truth about carbs

Carbs: are they good or bad? Do they cause problems, increase fat, or are they a necessary part of your diet? Nate Miyaki, CSSN, fitness author and nutritional expert, drops by ConFITdent to breakdown the truth about carbs. He explains the confusion behind it, how much should we eat, and much much more.

Read on for the real truth about carbs:

Nate, lets start with why there seems to be so much confusion and disagreement in the fitness industry over carbohydrates?

Atkins vs. ADA, Food Pyramid vs. Fitness Nutrition, Paleo vs. Pop Tarts, etc. What is a dude or diva supposed to do?

Carb confusion in the public and problems in the individual person arise because many fitness writers and coaches try to slot everyone into one universal system and proclaim it is the best for everyone, everywhere.

“I’m a ‘x’ eater” or “I follow ‘y’ diet,” and of course that is the only way to eat regardless of body type, activity levels, current health status, metabolic condition, and physique or performance goals. All other approaches are worthless.

It doesn’t work that way, at least off the magazine pages, outside of theoretical discussions at nutrition conferences, out here in the real Fat Loss Streets. This inability to see the big nutrition picture generally happens because of a few reasons:

  1. Someone personally achieved great results on a particular plan–dramatic weight loss, improvements in overall health and wellness, or some type of athletic achievement. As a result, they are passionate about sharing it with others. But sometimes this passion blinds them to the bigger nutrition picture, and they can’t look beyond their own personal experience – research, practical experience of others, etc. They can’t comprehend that there might be more than one way to skin a cat, or in our cases, to peel off body fat.
  1. Someone’s personal identity has become tied to the associated lifestyle or community aspects of a particular diet.
  1. Someone’s job or revenue stream is tied to a diet and is trying to sell you something associated with it–a system, a lifestyle, a supplement, etc.

The diet industry has lost the principle of Specificity–matching your plan to your individual situation and goal. There is no “Perfect Diet” that can claim a throne. The next time someone claims to be king, punch them in the high-carb breadbasket or kick them in the low-carb nuts.

So what is a simple solution coaches, athletes, and health and fitness enthusiasts can use to solve this problem?

Match your carbohydrate intake to your individual activity levels, metabolic condition, and physique or performance goals. It really is that simple.

A 300lbs, obese, sedentary, pre-diabetic office worker trying to improve biomarkers of health and save his or her life DOES NOT have the exact same nutritional needs as a 175lbs, lean, fit, insulin-sensitive athlete trying to reach elite levels of performance or physical development, and maybe has the less noble, but equally important goal of getting big guns and a shredded 6-pack. Neither does the relatively fit woman trying to turn it up for the next few months and rock a bikini come summertime.

Yet, that’s what you have to believe if you buy into the dogmatic adherence to a one-size-fits all “diet system.”

It seems simple and logical enough, but it surprises me how often that advice does not get applied to real life diets, even by intelligent athletes and coaches. Irrational emotions take over when it comes to diet. That’s right about the time when results fail to meet expectations.

You recommend lower carb diets for the average sedentary person? What is a good amount of carbs to shoot for, and why?

A sedentary person is not exercising and burning through muscle glycogen stores, so they do not need to worry about replenishing them with a high carbohydrate intake. High carbohydrate intakes (300g or more) are more appropriate for athletes that undergo the cyclical depletion and repletion of muscle glycogen stores.

Sedentary populations really only need to worry about providing adequate carbohydrates to fuel the brain and central nervous system at rest. This can be accomplished with roughly 100-125g a day. This does not vary much with weight and gender as the liver is roughly the same size regardless of those two variables, unless perhaps you’re hanging with Frank the Tank.

This is why lower carb diets may be the best approach for improving body composition and biomarkers of health for obese, insulin resistant, and sedentary populations.

You give your body just enough carbs to support liver glycogen stores and fuel the brain and central nervous system at rest, have good cognitive function, energy, and mood, etc., without overshooting your daily energy needs, gaining fat, and getting diabetic.

But you also say in your book that high-intensity exercise changes everything, and many athletes following low-carb diets suffer from severe side effects and drawbacks. Can you explain?

The short summary is that anaerobic exercise (strength training, HIIT, intermittent sprint sports, etc.) creates a unique metabolic environment, an altered physiological state, and changes the way your body processes nutrients for 24-72 hours after completion of a training session.

So if you exercise 2-4 days a week, then your body is virtually in a recovery mode 100% of the time. It is in an altered physiological state beyond pure resting conditions 100% of the time, thus its nutritional needs are completely different than the average sedentary office worker.

A good analogy is your car. If your car has been sitting in the garage, it doesn’t need gas. Loading up on carbs is like trying to fill up a full tank. It just spills over the side. In the human body, that overspill equates to sugar backing up in the bloodstream (high blood glucose). This in turn leads to body fat storage and a host of other negative effects like elevated triglycerides and cholesterol, insulin resistance, and, eventually, type II diabetes.

However, if you drive your car around every day, sometimes for long mileage, you have to fill it up often. If you don’t, you will run out of gas. An empty tank in the human body equates with fatigue, depression, lethargy, irritability, impaired performance, muscle loss, stubborn fat, insomnia, low testosterone, impaired thyroid production and resting metabolic rate, foul mood, frustration that despite dieting and training your body is not changing, etc.

That doesn’t sound very good. What is your strategy with athletes and regular exercisers to avoid this?

Yeah man, no diet is worth sacrificing sexy time with your significant other. So here is what I recommend.

Keep carbs as high as possible to fuel and recover from anaerobic training while:

  • Eating enough protein to support lean muscle mass
  • Eating a baseline level of fats to support normal functioning and natural hormone production
  • Getting in the calorie deficit necessary for optimum fat loss

To accomplish the above:

  • Set calories at a level that is ideal for fat loss
  • Set protein and baseline fat intake
  • Fill in all remaining calories with carbohydrates. This will probably end up somewhere in the range of 1-3g/lbs.
  • Adjust the calories as necessary based on progress, primarily by increasing or decreasing carb intake

Want to know more about the details of carb customization strategies, including supporting research and specific numbers? Check out Nate’s new book: The Truth About Carbs: How to Eat Just the Right Amount of Carbs to Slash Fat, Look Great Naked, & Live Lean Year-Round on Kindle or Paperback.

Or visit his website at natemiyaki.com

By Daniel

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