Carbs are Killing You (infographic)

If the obese people just kept exercising, they'd surely start burning their stored fat off.
Don't exercise for a week and stop. Just keep your ass moving.

When I wasn't playing rugby I put on weight quickly, but the moment training came around I could lose it again and that was just being active because my diet never changed any. Still hamburgers and chips every day at smoko.

And now same sort of thing. Earlier in the year I was at my lowest weight since high school 10 years ago. 90kg. I was walking 20+kms a day though! not a brisk walk! just walking. Then my job role changed and I wasn't walking and I was sitting all day in my van. I put 10kg on in a few months. Now I'm trying to lose that again so I've picked up the exercise.

Problem is with that chart is everything that is bad for you is pretty much my diet...

 

I am thinking you are thinking we are claiming to be doctors here, no one has made this claim and we are just having discussion. Hopefully our links will help for those who want to go further and do their research.
No one has to study to be a doctor to start understanding their body and how it works. In fact some doctors don't know anything but terms but not how nutrients really could benefit us but are more about a drug to make us comfortably sick so the cash keeps coming into the pharma system. People are educating and it could be a good thing but they have no need to be perfect to improve their lives.
It's actually quite simple, look for foods that are not processed, eat less of the higher sugar fruits and eat almost any food on the shelves along the walls of the store, except for dairy, or take dairy in moderation.
The scary thing is even some veggies grown in other countries and even in our own countries are now not being supplied with their nutrients as they were years ago because they are grown in less time, in poor soils and some are even injected to show the original color they Should be. Supplementing was not really suggested like it is now.

 

Haha...

Of course they would, because they would eventually burn off their glycogen stores, their insulin levels would fall, and they would actually start to burn their fat stores for energy.

The problem with most people is that they eat something that causes them to store fat, then they go do an hour of cardio and think they burned off however many calories the machine says. It's not quite that simple. People who do excess cardio with no regard to their diet might burn off some fat, but they're also going to be burning off a lot of muscle as well. This is why people who think exercise is the answer to their weight problems might in fact lose lose weight, they only become a lighter, deflated version of how they looked when they were fat. In other words, they become skinny-fat, which is not at all an attractive look, especially without clothing.

Chronic cardio is one of the absolute worst tools for weight loss, and I know this from experience, because my initial weight loss was the result of calorie restriction and excessive cardio. Yeah, I lost a ton of weight, but it left me looking wasted and I still had a gut on me despite having lost around 100 lbs. If I knew then what I know now, I would have saved myself a lot of trouble.

 

I'm of follower of Dr. Fuhrman. What matters isn't carbos, fat or protein, but how much nutrients are in those foods.

 

That's more accurate than your earlier statement.

In light of you saying that, a more accurate title for the infographic of Taubes might be: Over-Consumption of Refined Carbs Is Unhealthy (especially when coupled with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle). "Carbs Are Killing You" is a catchy, exaggerated, absolute, emotionally-charged mantra phrase, so Taubes uses it. No surprise, contrarian Joe Mercola loves contrarian Gary Taubes, as he does every contrarian whether they are right or wrong, and features him on his website.

One of the traps people fall into is making sweeping generalizations that aren't supported. Similar to generalizations that Taubes has made about carbs, others have made generalizations that all saturated fats are supposedly unhealthy. It was once thought that all cholesterol was bad. Then it became LDL. Later, the particle size of LDL was discovered to be a factor regarding its risk to causing vessel disease.

 

The quality and quantity of carbohydates is sometimes neglected. Some island cultures such as the Japanese and Melanesian, some African cultures, and a minority of people in industrialized cultures like the U.S., eat a high percentage of healthy carbohydrates, up to 70% or more, yet don't suffer from high blood pressure, high triglycerides, or industrial era diseases such diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Or at least nowhere near the extent observed overall in industrialized cultures. Melanesian island cultures are an example where people acquire their carbs from fresh fruits and fat from coconuts, as opposed to refined grains and added sugars and animal fat common in western industrial cultures. Such groups are normal weight, physically active, and generally healthy throughout their lives.

People need to account for the success of such high carb diets if they want to prove that something is inherently wrong and unhealthy about diets that are relatively high in carbs. A distinction needs to be made between healthy and unhealthy carbs and an acknowledgment of the unhealthy effects of being sedentary and obese no matter what the macronutrient composition of the diet may be.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9322559

 

I think I have made it pretty clear what separates good carbs from bad ones. Not sure what your argument is. Sure the infographic has a sensational title because that is what attracts people's attention. Once people look further they see that the carbs being referred to are not from green, leafy vegetables, but rather things like bread, pasta, beer, and sweets.

So again, please state your point.

 

I think processed foods are the enemy rather than carbs, fats or protein.

 

I agree, and most processed foods are full of carbs. Sure, many are full of fat also, and not the good kind, but the Western diet is overwhelmingly carb heavy. Most people eat less fat than ever, yet are fatter than ever. The low fat craze which began in the 70s and persists to this day has been used to push foods which are relatively low in fat but loaded with refined sugars and carbohydrates. Many people don't realize that just because something is sold as "low fat," doesn't mean it won't make you fat.

 

The low fat craze ruined a lot of tasty snack foods. To keep some kind of flavor they add not only more sugar but flavor enhancing chemicals, carefully designed and engineered to appeal to the gluttonous part of the brain. People end up eating more, and since they are convinced it's healthier, they go ahead and eat even more than they would have the full fat product.

 

Very true.

 

http://youtu.be/UslqAW2otXU

 

It's misleading people with exaggerated black/white statements, the same way the public was misled when they were told "fat is killing you!" by some groups in previous decades. You have posted before that you are upset about how people were misled about dietary fat being demonized, yet you applaud misleading claims that demonize carbohydrates.

For you to be consistent, your response should be something like: "The demonization of fat was ok because it got people's attention and they can look more closely at the issue and figure out there are some fats that are healthy and others that aren't." In reality, that's usually not what happens. People are misled by flashy sayings and misinformation and many end up damaging their health because of it.

 

People gaining weight as a result of consuming more calories than they need is not a notion. It's a fact.

Taubes didn't prove anything with that attempt in the video. Taubes engaged in a drama queen tactic to try to make Guyenet look bad but instead made himself look immature. It's understandable that Taubes is frustrated that his claims aren't gaining any traction in the science community, but it's still really bad etiquette for him to behave rudely at a public venue.

Taubes alluded to a study that Guyenet wasn't familiar with. Taubes then insinuated that because Guyenet wasn't familiar with it that he was deliberately ignoring it. The fact that Guyenet wasn't familiar with it doesn't mean that the study proves Taubes' argument right and Guyenet wrong. Guyenet couldn't speak to it at the moment because he wasn't familiar with all the details of the study.

 

It's not misleading. Most of the carbs people eat in the developed world are bad, fast-digesting carbs which come from refined sources.

While vegetables are carbs, the ones people should be eating most are relatively low carb. This is why I can still eat more vegetables than most people, and still keep my daily carb intake well below 30 grams if I so choose.

But OK, perhaps the title of the infographic is sensationalistic and misleading, but the information contained within is accurate. That is what is important. Why focus on a title instead of looking at the overall picture?

 

I have no doubt that if you eat enough, you're going to gain weight, regardless if it's carbs, fat or protein. But there is a pretty huge difference in how certain calories are used (or rather stored) by the body. There is a big difference in how the body utilizes calories in a diet that consists of 50 or 60% carbs, and one that consists of 60 or 70% fat. On a low carb diet, you're in constant fat burning mode, so whatever weight is gained from food intake is usually burned off just as quickly. It isn't until you start adding carbs that you begin storing fat.

While some people can tolerate high amounts of carbs -- even refined, fast-digesting, high-glycemic ones -- a large number of the population cannot. In these people, whatever the body cannot immediately use for energy gets converted to fat and stored.

Also, anyone who has tried a low carb diet knows that fat is satiating, and therefore overeating becomes much more difficult than when you're sustaining on a high carb diet and need to eat every 3-4 hours just to keep your blood sugar levels normal. If there is any primary reason people overeat, it's because they're eating most of their calories in carbs, which contribute to unstable blood sugar.

 

I have my own nutrition graphic:



This is the result of consistently eating a balanced, low calorie, moderate fat diet for decades, with moderate exercise.

Narrow focus specialty diets always get results in one area of health and cause problems in other areas. Common sense should tell you that if your diet is unbalanced, there will be negative consequences of one kind or another. For example, cutting back too much on high fiber foods like beans can lead to colon cancer. You need to eat some of everything, except for highly processed foods that are not a part of nature.

The big flaw in that first carb diagram is that it doesn't show how the body's current energy needs are being supplied.

Calories are not rocket science. Everything you do burns calories, including sleep. In order for your weight to stay the same, your calorie intake has to equal your long term average daily calorie burn. Excess calories get stored as fat. When calorie intake is too low, the balance has to come from fat and muscle. Muscle loss can be controlled through exercise, forcing more calorie extraction from fat.

The average American only consumes about 50 calories a day more than they burn. Unfortunately, that's enough to lead to obesity by age 50. Fifty calories is nothing. It's so easy to burn that off! No gym membership required. Just walk around a few blocks!

Don't waste your time on complicated diets. Just eat a wide variety of quality foods, keep your fiber intake up, and count calories. After a few weeks of writing everything down, it will be obvious where your problem areas are. If you wouldn't want a stranger to read your list, then you already know what to change.

 

So Ramen Noodles are awesome, after all!!!







Ramen, anyone?

http://dailyhealthpost.com/see-what-happens-inside-your-body-when-you-eat-ramen-noodles/

http://youtu.be/IQlNv2Au-Lg

 

Not sure what that picture is supposed to prove, Karen, other than that you have a high opinion of yourself. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.

The focus on calories in being the root cause in obesity is flawed since, as I have stated, it depends on the quality of calories you're getting and not simply the amount. When you keep calories too low over a long term without addressing nutritional needs, you are depriving your body of the nutrition it needs. Conversely, if you're eating the right foods, you can restrict your overall calorie intake and receive immense long-term benefits from it, especially with regard to longevity.

The concept of the "balanced diet" is flawed, since the US government's food pyramid tells us that a "balanced" diet is one consisting of 6-11 servings of breads, pastas and cereals per day, which is insanity and proven to be the cause of ill health for many.

As far as how the body's current energy needs are met, I have been over this already. On a low carb diet, the body switches from burning glucose to fat as its primary energy source. Calories from carbohydrate have a much greater potential of being stored, whereas calories from healthy fats have a much greater potential of immediately being used for energy and NOT stored, granted carbs are kept low. Carbs can be kept low without depriving oneself of vital nutrients because, as I stated, grean, leafy vegetables are relatively low in carbs. The culprit of the carbs the infographic calls into question are not fruits, vegetables, or even legumes, but the highly refined, high-glycemic ones that are listed in the graphic. Last I checked, bread, pastries and beer are not essential to human health.

The consumption or lack thereof of beans has nothing to do with colon cancer, since there are other forms of fiber, such as what I mentioned in the paragraph above. On the contrary, beans are full of plant toxins and have proven to not be tolerated well by some.

The concept of calories in / calories out is flawed, and it's being realized more and more as time progresses.

The idea that restricting unhealthy carbs means restricting vital nutrients is flat out wrong.

 

If your method is so great, then post a pic to prove how little body fat you have.