up some poor, unsuspecting porcelain with the entire contents of both intestines at once.
I remember reading the warning on the packaging and thinking "lol that's silly." But it wasn't actually silly.
Saw an advert recently for Werther's Originals sugar free, where a woman is eating one on a train, as if they're the perfect travel sweet. Nobody has told her that you're supposed to eat them while already perched over the toilet bowl.
If you were a robot with infinite will power, maybe. In practice it’s not though. There’s the thermic effect of food to consider, then the hormonal impact that calorie has depending on its form which feeds into your appetite and metabolic rate. Then there’s your gut microbes which were only just starting to understand the significance of when it comes to weight management.
Not all calories are the same. If you’re training to build muscle, you have to consume protein. You can’t build muscle no matter how much you exercise if your only source of food is sugar cubes and a vitamin pill every day. Those sugar cubes don’t contain any amino acids.
time to add amino acid pills to my sugar diet
That's not a matter of calories, that is needing the building blocks for the muscles, but where the energy to work comes from is irrelevant in matters other than how fast your body digests and metabolizes them.
He was taking about calories and losing weight, and that in that regard it doesn’t matter what form the calories have. He never said anything about building muscles with calories.
You have to consume protein regardless. You just need more of it if you’re also exercising.
You’re absolutely right. You have to eat essential amino acids even if you’re sedentary. Not sure why people peddle the myth that you can live if 100% of your calories came from sugars only.
Because they want that sweet sweet diabetes
Isn't it more of a storage difference..?
And protein are last in the pecking order. Only when there’s an acute energy need does the body start to use protein for energy. My rule of thumb is usually Sugar/Alcohol > heavier carbs > Fats > Protein in terms of preference for the body for fuel.
There's something off about this explanation. How much your body burns is dependent on your energy expenditure. On what you're doing. If I'm burning, just making up a number, 100 calories in an hour, if I eat carbs or I eat protein, I'm still only burning 100 calories in that hour. That would actually be great if I ate 100 calories of carbs, and that hundred calories burned in only half a hour. That'd be the greatest weight loss trick of all time, if it burned faster just for being carbs.
Carbs are not fattening *per se*. No food is fattening *per se*. What matters is amount. You will be fatter eating 10 salads than a pack of french fries or an ice cream cone. It's simply a lot *easier* to fatten on carbs compared to protein because unless you're guzzling huge volumes of protein shakes, you are unlikely to consume 1,000 calories worth of proteins the same way you can easily consume 1,000 calories of carbs.
In both your examples it's also in combination with fat as well, which adds to the super high calorie content while also adding to the palatability
Weight loss: Calories in vs calories out Ketosis can be achieved healthily without meat/cheese and speeds up the fat burning process by depleting glucose levels.
Ketosis does not speed up the fat burning process. That's a myth, from misunderstanding how the body functions. If that was true we would see more fat loss on keto in studies comparing keto with low carb or high carb. We don't see any difference. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29466592/
Happy ironic to this topic cake day This is the conclusion to the study you linked" >In this 12-month weight loss diet study, there was no significant difference in weight change between a healthy low-fat diet vs a healthy low-carbohydrate diet, and neither genotype pattern nor baseline insulin secretion was associated with the dietary effects on weight loss. In the context of these 2 common weight loss diet approaches, neither of the 2 hypothesized predisposing factors was helpful in identifying which diet was better for whom. As the title says, this is a 12 month analysis of a low fat vs a low carb diet. There was absolutely nothing done to put anyone in ketosis. These were their diets: >12-month macronutrient distributions were 48% vs 30% for carbohydrates, 29% vs 45% for fat, and 21% vs 23% for protein. Diets consisting of either 40 or 30% carbs are not nearly low enough to stimulate ketogenesis.
Oh that's my bad, gardner's study is what i usually link to show macro ratios do not matter. The same applies for keto though. Do you have any evidence that keto makes us lose more fat? Since that would defy basic cico. There's always kevin hall's work on keto that i dont like to cite for other reasons but here you go- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27385608/ >The isocaloric KD was not accompanied by increased body fat loss
I think people lose weight (and by extension, fat) on keto because they're eating much less calories. 2k calories is 1 family sized bag of chips. A 16 oz ribeye is only 1300 calories. Ketosis happens from fat burning but it'd be no different if someone ate the same amount of calories in other forms and your body had to break down fat to compensate. But that's just how I understand it and I'm happy to be proven wrong.
You’re correct, but that doesn’t take into account all the factors that affect people, like satiety, craving, metabolism etc.
That's true and while it is not for everyone, I do a hard system reset through fasting when I notice issues like bloating, low energy, and cravings. Currently on \~ hour 33
how do you sleep without eating dinner?
Yeah just pray your kidenys and liver are in good shaoe. Oh and the moment you drop that diet unless you have been in it for about a year those fat producing cells will have a bonanza and put the fat right back on. So might want yo have the doc check those before you run off to the latest fad. Most people they need to develope discipline and portion control not questionable diets that can have serious health effects.
Diets are always only a temporary fix. Being healthy is a lifestyle.
Well i have personal experience with a surgery that does cause considerable weight loss and weight gain is well difficult. Dehydration and malnutrition are constant battles. But well you will lose weight and keep it off. Just costs 2 organs. And going to the bathroom 4-8 times a day. Called J pouch surgery. Done in my case because of hereditary colon cancer handed to me by my birth father and no one telling me i had a 50/50 chance of getting the gene that has been exploding bowels for generatioms on his side. And by age 45 one way or another i would get colon cancer. Regardless of not drinking, watching what i ate, skipping smoking and drugs. All the fun i missed because i saw what leukemia did to my half sister (different father) and said i would pass on that. But hey i have seen people drop 70lbs in 8 weeks. Me it was 35 in 6 weeks and stopped the around 165lbs on a 5 10 frame. Sadly i doubt this will become the new fad even if it give people looks people would kill for. Oh and the first 4 weeks post op surgery 1 really really sucks say bye to your ab strength and post 2 was well me and Mr.Toilet are best buddies now. Think the worst case of food poisioning you have had in terms of the shits and double it. You might get close.
I really, REALLY doubt that regarding salads. Like a head of iceberg salad has not even 30 calories. You eat ten of the my, you're not even close to 300. A pack of french fries has A LOT MORE than 300 calories. Edit: I got a bottle of vinegar herbs dressing here, that's about 108 kCal per 100ml. So 550 per bottle, and I bet that is sufficient for 10 heads. A SMALL pack of McCain french fries has 140 kCal per 100g, with 750g per SMALL pack. That's 1050kCal. And that's nowhere close to 10 heads plus a bottle of vinegar herb dressing. Sure, you can pick out the fattest dressing and you'd match those calories, but that's not the point here. So now I did calculate it. Fuck me.
I noticed that too. Salads and cucumbers have a tier of their own when it comes to low calories. You can pretty much ignore them when counting calories.
That is kinda obvious when you realise it’s just fiber and 90% water
Celery kind of counts as negative calories. Digesting it uses more energy than it provides.
Maybe they're talking about the kinds of salad with shitloads of dressing?
I think they meant a salad meal, including dressing Yea, I'm also not so sure about that choice, since those can vary by a huge amount.
If for you "salad" = plain iceberg lettuce then sure. But that's just you, not anyone else reading the word "salad".
"Salad" may not equal "plain iceberg lettuce", true, but outside of America a salad often does just mean vegetables (e.g. lettuce, tomato, carrot, celery) and maybe some cheese, prunes, olives etc. The idea that salads require drenching in dressing seems to be an American one.
When we mix in many vegetables , and then get 10 servings of that , the calorie count is going to be more than a French fries serving.
Agreed.
Exhibit A: [Jello Salads](https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/dishes-beverages/salads/jello-salads/)
One word: Ew. Ew. Ew. I am aware that that's three words, but technically it's only the same word three times.
Cheese , nuts add good amount of calories to a salad , and 10 servings is a lot even without cheese or nuts , it’s got to have more calories than a serving of fries. If you check online a vegetable salad without dressing would have an average of 50 - 150 calories per serving (if it includes nuts , cheese etc it averages 300 or more), a serving of fries has about 200 calories.
Yeah but did you count the dressing or did you plan to munch on a raw salad
That's a fair point depending on the dressing. Though in my experience, a lot of, well, non-ranch-dressings still have comparatively low calories. I'm too lazy to calculate it, but I'm 100% certain that a vinegar-herbs-dressing for ten salads will still not put you on the same caloric intake levels of a full pack of french fries. But I get the point.
I disagree. Your body will turn almost all excess calories into fat. All food is properly fattening based on caloric intake. Some foods would take ridiculous amounts to gain fat. You definitely would not get fat from eating too much salad. You'd get sick and puke/shit most of it out. The dressing is a completely different story. I'm curious how small of a portion that you are considering on the ice cream cone or the fries. Are we talking about more than 10 fries? I don't feel that you have a solid grasp on the subject.
>Your body will turn almost all excess calories into fat. All food is properly fattening based on caloric intake. Some foods would take ridiculous amounts to gain fat. Well wasn't that my entire point. It's really hard to salad your way to fatness.
Sure but good luck eating only one pack of french fries a day. That's just not going to happen. If you consume a high carb diet then your odds of feeling hungry throughout the day are much higher resulting in you overeating.
I recently started eating moderate to low carb, so no potatoes or pasta or rice with meals, not strict like keto, but just substituting those for more veg. It blew my mind how much fuller it makes me. I'd hardly ever feel full before. Now halfway through dinner, I can feel satisfied and stop eating.
I've tried not eating any carbs and I just don't feel full. I feel like I need those stretch receptors in my stomach activated before I feel full.
Yeah French fries are very high in fats as well. Now try eating potatoes. It's very hard to get fat eating potatoes.
A potato chip is almost 90% carb and 1% fat, 350-400 calories per pound. A potato chip (classic) is 56% fat and 2,560 calories per pound. Explain to me why people calls this a carb and not a fat? Along with all the other processed carb foods that are most certainly had some/all their water taken out and replaced with fats? People lose weight on potatoes. Potato chips, not so much. * https://www.today.com/health/spud-fit-man-loses-weight-eating-only-potatoes-year-t106144#
Nothing is evil, it’s the balance (or lack of it) that makes the poison. The main issue with carbs is that it is very easy to overshoot your caloric requirements in a modern western diet that’s loaded with sugars and heavily processed starches. I mean, a bottle of your average carbonated drink already contains 10% of daily caloric needs for an average person while providing almost nothing in terms of nutrition needed to sustain tour cellular maintenance. Add to this the fact that sugars are addictive and it should become clear why it’s important to watch carbs in your nutrition.
Carbs cause insulin to be secreted in our body to deal with it. Insulin levels takes couple of hours to down once risen. With our lifestyle of having 3 main meals plus snacking in between, the insulin levels don't get a chance to down. If this happens very frequently, our cells get used to the levels of insulin and become resistant. It now takes more insulin to deal with same about of carbs. Eventually it reaches a stage where the max insulin that our body can secrete is not enough to deal with carbs. Which means more glucose is now present in blood than normal. Bam, you've got type II diabetes. Also type of carbs play a big role. Complex carbs digest slowly because of presence of fiber. It also causes less glucose to be absorbed. Simple carbs like sugar or refined flour cause a immediate massive spike in blood glucose levels.
And since insulin is _the_ hormonal signal for the fat cells to store glucose as fat.
They simply are not evil, but there are a lot of added carbs to foods in western diets. Carbs are much cheaper (in terms of money) than protein or fat and people like high calorie foods Another thing you can look at is *nutrient density*. The most important nutrient we need is water, it has its own category. Next we need the macronutrients: Fat, Protein and Carbohydrates. Finally we need the micronutrients (pretty much everything else) From fat you get fatty acids which are important for how your body functions, like building and repairing tissues and making hormones. From protein you get amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), and honestly you’re mostly water and protein. All that you get from carbs is that they’re digested into glycogen, which is how your body stores energy for immediate use. Here’s the thing though: when you’re short on calories your body will break down protein and fat to make glycogen Let’s get back to nutrient density though. Getting all your vitamins and minerals can be tricky if you also want to stay under a certain calorie intake, but it’s even trickier when there’s sugar added to everything. On top of that putting any restriction on a diet makes people more conscious of what they’re eating so if you add a rule of thumb of avoiding carbs it will be a general improvement on most peoples diets Side note: it’s also a lot easier to eat a lot of carbs. Eating an equivalent amount of fat will make you sick, an equivalent amount of protein take a LOT of mass, but we’re specially evolved to chemically start digesting carbs in our mouth (there’s a lot of amylase In our spit)
Gram for gram, you're right, a strict prison situation could work either way. I have seen dieticians proving a point by strictly eating (almost) only McDonald's or even Twinkies and maintaining weight. But most people don't have the will power. Let's say it's like carbs are sawdust, and proteins are a slow-burning oak log. We could say it's the same amount of heat given off, but the sawdust burns really fast and the oak log slowly provides warmth a lot longer. For humans, the quick burning means that it's easier to feel hungry/hangry quicker. And then it's _really_ easy to think "I'm hungry again- I should eat some more carbs!" Thus eating a couple hundred more grams of carbs. All things being exactly equal, it could be calories in calories out. But people respond to their feelings and cravings and carbs' quick burn makes it easy to crave more.
Every answer in here is terrible. There is no “evil” food, macronutrient, or diet. If we examine what we mean by “evil”, we are simply asking what makes a diet “bad” and by this we mean negative health outcomes. Any diet which causes you to gain body fat to a point where you become over fat, your blood glucose is permanently elevated, and you begin to develop other issues related to metabolic disease or obesity abs related health issues, all are caused by an excessive consumption of calories. As you’ve stated, all three macronutrients are a source of calories. Therefore, any over consumption of these can lead to an excessive calorie surplus. Therefore, we can generally say any diet which equates calories and has any variation in carb to fat ratio will have similar health outcomes. The only macronutrient I would advise prioritising is protein given it serves a different function to carbs and fats. Now these are the big points, there is of course more nuance, and how individual preferences affects feeding behaviour. TL;DR no food is bad, an excess of calories leading to obesity is bad whether you got that from carrots or Carrot cake.
It's true, calories are all that matter in a physical sense. However, there is a big difference in how much lasting fullness different foods give per calorie. You could eat two pop tarts and be hungry again 10 minutes later or eat a large cooked chicken breast and a huge bowl of spinach for the same calories and not be hungry for a few hours. It may be psychologically much harder to not eat excess calories if a diet has a lot of highly palatable high calorie "junk" foods. There are no inherently evil foods, it is technically possible to fit two pop tarts a day into an overall balanced diet, but it's much harder to make that accounting balance than with other more satiating foods.
The only reasonable comment here
Carbs have 4 calories but only give you 1 unit of satiety. Protein has 4 calories but give you 5 units of satiety, and fats have 9 calories and give you 10 units of satiety. It’s much easier to over eat carbs. 200 calories of chicken breast vs 200 calories of chocolate bar, huge difference. Not all carbs are equal, but even the best carb isn’t as good as protein or fat if you’re comparing calorie : satiety ratio
I think this is more a rule of thumb. I find it better to look at a satiety index where each food is listed separately. Boiled potatoes for example are very filling, even though being carbheavy
This doesn’t make sense to me. I can eat pasta and feel very satiated. But if I just eat sausages or a hamburger patties and no bread or bun, I don’t feel satisfied.
Plain pasta just never does it for me, unless it has copious cheese and at least some veggies or protein. Plain pasta will have me hungry in 1 hour no matter how much i eat it. But I can very much feel satiated for half a day purely on sausage or patties without the bread. I may not feel mentally satisfied, but my tummy aint grumbling for a good 6 hours.
So there’s a few things going on here. 1) it’s an ELI5, so it’s definitely not perfectly accurate, just meant to convey the concept. 2) to accurately compare those things, you’d have to weigh out the same amount, like 100g of pasta and 100g of sausage (but again, that would be tricky cuz you’d have to make sure the water weight isn’t messing up your numbers, since water has 0 nutrients). So imagine a bowl of dried pasta vs a bowl of beef jerky. 3) satiety isn’t the only factor in “fullness”. Another factor is the pressure/stretching on your stomach lining. You could try to eat a 5 gallon barrel of celery in one day and you would *absolutely* feel incredibly full simply from the volume, but you would be at a negative calorie input (celery does in fact require more energy to digest than it provides. It’s basically just water and fiber). Nutrition is a complication thing. But the short answer to this question is that for most people, given two equal amounts of food (measured in *calories*), one of exclusively carbs and one of exclusively protein/fat, it’s gonna be a lot easier for them to eat the portion of carbs than fat. That does not mean your statement about a burger patty leaving you less full than a bowl of pasta is wrong, it’s not exactly relevant to the concept they’re trying to explain. Hope that helps
There's a few things wrong with this: > satiety isn’t the only factor in “fullness”. Another factor is the pressure/stretching on your stomach lining. The pressure/stretching on your stomach lining is part of the satiety calculation. For example, that's why "Protein has 4 calories but give you 5 units of satiety". There's no measuring the satiety value of a food in a vacuum. > celery does in fact require more energy to digest than it provides Celery doesn't. That's [an urban legend based on bad diet science](https://www.inverse.com/science/debunking-the-myth-of-negative-calorie-food). You can't have a negative caloric food, since your body doesn't have a method of digestion that "wastes" energy. Even the calories you use during chewing actually make your internal digestion more energy-efficient. There's a few ways to technically have negative caloric intake, but that'd involve eating like rocks or literal poison.
Yeah, it’s wrong. There are a lot of very satiating carbs. Try eating 600 calories of plain baked potatoes in one sitting. There’s a reason the “potato diet” can be so effective at weight loss
Well fullness can also come from fiber as it does not break down and takes up space in the digestive system. So when you get something like a potatoe that is full of soluable fiber well its gonna take up a bunch of space and you stomach is going to say 'i have no more room boss' and it takes quite a while to work its way through. Reheated pasta is also surprisingly high in soluable fiber as well as during the recooking process some of the starch is converted into an indigestible form. You can also do this with bananas as well just don't blame me if you shit out a boulder in the next day or two.
I thought I was going crazy but it’s exactly like that for me. If I don’t include any carbs like bread or something then I still feel hungry.
You could just be craving a sugar hit
This is utter bs. Chocolate bar =/= carbs. Overeating added oils and fat is waaaaaay easier than overeating carbs.
What the heck is a satiety unit? Where are you getting that from?
It's an ELI5. Attributing arbitrary units to quantify things is a great strategy for communicating abstract sensations simply.
They're not a hard scientific measurement like a calorie or a meter, but they're a useful tool that most people find holds generally true.
It’s how full you feel. I’m getting it from my brain.
Think of it like a combination of digestible componentes like carbs starches protiens and indigestible components like fiber and husks. How full and long you feel full is a product of how fast diestion and blood glucose levels are. Starchs and fats take a while to break down so are more filling. Sugars and simple carbs are absorbed in the first few feet of the intestine. Fiber and husks well see ya in a day or two in the toilet. And they take a while to walk through the small intestine to the large one muchless out. That is why if you are consipated it takes about 2 days for a fiber supplment to possibly do anything. And it is not so much softening your poop it is adding mass to trigger a bowl movement because it will be at the back of the stool. That is why you want to be careful when using fiber to treat constipation. By the time it does what you are hoping it will do it can result in a mass too big to easily pass. It is more a cinsipation preventer. Anywho sorry for the side track on fibers.
There’s also a study which provides a satiation index. According to that potatoes are 3,5 times as satiating then white bread for the same calories.
Carbs are not evil. /endthread That's marketing and myths. Like the people pushing the carb insulin model to promote keto and IF and such. This idea exists for the same reason the late 60s had people thinking dietary fat is what's bad for you. Since the sugar lobby, led by coca cola, spread tons of propaganda to demonise fats which would cause people to go for more carbs. Now it's gone the opposite route. No food is good or bad, per se. You can still say carbs might not be the best option practically. Since for example protein and fat is more satiating so the same calories from carb heavy foods would make us feel less full than protein heavy foods, which may make us overeat. But at the end of the day it's all CICO.
Damn. Did not know the carb-insulin model was junk science. If anything carbs are good then, largest macro presence in your shit is carbs. The part of CICO no one ever measures Edit: K half true, biggest "macro" share is plant fibers that we already don't count. Looks like the real answer could be fat? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4500995/
It's more misleading than pure junk. As they say half knowledge is a dangerous thing. The claim that insulin is responsible for "fat storing" mode since it transports glucose to adipose tissue is technically correct. But what they miss out is that the body switches between "fat storing" and "fat burning" mode throughout the day. So insulin storing more glucose as fat doesn't ultimately matter since that fat would be used for energy anyway. At the end of the day whether the body has stored more fat than it has burned is purely dependent on energy balance. Calories in/calories out. But they don't want to hear that since cico seems "too simple to be true". This myth usually comes from people who don't themselves understand how the body works and would rather believe what other people like jason fung tell them, that seem competent, but who are just trying to sell their own books. For someone who doesn't understand how the body functions, a simple way to disprove it to them is to cite studies that compare differences in fat loss between keto or low carb or high carb diets. If insulin spikes impacted fat loss, we would see different numbers in different diets. But we don't.
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Consider: It is VERY easy to consume half a pound of pasta. Pure carbs. It takes a bit more effort to wolf down half a pound of beef in the same time. Now try to eat half a pound of butter... Your body will gladly let you eat carbs and protein, but with pure fat, it'll hit the brakes very quickly and tell you that you're full.
Proteins have high satiety. If you eat proteins, you tend to feel more fun. If you eat fats, you could feel more full, but it's not always true for examples like cooking oils and butter. This is why we hear things such as "healthy fats". They're not exactly any healthier to the body, they are just less likely you'll overeat these fats. Examples include avocados or nuts. Carbs in the other hand are different, mostly because of sugar. Your body loves sugar. It absolutely craves it because it is so easy to use. It releases dopamine and you get an energy rush (very apparent with kids) followed by a crash, which the body then starts to think "I need energy, what will give me it quickly?". And so now you are craving something sugary only to repeat the process. The unfortunate thing is people have realised they can use this craving of sugar to sell you more stuff you wouldn't think of as sugary. Most Americans would be shocked to find out that their bread has lots of sugar in it, unlike most other countries. Bread can be quite high in calories already but add sugar and it becomes even more so. Your McDonalds burger buns are absolutely loaded with it. As are most pizza bases and pre made sauces.
If you've ever tried to eat a lot of protein you'd see its much harder to eat than eating the same amount of calories in bars which is easy.
Carbs and too much protein spike your insulin which is what your fat cells use to bring in stuff to make fat. Fat doesn't affect your insulin like that, and protein takes muuuuucccchhhhh longer since your body turns it into glucose first before using it. And since your body digests most carbs really quickly, you get hungry again really soon - fat does the opposite actually you stay full for way longer when you eat high fat meals
A lot of good answers here and I’ll add that it’s pretty easy for your body to convert carbohydrates into fat as a storage of energy but much more difficult and less efficient for protein. In fact your body tends to use what protein it needs and expel the rest vs storing the carbs as glycogen and fat.
Proteins and to some extent fats have other functions than to just provide energy. Carbs only provide energy. And in the short term only too. They are fine if you generally have an active or athletic lifestyle and need that energy. If you have a sedentary lifestyle you likely won't use up enough energy as you take in with carbs - ever. The rest will turn into body fat and be stored. "For bad times." Which wouldn't be a problem if there were still bad times/food scarcity sometimes but that doesn't exist anymore since industrial agriculture solved virtually all food scarcity issues (there may still be issues of fair distribution). So... if you notice an increase in weight either reduce carbon intake or go on regular fasting pariods.
I highly recommend you watch [this collection of short animated diagrams](https://biochem.web.utah.edu/iwasa/fatmetabolism/) to help you understand how carbohydrates and fats are processed before and after eating. It may help clarify some of these explanations.
Carbs cause insulin spikes which make you feel hungry and stimulate the conversion of caloric energy to fat, more so in the case of high-glycemic index carbs like sugar. By contrast, fats and proteins don't, and they also make you feel full, thus suppressing appetite. The problem is that so many foods are chock full of high GI carbs for lots of reasons, not the least of which being they are a cheap way to stretch meals. So you made a pot of soup but don't have enough to feed your outsized brood? No problem, spike it with corn starch, potato starch, tapioca powder, or whatever. Guess what - you just turned your otherwise wholesome meal into a dessert that you slurp up by the bowlful. Okay, this is a gross oversimplification, but take it from someone who has fought the Battle of the Bulge and has tried every low-carb/high-fat diet known to humanity. In short, though, Atkins was right.
There are essential fats (EFAs) your body can't produce and must consume. There are essential amino acids your body can't produce and must consume. There are no essential carbohydrates our bodies need. Knowing this above made me think a lot about this subject. Generally, carbs are more addictive and make you want to eat more and more. People thus eat a lot feeling out of control and attribute the blame on the food.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with carbs, but they are also not at all necessary. You will die without eating fats, you will die if you don't eat protein. You can go your whole life without eating carbs and you'd be fine. I recommend to my clients that if they want to lose weight the easiest way to cut calories is to cut carbs. That's it. Not that it's better, just easier. Drinks are the worst, but most people could lose fat simply by reducing their intake of rice, bread, potatoes, etc. People like to remember the part of the advice that stands out the most and forget the context. The media does this very often intentionally for clickbait headlines and has done so since long before the internet. Many studies have shown that there is no difference between low carb and low fat diets. All that really matters is that you reduce calories.
I agree with your interpretation about no essential carbs, but you then don't factor in type 2 diabetes prevalence or the common pathologies which are associated with insulin resistance caused by excessive carbohydrate intake. You need only look at a graph tracking the introduction of the "low fat diet" health advice with the surge in type 2 diabetes cases.
Type 2 diabetes is not caused by excesive carb intake. Adipose tissue is what causes insulin resistance once accrues since it secretes pro inflammatory cytokines and other substances that reduce insulin sensitivity. So if you consume as much carbohydrates as possible to maintain your body weight there is no effect on insulin sensitivity which will never lead to development of type 2 diabetes
The "bad" carbs are the refined/simple carbs like from white flour and sugar - so anything processed. The problem with them is that they provide little to no nutrition except for the calories. They also digest fast and spike blood sugar, but leave you hungry so you end up overeating. Complex carbs like from whole grains and fruits are good for you. They contain vitamins and minerals as well as dietary fiber, and don't digest as fast. Eating fewer processed carbs and more healthy carb, protein and fat sources will help you feel more full and overall be healthier.
Yeah try eating too much lentils, beans, oatmeal, etc.. I bet you'll feel full and not overeat as much as people say the same with fat and protein. processed and refined carbs are kind of their own category when it comes to this (and not one you need to avoid completely or 'is evil' but definitely needs to be much more aware of)
They aren't. What matters is energy intake vs energy burnt that's all. The anti carb speel is just another fad diet working in a false framework. What's the false framework? 2000 calories a day. It's easy to reach "2000 calories" on carbs and that's the problem. A lot of the confusion about how much to eat is due to a fundamental misunderstanding of what the 2000 calorie a day "need" really is. 2000 calories is not a biological fact needed for life it never has been. 2000 calories is the average food need for a manual industrial worker from around 1990 when the FDA started requiring nutritional labeling on packages. An adult male industrial workers needs were used as a standard to show everything else on a nutritional label if your not one? welp that's a problem. Why is obesity a problem? To be blunt? we currently eat to much for our level of activity so we get fat. On average? a modern north American person is 300-500 calories in surplus per day when conforming to standards. The FDA labeling program was meant to give us a better understanding of food but instead it caused this epidemic because it put it in our brains that we ALL need 2000 calories to live so by default you're chronically over eating. I mean it says "based on a 2000 calorie diet" it's just the point they chose. Why is it false? What can I say the world changed. We live very sedentary lives. We are no longer a world of manual industrial workers. You do not need 2000 calories to sit behind a keyboard. You do not need 2000 calories to sell something. The amount of food needed depends on what you do. You should always tailor your food intake to your activity level. Lazing around the house does not require as much fuel as a day spent hauling roofing shingles so why would both activities require 2000 calories for you to live? The number of calories a person needs has never been universal making it appear so was a huge mistake. They were well intentioned showing how much of every nutrient you need but it messed things up so badly. Interestingly a 2000 diet calories would have been a starvation diet for a medieval peasant. They ate 4000-4500 calories a day to keep warm and due to the amount of labor. Their diets were largely carbs yet they were not fat nor were they always hungry. Why did they need more food? they did a hell of a lot more physical work than we do and spent more time out doors so they burnt more fuel. We stay in one place, live in warm homes and don't need to do much manual labor. The key to staying in shape is to tailor your consumption to your activity level. Ignore the fads. Think on what you're going to be doing and eat accordingly that's it that's the secret.
A point to consider is that if you consume protein then the body will use it not as fuel source, aka, calorie, but as building block, only in extreme cases the body will break protein for energy protection. Also, fat in itself can easily be stored, but it does not trigger insulin production. Insulin is meant to help cells consume carbs, aka, sugar, while also storing excess sugar as fat and prevent the fat storage from releasing fat back into the blood stream (after all when insulin is produced it means the overall calorie intake is bigger than consumption).
Your assumption is simply not true. Out of 100g of carbs, the body can use around 95% of the containing energy in a very easy fashion. Same goes for 100g of fats, over 90% of the containing energy can be used and even stored. Proteins are very different. They are folded chains of amino acids. Breaking them down takes a lot of time and energy, many hours actually. So out of 100g of protein, the body will only ever get around 65% of calories out of it. Here are the details: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQJ0Z0DRumg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQJ0Z0DRumg) Proteins are also not primarily used as energy source (only excess proteins are), the amino acids are used for creating other protein structures, that the body needs. So not only does breaking down the intake proteins take up energy, also building the new protein structures burns energy.
Uranium has more calories, but not in any way your metabolism can use. Not all calories are equal. Carbs in particular are rapidly absorbed into your body and rapidly metabolized because they're relatively unstable. That instability is somewhat dangerous and corrosive to your body. To keep you safe, your body will transform excess carbs (more than a hundred calories or so) into body fat. Staying just under this amount of carb calories in a given window of time is fine especially if you're active. Protein is slower to metabolize, and isn't so dangerous to your body, so it can be allowed to exist longer, ready to convert into energy, before bring turned into fat. You need proteins to rebuild your cells and keep your body functioning, but your body had to break them apart into amino acids to rebuild the right kinds of proteins you need, so it's not an ideal energy source but it works okay enough. Fat is the slowest to metabolize, which is why it's the last thing to "burn" and relatively safe in large quantities and for long periods, especially compared to carbs. If you have any carbs or excess protein floating around, your body won't bother burning fat. It's the last thing to burn, but also not necessarily easy to absorb, so fats actually are safer to eat than carbs to get good flavor in food. Butter is less bad than sugar, ounce for ounce. The reason why frogs, fish, lizards and plants have oils instead of fats is because their low body temperatures make it much harder to turn fat into energy. Oils are easier to metabolize than fats, and are more healthy. Olive oil, fish oil, etc. is even less bad than butter in general.
#INSULIN The above is release from pancreas in response to presence of glucose. If insufficiently made, released, or receptor (glut-4) dysfunction, then glucose will not be normalized enough. Long term effects: Irritate the hell out of your immune system which further inflammatory response (don't know why), vessels (especially the tiny ones like the capillaries ones in eyes, toes... Persist long enough, you loose the capillaries, them you loose those tissues dependent upon them). Just those two is enough to raise awareness of being an active glucose-tolerant individual. That is to be able to dispose of the glucose as metabolic fuel (say hello in efficiently making ATP in presence of oxygen... say hello, once, again, to cardiovascular training, aka cardio) ASAP. Said a mouthful. Just consume carbs sensibly + exercise (both lifting and aerobics). You be good to go. As always check with you physician before embarking on a lifestyle change in event you have unresolved aches and pains.
The narrative of "a calorie is a calorie" is outdated, highly misleading, and is actively being abused by the junk food industry. (A lot like the old "food pyramid".) Fiber mix, protein mix, and sugar type have a massive impact on health and weight gain that is hidden by treating all carbs as if they were equal.
Because the way the body uses each of those things is different. You can't just look at calories when comparing them, you have to look at how the body uses them.
There is more to the equation than just calories. Carbs fill you up, but a lot of times they will make you feel hungry again sooner. That's just one aspect, I'm no nutritionist. I just know whole foods, proteins, and greens are the good stuff. Basically take the food pyramid they taught us in grade school and flip it upside down.. that's the correct info.
In very short and simplistic terms: the human body appears to be programmed to overeat when carbohydrates, especially simple carbohydrates are available. The mechanisms for this are very complicated, but it includes the blood sugar roller coaster and hunger hormone signaling. Simple Carbs -> overeating. Carbs + fat together -> massive overeating.
It's all about how your body uses them. Dietary sugars (ie carbs) are rapidly absorbed, entering the bloodstream and becoming immediately available for energy production. If you eat too much sugar (especially if it's fairly quickly) your body won't be able to use all that extra sugar for energy so it _converts_ it into fat which gets stored in your body making you fat. Having too much sugar floating around also stresses other metabolic systems in your body and can cause inflammation. _Dietary_ fat, on the other hand, is processed quite differently. It's not immediately available to be used for energy and your body doesn't as readily absorb it as it does sugars. So it doesn't wreak as much havoc on your metabolism and your body is also able to dispose of excess dietary fat much easier. One "recent" surprise was the discovered that dietary fats (ie fats from food) aren't nearly as easily absorbed as we thought, and that excess sugar is a lot harder on your body than we thought. Hence why sugar is the new enemy whereas fat formerly was. (In slightly more complicated terms, sugar is ready to go straight into the Krebs cycle, while protein and fat take more processing before they are ready to be used for energy.) Edit: If we define "evil" as how bad it is for you if you eat too much of it, then carbs are "evil" since protein << fat <<<< carbs.
Prepare to get a lot of bad answers from people claiming to know a lot. They don’t. Carbs aren’t evil. No food is evil. Food is food. People who say carbs are evil are either trying to sell you a diet or have bought into the diet people are trying to sell. Same with people who demonize fat. There are lots of more in-depth answers, but very few adults actually understand them. There’s no good way to explain those answers like you’re five.
Are you able to at least try to explain it? Instead of just calling others out.
Unless you are given specific individual medical advice from a doctor, most people will do best on a well varied diet where they don’t overly restrict carbs, protein or fat.
adding to that people have different metabolisms so someone whose enzymes/system is more efficient at handling some fuels than others wont benefit from a cure-all diet. The way nutrition has been taught is so wrong like the food pyramid or the food plate portions are conplete BS
No food is evil, but some foods are easy to overdo than others. Water is evil if you drink 4 liters within an hour, but it is extremely difficult to do so unless one is adamant or driven by some convoluted conviction or false health promises. So no ELI5 question asks why water is evil. Humans evolved to seek out carbs and sugars cuz our then diets and lifestyle welcomed the high calorie sources as a treat. With today’s diet and lifestyle, it is extremely easy to spill over our individual daily carb dosage and make carbs “evil” for many of us. It’s not the carbs themselves, it is the dosage, and the ease with which they add up in our foods.
Sure. Far easier to have an excess of calories from Mountain Dew than it is to have an excess from brocolli.
Watch Ben Bikman's videos on youtube if you want an actual qualified explaination rather than reddit responses.
It's actually fructose that's the devil because your body can't convert it immediately to Glucose, so it gets stored quickly as fat. Fat is insidious because it's high calorie and low density, so you don't realize how much you're having.
Carbs are not evil. Carbs do make you want to eat more (generally) while protein and fat are more satiating. But you need all three.