Do Carbs Make You Fat? Everything to know about glucose in the body
Do Carbs Make You Fat? Should you fear carbs?
Fear the misinformation about carbs.
I will give you a FULL breakdown to clear up ANY fear around carbs in this article.
Buckle up, because it’s a fun one.
Since the Atkins diet, there has been a group of people making society believe that carbs are the enemy.
Then there was the Keto revolution, and now we have the Carnivore cult.
You also have subgroups demonizing sugar, and stating it’s a poison and you should never eat anything with sugar in it.
Do you think you’re addicted to sugar?
Let me ask you this…
Someone who’s addicted to heroin or cocaine will do unspeakable sexual acts, steal, and murder for the sake of getting another hit.
Are you that pulled to sugar?
Let’s clear all this up.
You will see that you can have them in your life, and your life will likely be better for it.
How the body first breaks down sugar.
First, you consume carbs.
Depending on what type of carb, they may take more or less time to break down.
An apple takes much longer to break down than a sugary candy.
The body needs to convert it into glucose or fructose.
The sugary candy is already in a form the body can absorb as glucose while the apple takes some time to be absorbed.
This is seen in the glycemic index (GI).
Everything is compared to pure glucose which is a score of 100.
Low is considered below 55, medium is 55 to 70, and high is greater than 70.
This can vary a lot.
- Apple 39
- Strawberries 40
- Banana 51
- Multigrain bread 41
- Brown Rice 50
- White Rice 71
So depending on how fast these carbs break down to enter into your bloodstream, and depending on the total amount, can affect how high your blood sugar will rise after a given meal.
Some will say “If it raises your blood sugar too fast, you’ll have a blood sugar rise and crash, make you crave more food, and it will store as body fat.”
Not the whole picture.
So if these foods are consumed with more protein and fiber it will slow down the digestion process.
You’ll notice that bodybuilders VERY frequently have white rice. Why would they if it’s a higher glycemic food?
They usually have it in a mixed meal with protein and veggies, so it blunts the glycemic effect.
When they research the difference between a diet with low glycemic foods and high glycemic foods, they don’t see any difference as long as protein and calories are equated.
Also important to note, healthy foods can have high GI, and "unhealthy" foods can be medium to low GI.
Watermelon has a GI of 72.
Ice cream has a glycemic index of 61. Does that make ice cream better than watermelon?
The watermelon has a VERY low glycemic load, meaning a very small amount of carbs per serving.
4 Cups of watermelons is 188 calories.
1/2 Cup of ice cream is 200 calories.
So the glycemic index doesn't tell you everything.
However, this is important to note if you’re having JUST a donut in the morning you’re not in a good position for the rest of the day.
If you have dessert-like foods, with low protein and low fiber, you’ll likely have that rise and crash, making you feel the need for more food.
Because of this idea, all the anti-carb groups have the belief that any blood sugar rise and crash is bad.
But they are missing the point that you can lower the glycemic response with a well-balanced meal.
So when you look at your diet, how often are you mixing the carbs sources with enough protein and fiber?
Start with this simple step when making up your meal plan, and notice whether or not this helps you stay fuller longer.
Do all carbs turn into body fat?
Far from it.
Let’s talk about how the body uses carbs, which is glucose, in the body.
So once your body has broken down the carb into glucose, it will now enter the bloodstream from your digestive tract.
Your body will mostly try to store it, and it has 3 ways of storing glucose:
- Liver Glycogen
- Muscle Glycogen
- And Body Fat
It’s important to have liver glycogen as it’s the quickest way for your body to regulate your blood sugar levels.
You use glucose for many things, even 20% goes to your brain for thinking, so if your blood sugar drops too low, the body pulls it from the liver.
The muscle glycogen is important for intense exercise.
You know the burning feeling in your muscles when you do something intense for more than 20-30s?
Imagine doing a wall sit and pushing to the wall until your quads are BURNING bad.
That’s when your muscles need glucose the most.
Now let’s say you've consumed more than enough carbs at some point in your day,
So you have both of these stores, muscle and liver glycogen, all topped off at that moment because you’re not very active.
Then the body will then convert the carbs into fat and put them into your fat cells for that moment.
So yes, carbs can convert to fat.
But here’s the key point…
Fat Will Only Stay As Body Fat, When You’re In A Calorie Surplus By The End Of The Day.
So people are looking at this at the immediate moment way too much.
Let's think about the whole day even without exercise.
So say it’s a rest day and you’re not training, and you eat 40% carbs in your diet.
After all of your meals, your body has enough glucose so that the muscle and liver glycogen are already topped off.
And so it starts to build more fat molecules.
BUT… by the end of the day you only ate 1600 calories, and your calorie maintenance is 2000 Calories.
Then while you’re sleeping, even without training, your body needed to pull an additional 400 calories from fat.
So it didn’t matter.
What if you eat minimal carbs and more fat?
Again, it just depends on your calories at the end of the day.
Say instead of 40% carbs, you go keto and eat 10% carbs, and around 40-50% fat.
Ironically, you store fat faster.
Your body doesn’t have to go through the steps of topping off the liver and muscle glycogen.
Your body can instantly put any excess fat into the fat cells because there is no conversion needed.
But that doesn’t mean you need to fear fat either.
Even with 40-50% fat, and say temporarily your body puts some fat into fat stores...
This is only until at night when you need to burn another 400 calories, and thus you have the same net fat loss.
Do you see how unnecessary this fear is now?
The reason why most people will say "I need to cut carbs" is simply because they are cutting down total calories.
Hopefully, you can see you CAN include these foods.
What about the blood sugar everyone keeps talking about?
You may notice, anytime you see a viral video with a sugary treat you see thousands of comments saying "Diabetes"
It's true that carbs are not harmless.
There is a reason why SPECIFIC people should watch their carbs and blood sugar.
But you don't have to be so terrified of carbs and blood sugar that you run to the keto diet to save you.
When should you fear carbs?
I wouldn’t even use the term fear but rather caution carbs.
Here’s the situation.
You’re prediabetic or diabetic
Let’s quickly explain Type II diabetes and why people hate insulin.
Type II Diabetes
This happens when a person is eating high carbs AND in a calorie surplus for a LOOOONG time.
This person has
Their muscle and liver glycogen are full constantly,
They do not exercise
They have higher glycemic foods
They have minimal protein and fiber
They are usually in a calorie surplus and gain body fat
Very likely overweight or obese (but not always)
Now this is where blood sugar is an issue.
The reason why blood sugar comes down is because your body doesn’t want it too high, so your hormone called ‘Insulin’ comes in to push this into other cells.
If you exercise routinely your body will normally use up carbs during the activity, then the insulin will direct the glucose to go into the muscle to be stored as liver glycogen.
But if you do not exercise, and you're in a surplus of calories, then you can’t push this into the liver or muscle, and the body will have to turn into fat and push into the fat cells.
If this happens to you occasionally, it's not a big deal.
The truth is this happens to everyone…Especially around the holiday meals and fun treat meals that get away from us.
But if this happens 7 days a week for months and years... now your body feels resistant to letting insulin do its job.
This is literally called insulin resistance.
Imagine it's like an alarm clock, you're so used to hearing you sleep right through it.
It cannot respond to the insulin as much anymore.
So now even your resting blood sugar levels will be higher.
If you’ve been told by your doctor, you’re prediabetic, this is a really important thing to improve.
There are so many health concerns with diabetes
High risk for heart disease
Kidney disease
Alzheimer’s
Blindness
And sometimes amputations.
However, you can improve this with 4 simple steps
Walk after each meal for 10 minutes
Have meals mixed with protein and fiber
Have a calorie deficit to lose weight
Exercise 3-4 days/week – both strength and cardio
Get 7-8 hours a sleep
This isn’t much different than most people’s recommendations, but it’s simply a more urgent matter when prediabetic or diabetic.
You NEED to get your blood sugar under control for good health at that point.
If you’re not prediabetic?
You don’t need to panic but be aware there is a consequence of eating in a calorie surplus, with a lot of high carb foods, for a long period of time.
Be more concerned about the calorie surplus than just the simple rise and fall of blood sugar.
So I don’t need to fear sugar?
Not all calories are equal when it comes to fat loss.
This sounds like the opposite of what I've said up to this point, but there is a specific application here.
Any sort of carb by itself, is not actually unhealthy.
Whether it's a Snickers bar, a bowl of rice, or an apple, it will all turn into glucose in the body.
However, that doesn't do anything harmful until you have a calorie surplus and develop high levels of body fat or insulin resistance.
Here are the details that matters.
All those carbs might affect you differently when it comes to your appetite and energy consistency.
Snickers bar isn't going to give you the same meal satisfaction that an apple does for the same amount of calories.
You can make your diet better if you pay attention to how certain carb types affect you.
When you have a meal with good protein and fiber, then also think about this
- Do you feel full enough after the meal?
- Do you get hungry within 1-2 hours?
- Do you just happen to enjoy that carb so much that you want to keep eating it?
The last part is the really important one.
Even carbs that are inherently healthy could need to be cautioned.
For example, when I eat sweet potatoes, they taste like candy to me.
Sweet potatoes are a healthy food for sure, but should I plan on having them routinely if I don’t like slowing down around them?
Probably not my A+ choice.
However, when I have baked white potatoes, with minimal oil and salt, I feel very full with a modest amount of calories.
That sounds like a smart carb choice.
What about the fear of Fructose? And Fruit?
This one annoys me the most.
People will associate Fructose which is heavily processed and used as a sweetener in hyper-palatable foods, then say “All fructose is bad”
It blows me away that people are trying to consider the fructose-glucose molecule, known as sucrose, as being the same thing as the fructose found in an apple.
It’s like saying ‘You can’t eat organs. They have orange flavouring, which is the same orange flavouring as orange crush. So it’s bad for you.”
Who’s getting overweight or diabetes from oranges?
These same people will then say you can eat butter, have bacon, and say it’s way healthier.
I’m not saying you can’t have butter or bacon but let’s look at this per gram.
2 Tbsp of butter is 200 Calories
4-5 slices of bacon is 200 Calories
Over 4 cups of Strawberries is 200 calories.
Can you really tell me the strawberries are the issue?
Fruit is the BEST carbohydrate source in my opinion.
It’s one of the only foods, that require no preparation.
And it’s the carb that actually comes with a bunch of vitamins.
Just 1 cup of strawberries has all the vitamin C you need for a day!
What about sugar?
This is where I’ll simply say “What about TV?”
The sugary foods and desserts are just simply for fun.
TV and sports entertainment are just that… entertainment.
You don’t spend more than 10-20% of your waking hours consuming TV right?
Then don’t spend more than 10-20% of your diet on sugary fun foods.
Here is the worst type of carbs, and food.
Processed foods you go after for snacking and mindless eating while distracted.
The issue most people have around them that makes them think they are addicted is the habit of reaching it when they are likely using that food to cover up an emotion.
Are you bored?
Are you frustrated? Sad? Lonely?
These foods have a fast hit of pleasure. And quite often the sugary stuff is packaged ready to eat.
You start binge-watching your favorite TV show and you have no idea how you ate an entire bag of chips.
Being distracted and eating prevents you from paying attention to how much you're eating or even enjoying the food!
If you’re going to consume them, give yourself a simple rule.
Don’t snack on your chips, M&Ms, or cookies.
Intend on eating it.
Take out a bowl or a serving of some treat food, sit down, and eat it mindfully without any distractions.
Bonus points if you weigh out that serving size, and make sure you’re aware of the calories you’re having.
When you do this, you might instantly realize how much less exciting this food is.
Then you may ask yourself "Is it really worth these calories?"
Remember none of this becomes bad until you’ve had too many calories.
Learning the right amount of calories for fun will go such a long way so you don’t have to give up these foods, but rather just improve the habit of how much you have.
This practice can change your relationship and instincts around these foods so much that you can lose weight AND have cookies the whole time.
What’s this keto stuff about? Do I really need carbs?
Technically no.
Protein and fat are what you call ‘essential’ nutrients because our body cannot make it, so you need to hate it in your diet to get enough.
However, carbs are a non-essential nutrient. This is because our bodies can make glucose out of amino acids.
This is how some people live as keto or carnivores.
So these people feel better control over their diet by eliminating the whole macronutrient.
For them it's a simple way to ensure you get into a calorie deficit, seeing as your don't have as many options (especially the really appetizing ones).
The body can then use ketones to give energy to the mind in replacement of glucose.
But if you choose keto you will have a hard time at parties...
AND athletic performance!
There is no research to date showing any benefit to low carb making someone a better athlete.
You will always perform better having carbs in your diet if you’re doing any intense exercise.
You will grow more muscle.
You will get stronger faster.
Now if you’re an athlete, and your training and sports performance are critical to you, this is a key step not worth missing.
But if you’re not super competitive, and your concern is more about sustainability, then it's not a big deal if you don't get the perfect macros down.
But are Low-Carb High Fat Diets more successful than High Carb Low Fat Diets for fat loss?
In the research, when they compare two different types of diets, when calories and protein are equated, there is no difference.
There are only a few keys in successful diets.
A calorie deficit
Enough protein (0.8g - 1g per 1lbs of bodyweight)
Adherence - meaning the willingness to keep doing it
The key is finding here is that the diet that feels least restrictive to you, but restricts your calories enough to put you into a calorie deficit, is a good diet for you.
You need to discover that for yourself.
I recommend you experiment with different meals.
Try having a meal with higher protein and higher fat one meal.
Then have another with higher protein and higher carbs in the next meal.
Have some mixed with both.
And guess what happens when you do this?
You’ll get a huge variety of foods that simply make you enjoy your diet more.
“But My Friend Lost So Much Weight On Keto!”
2 things here that your friend has going for them
1) Bodyweight loss doesn’t mean all body fat loss
When you stop eating carbs, something big happens to your weight.
You stop holding on to water. A lot of water.
Always remember the word is Carbo-hydrate. So water is always surrounding the molecule.
It’s around 3-4 molecules of H20 for 1 molecule of glycogen (glycogen basically many molecules of glucose stored together).
Eating less carbs, you’ll have much fewer stores of glycogen, and less water that would come from it.
Plus with eating low carbs your digestive tract would also have less water retention.
The first 10-20lbs will be minimal fat. Mostly just water weight.
Water weight happens to anyone on a diet, but even bigger on a keto diet.
2) Eliminating food groups is effective but is it sustainable?
On keto, you have just told yourself a rule of "I'm no longer eating sugary tasty things."
Rules will always guide you to a path quicker.
Think about how many foods you’d get excited about that have little to no carbs.
This is so effective for people who want rigidity.
Rigidity in a diet doesn’t mean sustainability.
Even in the research, those with a more flexible approach to dieting have better long-term weight loss.
So is your friend still keto?
There are be some people who can manage to sustain this for a long period of time.
That is incredible if they found a way of eating that they want to do for the next 10-20 years.
This becomes almost like a religious like following to this style of eating.
And when this friend goes to parties, they have to bring their own keto versions of things.
Not to mention, keto treats
They still have a ton of calories!
And they usually come with monk fruit or erythritol, which if you have IBS issues… you may be a walking gas tank the next day.
But just like any other diet with a name...
Once you come of ... the weight comes back on, because they didn’t really change their long-term habits around those sugary tasty foods enough.
And keto people still have to solve the calorie equation.
They will still deal with hunger. They will still need a plan.
So is it better?
It’s Your Diet…
If you can stop thinking of a mainstream concept of diet, meaning something with a name, or you purchase online… you can start using the term ‘diet’ useful for yourself.
A 'diet' is what an organism consumes to live.
So YOU define what your diet needs to be.
The challenge is within the work involved to make it right for you. So you need to do your own consistent trial and error of different foods.
And trust me, there will be errors.
So should you have carbs?
Again, not my choice to make.
You want all the info of why you do NOT have to fear carbs in your diet, check out my full article "Do Carbs Make You Fat?"
My biggest concern is that you do NOT allow the fear-mongering to get you.
Base it on your own experience on what foods are healthy and sustainable options.
Base it on your values and how you see yourself eating for the next 10-20 years.
You want to sustain the fat loss right?
Start practicing a diet that will help you both lose the weight but enjoy the lifestyle so much, that you won’t give up the foods, once you’ve accomplished it.
Keep enjoying your diet, my friend.
RQ