According to Nell Stephenson of Paleoista, It’s So Simple. If You’re Not Moving, You Don’t Need Starch:
Beyond that, from a very simplistic point of view, if you’re not someone who is engaged in long endurance activity, not only do you simply do not need to ‘eat starch with every meal’, you don’t need to eat starch at all. Further, if you’re someone who is not at their ideal, healthy weight, and you are not engaged in long endurance activity, you really don’t need to be eating starch.
Later in the post, she notes that she really means the “starch found in all legumes and beans that many of us grew up thinking were an important part of every meal.”
Well.
What someone “needs” in their diet is not just about the underlying metabolic processes. At the risk of repeating myself (or of repeating Dr. Yoni Freedhoff), I think Yoni is spot on:
It’s about living the healthiest life that you can enjoy, not the healthiest life that you can tolerate, because if your life is simply tolerable, you’re not likely to keep living that way. To take an extreme example, while becoming a teetotaling, vegan, shut-in, marathon runner might well help you to manage your weight, is that a life you’d be willing, or even able, to live with forever?
This is why despite still needing to lose weight (and hardly being an endurance athlete), I eat what I call moderate carb and include starch at both lunch and dinner.
And before you can say, “well Beth, you’re lucky, you’re clearly not metabolically deranged,” let me say I am (or at least was) the poster child for met syn … which included high blood pressure, very high BMI, and a starting high fasting insulin of 24. For me, avoiding starch is treating the symptom, not the problem.
So if going low-carb works for you, by all means keep doing it! But if you’re like me, if the thought of not having starch during your weight loss efforts is going to cause more problems wrt consistency (thanks again Yoni!) than it solves, then relax and include starch. You can absolutely lose weight with starch in your diet … I have!
But be honest, if adding starch causes problems (e.g., portions start creeping up or kicks in the WTF effect), then you’ll want to adjust.
Note: As someone following an ancestral approach, I generally get my starch from veggies, fruits, and white rice (see PHD).
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health & food policy. And cats! 
I love that Dr Yoni quote! (As I drink my glass of wine) The balance between weight and enjoying certain things in life, it one I’m always working on.
Actually, Beth, you’re following Nell Stephenson’s formula to some extent: “You’ll get eight times the fiber than you’d get eating whole grain products if you eat your veggies with every meal, not to mention a superior source of vitamins and minerals, compared to whatever processed vitamin source that may have been added to ‘fortify’ your bread.”
I love that Dr Yoni quote. I believe that a lot of people who lose weight cannot maintain the loss because they go to extremes and can’t keep it up forever.
Yes, she confuses things a bit by suggesting that starch is okay if you’re active, but then refers primarily to grains in her article. But there is this “LC for weight loss” that is common in the paleo blogosphere, so I am just trying to address that.
I’m with you and Yoni. I’m honestly not sure where I fall in the starch continuum (I probably eat more than I actually need) but I know I will eat more of it if I try to take carbs out of my life completely.
That’s a very good point. Someone really needs to look more carefully at what’s going on when so many people (if PaleoHacks is any indication) seem to react to their initial paleo-ish diets with urges to binge.
There seems to be this view that only elite athletes should eat starch. I am very, very far from being an elite athlete but I am trying my best. Does that mean I don’t get to eat starch?
Let the slow, clumsy, uncoordinated people have some starch too, it shouldn’t be only for the elite few.
Exactly. Far better IMO to have some rice or a sweet potato or a banana than to pile tablespoons of non-essential fat on your protein!
“Let the slow, clumsy, uncoordinated people have some starch too, it shouldn’t be only for the elite few.”
That cracked me up! I can relate! I’m a sporty person, but not an elite athlete by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve found that starch doesn’t interfere with any weight loss or weight maintenance… and I’ve found it very important for restoring my burnt-out adrenals.