Why should I consume less process sugars?

[BenM]

"Good Calories, Bad Calories" - Taubes (available on audible)

Helped me a lot with this.

Sugar and highly processed carbs have are very easily and rapidly digested. Sending your insulin through the roof, which has a number of long term consequences. (spoiler alert, they are bad)

You can help yourself by getting stronger (more receptors). You can also alter your diet to go what is called keto-genic (aka fat burning mode), by eating very low carb and "moderate protein". Either approach can potentially cure type-2 diabetes, and has a number of other health benefits.

If you're really in trouble, do both. These "programs" are not without conflicts. It all depends on your objectives. To implement this stuff I read "Keto Clarity", a lot more how to, where the Taubes book is more research re-examination.

If stabilizing your blood sugar levels quickly is your goal do both. This will cost your strength program some. It appears to be working for me. My squat and press are screwed up by injuries anyway. But I've also had unexpected struggles on my Deadlift. At this particular point, it works for me. I'll make up lost ground later. But still lifting now for health benefits.

Good luck.

Taubes is a storyteller not a scientist.

[Cheesepuff]

"Storyteller" is too high of praise. Taubes couldn't tell a good story to save his life. Have you even seen him interviewed? It is brutal.

He searched and put together a time line, and studies that landed our current "nutrition guidance" where it is. He questions the conclusions based on the studies themselves.

We have been pushed to eat more "healthy grains", and avoid fat. Which people have largely done. The result is where we are. Fat and sick.

The only thing he comes close to proving is that we should rethink who we trust regarding nutrition. Everyone with a lab coat and a grant is not a scientist. IMHO.

The central question becomes: "Are the diseases of Western Civilization, actually caused by carbs and not fat?" A case can be made for chronically high insulin levels, followed by obesity and metabolic syndrome. What can we do about this? If you get on board soon enough, Starting Strength is all the answer you need.

If your happy with the answer you have, run with it. Quite possibly the answer is not the same for everyone. Some people may need a little more help.

[MBasic]

"Storyteller" is too high of praise. Taubes couldn't tell a good story to save his life. Have you even seen him interviewed? It is brutal.

He searched and put together a time line, and studies that landed our current "nutrition guidance" where it is. He questions the conclusions based on the studies themselves.

We have been pushed to eat more "healthy grains", and avoid fat. Which people have largely done. The result is where we are. Fat and sick.

The only thing he comes close to proving is that we should rethink who we trust regarding nutrition. Everyone with a lab coat and a grant is not a scientist. IMHO.

The central question becomes: "Are the diseases of Western Civilization, actually caused by carbs and not fat?" A case can be made for chronically high insulin levels, followed by obesity and metabolic syndrome. What can we do about this? If you get on board soon enough, Starting Strength is all the answer you need.

If your happy with the answer you have, run with it. Quite possibly the answer is not the same for everyone. Some people may need a little more help.

This is all old news, and has been beat to death.
And many have run with this same narrative.

Some will re adjust their carb intake, but just maintain the same calorie level. So they wind up not improving much.

I fell into the same insulin trap about 10 years ago.
That is, the thinking carbs = insulin = keeping me fat.
I think low carb diet MOSTLY works on sedentary people. If you are active, or TRAIN^TM with weights, you're going to need more carbs than the low carb people think you need.

If you sit on a desk all day, and don't do anything serious in the way of exercise, yeah, low carb is probably for you.

The best thing I've done lately is starting eating more carbs again.

Also, the push for Grains thing and demonzation of fat thing the happenedway back when...also happened at a time when a lot of laborious jobs went bye bye. And that is /has been getting worse with time. This time period also correlates with great wealth creation in our country...more disposable income for food and junk. I don't think the shift to carbs/grains is the majority of the problem. But some.of the problem yes

[BenM]

"Storyteller" is too high of praise. Taubes couldn't tell a good story to save his life. Have you even seen him interviewed? It is brutal.

He searched and put together a time line, and studies that landed our current "nutrition guidance" where it is. He questions the conclusions based on the studies themselves.

He cherry picks information from studies that supports his theory, and openly admits that he wouldn't change his mind about his theory even if he was presented with irrefutable scientific evidence.

We have been pushed to eat more "healthy grains", and avoid fat. Which people have largely done. The result is where we are. Fat and sick.

No, I don't think they have largely done that at all. I am currently partway through 'The Hungry Brain' by Stephan Guyenet. You might find the first chapter or two very enlightening. For a start, the people who DO eat according to the dietary guidelines (lower fat, variety of foods etc) tend to be leaner than those who don't. Calories (and fat consumption) have gone up significantly (example, How America's diet has changed over time | Pew Research Center)

Taubes theory is flat out wrong and carbs are not the cause of our problems - they are a contributor but so is fat and so is overeating generally.

[Cheesepuff]

I shall do more reading. Thanks for the input.

You make excellent points. I'm not able to train as well as I'd like now. (age and injuries) Which sparked my interest in this topic.

I shall consider my ways.

[Charlie Davies]

I'm about 25% convinced that deliciousness itself is the problem.

I.e. our brains crank up our hunger drive when extremely tasty and widely varied food is on-hand.

I've had good luck with just making my diet boring. I.e. the same 3 meals every day. When I do this and avoid snacks and sweet drinks, I can eat to appetite and get leaner.

[BenM]

I'm about 25% convinced that deliciousness itself is the problem.

I.e. our brains crank up our hunger drive when extremely tasty and widely varied food is on-hand.

I've had good luck with just making my diet boring. I.e. the same 3 meals every day. When I do this and avoid snacks and sweet drinks, I can eat to appetite and get leaner.

I haven't finished the book yet but that's a big part of what it says.

We're genetically hard wired to seek out calorically dense food which in our hunter gatherer days would have required a fair bit of energy expenditure to source. And because it wasn't always readily available we'd gorge on it when it was.

Nowadays we suffer from an overabundance of highly palatable, calorically dense foods and on top of that it's cheaper and more readily available than ever. Our brains haven't really evolved to deal with this so we're constantly fighting that old programming.

[Charlie Davies]

Yeah, I got my opinion from this (long) review & discussion of The Hungry Brain: Book Review: The Hungry Brain | Slate Star Codex.

There are certainly *other* causes of obesity in addition to hyper-palatable food.
Dieting is not that hard for me, but not everyone's body works like mine does.

There's a product mentioned in the link above, "meal squares".
They are a meal-replacement product (a bar/biscuit thing) that is safe to live on, but deliberately designed to be only tasty enough to eat if you are hungry :-)
Haven't tried them myself.

[BenM]

Yeah, I got my opinion from this (long) review & discussion of The Hungry Brain: Book Review: The Hungry Brain | Slate Star Codex.

There are certainly *other* causes of obesity in addition to hyper-palatable food.
Dieting is not that hard for me, but not everyone's body works like mine does.

There's a product mentioned in the link above, "meal squares".
They are a meal-replacement product (a bar/biscuit thing) that is safe to live on, but deliberately designed to be only tasty enough to eat if you are hungry :-)
Haven't tried them myself.

Oh cool. Didn't realise you'd got it from the book (kinda).

Yeah there are other causes, sure. But I think - genuine medical issues aside, which I've always considered to be a tiny minority of obese people, it comes down to CICO in the end and hyperpalatable / highly available food is the major contributor to that, there are also societal factors, mental health factors and many other things but without the former most of those would be less of an issue.

Meal squares sound interesting, when you mentioned it the first thing I thought of was Soylent (which I also haven't tried) and now I've read the review I see the reviewer mentions them too. Would definitely be interesting to try them both.

As a FFB (former fat bloke) I find this nutrition stuff fascinating. Still dealing with my own psychological demons and I think I always will be. Right now, tracking macros and eating similar foods most of the time is how I deal with it, but that can be a real pain in some circumstances and probably isn't something I want to do for the rest of my life. So I spend a LOT of time reading and listening to podcasts on nutrition, trying to absorb as much as I can. There are differing viewpoints on many things of course, and everyone responds differently to certain dietary protocols too. It's incredibly complex but also fairly simple at the same time

[Bliss]

Some reading from Lyle McDonald's site may be of interest:

How We Get Fat : Bodyrecomposition

One of my favorite articles that finally clicked in for me and bridged a few important gaps regarding macros interplay and weight gain/loss mechanisms.

Actually, there's one point that was not addressed, unfortunately, so might post it on the nutrition subforum....basically, de novo lipogenesis will occur when total fat intake is abnormally low, by converting excess carbs to fat.

Not sure if excess PROTEIN is able to undergo the same mechanism, although a search on Google hints that it will...?

(DNL occurs via acetylCOA, which is produced from the glucose. And If acetylCOA can be produced from certain amino acids, that deals with my question. Not sure if this is true or to what extent.)