Weight loss – part 4
This is the fourth part in a series about weight loss including diet, exercise, measuring your success and keeping the weight off when you stop.
So far we’ve looked at the principles of calorie deficits and some specific foods that should ideally be avoided in order to improve weight loss, however I saved you all from an excessively long post by leaving out carbohydrates which I’m covering today.
I’m not going to go into all of the fine details about low carb diets for weight loss – it’s a topic covered in plenty of detail elsewhere on the internet. However, it is still important enough to deserve a post of its own.
Where are you starting from?
It’s important to establish where people are starting from when we talk about going “low carb” for weight loss. Do they eat a standard western diet or do they already follow a form of paleo diet?
People who are not on a paleo diet and who have a significant intake of sugar, cereals, rice, potatoes, pasta, bread and oats, are likely to see great results just by stripping these carbs out of their diet. The secret is in the total calories in these foods.
The starchy “Neolithic” foods are all very high calorie in relation to the amount you can easily eat in a single sitting, especially sugar. If you tried to eat the same amount of calories in paleo foods, especially the lean foods like chicken, you would be full before you ever finished the plateful.
Cutting out rice, pasta and potatoes is an easy start
Example – reducing calories by removing “carbs”
Imagine you are eating a chicken sandwich: two slices of multigrain bread; half a chicken breast; lettuce; tomato; and a spoonful of mayonnaise. This could analyse out as follows:
Calories: 381
Fat: 11.2g
Carbohydrate: 36.4g
Protein: 34.5g
Now imagine that we replace the bread with the other half of the chicken breast (which is a larger meal). The analysis would still be:
Calories: 361
Fat: 11.8g
Carbohydrate: 6.7g
Protein: 54.6g
That’s only a reduction of 20 calories, so not huge, but the meal would feel much bigger. Similarly, a “portion” of spaghetti with your Bolognese could be 150 calories but you would probably feel as full with plenty of vegetables instead of spaghetti. 150 calories is a lot of veg!
Those extra 20 calories here and 50 calories there add up over the course of a day. Also, foods like sugar, pasta and bread often create insulin spikes and hunger pangs so you may snack more often too.
However, it is possible to have a high carb paleo diet (fruits, nuts, seeds and dried fruit in particular are high carb) so don’t get drawn into believing that a paleo diet equates to a low carb diet – it is perfectly possible to retain and even gain weight while following a paleo diet if you have the stomach to eat enough.
How carbs create fat
Carbs are used by the body as an energy source in the form of glycogen or glucose. The muscles store and utilise glycogen as energy and the liver acts as a store of glucose for release into the blood stream when it is needed to restore blood sugar levels and glycogen stores if no fresh carbs are provided after the body uses some of the existing supply.
Unfortunately there is a limit to how much the body can store in the muscles and liver. Any surplus carbs are therefore converted to fat so that they can be easily stored for later use. A simple and understandable explanation of this was provided in a recent article by Dr Clay.
Problems from a western diet
What many people don’t realise is that the body can also use fat as fuel for certain types of exercise. In particular steady state cardio and NEPA (non-exercise physical activity, like walking up the stairs). Common sense therefore suggests that if we can make our bodies do this we should see some weight loss.
The problem with our western diet is that we have usually had such high levels of carbs as we have developed (and these carbs have been present in every meal, so stores are replenished as quickly as they are depleted) that most people find that their bodies don’t understand how to do this. There is an element of (re-)education needed for the body.
Teaching the body that it is capable of burning fat as a fuel source can be unpleasant for the first few weeks and often leaves the person who is doing it feeling lethargic and tired, but it pays dividends in the long run. Not only are there weight loss benefits from being able to quickly strip fat by restricting dietary carbohydrate and fat intake (thus leaving the body with no choice but to burn the fat it is already carrying), but the requirement for fuel when out exercising is reduced. As a great example, Chris and I can now get by each eating 150g nuts and 100g dark chocolate during a strenuous 8 hour walk, without having any breakfast first, and we are still going well at the other end of the day.
The right level of carbs
What is the right level of carbs for a successful low carb diet?
I have no idea – it is very much a case of experimentation. If you are starting from a western diet with lots of starchy carbs then the calorie reduction from removing these foods may be enough and, on analysis, you may find that the carb intake is still quite high.
Personally I’ve found that I am so well adapted to burning fat for fuel that if I want to lose weight I now get best results cutting my net carbs (total carbs less fibre) to below 30g per day. This may seem incredibly low, but the key is in the netting element. I can fill out my diet with foods like broccoli and cabbage and this doesn’t add much to calorie or net carb figures. The reality total carbs, before netting, is probably closer to about 70g and this excludes my pre-workout fuel.
That’s it for this week. Next week, I’ll finish off the diet issues with a return to intermittent fasting. If there is anything in particular you would like me to explore as I work through this series, please let me know and I’ll build it into my research.
Related posts:
If it’s true that fat is also a fuel source, why don’t most people eat low carb to keep fat at bay??? Why are people afraid to run on fat? Are there negative side effects to the body? I know I feel sooo much better eating very little carbs and eating lots of fat and protein.
If you want the honest answer, I really have no idea.
I suspect that the problem is that by the time people get to an age when they can understand that the common accepted belief that people need carbs to provide them with essential energy is false, their bodies are already fully adapted to be dependent on carbs. I used to struggle to believe that it was possible to burn fat for fuel because I used to suffer from such dreadful shakes and weakness when I ran out of carbs and would instantly feel better within moments of taking in more sugar or starchy carbs. If that was how I felt how could it possibly be true that I didn’t need carbs to fuel my body?
It’s a big mental step to get from that to believing that it is possible to run on fat for fuel. I was only convinced after I’d thoroughly researched the science and read plenty of testimonials as evidence that it works. Even then, Chris and I kept putting off converting because we believed that it wouldn’t be possible to maintain a full time job and everything else while going through that painful and unpleasant conversion process. There is a brief period when you are mid-converting before your body gets the hang of burning fat for fuel when you find yourself with the shakes and feeling weak, tired and grumpy at regular periods of time.
However, now I’ve done the conversion I would recommend it to anyone – I’d agree with you about feeling better. I’ve never felt so good and so independent of fuel and food resources. I would happily support anyone trying to go through it now. The conversion doesn’t have to take quite as long or be quite as unpleasant as I had first imagined.
While, I could use some help/support. I have started eating Paleo for over a month now. I was following the Zone Diet prior. I thought eating more Paleo would be a nice change since I was never much into bread etc. I’m not sure if I have really noticed a difference in weight/body comp yet. People that have went Paleo say you can’t go by the scale. To be honest it’s a bit scary to be eating fat so freely. I guess the question I keep asking myself is does it all just boil down to calories. Is it just harder for people to consume a lot of calories when they are coming from protein and fat?? Or is it that your body is burning off your stored fat and you can get away with eating more calories??? Any thoughts?? Why is it that some people can stay very lean while still consuming grains?
Essentially I think the weight/body comp idea does just boil down to calories once you are eating cleanly. For example, Chris (my partner) has recently been through a weight gain cycle while on the Paleo diet and we’ve both been through weight loss cycles when eating paleo. The difference between each of those diet phases was total calories, although to really lose weight effectively now we’ve found we have to cut down the fat too (partly because fat sources are much higher calorie so if you restrict calories you end up eating almost nothing whereas you can eat loads of food and not feel deprived if you go for lean protein sources).
There has been some research that it doesn’t just boil down to total calories if you aren’t eating “clean” foods. A study published last year ( http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/HFCS_Rats_10.pdf ) showed that rats fed HFCS gained more weight than those fed a sucrose solution, despite the HFCS rats consuming fewer calories. So it really depends on your starting point. If you were already eating mainly unprocessed foods and an almost-Paleo diet before transferring fully to Paleo then moving to the Paleo diet is unlikely to create much weight/body comp difference unless you reduce your calories. However, if you start from a position of eating plenty of processed foods with things like HFCS in them (it seems to turn up in the most unlikely places, not just in cans of soda) then swapping to unprocessed foods may well produce weight loss and body comp improvements without reducing overall calorie intake.
Since I’m always starting from a “clean” diet perspective I don’t follow the “unweighed, unmeasured” Paleo approach. I love food so if I go unweighed I end up eating far too much and gaining weight, despite eating it in the form of meat and veggies. Your point about people saying that with Paleo you “can’t go by the scale” is sort of correct with respect to the macro-nutrient breakdown. Certainly for the official Paleo Diet there is none of the regimented breakdown of quanitities of each of the macronutrient groups that you see with the Zone Diet. But a mistake that lots of people make with the Paleo Diet is thinking that it is a weight loss and body composition diet – this may well only be true if your diet beforehand consists of lots of processed foods.
The Paleo Diet is really an approach to eating for health benefits (eg. reduction of inflammation, better absorption of nutrients etc) created by stripping out the problem foods and eating “cleanly”. As I mentioned earlier, depending on your starting point you may or may not get some weight loss benefits from transferring to the Paleo Diet as well. However, once you are eating in line with the Paleo Diet you can then lay other diet ideas over the top of it depending on your goals. For example, paleo doesn’t necessarily equal low-carb (in fact, with plenty of fresh fruit you can easily end up in a high carb position). When I’m trying to lose weight I don’t only cut the calories down but I also bring my carbs and fat intake very low so that I can feel as full as possible on minimal calories (and so that I’m providing my body with as little fuel source as possible so that it has to burn its own fat for fuel). At the other extreme, when Chris was bulking we found plenty of Paleo foods that gave him lots of calories without making him feel too full (eg. avocados and coconut milk).
It’s true that some people can stay lean while still consuming grains. I think that is partly due to what else they are eating and total calorie intake versus expentidure. However I believe there is also an aspect of evolution to consider. The premise of the Paleo Diet is to go back to the diet that our bodies are evolved to handle. We are all descended from different “tribes” of humans, some of which will have settled down to farming and agriculture much earlier than others. It is likely that people who are descended from the very first tribes to eat grains will find that their bodies have adapted better to handle the grains than those whose ancestors were still hunter-gatherers until much more recently, simply because the body has had more iterations to slowly build the necessary adaptations to handle grains. For example, my understanding is that Scandinavian people were hunter-gatherers much longer than most and the Paleo Diet has been a huge success in Scandinavia – similar examples would include the consumption of rice in the Far East or cheese and other dairy products in Mediterranean regions. I bloat dreadfully when I eat too much dairy and I don’t react well to grains so I’m probably looking at an ancestral heritage from northern climes where people continued to be hunter-gatherers until relatively recently (in evolutionary terms).
Hopefully I’ve got to the bottom of your questions with this. Hope it helps.