How To Tell When Low-Carb is Right For You
Should you jump on the bandwagon and try a low-carb nutrition lifestyle? Maybe…
The Truth:
Low-carb nutrition CAN, but is not GUARANTEED to result in rapid weight loss, improved metabolic health, mood, and energy (among other things). In this post, I’ll discuss in simple and easily-digestible detail why this “diet” of increasing popularity produces such incredible results for some, and suboptimal results for others.
Before jumping in though, a quick backstory is necessary.
Back when I was still in high school, I had a friend on the baseball team who was struggling with his weight. I didn't know much about his nutrition, but I knew he drank a lot of soda. I had just begun exploring my interest in fitness and nutrition at the time, so I made the obvious suggestion of cutting back on his soda for a while to see if it could help.
I expected it to make some kind of difference, but I definitely didn't anticipate the results he ended up experiencing. The only thing he did was eliminate his daily 20oz Coke, and he lost 2-3lbs per week, every week, for the next SIX WEEKS!!!
Luckily, the reason why it works is no longer a mystery to most of the fitness and nutrition community. The answer lies in what happens to a body with chronic and severe insulin resistance, and the resulting excess in insulin production. There are several factors in play, but I'm going to focus on two major ones.
Decreased ability to utilize blood sugar for energy
Mitochondrial/metabolic dysfunction.
Let's start with the first one:
First, a quick definition of insulin.
Insulin is a hormone the body produces to assist in carrying sugar (glucose) to your cells for the purpose of being used as energy. When food is consumed, insulin is secreted by the pancreas into the bloodstream where it will attempt to transport your blood sugar into the cells that need it.
The more glucose in your bloodstream, the more insulin your body will produce to help transport it where it is needed. Unfortunately, excess production of insulin causes cells to become increasingly resistant to its effects.
When the cells in your body are resistant to insulin, and you are consuming lots of sugar, insulin loses much of its ability to properly assist in using that sugar for energy, and excessive amounts of insulin are produced.
Excess insulin signals the body to begin storing glucose as fat. If the sugar can't be carried into the cells that need it and used as energy in the form of ATP (adenosine triphosphate), or as glycogen to be used as energy later, it will get stored elsewhere - typically as bodyfat. Essentially, the excess sugar and insulin INCREASE the weight gain impact of the foods you’re eating, and DECRESE your ability to “burn” the food you’re consuming as energy. Mitochondria also play an important role in this process, but we’ll get to that shortly.
For a person without insulin issues, moderate amounts of carbohydrate consumption are not likely to have any negative impacts. But for a person WITH insulin issues, even relatively small amounts of carbs may go directly to bodyfat.
By the way, there are many who claim this isn't the case, and that insulin resistance is relatively insignificant when it comes to weight gain/loss. As much as I'd love to believe this is the case, if even just for simplicity's sake, the truth is that insulin resistance matters. A LOT. The number of studies and real world examples proving this to be true grows almost by the day.
Now for mitochondrial/metabolic dysfunction:
The negative consequences of excess insulin don't stop at "mishandling" of carbs. Unfortunately, excess insulin and insulin resistance can actually ruin your body's ability to create, and properly utilize mitochondria, as well.
Without getting into too much detail (many of the specific details are contested still, and not perfectly understood), when chronic excess insulin resistance and production are occurring, you can expect the following, and more, to occur:
-Decreased number of mitochondria
-Lower ATP synthesis (sugar to energy)
-Dysfunctional lipid and glucose metabolism
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7341556/
Summary:
Mitochondrial dysfunction is dysfunction of metabolism. In other words, If you have excess insulin, and decreased insulin sensitivity, your metabolism will fail to operate at its “factory” setting. If extra storage of fat from excess insulin and sugar wasn’t bad enough, dysfunctional mitochondria will finish the job.
Healthy mitochondria are necessary for a fully functioning metabolism. Insulin resistance and excess insulin production will not only result in more glucose being stored as fat, but will ALSO reduce your body's ability to use the glucose and fat you have, for energy.
If mitochondria are the batteries of your cells, then living with dysfunctional mitochondria is akin to installing homemade potato batteries in place of nuclear reactors, and way fewer of them…
So, when my friend lost all that weight by cutting out his daily soda, it wasn't because of his calorie reduction. It was because he was a very active athlete who, up until correcting his "carb sickness", could not properly utilize the food he was consuming as energy. It was just all getting stored as fat, and his body was struggling to use its available energy sources.
The Lesson Here:
Low-carb diets, for those who are "carb sick", will very likely result in significant and rapid weight loss, improved energy and mood, and many other potential benefits not discussed here.
In these instances, low-carb may effectively be a temporary "treatment"; it's giving your body a chance to correct itself, and to improve its metabolic function and homeostasis. For people without carb sickness, a very low-carb diet MAY have few, if any positive benefits long-term. This isn’t to say you need to be morbidly obese and mentally miserable to see any benefits from low-carb - just that those who fall into this category are significantly more likely to see the kinds of results many low-carb enthusiasts so often talk about (I was in this category, myself!).
Of course, everyone is different and, for some people, long-term low-carb may be the diet that suits them best. For others, it may work best as a temporary treatment.