Ruina
(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!)
#17
Wow guys… great job of not getting too sciency per OP’s request.
My point of view: Carbs are not inherently bad.
Put simply, carbs are sugar or any food that breaks down into sugar inside your body. Our body can use sugar or fat as fuel. If everything is in balance either one is fine. But the modern western diet is not in balance. The fear of fat has driven a carb heavy way of eating which has caused our bodies to burn out the carb fuel system and not use the fat fuel system efficiently. So we lack energy while over-storing fat instead of using it for fuel. And since our body systems all interconnect this causes many other problems leading to seemingly unconnected health problems.
So, by eating on the low-carb to carnivore spectrum, depending on your personal needs, you get the fat fuel system back in line and hopefully repair the carb fuel system. If the damage is too bad that may not be possible which means you can’t go back to a healthy balanced diet including more heathy carbs than keto allows. Of course, if you want to be healthy you can’t go back to the imbalanced carb laden diet that damaged your body in the first place.
Bigger sugar intake bad. Simplest form to think about it LOL
here is a small fast read on it.
You have to think of the food also. All carbs are carbs. Simple as that. It is the food wrapped around those carbs which jack it up into super bad or tone it down into more acceptable overall nutrition for your body.
but then you have to realize what food veg might be doing to you, many bloat on broccoli and cauli and find it doesn’t suit them so again, many do bad on grains etc…it kinda becomes that bigger picture of ----while we know the lower carb intake we have it is a very good thing for your body, what is the food those carbs are coming from and what does that food do your personal body?
Sugar rots the insides of the body. It really is now an epidemic of nasty sugary icky food out there Just by always going low as you can on carbs is the best thing to do, many find they can function well on a set carb number. Some are great at 20g intake, some do very well on like 50g intake. Again that becomes personal to your needs and body etc.
Plus we are not the old days. Obesity thru junk sugar fake chem foods has exploded now. People eat all day but are nutritionally point blank starving. My mom who is 93 now was not eating gummy bears or having high frutose corn flakes for breakfast or ‘Let go of my Eggo’ in the toaster ya know. Our food now is out of control on horrible quality of ingredients. Which is why they say shop the outer perimeter of a grocery store, don’t step into those inside aisles cause once ya do…you are in sugar and chem. ingredient food land more than the outside areas.
@daigo1 - not sure if podcasts are your thing, but I’d recommend listening to the 2KetoDudes, especially the early podcasts as they cover a lot of the bases and give you a really solid foundation for understanding what this way of eating is, how it works, and why we do it.
Fascinating! There must be a lesson for me in here somewhere…
Perhaps one of the simplest questions I’ve seen around this forum was asked by the OP.
Within hours, this thread filled up with responses from a number of the regulars on this forum whom I admire most. These are the same folks who have taught me much and pointed me in helpful directions.
Moreover, most everyone who responded generally agrees that keto can greatly enhance one’s health.
… and yet…
We’ve found ways to disagree with each other at the molecular level.
I concede. This is too much jargon for me. However, for our baby talk discussion, fructose, especially high fructose corn syrup, should be consumed sparingly.
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#23
Carbs are an option. The daily requirement for carbs is zero. There is no carb deficiency disease because gluconeogenesis synthesizes all the glucose we need thus there is no need to eat it. The only difference between so-called ‘simple’ carbs and so-called ‘complex’ carbs is about 2 hours to metabolize to glucose. All carbs have the same amount of energy whether ‘simple’ or ‘complex’. Your mileage may vary, but it’s the ups and downs of glucose and insulin from eating carbs that makes you perpetually hungry by messing up ghrelin signalling.
Apart from sugars, carbohydrates are nothing more than glucose molecules arranged in various ways. If we can digest them, we call them dietary carbohydrates, if we can’t, we call them fibre. Complex carbohydrates contain more energy only because they contain more glucose.
Moreover, I would question the matter of “less hungry.” In my carb-burning days, I could easily fill my stomach to the literal bursting-point with pasta, and still be hungry for more. On a low-carbohydrate diet, I find I can go many hours between meals, without hunger. I watched, over a couple of decades, as the experts’ nutrition advice, post-dietary guidelines, evolved from “three square meals a day” (with several hours between meals) to “three large meals and three snacks a day” (i.e., eating every couple of hours) as a coping strategy for the constantly recurring hunger many people feel on a high-carbohydrate diet. This constantly recurring hunger actually has a good mechanistic explanation, involving how the elevated insulin level that results from consuming so much carbohydrate blocks the receptors in the brain that are supposed to detect how much energy the body has stored.
I know this is an old thread, but this may help someone else out.
Carbs are not “bad” per se. It is how much we consume and how often that does the damage. I think of my great-grandparents who ate biscuits and bread with every meal in addition to some starchy vegetables.
BUT! They only ate 3 times a day, no snacking and their diet was low in sugar. They had no diabetes or heart disease in spite of eating lots of saturated fat.
Compare that to our typical diet today - eating every 2 hours because our food is loaded with sugar which drives our hunger up. Plus processed foods are created in the lab to cause cravings so you eat (and buy) more.
It keeps your insulin constantly elevated and turns everything you eat into stored fat. And you eventually develop diabetes.
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#26
They also ate more sat fat and protein. I think that was more significant for minimizing metabolic damage from eating whatever carbs they ate, which was probably much less than what gets consumed nowadays. So my guess is eating fewer carbs overall, and not snacking between usual meal times, gave their metabolism the time to deal with the glucose load (insulin up then back down again) before getting another dose at the next meal.
My father, whom I’ve mentioned elsewhere, had his hyperactive thyroid nuked in the early 1950’s and spent the rest of his life gaining weight. No matter what or how little he ate he gained. Until the last couple years prior to his death when he reduced carb intake significantly - not even close to keto but muchly. One of my brothers who tried to start keto when I did but couldn’t manage it, instead still reduced his carbs enough to start losing significant weight. He also cut out the huge amounts of soda pop he had been consuming daily.
So I’ll say, in my opinion I think carbs are ‘bad’ per se. As I said above, there is no need to eat them, they serve no useful purpose and interfere with ketosis and maintaining metabolic health. The less you eat the better and healthier you’ll be.
They also ate a huge breakfast and went to the fields to tend their crops and livestock. They worked off the small carbs they ate at breakfast since it was mostly protein (bacon and eggs) and biscuits drowned in butter or bacon grease gravy.
Lunch was also a big meal as they came in, ate and went back out to work.
Dinner was the lightest meal and may be a pot of beans leftover from lunch sitting on the stove all afternoon and cornbread. And garden greens drenched in bacon grease.
Carbs are a type of food that creates problems for some people when they eat them. When some people eat carbs it makes their body store food as bodyfat as well as stop their bodies using that bodyfat. If that goes on for a long time, then some people just get fatter and fatter.
If this problem continues for many years, then that person’s body eventually becomes worn out from dealing with the problem, and it causes disease that needs daily medications and possibly injections.
All of this can be avoided by simply not eating so many carbs and eating other yummy things instead like bacon and eggs.
If all carbs are bad and unnecessary, why do people who are aware of this consume them at all? Is it just for the flavor/enjoyment? Kind of like if I know a certain type of illegal recreational dopaminergic stimulant is bad for me, but if I micro-dose on it, it won’t kill me but it’ll still make me feel good even though it’s not good for my health.
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#31
Most folks are not aware of it even when they claim they are. They rationalize the contradiction by thinking ‘it can’t be all that bad or it wouldn’t even be considered food…’ Those who really are aware of it do reduce carbs significantly. The problem is that carbs are ubiquitous and lots of perfectly healthy protein and fatty foods contain incidental amounts. Me, for example. I eat sub-15 grams of carbs per day, usually closer to 10 grams and frequently less. All of it incidental to other protein and fat-rich foods I eat for nutrition. Could I get it down to zero - sure, but I don’t bother because the amounts I happen to consume are too little to affect ketosis and I happen to think dairy/butter/cheese/cream is very healthy to eat, even though it contains incidental carbs.
Carbohydrate has an addictive effect on some people, just as alcohol and many other drugs do. Some people aren’t susceptible to a given substance, whereas others only need one hit to become hooked. (I was never able to get addicted to nicotine, for example, but I know many people who found it more addictive and harder to quit than they found heroin.)
Once the addictive process begins, it is virtually impossible to moderate one’s intake. This is why members of Twelve-Step programmes generally don’t consume at all—total abstinence from the drug is much easier to manage than moderate use. A number of recovering alcoholics, for example, have told me over the years that the only way they can preserve their freedom is not to drink at all, that drinking in moderation is something normal drinkers can do, but not alcoholics.
My great-grandfather was rail thin his whole life and I would argue he actually needed the small amount of carbs he ate to fuel his body since they did so much physical labor. Fast energy source when he needed it to do something particularly laborous and the saturated fat from his meal to sustain him until lunchtime.
My great-grandmother OTOH was never fat but not as thin but her labors were much less intensive in the house and she ate the same things he did - she just didn’t burn it all off. Plus she birthed 8 kids so that tends to contribute to holding onto a bit of extra fat for the next kid you grow. The year a really bad flu swept through she said she didn’t think she took her shoes off all winter. She nursed half of Titus county back to health and never got sick herself. The little extra “padding” on her frame probably came in handy that year.
I am just giving another perspective of why you look at pictures of people from the 40’s and most are thin and they certainly ate “unnecessary” carbs in moderate amounts. It does not apply to today as we have moved far away from the way they ate and the results are depressing.
Personally, I can’t eat many carbs without gaining weight or having the other inflammatory effects so I am keto for life.
amwassil
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.)
#34
Here’s another consideration from my own experience as a child. 3 meals per day and little or no snacking. But also… supper was like 5-6 pm and breakfast like 8 am the next morning. That’s a 12-hour overnight IF. And this was the norm, not unusual. People did it every day. Sure, some folks had an evening or before bed snack of some sort, but many or most did not. So by morning many/most folks eating just ‘normally’ for the time were in ketosis for a couple hours or more every day. Long before anyone knew anything about the benefits of ketosis. So maybe that played a role keeping things under control.
I am otherwise an awake person with both backbone, understanding and resources, but even on keto for years, something about carbs has me loose all controll time and time again, and its a long struggle to get back in line again.
you know it is 1 thing…frickin’ complex for each and every single one of us. Full truth on that.
Now we can boil it down to the most basic of science. NOT 1 single carb from any plant life is ever needed in our bodies. Fact. Done deal. So if the body only requires meat/fat sources for full on survival to thrive, does anyone ‘ever need a plant’ carb? Yes for survival issues only. When no meat to hunt and we are starving our bodies will let us survive on plants/carbs from them cause the body gives us 2 ways to live/survive and not die off the face of the planet when one food source is not available. So yes we can live on yams, we can live on yams and chicken, we can live on taters and lamb. Yes we can live on lamb alone all the time but we can not live on taters alone ever.
Now always keep in mind the plants/tubers/grains that have an ‘allergic’ effect on people, we all have it, feel it when eating something that ‘don’t set right’ with us but there are degrees of that issue for each individual on the planet…so what if I am allergic to yams and all I have is chicken and yams. I eat the chicken and live. I eat the chicken and yams I find ‘my health less than cause I am being effected by the yams’ but not that bad, I can survive still but might be a tad miserable. Choose your poison.
Now vault ahead to food now is not food. Kellogs, General Mills, Kraft, and every single monster agri company producing fake, chemical laden chemist made ‘whatever the heck these concotions are from labs’ into your food for preservation of that food to be safe to eat…what does that do to each of us?
Now think lifestyle. Old days you earned your life and survival. Now we sit behind desks and buy ‘so called’ processed fake food ‘thru drive ins in our cars’ and we friggin’ love the food LOL IT IS MADE to be addictive ya know…just research the chemical additives put in stuff, like tons of sugar which is addictive, into our food products and while I can write a ton more stuff on it all truly…and believe me I could and this post would go on forever…humans are not in a natural food environment anymore. Food now works against us from companies saying eat this…from GMO who knows what the heck they are doing to our food source? to being sedentary work life and not a natural ‘work for your dinner’ as in hunt it, move for it, anything natural about humans lives now mostly to just sitting in a cubicle to getting a paycheck and then buy crap food cause ‘we deserve’ it and the whole shibang is just so F’d up in the big picture it is crazy!
Plants carbs as a whole can easily effect each and every one of us different on how the plant works in our bodies in an allergic type concept and that again, is personal to us.
Old days. Garden and meat you had on the farm. Done. No grocery stores and fake food around. You knew if mom put some beef on the table from your cow and took tomatoes from the garden with a few carrots, you knew point blank you did fine eating carrots but when you ate the tomatoes you ‘got reactions’ that didn’t set well with you. Clear as day…eat the meat and tater, done and fine but never eat the tomatoes! You KNEW you back then on REAL food…but that is SO over now.
A carb is a carb is a carb is a carb…that will never change. It is the food source and how it works in your body and how your body reacts to it all on a very highly personal level from that food source------and then remember our food is not food from long ago. Nope. So we got things working ALL against us in so many ways that the only thing one can do is eliminate.
We eliminate thru the insanity of food out there now.
We go down to bare bones. Meat/fat for ALL survival. Can we add back in some green beans and do great…many can…can we add back in some broccoli or mushrooms or make a sauce like gravy from meat juices and enjoy that? Many can!
Now think adding back fake sweeteners…omg don’t get me started on that chemical crap nightmare?
Now can we buy convenience foods that suit us in our current lifestyles?
Like a protein bar or something in a package made for us…and then we navigate the ‘organic vs. mass produced’ to try to stop the pesticides and more in our foods?
A carb is a carb is a carb…how plant food sources work for you personally will always be about how they effect your body. Only us as individuals know that. Then we massively jump into ‘today’s life’ of crap food available 24/7 with chemists and GMO and ‘my gosh that smells great and OMG that comfort food meal is to die for’ and we find ourselves in a whole new food world of crazy.
ok that is my take on it.
We are programmed to overeat and be unhealthy now in this age.
Our food supply is crap. We are bombarded with food 24/7 from companies wanting profit, we are hit with sugar included in all made for us foods mostly to keep us addicted along wtih chemical preservation in those foods that further this addiction and ill health and mental fog and then THROW OUR PERSONAL lives into it with ‘maybe all kinds of trauma we live thru that another will never’ and put it all in a big picture…and it ain’t good now.
Just by always going low as you can on carbs is the best thing to do, many find they can function well on a set carb number. Some are great at 20g intake, some do very well on like 50g intake. Again that becomes personal to your needs and body etc.
There must be a lesson for me in here somewhere…