We’ve come through a paradigm shift – or some people might say we’re still going through it – from where we’ve been taught to worry about fat in food (especially saturated fat and cholesterol) to experts now saying that you should limit sugar in food. Starches get digested into sugar, so you want to be careful about sugars and starches. We put these together in the term “carbohydrates.”
Shifting the general mindset isn’t easy
It’s important to hear it over and over again because of the fact that you’ve heard that you want to worry about fat in food so often; to move the needle to you not worrying about fat and having it move towards worrying about carbohydrates is not always an overnight thing. I found recently that you might be doing great by avoiding sugars and then a doctor shocks you and says you need to watch the fat in your food because of your cholesterol levels. They might fearmonger a little bit about it. That’s just the process of going through the painful paradigm shift that we’re in. There are medications that can treat cholesterol in your blood, even though cholesterol can get better when you do a carbohydrate-restricted diet. Again, most doctors, dietitians, and nutritionists have not been taught that.
Why limit sugar?
The reason why you want to reduce and eliminate sugar is because of the bad health effects of it. Not for everyone – if you’re not susceptible to it, then don’t listen to this. If you have pre-diabetes, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, fatty liver, PCOS – any of these carbohydrate-related problems – then you’ll want to pay attention. The root cause of most chronic medical conditions today is excessive carbohydrate consumption. The amount that you should consume is based on your basic metabolism. If you have no tendency towards insulin resistance, you’re naturally an athlete and have a lot of exercise in the course of your day, and you don’t have a tendency to store extra sugar as fat on your body, then you’re dealt the genes to allow you to not have to worry much about sugar.
Remember that protein is the best and most important part of your nutritional intake or nutritional program, not sugars and fruit. Protein is what our bodies are made of; amino acids are the building blocks of our bodies. Protein comes first – this is the hallmark of any good nutritional program. You may have a metabolism where you’ve been heavy since you were a child, your parents put you on Weight Watchers when you were young, you’ve always struggled with controlling your weight, or you’ve had blood tests and you’re diagnosed with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. Reducing the carbs to the level that suits your metabolism can actually reverse these conditions.
The old paradigm
I’m in the interesting academic evidence-based position where I can show and demonstrate the reversal of these chronic diseases by reducing carbohydrates and using a low-carb keto diet; I don’t have studies that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that sugar and carbohydrates are the cause for these conditions. However, I can reverse them by limiting carbohydrates. That makes me think that carbohydrates are going to be one of the main factors if prospective studies are done to look at the root cause of all these chronic conditions.
In the old paradigm, no one suspected sugar of being bad. It was fat. Large, expensive studies were done looking at fat in food and seeing if you could manipulate and reduce the saturated fats and cholesterol and really, there was no health benefit as a result of it. The organizations that still hold onto this old, low-fat, reducing cholesterol levels by changing fat in the food, are really out of date. Using that method versus a low-carb keto diet is like using a phone with a cord versus a smartphone. We can do so much more than the old type of diet.
Limiting sugar works!
We’re just learning more and more as time goes on about what reducing or eliminating carbohydrates can do. When I look at the food list on the wall in my clinic rooms, it’s really just food that I am recommending people to have. I wish sometimes you would take away the names and the buzzwords. What you want to do is look at the foods and get rid of the names. Reduce sugars and that will lead to a reduction of blood sugar and blood insulin levels where you can reverse or prevent your tendency to type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes, fatty liver disease, and PCOS. The most amazing thing that we’ve learned recently is people with a very rare disease called McArdle disease (a type of glycogen storage disease), when they cut carbohydrates out, their muscles run on fat for fuel. It’s a disease where they can’t store sugar in their muscles. When they change the muscle to burn fat instead, they have tremendous improvements in their symptoms.
It’s not easy for all those folks, like people in general, to get rid of the sugars and starches, but that’s a different issue. If we teach you a simple way to have sugar-like things, then we can get you off the sugar itself. The reason we think it’s okay to not eat carbohydrates and sugar is that it’s okay to run your body on fat. Fat is the preferred fuel for your heart muscle and for the skeletal muscles. Ketones get made from the fat that you’re burning to fuel the brain. You really don’t have to eat carbohydrates. I can imagine you might say, “But, they taste so good!” Again, that’s a different issue. The amount to which you should watch the sugar depends on the genes you were dealt, and your metabolism depends on what you’re trying to accomplish by changing your diet. The old worry about fat in food is fading away and now you want to moderate the amount of sugar and starch in the food instead.
Watch the full video here.