My, my, my! Leave it to Stephan Guyenet and Gary Taubes to keep things interesting since their spat at the Ancestral Health symposium last month. Stephan had responded to Taubes’ latest, but curiously has taken down his post which, IMNSHO, was unfairly criticized by Taubes’ devotees (bummer, too, it was driving a lot of traffic to my blog for this 1796 recipe for ‘diet bread‘ ;).
Better late than never, this has prompted me to go on the record about where I am with carbs. In a word, I’m agnostic. Or perhaps the more apt religious metaphor is that I prefer to follow the middle way.
Simply stated: I don’t demonize carbs, but I think our Western diet full of refined carbs is not healthy.
My low-carb past
I come to this position with a somewhat unique perspective. I’ve actually lost a boatload of weight LCing. Twice. The first time was in my late teens between my freshman and sophomore years of college, back when Nutrisystem was a ketogenic diet; I lost 75 lbs over that summer. The second time was in my 30s, when I lost over 100 lbs doing a medically supervised liquid fast.
And LCing certainly worked (at least temporarily). I did find that ketosis seemed to suppress appetite and providee energy. But I struggled to do LC over the long haul (which seems to happen to others as well).
So, here I am a couple of decades later, hopefully losing weight for the last time … and this time, I’m taking a different route.
Moderate carbs for me!
I’m approaching carbs moderately, because I think it’s something I can sustain for a lifetime. I also suspect that eating different levels of carbs may be a good strategy.
Here’s Mark Sisson’s carboyhydrate curve:
On a typical day, I like to stay in Mark’s “weight loss sweet spot” of 75-100g of carbs. But at least once a week, I eat somewhere in the 100-200g range for diet variety and to keep my carb machinery working. I also like the idea of a periodic postprandrial leptin boost … a la Leangains’ carb refeeds.
[As I’ve mentioned in the past, my diet is fairly close to the Jaminets’ Perfect Health Diet which focuses on safe starches (e.g., rice or potatoes, etc) over grains.]
A word about flexibility: If you’ve read many LC blogs or forums, you’ve probably come across the advice to ramp up carbs before an OGTT or else you’ll be diagnosed as a diabetic due to sky-high BG readings.
Basically, the gist is if you go LC long enough, you down-regulate some of the enzymes needed to metabolize glucose, thus your BG levels go higher during an OGTT (or if you had a high carb meal while LCing) than if carbs were a normal part of your diet. This is essentially the opposite of the LC induction ‘flu.’
For me, eating moderate carb lets you keep your metabolic flexibility. That means not so many carbs so you are primarily a sugar burner, but not too few carbs so you can only be a fat burner.
IMO, this flexibility makes for a great “for life” diet. Another plus: I don’t have to worry about potential low-carb thyroid issues.
Chicken or egg?
While we’re on the subject of carbs, I think yesterday’s tweet from Chris Kresser bears repeating:
Also, if I hear another person say “LC diet worked for me, so the insulin hypothesis must be correct” I’m going to flip out.
To me, this is an important concept. No one disputes that many people find LCing a useful way to lose weight (at least in the short term). But many of the studies touted by the LC camp also show that many people do not do well on LC — sometimes because of compliance issues, or sometimes because they seem genetically wired to need more carbs.
Brain or booty?
This snippet of a conversation between Dr. Mike Eades and Dr. Emily Deans on Twitter today really framed the discussion in a way that gets at the heart of the matter: where is the source of the dysfunction … fat tissue or the brain?
Good question!! I can’t wait until we find out … hopefully in my lifetime.
[As an aside, I suspect that the combination of carbs AND fat is a problem … especially when you’re talking refined carbs and sugar and refined veggie oils. This not-found-in-nature combination is not only problematic from a brain/food reward perspective but also from a downstream perspective (e.g., hepatic injury).]
I’ve also become intrigued by the idea of a seasonal approach to carbs. It makes sense to me from an evolutionary perspective: my northern European ancestors probably cycled between a low (or no) carb diet in the winter months and a higher carb diet at the end of the summer. And this may or may not be related to serum vitamin D levels which likewise would have varied seasonally.
Interestingly, Robert Lustig has a theory that higher fructose intakes might create insulin resistance (for example, at harvest time) to enable us to put on fat stores to help us get through the winter.
Of course, this doesn’t work so well in our modern food environment, which is all harvest, all the time. Living seasonally — or perhaps alternating periods of “feast” with “famine” might be an interesting tack to take.
Your mileage may vary
All of this said, note that I titled this post “why I eat moderate carb” not “why you should eat moderate carb.” I read very many LC (and ZC) blogs, and they make compelling arguments for a low-carb diet. If they work for you, great!! Keep on keeping on ;).
Update, 9/5: Chris Kresser adds some useful context, Reframing the obesity debate: cause/effect, genetics & robot clones
Update, 9/6: Yoni Freedhoff asks (and answers correctly IMO) the question: Will there ever be a grand unified theory of obesity?
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our modern culture -- especially diet. Beth writes about ancestral health, health policy, & mindfulness. And cats! 
Hi Beth
Nice post. I’m also a carb agnostic, and while being moderate carb isn’t helping me to lose weight just yet, it is keeping me energetic and happy. Low carb works for weight loss but I slowly lose the will to live.
It’s unfortunate that this argument isn’t going as far as to define what carbs are. There’s a vast difference, health-wise, between eating grains, sugars and processed foods, and eating plants like kumara, rice and potatoes. I reckon there’s also a huge variance in the different fruits that are available. Overall, I think the subtleties need to be teased out more than they are currently.
You write: “Low carb works for weight loss but I slowly lose the will to live.” LOL … I know what you mean!!
I’m anticipating I may plateau higher than I’d like. But I think that rather than lower the carbs, I’ll probably experiment with things like HIIT, intermittent fasting, etc. I like the comment engrevo made: the trick is to convince the brain the fat can go ;).
Hi Beth, Nice post. (And thanks for the links! We’re proud to have you on our diet.)
I now think that, in general, moderate carbs is best for weight loss. If you’re metabolically damaged, you want to give the body the least possible stress, and you can do that by eating to your body’s nutrient needs. Since we all need some glucose, that means eating a bit of carbs.
I hope to get time to develop some of my own ideas which seem to be intermediate between those of Taubes and Stephan, and might help integrate the two.
Thanks Paul! I very much look forward to reading more of your theories. I think the middle ground (moderate carbs) is really being overlooked. Re Stephan’s theory, I find it very curious that the “reward” part of food reward doesn’t factor in … he’s only interested in the “palatibility” aspect. I certainly think that a bland diet is gonna be as tough a sell wrt compliance as a LC diet!
Beth, are you losing weight on moderate carbs?? I probably eat about 100g most days, with some days higher than that. Dang, maybe I should count . . . but that turns me into a crazy person because I always try to get the numbers down, down, down.
I totally agree, Paul, about moderate carbs being less stressful for the body – I can just feel my whole system relaxing. I follow the PHD for the way it feels, and for healing IBS. Very satisfying and comfortable way to eat, I’ve found. But I can’t get to weight loss within the comfort!
Jacquie, I am losing weight on moderate carbs, but more slowly than I’d like ;). However, I attribute some of that to how sedentary I am (got really, really deconditioned after a meniscus tear a few years back — think it did a number on my lean body mass).
Excellent news!! You give me hope, lol. I’m sedentary, too – weak muscles mostly, so gaining strength is probably the next step in the puzzle for me.
Yeah, I very much like the paleo idea for fitness. Lifting heavy stuff (I do Body By Science), sprint occasionally (I need to work on this … am thinking of doing sprints on a rowing machine), and do lots of low and slow (am doing lots of water walking in the pool til my physical therapy makes longer walks doable).
From my perspective, none of this is about burning calories. It’s about fixing what’s possibly broken … like insulin resistance. Chronic cardio is not a big help here, think the cortisol is especially unhelpful for women!
Yep, when I learned about cortisol and cardio I was hugely relieved. I’d been puffing my way around the neighbourhood behind hubby, miserable, sore shins etc. Lifting heavy things and sprinting is heaps more fun! Waiting for the weather to warm up so I can use the pool for sprinting.
I too have a low carb past… I ate around 20-25 carbs (about 70/30 fat/protein) a day while on a Paleo regimen between 9th and 11th grade, I did indeed lose weight quickly. I am fond of low carb more so for its health benefits than for just lowering bodyweight.
That said, I’m at university now and eating anywhere near Paleo is next-to-impossible for me, plus I never planned on staying on low carb forever (I’d probably be irritable about that), so I’m now mostly a WAPF’er; grass-fed raw milk, grass-fed liver, fermented/bran-reduced grains, and grass-fed red meats make up the majority of my diet now. I’m eating about 50% fat, 30% carbs, and 20% protein- and surprise, I’ve only gained 2 pounds in the process (probably water weight). I probably go just above 200 carbs on most days.
From the update with Chris Kessler: “But as far as I can tell, they didn’t get obese by eating natural, whole-food carbohydrates. I’ve yet to see a population that got fat eating sweet potatoes, fruit and white rice – without any exposure to modern food. If anyone knows of such a population, please let me know. ”
The pro-insulin theory people tend to say that carbs are the “primary cause of obesity but not the only one” to be somewhat politically correct. And Stephan Guyenet said himself that he regretted putting “dominant” in the title of his food reward series.
Hi Beth,
Great post. I think the concept of a seasonal CHO intake is sound from the perspective of evolutionary biology. In Chinese medicine, it goes without saying that an individual’s diet will vary based on season, location (geography), health status, age, activity level and goals. They would find the concept that everyone should eat the same exact diet, and even that an individual should follow the same diet throughout their entire life, to be ridiculous.
I’ve started introducing safe starches back into my diet. Not a lot of them, generally around 100 grams of carbohydrate a day. I have noticed that I don’t feel as satisfied as I did when I was eating low-carb or zero-carb. I get hungrier a lot faster. Is this a sign that moderate carb is not right for me? Did you experience that at all? Otherwise I feel pretty good, it’s just the fluctuations in appetite that are bothersome. I don’t know whether to trust them.
How long ago did you introduce them? If it was recently, then that’s one possibility (just as you need to transition to low-carb, you need to transition to adding starch). In the interim, you may have higher blood sugar swings which could affect satiation. Ramping up to 100g of carbs may work better.
Also, how are you eating them? Paul Jaminet has some good suggestions for ensuring that starch doesn’t negatively affect blood sugar levels.
Hope this helps!
Yes, this was a recent transition. I would say I’ve been doing it for about 2 weeks now. I prefer to eat my sweet potatoes with lots of kerrygold butter, but I noticed that Jimmy got a lot of backlash for adding fat to his starch. I’m trying to lose weight, and I’m a little confused as to whether adding fat to starch is beneficial because it blunts blood sugar levels, or whether it is detrimental because it increases daily calories. What do you think?
I think it’s important to add fat to starch, but I’m not sure that 3T of butter per half sweet potato makes sense if weight loss is a goal. I think it’s important that each meal include some fat for both nutrients and for satiety’s sake. But I don’t see the usefulness of putting lots of fat on the plate if I’m trying to burn my own! I generally stick to 1-2T of fat in my meals which include 1c or either sweet potato or white rice.
Paul Jaminet suggests that even diabetics should be able to handle 25g of starch if it’s consumed with fat and protein. I’ve been meaning to actually test my BG response to these carbs to see what’s up (I’m not diabetic). But I’m also a believer that insulin sensitivity and BG response can be improved with physical activity as well, unless there just isn’t enough beta cell function left in the pancreas.