Comparing the Diets: Part 1
If you read diet literature, it seems as if there are nearly an infinite number of dietary approaches out there. However, once you start looking at it in terms of generalities, you find that this isn’t really the case. The number of distinct dietary approaches is actually quite minimal.
I’m going to ignore the really weird stuff that’s out there, by the way. Food combining, metabolic typing, I consider all of that to be voodoo nutrition. If such approaches work for you, fantastic, but I doubt they are working for the reasons you think they are working.
In general, folks have generally divided themselves into three different ‘camps’ when it comes to diet. All of the groups tend to proclaim loudly that their approach is best and all are quite able to bring research to the table to support their diet in some degree.
Testimonies always abound about how a specific diet just did amazing things and you can find them for any diet out there. A bigger cynic might conclude that all diets work (as long as they meet a few basic requirements) and to, a great degree, there is some truth to this. As long as a diet gets you to eat less, you should lose at least some weight.
At the same time, you can always find folks who did poorly on a given approach. It’s easy (and a copout) to blame the dieter and there are situations where a given diet may simply be inappropriate (or less than ideal) for a given situation. A dieter may fail on a diet for the simple reason that it doesn’t meet their needs, a topic I discuss in How Dieters Fail Diets.
But that doesn’t change the rather loud proclamations of the various dietary camps that they have the ONE TRUE DIET ™. It’s not far from claims of having the ONE TRUE RELIGION ™ in a lot of ways.
What few of these groups are willing to admit or acknowledge, and what I’ve tried to make a recurring theme in this book is that different diets are more or less appropriate depending on the situation. Each of the different diets may be the ‘correct’ approach, simply at different times and under different sets of circumstances.
Rather than promoting a specific diet as being optimal under all situations, I take the stance that the choice of diet (for example high vs. low-carbohydrate) is context specific: different diets are more or less appropriate under a given set of conditions. Sure, I’d sell more copies of my books if I told you I had the ONE TRUE DIET ™ but that’d be bullshit because I don’t think it’s true.
Frankly, I feel that this is a big part of why you can always find someone reporting near magical results with a given diet: whether by design or by accident, they stumbled on the diet that happened to meet their specific needs. At the same time, it’s easy to find people who weren’t so lucky: who by design or accident picked the absolutely wrong diet for their situation. Results, as would be expected, are poor.
As I mentioned above, you might note in this regards, that diet gurus almost never report their failures (or they blame failure on the dieter), focusing only on those individuals who got stunning results. To say that this is intellectually dishonest would be an understatement.
I’m going to present, discuss and describe three distinct dietary approaches in this and the next two articles: high carb/low-fat, moderate carb/moderate fat and low-carb/high fat. If you read Dan Duchaine’s Bodyopus, they should seem quite familiar as he described a standard high-carb/low-fat diet, the Isocaloric diet and finally his take on the ketogenic diet, Bodyopus.
However, the way Dan’s book was written, it almost seemed as if dieters were supposed to move sequentially through each diet: starting with the standard high-carb approach, then to Isocaloric, finally to Bodyopus. Figuring that most people were ‘used’ to seeing the standard approach first, he described it first; it was pandering to the psychological hangups of dieters as much as anything else.
I am going to take a different approach in this article series. Rather than have folks pick a diet at random, find out that it’s not appropriate for them (losing valuable dieting time) and then try the next diet, I prefer to take a broader approach.
First I want to discuss each of the three diets in terms of their pros and cons and under what situations and conditions they might be ideal or less so. Odds are you’ll find a description of your specific situation (or something close to it) in that discussion. That should point you towards which approach might be ideal for you and you can look at the detail chapters to get the specifics of the how to optimize the diet. Of course, I can’t predict every possible situation, in some cases you might have to take a stab at one of the dietary approaches and then make modifications.
I’ll say it again, for the slow of reading: none of the three diets described in this book is the ‘best’ across the board. Not high-carb, not moderate carb, not low-carb (so please quit calling me the keto guru). Put differently, I am absolutely NOT an advocate of a given dietary approach except inasmuch as it meets the needs of the individual. I’ll rant about this one last time in the next chapter.
One More time: Protein Intake
Before continuing, I want to harp on the issue of protein intake one more time, an issue I discuss in more detail in Is A Calorie A Calorie? In this article series, I’m mainly going to focus on manipulations in carbohydrate and fat intake; I assume protein intake to be set adequately and identically in each of the three diets I’m going to discuss. Basically, this isn’t a discussion of how low-carb diets are ‘better’ but only because they happen to get people eating more protein. Understand, protein intake is taken to be sufficient and identical regardless of the rest of the diet.
That assumption means a protein intake of 1-1.5 g/lb (roughly 1.8-3.0 g/kg or thereabouts). Again, that means that, in this discussion, I’ll be focusing primarily on variations on carbohydrate and fat content since, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s generally what’s being shuffled around.
Defining Terms
Even though I threw around the terms high, moderate and low above in terms of carbohydrate and fat content above, I’m not happy with them. As I discussed Diet Percentages, such terms tend to be generally meaningless. A diet containing nothing but 50 grams of protein per day might be ‘high-protein’ because it’s a 100% protein diet but it’s ‘low-protein’ compared to what the body actually might require. As well, as much as I don’t like percentage based diets, I need some way to differentiate the various diet camps from one another. I’m not saying mine are necessarily correct, simply that that’s what I’ll be using. But so we’re clear I’m going to use the following terminology:
Low-fat: anything below 30% of total calories (this is the standard definition) Note: to athletes and obsessive dieters, low-fat usually means 10% or ‘as low as I can get it’
Moderate-fat: 30-40% of total calories Note: some researchers use 25-35% as moderate fat
High-fat: anything above 40% of total calories
Low-carbohydrate: less than 20% of total calories
Note: a true ketogenic diet contains, by definition, less than 100 g carbs/day. But while all ketogenic diets are low-carbohydrate, not all low-carbohydate diets are ketogenic
Moderate-carbohydrate: 20-45% of total calories
High-carbohydrate: 45% of total calories or higher
Since protein intake will always be set at about the same level (between 1.0-1.5 g/lb which is generally between 25 and 40% of total calories), I’m not going to bother defining terms for it. You can call it low-protein or high-protein or Susan for all I care; I consider it the proper protein intake and that’s all that matters.
So, using those numbers, a traditional athletic ‘low-fat’ diet would contain approximately 60% carbohydrates, 30% protein and 10% fat. Moderate fat diets such as The Zone, Dan’s Isocaloric diet and others contain anywhere 30-33% protein, 33-40% carbs, and 30-33% fat on average. A typical low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet would contain 30% protein, 20% carbs or less and 50% fat or more.
I want to make the point once more that such percentages don’t necesarily have any relevance to actual human needs, which are better expressed in terms of g/lb or g/kg. I’m simply using them for convenience here. Again, read Diet Percentages if you’re unclear on why I’m saying this.
To be continued in Comparing the Diets: Part 2.
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Comparing the Diets: Part 1 /Part2
Started By \SHINE/, Aug 10 2011 01:17 PM
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Posted 14 December 2011 - 04:34 PM
[indent]Comparing the Diets: Part 2
In Comparing the Diets: Part 1, I made some introductory comments about the different primary approaches to dieting which are high-carbohydrate/low-fat, moderate carb/moderate fat, and low-carbohydrate/high-fat. I also defined my terms as to what I mean by high, moderate and low. In the next parts of this article series, I want to examine each of the three major dietary camps, along with their pros and cons so that I can provide recommendations on which diet might be the most appropriate for a given situation or individual.
A quick note on the percentage nutrient notation: as much as possible I tried to adhere to a format where the percentages represent percentages from protein/carbohydrates/fat in that order. So a notation of 30/60/10 means a diet where 30% of the calories are protein, 60% are carbs and 10% are fat.
High-Carb/Low-Fat
While trends are beginning to show shifts, the high-carb/low-fat diet is arguably the de facto standard recommendation for both health, weight loss and athletic performance. At the same time, it’s becoming more common to criticize this diet on various grounds, blaming it for increasing obesity and health problems among the general public. You can read more about Carbohydrate and Fat Controversies elsewhere on the site.
Research is finding that, among certain populations, such a diet can do more harm than good. For examples, individuals with insulin resistance tend to get better health benefits from lowered carbohydrates.
Among more fringe diet groups, a diet based around high-carbs and low-fat has become an almost unspeakable evil. Claims that you can’t lose fat on high carbs or can’t get ripped, or whatever, are becoming more and more common.
Now, if you still think of me as the keto-guy you’re probably expecting me to shit all over this diet interpretation or take the fringe stance on it. With some qualifications, I’ll say up front that you’re wrong. The reality is that there are plenty of folks out there who have made high-carb/low-fat diets work and work well.
In fact, over the years it’s probably safe to say that most contest bodybuilders have gotten into shape on such a diet. Folks in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR, which tracks successful dieters and their habits) reports most using some version of a high-carbohydrate diet (although more recent surveys have identified smaller groups succeeding in the long-term with low-carb diets).
It’d be absurd to dismiss it out of hand even if that’s what most people do.
At the same time, it’s probably safe to say that a lot of folks don’t do particularly well on such a diet, although it depends on a lot of interacting variables. The question is what differentiates the groups: why does such a diet work for some but not others? It’s easy and convenient to say that the drug use among top bodybuilders makes such a diet workable but this is too pat of an answer. Nor does it explain the NWCR folks. In my opinion, the answer is more complex.
Now, upfront I will say that I think a 30/60/10 diet is a little unbalanced to begin with. My main problem is that the dietary fat is too low. As I discussed in Comparing the Diets: Part 1 the technical definition of a low-fat diet is anything less than 30% and the actual government recommended high-carb/low-fat diet is actually closer to 15% protein, 45-50% carbs and 30% fat or thereabouts.
As you might imagine, I find this lacking in protein for body recomposition or optimal athletic performance even if it’s probably ok for the average person (even there recent research supports a benefit of higher protein intakes, approaching 25% for fat loss diets even in the non-athletic). Frankly, my ideal high-carb/low-fat diet would be in the realm of 25-40% protein, 50% carbs and 20-25% fat although, as I’ve discussed before, the percentages themselves are fairly meaningless.
The first problem that typically crops up is that people take a diet that should be ‘ok’ (either 30/60/10 or 15/45-50/30) and screw it up completely. The problem is primarily one of interpretation. It’s not uncommon to see dieters, especially women, turn a 30/60/10 diet into a 10/80/10 diet and they do it by overemphasizing high GI refined junk (the government and researchers thinks that folks are getting their carbs from unrefined grains but this is generally incorrect).
Endurance athletes, who tend to overemphasize carbohydrates frequently do the same thing: many, in my experience, are protein deficient (and studies are suggesting that very low fat intakes can hamper endurance performance). That takes a diet that was right on the edge of being imbalanced to begin with and screws it up even further.
I can track a majority of high-carb diet failures directly to such a mistake in interpretation. And, if you take someone from 10/80/10 to anything else and the results will look like magic. It’s not so much that the new approach is magical as the original approach was screwed up. Just about anything is better than something stupid.
Ignoring this major problem, let’s assume someone actually sets up a 30/60/10 diet more or less ‘correctly’ in terms of amounts. There can still be problems. The first is one of taste. A 10% fat diet is literally a non-fat diet and the small amounts of naturally occurring fats in non-fat foods tend to readily fill up the small fat allotment. Many people find such diets to be tasteless and bland which compromises adherence and research shows that moderate fat diets (discussed in Part 3 of this series) show better adherence than very low-fat diets.
Bodybuilders will just suck it up, of course; they are used to dieting with food that tastes like shit and a common statement is that ‘When I diet, I just make sure I don’t eat anything that tastes good.’ Typical macho crap. But the rest of humanity is unlikely to stick to a diet that they don’t find palatable.
With such an extremely low fat intake, there can also be problems with essential fatty acid intake which can be difficult to meet with so little of a fat intake. Even Dan Duchaine’s high-carb/low-fat diet required 8% essential fats for a total of nearly 18% total fat content (this changed a 30/60/10 diet to 30/52/18 which is damn close to my ideal anyhow).
There is a certain minimal fat requirement, if for no other reason than to ensure adequate absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. Extremely low-fat diets can cause their own set of health problems and this is clearly a place where lower isn’t better.
Another problem that crops up has to do with the types of carbohydrates being eaten. Researchers and other well-meaning types seem to assume that this is going to be the source of carbohydrates among the general public but this is generally not the case. Most of the athletes and bodybuilders who follow such a diet emphasize low GI, unrefined, high-fiber foods; in my experience, most of your typical dieters do not. It’s one thing to eat 60% of your total calories from carbohydrates when all the foods you’re eating have a GI that is extremely low.
As soon as you start making breads, pastas and other high GI foods a larger source of your total carbohydrates you run into a few problems. First is that the speed of digestion is fairly fast, a problem made worse by the low fat intake and generally low fiber intake of high GI food sources (and most peope don’t eat enough vegetables or fruit which would provide some much needed fiber). Along with that, the glycemic load (which is the Glycemic Index * the number of carbs eaten)) goes up fast meaning blood glucose can be all over the map. For folks with even moderate insulin resistance (see below) this causes all kinds of problems.
Along with that, most of the higher GI carbs can be surprisingly high in calories. So while 2 oz of uncooked pasta may only contain 40 some odd grams of carbohydrates and 200 calories, an average large bowl of past may easily contain two or three times that. This can easily amount to hundreds of calories. Bodybuilders and athletes are typically obsessive compulsive to begin with, and measure all their food intake; your average dieter is not. So where an athlete will know exactly how many calories they are getting from the pasta or rice, the average person will end up eating too many calories.
That’s ignoring all of the highly refined, high-carbohydrate low-fat foods that food companies brought to market (Snackwell’s anyone?). As above, researchers seem to think that most people are increasing their carbohydrate intake from moderately refined sources but that’s simply not the case in my experience.
As soon as people heard that fat was bad and carbs were good, and food companies rushed high GI non-fat carb foods to market, folks went crazy. Studies even found that, subconsciously, folks figured they could eat more when it was low-fat. Any benefit from lowering the fat content was more than compensated for.
Basically, very high carbohydrate intakes tend to work best when the source of those carbs are low on the GI. If you’re willing to eat almost nothing but low GI carbohydrates in the first place, a high-carb diet will probably work. If not…
Related to this issue is meal frequency. Bodybuilders and athletes eating high-carb diets spread out the carbohydrates over 6 or more meals meaning their total carbohydrate intake per meal isn’t actually that large. That, along with the low GI and high fiber intake minimizes problems with blood glucose swings and the resulting problems. Your average dieter, eating 3 large meals per day, with high GI carbohydrates and too little fiber will generally run into problems with such a high-carbohydrate intake.
Another related issue has to do with activity. Athletes who are burning a tremendous number of carbohydrate calories per day can tolerate/handle many more carbohydrates without problems than someone who is engaging in little to no activity (your average person). This is discussed in detail in How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need?
A bodybuilder or endurance athlete doing 2 hour workouts on a nearly daily basis may be able to tolerate (and may in fact need) such high carbohydrate intakes; someone walking briskly 30 minutes per day three times per week does not.
Related to the activity issue is that of insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity refers to how well (or how poorly) tissues respond to insulin. With high insulin sensitivity, small amounts of insulin generate a large response. With poor insulin sensitivity (insulin resistance), the body has to produce more insulin to get tissues to respond. Recent research has shown a clear link between Insulin Sensitivity and Fat Loss in terms of what diet is optimal.
Individuals who are highly insulin sensitivity handle high carbohdyrate intakes to a better degree than folks with poor insulin sensitivity. I should mention, in this regards, that even folks with substandard insulin sensitivity can sometimes handle high-carbohydrate intakes when insulin sensitivity has been temporarily elevated (such as with glycogen depletion). This is relevant because certain dietary approaches (such as cyclical diets like my Ultimate Diet 2.0) use this ‘trick’: they elevate insulin sensitivity temporarily and then load in lots of carbohydrates before insulin sensitivity goes back to substandard levels.
So what determines insulin sensitivity? Well, there are a lot of factors. First, there’s a genetic component, activity affects it drastically (improving it), so does diet. Diets high in refined, high GI carbs tend to impair insulin sensitivity, so do diets high in saturated fats. Fish oils and unsaturated fats generally improve insulin sensitivity. A crucial determinant of insulin sensitivity is body fat percentage.
Obese individuals frequently become insulin resistant, which causes problems with carbohydrate intakes are excessive (moreso when they are high on the glycemic index). One of the main problems has to do with hunger and appetite. Under conditions of relative insulin resistance, a high carbohydrate intake (especially with very low fat intakes) tends to spike blood glucose levels, which spikes insulin, which crashes blood glucose.
This tends to cause rebound hunger, making calorie control nearly impossible. It also makes people feel crappy with alternating periods of high and low energy. Studies are finding that high-carbohydrate/low-fat diets, especially when the carbs are high on the GI, cause detrimental effects on various health parameters in insulin resistant individuals.
Additonally, some people seem to be carbohydrate ‘addicts’. While it’s debatable whether or not this is a true addiciton, many people find that eating carbohydrates makes them want to eat more carbohydrates. Whether this effect is hormonal or just a taste effect is debatable but it is real.
For such individuals, a high-carb/low-fat diet can cause problems in terms of calorie control. It’s all good and well to tell such people to suck it up, or that dieting is supposed to be a test of willpower, but any diet that makes people feel lethargic and hungry all the time (from crashing blood glucose or simply the ‘taste’ of carbs) is not likely to be followed for very long.
As a final issue, empirically, high-carbohydrate diets can cause problems with stubborn fat mobilzation. The mechanisms are discussed in a later chapter but folks with a lot of lower body fat can have problems getting extremely lean on high-carb diets unless they reduce the GI to very low levels. That means pretty much veggies and the few low GI starches. Women seem to crave carbohydrates more than men and sticking to such a diet can be a losing proposition.
Continued in Comparing the Diets Part 3. [/indent]
In Comparing the Diets: Part 1, I made some introductory comments about the different primary approaches to dieting which are high-carbohydrate/low-fat, moderate carb/moderate fat, and low-carbohydrate/high-fat. I also defined my terms as to what I mean by high, moderate and low. In the next parts of this article series, I want to examine each of the three major dietary camps, along with their pros and cons so that I can provide recommendations on which diet might be the most appropriate for a given situation or individual.
A quick note on the percentage nutrient notation: as much as possible I tried to adhere to a format where the percentages represent percentages from protein/carbohydrates/fat in that order. So a notation of 30/60/10 means a diet where 30% of the calories are protein, 60% are carbs and 10% are fat.
High-Carb/Low-Fat
While trends are beginning to show shifts, the high-carb/low-fat diet is arguably the de facto standard recommendation for both health, weight loss and athletic performance. At the same time, it’s becoming more common to criticize this diet on various grounds, blaming it for increasing obesity and health problems among the general public. You can read more about Carbohydrate and Fat Controversies elsewhere on the site.
Research is finding that, among certain populations, such a diet can do more harm than good. For examples, individuals with insulin resistance tend to get better health benefits from lowered carbohydrates.
Among more fringe diet groups, a diet based around high-carbs and low-fat has become an almost unspeakable evil. Claims that you can’t lose fat on high carbs or can’t get ripped, or whatever, are becoming more and more common.
Now, if you still think of me as the keto-guy you’re probably expecting me to shit all over this diet interpretation or take the fringe stance on it. With some qualifications, I’ll say up front that you’re wrong. The reality is that there are plenty of folks out there who have made high-carb/low-fat diets work and work well.
In fact, over the years it’s probably safe to say that most contest bodybuilders have gotten into shape on such a diet. Folks in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR, which tracks successful dieters and their habits) reports most using some version of a high-carbohydrate diet (although more recent surveys have identified smaller groups succeeding in the long-term with low-carb diets).
It’d be absurd to dismiss it out of hand even if that’s what most people do.
At the same time, it’s probably safe to say that a lot of folks don’t do particularly well on such a diet, although it depends on a lot of interacting variables. The question is what differentiates the groups: why does such a diet work for some but not others? It’s easy and convenient to say that the drug use among top bodybuilders makes such a diet workable but this is too pat of an answer. Nor does it explain the NWCR folks. In my opinion, the answer is more complex.
Now, upfront I will say that I think a 30/60/10 diet is a little unbalanced to begin with. My main problem is that the dietary fat is too low. As I discussed in Comparing the Diets: Part 1 the technical definition of a low-fat diet is anything less than 30% and the actual government recommended high-carb/low-fat diet is actually closer to 15% protein, 45-50% carbs and 30% fat or thereabouts.
As you might imagine, I find this lacking in protein for body recomposition or optimal athletic performance even if it’s probably ok for the average person (even there recent research supports a benefit of higher protein intakes, approaching 25% for fat loss diets even in the non-athletic). Frankly, my ideal high-carb/low-fat diet would be in the realm of 25-40% protein, 50% carbs and 20-25% fat although, as I’ve discussed before, the percentages themselves are fairly meaningless.
The first problem that typically crops up is that people take a diet that should be ‘ok’ (either 30/60/10 or 15/45-50/30) and screw it up completely. The problem is primarily one of interpretation. It’s not uncommon to see dieters, especially women, turn a 30/60/10 diet into a 10/80/10 diet and they do it by overemphasizing high GI refined junk (the government and researchers thinks that folks are getting their carbs from unrefined grains but this is generally incorrect).
Endurance athletes, who tend to overemphasize carbohydrates frequently do the same thing: many, in my experience, are protein deficient (and studies are suggesting that very low fat intakes can hamper endurance performance). That takes a diet that was right on the edge of being imbalanced to begin with and screws it up even further.
I can track a majority of high-carb diet failures directly to such a mistake in interpretation. And, if you take someone from 10/80/10 to anything else and the results will look like magic. It’s not so much that the new approach is magical as the original approach was screwed up. Just about anything is better than something stupid.
Ignoring this major problem, let’s assume someone actually sets up a 30/60/10 diet more or less ‘correctly’ in terms of amounts. There can still be problems. The first is one of taste. A 10% fat diet is literally a non-fat diet and the small amounts of naturally occurring fats in non-fat foods tend to readily fill up the small fat allotment. Many people find such diets to be tasteless and bland which compromises adherence and research shows that moderate fat diets (discussed in Part 3 of this series) show better adherence than very low-fat diets.
Bodybuilders will just suck it up, of course; they are used to dieting with food that tastes like shit and a common statement is that ‘When I diet, I just make sure I don’t eat anything that tastes good.’ Typical macho crap. But the rest of humanity is unlikely to stick to a diet that they don’t find palatable.
With such an extremely low fat intake, there can also be problems with essential fatty acid intake which can be difficult to meet with so little of a fat intake. Even Dan Duchaine’s high-carb/low-fat diet required 8% essential fats for a total of nearly 18% total fat content (this changed a 30/60/10 diet to 30/52/18 which is damn close to my ideal anyhow).
There is a certain minimal fat requirement, if for no other reason than to ensure adequate absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. Extremely low-fat diets can cause their own set of health problems and this is clearly a place where lower isn’t better.
Another problem that crops up has to do with the types of carbohydrates being eaten. Researchers and other well-meaning types seem to assume that this is going to be the source of carbohydrates among the general public but this is generally not the case. Most of the athletes and bodybuilders who follow such a diet emphasize low GI, unrefined, high-fiber foods; in my experience, most of your typical dieters do not. It’s one thing to eat 60% of your total calories from carbohydrates when all the foods you’re eating have a GI that is extremely low.
As soon as you start making breads, pastas and other high GI foods a larger source of your total carbohydrates you run into a few problems. First is that the speed of digestion is fairly fast, a problem made worse by the low fat intake and generally low fiber intake of high GI food sources (and most peope don’t eat enough vegetables or fruit which would provide some much needed fiber). Along with that, the glycemic load (which is the Glycemic Index * the number of carbs eaten)) goes up fast meaning blood glucose can be all over the map. For folks with even moderate insulin resistance (see below) this causes all kinds of problems.
Along with that, most of the higher GI carbs can be surprisingly high in calories. So while 2 oz of uncooked pasta may only contain 40 some odd grams of carbohydrates and 200 calories, an average large bowl of past may easily contain two or three times that. This can easily amount to hundreds of calories. Bodybuilders and athletes are typically obsessive compulsive to begin with, and measure all their food intake; your average dieter is not. So where an athlete will know exactly how many calories they are getting from the pasta or rice, the average person will end up eating too many calories.
That’s ignoring all of the highly refined, high-carbohydrate low-fat foods that food companies brought to market (Snackwell’s anyone?). As above, researchers seem to think that most people are increasing their carbohydrate intake from moderately refined sources but that’s simply not the case in my experience.
As soon as people heard that fat was bad and carbs were good, and food companies rushed high GI non-fat carb foods to market, folks went crazy. Studies even found that, subconsciously, folks figured they could eat more when it was low-fat. Any benefit from lowering the fat content was more than compensated for.
Basically, very high carbohydrate intakes tend to work best when the source of those carbs are low on the GI. If you’re willing to eat almost nothing but low GI carbohydrates in the first place, a high-carb diet will probably work. If not…
Related to this issue is meal frequency. Bodybuilders and athletes eating high-carb diets spread out the carbohydrates over 6 or more meals meaning their total carbohydrate intake per meal isn’t actually that large. That, along with the low GI and high fiber intake minimizes problems with blood glucose swings and the resulting problems. Your average dieter, eating 3 large meals per day, with high GI carbohydrates and too little fiber will generally run into problems with such a high-carbohydrate intake.
Another related issue has to do with activity. Athletes who are burning a tremendous number of carbohydrate calories per day can tolerate/handle many more carbohydrates without problems than someone who is engaging in little to no activity (your average person). This is discussed in detail in How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need?
A bodybuilder or endurance athlete doing 2 hour workouts on a nearly daily basis may be able to tolerate (and may in fact need) such high carbohydrate intakes; someone walking briskly 30 minutes per day three times per week does not.
Related to the activity issue is that of insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity refers to how well (or how poorly) tissues respond to insulin. With high insulin sensitivity, small amounts of insulin generate a large response. With poor insulin sensitivity (insulin resistance), the body has to produce more insulin to get tissues to respond. Recent research has shown a clear link between Insulin Sensitivity and Fat Loss in terms of what diet is optimal.
Individuals who are highly insulin sensitivity handle high carbohdyrate intakes to a better degree than folks with poor insulin sensitivity. I should mention, in this regards, that even folks with substandard insulin sensitivity can sometimes handle high-carbohydrate intakes when insulin sensitivity has been temporarily elevated (such as with glycogen depletion). This is relevant because certain dietary approaches (such as cyclical diets like my Ultimate Diet 2.0) use this ‘trick’: they elevate insulin sensitivity temporarily and then load in lots of carbohydrates before insulin sensitivity goes back to substandard levels.
So what determines insulin sensitivity? Well, there are a lot of factors. First, there’s a genetic component, activity affects it drastically (improving it), so does diet. Diets high in refined, high GI carbs tend to impair insulin sensitivity, so do diets high in saturated fats. Fish oils and unsaturated fats generally improve insulin sensitivity. A crucial determinant of insulin sensitivity is body fat percentage.
Obese individuals frequently become insulin resistant, which causes problems with carbohydrate intakes are excessive (moreso when they are high on the glycemic index). One of the main problems has to do with hunger and appetite. Under conditions of relative insulin resistance, a high carbohydrate intake (especially with very low fat intakes) tends to spike blood glucose levels, which spikes insulin, which crashes blood glucose.
This tends to cause rebound hunger, making calorie control nearly impossible. It also makes people feel crappy with alternating periods of high and low energy. Studies are finding that high-carbohydrate/low-fat diets, especially when the carbs are high on the GI, cause detrimental effects on various health parameters in insulin resistant individuals.
Additonally, some people seem to be carbohydrate ‘addicts’. While it’s debatable whether or not this is a true addiciton, many people find that eating carbohydrates makes them want to eat more carbohydrates. Whether this effect is hormonal or just a taste effect is debatable but it is real.
For such individuals, a high-carb/low-fat diet can cause problems in terms of calorie control. It’s all good and well to tell such people to suck it up, or that dieting is supposed to be a test of willpower, but any diet that makes people feel lethargic and hungry all the time (from crashing blood glucose or simply the ‘taste’ of carbs) is not likely to be followed for very long.
As a final issue, empirically, high-carbohydrate diets can cause problems with stubborn fat mobilzation. The mechanisms are discussed in a later chapter but folks with a lot of lower body fat can have problems getting extremely lean on high-carb diets unless they reduce the GI to very low levels. That means pretty much veggies and the few low GI starches. Women seem to crave carbohydrates more than men and sticking to such a diet can be a losing proposition.
Continued in Comparing the Diets Part 3. [/indent]
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Posted 14 December 2011 - 04:36 PM
Comparing the Diets: Part 3
Having examined the traditional high-carbohydrate/low-fat in Comparing the Diets: Part 2, I now want to look at the second major diet ‘type’; moderate-carb/moderate-fat.
A quick note on the percentage nutrient notation: as much as possible I tried to adhere to a format where the percentages represent percentages from protein/carbohydrates/fat in that order. So a notation of 30/60/10 means a diet where 30% of the calories are protein, 60% are carbs and 10% are fat.
Moderate-Carb/Moderate-Fat
The next major dietary camp refers to any diet consisting of relatively moderate carbohydrate and dietary fat intakes. This includes diets such as Barry Sear’s “The Zone”, Dan Duchaine’s “Isocaloric diet”, 30/40/30 nutrition and others. Such diets generally recommend a macronutrient split based on fairly equal amounts of protein, carbs and fat. Various scientific rationales, usually involving hormonal control are typically given.
The Zone, for example, recommends a 30/40/30 split while Dan’s Isocaloric diet is 33/33/33. Some bodyuilding gurus recommend 40% protein with 30% carbs and fats, for what it’s worth. In the research realm, cutting edge diabetic diets are in the realm of 15% protein (too low for athletes but protein can stimulate insulin release in diabetics), 40-45% carbs and up to 40% fat from mono-unsaturated sources. All of those approaches to fall within the description of moderate carbohydrate and moderate fat I gave last chapter.
Although I find a lot of the scientific rationales given for such diets to be pseudoscience at best, I do think that this type of moderate approach is probably close to ideal for most individuals. As I mentioned above, my ideal high-carb/low-fat diet is already close to 25-30% protein, 45-55% carbohydrate and 20-30% fat or so and moving from that to an Isocaloric or Zone diet is a rather minimal change to begin with.
But rather than focus on issues of eicosanoid balance or what have you, I simply think of such diets in terms of the fact that they tend to control blood glucose and hunger better because of the lowered carbs and higher fat content. It’s a fairly simple trick, the increased dietary fat (and usually fiber) slows gastric emptying; the decreased carb intake decreases the overall glycemic load.
Such diets also allow more food freedom and taste better than their near zero fat counterparts; this adds up to increased adherence. Frankly, if the various diet book authors had simply said “Hey, here’s a diet that better controls blood glucose and insulin and blunts hunger by slowing gastric emptying and it doesn’t taste like cardboard so you’ll stick with it better.” instead of making up physiology, I don’t think there’d be as much criticism of such diets.
So what people might find such an approach to be ideal? As I described above, for that small percentage of individuals who are genetically very insulin sensitive, or who are burning a tremendous number of calories (from carbs) with daily or near daily workouts, the high-carb/low-fat diet described in Comparing the Diets: Part 2 intakes are probably more appropriate. At the very least, they can be tolerated. Since that describes a rather small percentage of people in the first place, I find the moderate- carb/moderate-fat approach more appropriate under most conditions.
For people burning less calories (or carbs) during the day, there’s simply no real need for the high carbohydrate intakes of the high-carb/low-fat diet. Folks doing more realistic levels of activity (perhaps an hour of weight training 3-4X/week and moderate cardio), carb requirements simply aren’t that high. Again, read How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need? for more details.
From a caloric control issue, by lowering carbohydrates, and raising dietary fat, digestion is slowed and blood glucose levels tend to even out (note: the major effect is from reducing carbohydrates, fat is simply a caloric ballast). This generally means more stable energy levels and less pronounced hunger. This also allows foods higher on the GI to be chosen if desired with less of a problem.
Basically, while it’s generally better to choose lower GI foods from a health standpoint but GI becomes far less crtical when total carbohydrate intake is decreased. Remember that the glycmic load is the GI times the grams of digestible carbs: reduce digestible carb intake and GI becomes less important. Breads, pasta, rice and the rest can be consumed in controlled amounts on such a diet with far fewer problems. I’d note again that these foods may not provide much actual food volume when calories are restricted.
Another potential benefit is that, by reducing carbohydrate intake, muscle glycogen is generally maintained at slightly lower level. As I’ve discussed in books such as the Ultimate Diet 2.0, lowering muscle glycogen enhances whole-body fat burning. At the same time, the moderate carb intakes should be sufficient to sustain performance in all but the most extensive types of training.
Moderate-carb/moderate-fat diets also tend to limit problems with insulin resistance related blood sugar crashes as a consequence of both reduced carbohydrate intake and increased dietary fat. However, some extremely insulin resistant individuals still run into problems with even moderate carbohydrate intakes. For such people, a more drastic decrease in carbohydrates may be necessary.
As well, those individuals who find that eating carbohydrates makes them want to eat more carbohydrate can also run into problems even with moderate carbohydrate intake. As I discuss in The Stubborn Fat Solution, lowering carbs tends to enhance stubborn body fat mobilization; however larger reductions than those which occur in the moderate-carb/moderate fat diet may be necessary for extremely lean dieters.
I should mention, that moderate carb/moderate fat diets tend to be more of a planning hassle than the other diets, especially at first. While I don’t believe that you have to be exact in the percentages (as long as you get in the ballpark, you’ll be fine), it can still be a pain in the butt to figure out meal plans.
From a simplicity standpoint, it’s pretty easy to reduce fat and it’s pretty easy to reduce carbs; getting moderate amounts of each can be a hassle. As well, with practice and time, it becomes relatively trivial to eyeball meals to get in the right ratio.
And that’s that for the moderate-fat/moderate-carb approach.
I’ll discuss low-carbohydrate/high-fat diets in Comparing the Diets: Part 4.
Having examined the traditional high-carbohydrate/low-fat in Comparing the Diets: Part 2, I now want to look at the second major diet ‘type’; moderate-carb/moderate-fat.
A quick note on the percentage nutrient notation: as much as possible I tried to adhere to a format where the percentages represent percentages from protein/carbohydrates/fat in that order. So a notation of 30/60/10 means a diet where 30% of the calories are protein, 60% are carbs and 10% are fat.
Moderate-Carb/Moderate-Fat
The next major dietary camp refers to any diet consisting of relatively moderate carbohydrate and dietary fat intakes. This includes diets such as Barry Sear’s “The Zone”, Dan Duchaine’s “Isocaloric diet”, 30/40/30 nutrition and others. Such diets generally recommend a macronutrient split based on fairly equal amounts of protein, carbs and fat. Various scientific rationales, usually involving hormonal control are typically given.
The Zone, for example, recommends a 30/40/30 split while Dan’s Isocaloric diet is 33/33/33. Some bodyuilding gurus recommend 40% protein with 30% carbs and fats, for what it’s worth. In the research realm, cutting edge diabetic diets are in the realm of 15% protein (too low for athletes but protein can stimulate insulin release in diabetics), 40-45% carbs and up to 40% fat from mono-unsaturated sources. All of those approaches to fall within the description of moderate carbohydrate and moderate fat I gave last chapter.
Although I find a lot of the scientific rationales given for such diets to be pseudoscience at best, I do think that this type of moderate approach is probably close to ideal for most individuals. As I mentioned above, my ideal high-carb/low-fat diet is already close to 25-30% protein, 45-55% carbohydrate and 20-30% fat or so and moving from that to an Isocaloric or Zone diet is a rather minimal change to begin with.
But rather than focus on issues of eicosanoid balance or what have you, I simply think of such diets in terms of the fact that they tend to control blood glucose and hunger better because of the lowered carbs and higher fat content. It’s a fairly simple trick, the increased dietary fat (and usually fiber) slows gastric emptying; the decreased carb intake decreases the overall glycemic load.
Such diets also allow more food freedom and taste better than their near zero fat counterparts; this adds up to increased adherence. Frankly, if the various diet book authors had simply said “Hey, here’s a diet that better controls blood glucose and insulin and blunts hunger by slowing gastric emptying and it doesn’t taste like cardboard so you’ll stick with it better.” instead of making up physiology, I don’t think there’d be as much criticism of such diets.
So what people might find such an approach to be ideal? As I described above, for that small percentage of individuals who are genetically very insulin sensitive, or who are burning a tremendous number of calories (from carbs) with daily or near daily workouts, the high-carb/low-fat diet described in Comparing the Diets: Part 2 intakes are probably more appropriate. At the very least, they can be tolerated. Since that describes a rather small percentage of people in the first place, I find the moderate- carb/moderate-fat approach more appropriate under most conditions.
For people burning less calories (or carbs) during the day, there’s simply no real need for the high carbohydrate intakes of the high-carb/low-fat diet. Folks doing more realistic levels of activity (perhaps an hour of weight training 3-4X/week and moderate cardio), carb requirements simply aren’t that high. Again, read How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need? for more details.
From a caloric control issue, by lowering carbohydrates, and raising dietary fat, digestion is slowed and blood glucose levels tend to even out (note: the major effect is from reducing carbohydrates, fat is simply a caloric ballast). This generally means more stable energy levels and less pronounced hunger. This also allows foods higher on the GI to be chosen if desired with less of a problem.
Basically, while it’s generally better to choose lower GI foods from a health standpoint but GI becomes far less crtical when total carbohydrate intake is decreased. Remember that the glycmic load is the GI times the grams of digestible carbs: reduce digestible carb intake and GI becomes less important. Breads, pasta, rice and the rest can be consumed in controlled amounts on such a diet with far fewer problems. I’d note again that these foods may not provide much actual food volume when calories are restricted.
Another potential benefit is that, by reducing carbohydrate intake, muscle glycogen is generally maintained at slightly lower level. As I’ve discussed in books such as the Ultimate Diet 2.0, lowering muscle glycogen enhances whole-body fat burning. At the same time, the moderate carb intakes should be sufficient to sustain performance in all but the most extensive types of training.
Moderate-carb/moderate-fat diets also tend to limit problems with insulin resistance related blood sugar crashes as a consequence of both reduced carbohydrate intake and increased dietary fat. However, some extremely insulin resistant individuals still run into problems with even moderate carbohydrate intakes. For such people, a more drastic decrease in carbohydrates may be necessary.
As well, those individuals who find that eating carbohydrates makes them want to eat more carbohydrate can also run into problems even with moderate carbohydrate intake. As I discuss in The Stubborn Fat Solution, lowering carbs tends to enhance stubborn body fat mobilization; however larger reductions than those which occur in the moderate-carb/moderate fat diet may be necessary for extremely lean dieters.
I should mention, that moderate carb/moderate fat diets tend to be more of a planning hassle than the other diets, especially at first. While I don’t believe that you have to be exact in the percentages (as long as you get in the ballpark, you’ll be fine), it can still be a pain in the butt to figure out meal plans.
From a simplicity standpoint, it’s pretty easy to reduce fat and it’s pretty easy to reduce carbs; getting moderate amounts of each can be a hassle. As well, with practice and time, it becomes relatively trivial to eyeball meals to get in the right ratio.
And that’s that for the moderate-fat/moderate-carb approach.
I’ll discuss low-carbohydrate/high-fat diets in Comparing the Diets: Part 4.
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Posted 14 December 2011 - 04:37 PM
[indent]Comparing the Diets: Part 4
Having examined the moderate-carb/moderate fat diet in Comparing the Diets: Part 3, I now want to turn my attention to one of the more contentious dietary approaches out there: low-carbohydrate/high-fat diets. I’ll also provide an end-of-article chart showing how the different dietary approaches may be more or less useful in a given situation.
A quick note on the percentage nutrient notation: as much as possible I tried to adhere to a format where the percentages represent percentages from protein/carbohydrates/fat in that order. So a notation of 30/60/10 means a diet where 30% of the calories are protein, 60% are carbs and 10% are fat.
Low-Carbohydrate/High-Fat
And finally we come to the low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet, the diet with perhaps the greatest amount of controversy and argument surrounding it. Now, at the risk of beating a dead horse, and since I find many of my critics to be a little slow on the uptake, I’m going to go off on one last rant about this topic.
I’ve actually found two different criticisms of my attitude towards ketogenic diets, depending on whether the critic is pro- or anti-ketogenic diets.
First is the group that feels that, since I didn’t write negatively about keto-diets, I must be their biggest advocate. Since they dislike ketogenic diets on some level, they feel that I should as well. Anyone who writes honestly and fairly about them is, by definition, in favor of them. This is moronic by the way.
The second groups seems to feel that since I didn’t say that ketogenic diets are magic, I must not believe in them. Since they think the diet is magic, they think I should too.
Both groups, as usual, are guilty of projecting their own personal biases onto me. Both groups are apparently unable to count beyond two, since they see the world in a rather simplistic ‘for/against’ way.
To make things clear to both groups, I’m going to sum up my attitude towards ketogenic diets one more time. I’ll be using simple words as much as possible.
My opinion on ketogenic diets is this: ketogenic diets are one of many (ok, three) dietary approaches available. They have advantages and disadvantages (like all diets). They are appropriate under some circumstances, relatively neutral under others, and entirely inappropriate under still other circumstances. They are not magic but they work tremendously well for some people and absolutely horribly for other. There are still questions regarding their long-term effects.
Of course, you could make the same statement about any dietary approach as I’ve discussed throughout this series. They all have pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages. But since keto diets are among the most contentious, and since my name is essentially equated with the ketogenic diet, I’m having to make my stance that much more clear.
The point I’m trying to make, and one that I will continue to make (probably for the rest of my life since morons will always think of me as the keto-guru), is that, it’s a matter of context, always. Whether a given diet, or training program, or supplement or drug is ‘the best’ always depends on context.
And if you continue to think that I only advocate or believe in ketogenic diets after reading that, I strongly suggest you go get your head checked for signs of trauma because you would seem to have a rather large comprehension problem.
Now, I want to point out again, while a ketogenic diet is a low-carbohydrate diets, not all low-carbohydrate diets are ketogenic diets. As detailed in the article How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need, an intake of carbs below 100 g/day is required to induce ketosis to any measurable degree (most ketogenic authors set an initial daily limit of 30 grams/day but I’ve never found a rationale for this recommendation). Not all low-carb diets reduce carbohydrates below the 100 g/day level so not all will induce ketosis. However, for the sake of typing and reading simplicity, I’m going to refer to all diets in this section as ketogenic (again, by definition containing 100 grams carbohdyrate or less per day).
For the purposes of this section, and as mentioned in Comparing the Diets Part 1 I’m going to set carbs at 20% or less of total intake for a low-carbohydrate diet. Protein will be set at 30% (and possibly higher) and the remainder of the diet will be fat (in this example, 50%). As carbs go lower, fat intake goes higher, of course, up to the limit of 0% carbs and 70% fat. I should also mention that some authors prefer to do low-carbohydrate diets as nearly all protein affairs, with little to no dietary fat. My own Rapid Fat Loss Handbook takes this very approach but it also sets out to generate a massive daily deficit.
I should probably mention that ketogenic diets actually come in a few varieties. First are the standard or strict ketogenic diets (SKD) where carbohydrates are kept reduced for extended (or unlimited) periods. Most of the mainstream low-carb/keto diets fall into this category.
Second are the modified ketogenic diets which come in two flavors. The first is diets which reduce carbohydrates throughout the day but allow small amounts of carbs before, during, and/or after training. We named those targeted ketogenic diets (TKD) in my book The Ketogenic Diet and I’ll stick with that name. Finally are the cyclical ketogenic diets (CKD) such as Bodyopus, The Anabolic Diet, and Rob Faigan’s NHE diet which alternates periods of ketogenic dieting with phases of high-carb intakes. Since all of these diets revolve around a ketogenic/low-carbohydrate phase, I’ll discuss them together.
Let’s look at the SKDs first and when and where they might be appropriate. Frankly, I could probably just tell you that, if you don’t meet the requirements for either of the previous two diets, some type of ketogenic diet is going to be appropriate for you; it’s a choice by exclusion. To be safe, I’ll include a little more commentary than that.
Obviously, folks who aren’t doing much (or any) activity, ketogenic diets tend to be appropriate. Now, it’s easy to simply say ‘You should exercise and eat more carbs’ but this isn’t always possible. In cases of extreme obesity, or injury, or just plain laziness, exercise (especially intense exercise) may be out of the question. Since carbohydrate requirements are going to be extremely low (approaching the minimums discussed in How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need?), a ketogenic diet can be appropriate under those conditions.
Even individuals doing nothing but low-intensity activity (think walking and such), carbohydrate requirements are rarely very high. Low-carbohydrate diets are also appropriate under those conditions. There is some evidence that a low-carb diet might be useful for ultraendurance athletes (who typically perform for hours on end at fairly low intensities) but the data is mixed and the issue contentious; at some point I’ll write a full article (or book) about that topic alone. I’ll talk about higher intensity exercise performance in a second.
I’ve also found that folks with extreme insulin resistance do better in terms of energy levels and hunger/appetite control when they reduce carbohydrates, as I discuss in Insulin Sensitivity and Fat Loss, fat loss may be greater as well. They go from constant energy swings to more stable energy. Research typically report rather significant improvements in many health parameters such as blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels although this depends on total caloric intake and fat source as well. But for those individuals with severe insulin resistance and the resultant hyperinsulinemia (high-insulin levels), a near complete reduction of carbs may be necessary to bring glucose and insulin levels under control.
Along those lines, some people simply feel better on low-carbohydrate (especially ketogenic diets). They feel mentally more aware and function better, especially after a few weeks of adaptation. At the same time, some folks never seem to adapt to such diets, always feeling brain fuzzed, lethargic and all the rest. Many folks couldn’t care either way. Is this genetics, a micronutrient imbalance, individual variance? I have no idea, but I’ve seen it enough times to know it happens.
My general experience, in terms of giving you some guidelines to go on is this: if you feel fine, meaning that you function well with no major energy swings on a carb-based diet, odds are you’ll feel horrible on a ketogenic diet. You probably have good insulin sensitivity, high levels of activity, are fairly lean and are genetically well suited to run on carbohydrates. Don’t mess with it.
If you’re one of those individuals who always feels lagged out and un-energetic on high-carbohydrate diets (or get major energy crashes after a high-carb meal), you’ll probably tend to feel wonderful on a low-carbohydrate diet. You may be inactive, carrying too much fat, or simply be genetically insulin resistant, meaning your body isn’t set up to handle lots of carbohydrates.
This is where individual variance starts to play a role. I suspect that the differences in response have to do with many of the factors described in the previous sections: activity, insulin sensitivity and the rest. At the same time, research is finding that some people seem to be better adapted to using fat for fuel while others do not (meaning their bodies prefer carbohydrates).
Genetics most certainly plays a role. Unfortunately, at present there’s no easy way to know who will do best with higher fat and who won’t. Use the guidelines above: if you feel good on high-carbs, you’ll probably feel terrible on low-carbs and vice versa. Some people seem to have the metabolic flexibilty to handle either approach at which point it’s more an issue of preference and the other related issues.
While I feel that a moderate carbohydrate/moderate fat diet will probably be sufficient for all but the most extreme cases, there are always those individuals for whom a nearly complete reduction in carbohydrate intake may be necessary.
And, as above, for those folks for whom even moderate amounts of carbs make them hungry for more carbohydrates (this tends to be far more true for starches than anything else), a complete removal of them may be necessary at least for the time being. I’ve found that, after time on a ketogenic diet, most people lose their taste for the high GI starches as their taste buds adapt. Frequently they can go back to a more moderate carb/moderate fat approach without getting into problems.
This is actually an important point, even for athletic individuals. Even with the most stalwart dietary discipline, athletes can have problems reducing calories on a diet because of the presence of what we might call ‘diet-breaker’ foods. That is, even in small amounts, certain foods make people cheat and overeat. While dietary fat can be problematic here, starches and sugars are typically what’s craved on a diet.
Now, as anyone who read my rather torturous Bodyopus diaries so long ago knows, I am (well, used to be) one of those individuals. Even the smallest taste of starch made me want to eat more. Keeping bread or what have you in the house meant a diet that was destined to fail. Over time, I’ve found balance, I can (and usually do) use a moderate-carb/moderate-fat diet without running into too many problems.
As well, even athletic individuals can suffer from some degree of insulin resistance (at a genetic level) and may not handle carbohydrates well. In Bodyopus, Dan wrote that he felt most bodybuilding failures were do to poor insulin sensitivity. While I think it would be more clear to say that it’s due to poor nutrient sensitivity and uptake, the general idea is still sound. This is discussed in more detail in the articles on Calorie Partitioning.
For those individuals, even who are highly athletic, a complete removal of the diet breaker foods (or foods that interact negatively with genetically poor insulin sensitivity) may be a necessary evil. As above, while I think moderate carb/moderate fat diets will probably do most of the work this isn’t always the case. Some people will have to remove those foods entirely from their diet to be able to stick with it.
As well as I’ve mentioned throughout this article series, stubborn fat (ab/low-back fat for men and hip-thigh fat for women) comes off better when carbs are restricted. The Stubborn Fat Solution details the along with how to utilize low-carbohydrate intakes and specific training protocols to target stubborn fat.
So now we have a contradiction, even highly active individuals (meaning high carbohydrate requirements) may find a situation where carbohydrates need to be restricted to very low levels. The question then becomes of how to sustain exercise performance on such restricted carbohydrate intakes.
Most critics of ketogenic diets would simply say ‘Eat more carbs’ but, as above, this may not be an option (also, as above, these people are idiots who can’t see past a single dietary approach). So we have to compromise. Modified ketogenic diets are that compromise: they let folks use ketogenic diets while trying to maintain performance with the inclusion of carbs at specific times.
To date, two primary solutions have been developed, both of which I mentioned above. The first, and perhaps the simplest is the Targeted Ketogenic Diet (TKD). The TKD allows varying amounts (usually 25-50 grams) of high GI carbohydrates before, during or after training with carbohydrates being severely restricted the rest of the day. This accomplishes a few things. First, it allows dieters to eat some of the diet breaker foods, but under controlled circumstances. This helps deal with some of the psychological issues involved with dieting. Second, it goes a long way towards sustaining exercise performance by providing carbs around training. Third, since insulin resistance isn’t much of a problem right around training, the high GI stuff that everybody likes to eat can be eaten fairly ’safely’ (from a blood glucose/insulin release point of view).
Even extremely insulin resistant/pre-diabetic individuals can usually eat carbs right after an intense workout without problems, as exercise elevates insulin sensitivity to high levels temporarily (there is also insulin indepdendent glucose uptake during exercise so the body can utilize glucose without having to increase insulin levels).
The second solution, and the one I suspect most readers are aware of is the cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD). A CKD refers to any diet which alternates periods of low-carbohydrate (or ketogenic eating) with periods of high-carbohydrate eating. Diets such as DiPasquale’s Anabolic Diet and Metabolic Diet, Dan’s Bodyopus, and Faigan’s NHE are all examples of CKD’s. My own Ultimate Diet 2.0, of course, represents the pinnacle of cyclical diets of this sort.
CKD’s are another compromise diet approach: they switch between a ketogenic/low-carbohydrate phase (for anywhere from 5 or more days) and a high-carb phase (lasting from 12 to 48 hours or more) to restore muscle glycogen and hopefully generate an anabolic response. They are for those athletic individuals who, for one reason or another, needs to restrict carbohydrates severely, but sustain exercise performance.
Active individuals with severe (diagnosed) insulin resistance or even the beginning of Type II diabetes tend to fare poorly on CKDs; the extended carb-load period causes all of the problems that they are trying to avoid in the first place. The TKD is more appropriate for them.
On that note, I should mention a seemingly contradictory situation, that of endurance athletes. Interest in fat loading and fat adapting endurance athletes has been a long-term project for exercise physiologists and some research suggests that some endurance athletes can benefit from following a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet for some period of time (5-21 days) and improve performance (more recent research suggests that it kills sprint performance even within the context of a long-duration event).
This is especially true for ultra-endurance athletes who may perform for many hours at submaximal intensities, relying predominantly on fat for energy. A recent series of studies found that fat adapting cyclists for 5 days followed by a 1 day carb-load (similar to a CKD) improved performance in some athletes. The fat adaptation increased fat utilization at lower intensities but the carb-load made sure that sufficient glycogen was available for high intensity efforts. Again, this is a topic deserving it’s own full article or book so I won’t get into many details here.
Summing Up Low-Carb Diets
So summing up the section on low-carbohydrate diets. As above, we have two basic flavors of low-carb diet. The first is simply a diet in which carbohydrates are restricted for extended periods of time. Such diets are appropriate (and may be desired) for individuals who aren’t doing much, if any, exercise (or are only doing low-intensity activity), who may have severe problems with insulin resistance, who have such an extreme carbohydrate ‘addiction’ that a full removal of starches may be required to control hunger.
The second flavor, the modified low-carbohydrate diets come in two separate groups. They are for those individuals who need (for some reason) to lower carbohydrates to low levels but still need to sustain exercise performance. First are the targeted type diets which have dieters restrict carbohydrates except around exercise (this is actually a very common approach to diet setup in bodybuilding literature). Second are the cyclical diets that alternate some period of low-carbohydrate dieting with periods of high-carbohydrate intake to refill muscle glycogen (and sometimes, it’s argued, to stimulate a growth response).
Finally, the Chart You’ve Been Waiting For
Ok, now you’ve hopefully got a better idea of which diet approach may be the most ideal for you. To make it a little more clear, I’m going to try to summarize all of the above information into a chart so you can see how the different variables interact.
Diet Type/Activity Level/Insulin Sensitivity/Carb Choices/Carb Addict/Stubborn Fat
High-carb/low-fat/High/High/Low GI/No/NO
Mod carb/mod-fat/Medium/Low-moderate/Medium GI/Maybe/Yes/Maybe
Standard Keto/Low/Low/N/A/Yes/Yes
Targeted Keto/High/Low/N/A/Yes/Yes
Cyclical Keto/High/Low/N/A/Yes/Yes[/indent]
Having examined the moderate-carb/moderate fat diet in Comparing the Diets: Part 3, I now want to turn my attention to one of the more contentious dietary approaches out there: low-carbohydrate/high-fat diets. I’ll also provide an end-of-article chart showing how the different dietary approaches may be more or less useful in a given situation.
A quick note on the percentage nutrient notation: as much as possible I tried to adhere to a format where the percentages represent percentages from protein/carbohydrates/fat in that order. So a notation of 30/60/10 means a diet where 30% of the calories are protein, 60% are carbs and 10% are fat.
Low-Carbohydrate/High-Fat
And finally we come to the low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet, the diet with perhaps the greatest amount of controversy and argument surrounding it. Now, at the risk of beating a dead horse, and since I find many of my critics to be a little slow on the uptake, I’m going to go off on one last rant about this topic.
Rant mode on:
If you think of me as the keto-guru, you’re probably expecting me to advocate the ketogenic/low-carb diet over all the others. People seem to think since my first book The Ketogenic Diet was about nothing but, I must be the diet’s strongest promoter. It makes me wonder if these morons actually read the book since I made it clear there that I didn’t feel that ketogenic diets were necessarliy ideal. I repeated this multiple times within that book. People didn’t get it.I’ve actually found two different criticisms of my attitude towards ketogenic diets, depending on whether the critic is pro- or anti-ketogenic diets.
First is the group that feels that, since I didn’t write negatively about keto-diets, I must be their biggest advocate. Since they dislike ketogenic diets on some level, they feel that I should as well. Anyone who writes honestly and fairly about them is, by definition, in favor of them. This is moronic by the way.
The second groups seems to feel that since I didn’t say that ketogenic diets are magic, I must not believe in them. Since they think the diet is magic, they think I should too.
Both groups, as usual, are guilty of projecting their own personal biases onto me. Both groups are apparently unable to count beyond two, since they see the world in a rather simplistic ‘for/against’ way.
To make things clear to both groups, I’m going to sum up my attitude towards ketogenic diets one more time. I’ll be using simple words as much as possible.
My opinion on ketogenic diets is this: ketogenic diets are one of many (ok, three) dietary approaches available. They have advantages and disadvantages (like all diets). They are appropriate under some circumstances, relatively neutral under others, and entirely inappropriate under still other circumstances. They are not magic but they work tremendously well for some people and absolutely horribly for other. There are still questions regarding their long-term effects.
Of course, you could make the same statement about any dietary approach as I’ve discussed throughout this series. They all have pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages. But since keto diets are among the most contentious, and since my name is essentially equated with the ketogenic diet, I’m having to make my stance that much more clear.
The point I’m trying to make, and one that I will continue to make (probably for the rest of my life since morons will always think of me as the keto-guru), is that, it’s a matter of context, always. Whether a given diet, or training program, or supplement or drug is ‘the best’ always depends on context.
And if you continue to think that I only advocate or believe in ketogenic diets after reading that, I strongly suggest you go get your head checked for signs of trauma because you would seem to have a rather large comprehension problem.
Rant mode off
Now, I want to point out again, while a ketogenic diet is a low-carbohydrate diets, not all low-carbohydrate diets are ketogenic diets. As detailed in the article How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need, an intake of carbs below 100 g/day is required to induce ketosis to any measurable degree (most ketogenic authors set an initial daily limit of 30 grams/day but I’ve never found a rationale for this recommendation). Not all low-carb diets reduce carbohydrates below the 100 g/day level so not all will induce ketosis. However, for the sake of typing and reading simplicity, I’m going to refer to all diets in this section as ketogenic (again, by definition containing 100 grams carbohdyrate or less per day).
For the purposes of this section, and as mentioned in Comparing the Diets Part 1 I’m going to set carbs at 20% or less of total intake for a low-carbohydrate diet. Protein will be set at 30% (and possibly higher) and the remainder of the diet will be fat (in this example, 50%). As carbs go lower, fat intake goes higher, of course, up to the limit of 0% carbs and 70% fat. I should also mention that some authors prefer to do low-carbohydrate diets as nearly all protein affairs, with little to no dietary fat. My own Rapid Fat Loss Handbook takes this very approach but it also sets out to generate a massive daily deficit.
I should probably mention that ketogenic diets actually come in a few varieties. First are the standard or strict ketogenic diets (SKD) where carbohydrates are kept reduced for extended (or unlimited) periods. Most of the mainstream low-carb/keto diets fall into this category.
Second are the modified ketogenic diets which come in two flavors. The first is diets which reduce carbohydrates throughout the day but allow small amounts of carbs before, during, and/or after training. We named those targeted ketogenic diets (TKD) in my book The Ketogenic Diet and I’ll stick with that name. Finally are the cyclical ketogenic diets (CKD) such as Bodyopus, The Anabolic Diet, and Rob Faigan’s NHE diet which alternates periods of ketogenic dieting with phases of high-carb intakes. Since all of these diets revolve around a ketogenic/low-carbohydrate phase, I’ll discuss them together.
Let’s look at the SKDs first and when and where they might be appropriate. Frankly, I could probably just tell you that, if you don’t meet the requirements for either of the previous two diets, some type of ketogenic diet is going to be appropriate for you; it’s a choice by exclusion. To be safe, I’ll include a little more commentary than that.
Obviously, folks who aren’t doing much (or any) activity, ketogenic diets tend to be appropriate. Now, it’s easy to simply say ‘You should exercise and eat more carbs’ but this isn’t always possible. In cases of extreme obesity, or injury, or just plain laziness, exercise (especially intense exercise) may be out of the question. Since carbohydrate requirements are going to be extremely low (approaching the minimums discussed in How Many Carbohydrates Do You Need?), a ketogenic diet can be appropriate under those conditions.
Even individuals doing nothing but low-intensity activity (think walking and such), carbohydrate requirements are rarely very high. Low-carbohydrate diets are also appropriate under those conditions. There is some evidence that a low-carb diet might be useful for ultraendurance athletes (who typically perform for hours on end at fairly low intensities) but the data is mixed and the issue contentious; at some point I’ll write a full article (or book) about that topic alone. I’ll talk about higher intensity exercise performance in a second.
I’ve also found that folks with extreme insulin resistance do better in terms of energy levels and hunger/appetite control when they reduce carbohydrates, as I discuss in Insulin Sensitivity and Fat Loss, fat loss may be greater as well. They go from constant energy swings to more stable energy. Research typically report rather significant improvements in many health parameters such as blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels although this depends on total caloric intake and fat source as well. But for those individuals with severe insulin resistance and the resultant hyperinsulinemia (high-insulin levels), a near complete reduction of carbs may be necessary to bring glucose and insulin levels under control.
Along those lines, some people simply feel better on low-carbohydrate (especially ketogenic diets). They feel mentally more aware and function better, especially after a few weeks of adaptation. At the same time, some folks never seem to adapt to such diets, always feeling brain fuzzed, lethargic and all the rest. Many folks couldn’t care either way. Is this genetics, a micronutrient imbalance, individual variance? I have no idea, but I’ve seen it enough times to know it happens.
My general experience, in terms of giving you some guidelines to go on is this: if you feel fine, meaning that you function well with no major energy swings on a carb-based diet, odds are you’ll feel horrible on a ketogenic diet. You probably have good insulin sensitivity, high levels of activity, are fairly lean and are genetically well suited to run on carbohydrates. Don’t mess with it.
If you’re one of those individuals who always feels lagged out and un-energetic on high-carbohydrate diets (or get major energy crashes after a high-carb meal), you’ll probably tend to feel wonderful on a low-carbohydrate diet. You may be inactive, carrying too much fat, or simply be genetically insulin resistant, meaning your body isn’t set up to handle lots of carbohydrates.
This is where individual variance starts to play a role. I suspect that the differences in response have to do with many of the factors described in the previous sections: activity, insulin sensitivity and the rest. At the same time, research is finding that some people seem to be better adapted to using fat for fuel while others do not (meaning their bodies prefer carbohydrates).
Genetics most certainly plays a role. Unfortunately, at present there’s no easy way to know who will do best with higher fat and who won’t. Use the guidelines above: if you feel good on high-carbs, you’ll probably feel terrible on low-carbs and vice versa. Some people seem to have the metabolic flexibilty to handle either approach at which point it’s more an issue of preference and the other related issues.
While I feel that a moderate carbohydrate/moderate fat diet will probably be sufficient for all but the most extreme cases, there are always those individuals for whom a nearly complete reduction in carbohydrate intake may be necessary.
And, as above, for those folks for whom even moderate amounts of carbs make them hungry for more carbohydrates (this tends to be far more true for starches than anything else), a complete removal of them may be necessary at least for the time being. I’ve found that, after time on a ketogenic diet, most people lose their taste for the high GI starches as their taste buds adapt. Frequently they can go back to a more moderate carb/moderate fat approach without getting into problems.
This is actually an important point, even for athletic individuals. Even with the most stalwart dietary discipline, athletes can have problems reducing calories on a diet because of the presence of what we might call ‘diet-breaker’ foods. That is, even in small amounts, certain foods make people cheat and overeat. While dietary fat can be problematic here, starches and sugars are typically what’s craved on a diet.
Now, as anyone who read my rather torturous Bodyopus diaries so long ago knows, I am (well, used to be) one of those individuals. Even the smallest taste of starch made me want to eat more. Keeping bread or what have you in the house meant a diet that was destined to fail. Over time, I’ve found balance, I can (and usually do) use a moderate-carb/moderate-fat diet without running into too many problems.
As well, even athletic individuals can suffer from some degree of insulin resistance (at a genetic level) and may not handle carbohydrates well. In Bodyopus, Dan wrote that he felt most bodybuilding failures were do to poor insulin sensitivity. While I think it would be more clear to say that it’s due to poor nutrient sensitivity and uptake, the general idea is still sound. This is discussed in more detail in the articles on Calorie Partitioning.
For those individuals, even who are highly athletic, a complete removal of the diet breaker foods (or foods that interact negatively with genetically poor insulin sensitivity) may be a necessary evil. As above, while I think moderate carb/moderate fat diets will probably do most of the work this isn’t always the case. Some people will have to remove those foods entirely from their diet to be able to stick with it.
As well as I’ve mentioned throughout this article series, stubborn fat (ab/low-back fat for men and hip-thigh fat for women) comes off better when carbs are restricted. The Stubborn Fat Solution details the along with how to utilize low-carbohydrate intakes and specific training protocols to target stubborn fat.
So now we have a contradiction, even highly active individuals (meaning high carbohydrate requirements) may find a situation where carbohydrates need to be restricted to very low levels. The question then becomes of how to sustain exercise performance on such restricted carbohydrate intakes.
Most critics of ketogenic diets would simply say ‘Eat more carbs’ but, as above, this may not be an option (also, as above, these people are idiots who can’t see past a single dietary approach). So we have to compromise. Modified ketogenic diets are that compromise: they let folks use ketogenic diets while trying to maintain performance with the inclusion of carbs at specific times.
To date, two primary solutions have been developed, both of which I mentioned above. The first, and perhaps the simplest is the Targeted Ketogenic Diet (TKD). The TKD allows varying amounts (usually 25-50 grams) of high GI carbohydrates before, during or after training with carbohydrates being severely restricted the rest of the day. This accomplishes a few things. First, it allows dieters to eat some of the diet breaker foods, but under controlled circumstances. This helps deal with some of the psychological issues involved with dieting. Second, it goes a long way towards sustaining exercise performance by providing carbs around training. Third, since insulin resistance isn’t much of a problem right around training, the high GI stuff that everybody likes to eat can be eaten fairly ’safely’ (from a blood glucose/insulin release point of view).
Even extremely insulin resistant/pre-diabetic individuals can usually eat carbs right after an intense workout without problems, as exercise elevates insulin sensitivity to high levels temporarily (there is also insulin indepdendent glucose uptake during exercise so the body can utilize glucose without having to increase insulin levels).
The second solution, and the one I suspect most readers are aware of is the cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD). A CKD refers to any diet which alternates periods of low-carbohydrate (or ketogenic eating) with periods of high-carbohydrate eating. Diets such as DiPasquale’s Anabolic Diet and Metabolic Diet, Dan’s Bodyopus, and Faigan’s NHE are all examples of CKD’s. My own Ultimate Diet 2.0, of course, represents the pinnacle of cyclical diets of this sort.
CKD’s are another compromise diet approach: they switch between a ketogenic/low-carbohydrate phase (for anywhere from 5 or more days) and a high-carb phase (lasting from 12 to 48 hours or more) to restore muscle glycogen and hopefully generate an anabolic response. They are for those athletic individuals who, for one reason or another, needs to restrict carbohydrates severely, but sustain exercise performance.
Active individuals with severe (diagnosed) insulin resistance or even the beginning of Type II diabetes tend to fare poorly on CKDs; the extended carb-load period causes all of the problems that they are trying to avoid in the first place. The TKD is more appropriate for them.
On that note, I should mention a seemingly contradictory situation, that of endurance athletes. Interest in fat loading and fat adapting endurance athletes has been a long-term project for exercise physiologists and some research suggests that some endurance athletes can benefit from following a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet for some period of time (5-21 days) and improve performance (more recent research suggests that it kills sprint performance even within the context of a long-duration event).
This is especially true for ultra-endurance athletes who may perform for many hours at submaximal intensities, relying predominantly on fat for energy. A recent series of studies found that fat adapting cyclists for 5 days followed by a 1 day carb-load (similar to a CKD) improved performance in some athletes. The fat adaptation increased fat utilization at lower intensities but the carb-load made sure that sufficient glycogen was available for high intensity efforts. Again, this is a topic deserving it’s own full article or book so I won’t get into many details here.
Summing Up Low-Carb Diets
So summing up the section on low-carbohydrate diets. As above, we have two basic flavors of low-carb diet. The first is simply a diet in which carbohydrates are restricted for extended periods of time. Such diets are appropriate (and may be desired) for individuals who aren’t doing much, if any, exercise (or are only doing low-intensity activity), who may have severe problems with insulin resistance, who have such an extreme carbohydrate ‘addiction’ that a full removal of starches may be required to control hunger.
The second flavor, the modified low-carbohydrate diets come in two separate groups. They are for those individuals who need (for some reason) to lower carbohydrates to low levels but still need to sustain exercise performance. First are the targeted type diets which have dieters restrict carbohydrates except around exercise (this is actually a very common approach to diet setup in bodybuilding literature). Second are the cyclical diets that alternate some period of low-carbohydrate dieting with periods of high-carbohydrate intake to refill muscle glycogen (and sometimes, it’s argued, to stimulate a growth response).
Finally, the Chart You’ve Been Waiting For
Ok, now you’ve hopefully got a better idea of which diet approach may be the most ideal for you. To make it a little more clear, I’m going to try to summarize all of the above information into a chart so you can see how the different variables interact.
Diet Type/Activity Level/Insulin Sensitivity/Carb Choices/Carb Addict/Stubborn Fat
High-carb/low-fat/High/High/Low GI/No/NO
Mod carb/mod-fat/Medium/Low-moderate/Medium GI/Maybe/Yes/Maybe
Standard Keto/Low/Low/N/A/Yes/Yes
Targeted Keto/High/Low/N/A/Yes/Yes
Cyclical Keto/High/Low/N/A/Yes/Yes[/indent]
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