Refined carbohydrates tend to be low in fiber and are digested and absorbed quickly, leading to rapid spikes in blood sugar. They have a high glycemic index GI , which is a measure of how quickly foods raise blood sugar. When you eat a food that spikes blood sugar fast, it tends to lead to a crash in blood sugar a few hours later.
When that happens, you get cravings for another high-carb snack. One study served people milkshakes identical in every respect except that one had high-GI and the other low-GI carbs. The high-GI milkshake caused increased hunger and cravings compared to the low-GI shake Therefore, the speed at which carb calories hit the system can have a dramatic effect on their potential to cause overeating and weight gain. The fiber can reduce the rate at which the glucose enters your system 25 , Studies consistently show that people who eat the most high-GI foods are at the greatest risk of becoming obese and diabetic.
Studies show that refined carbohydrates lead to faster and bigger spikes in blood sugar, which leads to cravings and increased food intake. Different calorie sources can have vastly different effects on hunger, hormones, energy expenditure and the brain regions that control food intake. Even though calories are important, counting them or even being consciously aware of them is not at all necessary to lose weight. In many cases, simple changes in food selection can lead to the same or better results than restricting your calorie intake.
This simple 3-step plan can help you lose weight fast. Read about the 3-step plan, along with other science-backed weight loss tips, here. Calories matter, but counting them is not at all necessary to lose weight.
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What gets me in trouble relates to a factor Dr. Ludwig talks about, but inadvertently, I assume, was not mentioned by the author of this article: glycemic load. But serving size, of course, is where calories come in to the equation. Again, overly simplistic. Harvard Health lags behind public health research, nutrition being just one area. For example, a croissant has a GI ranging from , which makes it a low GI food choice, not a high GI food as you suggest.
Get with it. For up to date information on GI facts, go to glycemicindex. As another example, you really missed a golden opportunity in your brief article about GI to talk of the health benefits associated with food blending as in combinations of, not as in using a blender , which is a key to using the GI to guide healthy food choices.
Calories do make a difference in weight control. Amazing that so many support olive oil when there is no evidence it is healthy but evidence that it reduces blood flow almost immediately after consumption. Ohhh you like the taste! I bet milk chocolate taste good to many more than unprocessed cocoa too but that is again not a valid reason to consume so much of it…. There is good and bad information floating everywhere, including this article. Readers should not think calories do not matter relative to weight but what you eat is much more important for long term health than your weight.
A very large percentage of the world population would be at their correct weight if they focused properly on whole plant-based products without counting calories but much more importantly there would be significantly less heart disease, diabetes and cancer to name just a few ailments. Salt does not contain many calories but a large number in the world are slowly killing themselves with the large amount of daily salt they consume.
Trans fats may have more calories than salt but it also appears to be more deadly and likely should be banned and is in some countries. There is NO known carbohydrate deficiency disease, where as this is not true of proteins and fats, hence carbs are a Non-Essential macronutrient. That is why the LCHF ketogenic diet works and is curing everything from diabetes to cancer..
We only have about 1 tsp of glucose dissolved in our blood … and insulin is really a growth hormone not designed to control the upper limit, is only controls the lower limit and triggers gluconeogenesis to support the nervous system. My mother was right… We drank cod liver oil in the bath tub in case we spilled it, ate one green and one yellow vegetable with dinner every night along with lean protein and a carb.
We needed our roughage so fruit was not peeled and rice was brown. Soda was expensive so we drank water. She was a juvenile diabetic who lived into her 70s without most of the common diabetic complications. If the notion that burning more calories than you consume has been debunked as diet advice, then either the laws of physics have been repealed or there are still problems in nutritional science.
If you consistently burn more calories than you consume, then the laws of physics say you must lose weight — calories cannot be created out of thin air, but only by the conversion of mass to energy.
Are starving people delusional; they are not really emaciated when their intake is insufficient to generate the calories expended? If the research suggests that eating less than you burn will not lead to weight loss, then the measurement of one or both of these must be wrong. Nutrition tables are based on the assumption that protein and carbohydrate both yield 4 kilocalories per gram, 9 Kcal for fat and 7 Kcal per gram of alcohol.
I am not clear on how the deduction for non-digestible fiber in carbohydrates is made but this deduction process could lead to inaccuracies in calculating actual caloric intake. There may also be differences in the percentage of available calories that the body takes up: for example, perhaps the body absorbs a higher percentage of the 4 Kcal per gram of easily digested high-glycemic index carbs and a lower percentage from low index foods which may transit the bowel before it is all absorbed.
It seems highly likely that not all people absorb the same percentage of theoretically available calories in their foods — our guts are just too diverse. Even if researchers got the caloric UPTAKE right, the measurement of caloric expenditure is susceptible to estimation errors, since it is unlikely that all of the subjects in these studies spent their days hooked up to a calorimeter measuring oxygen consumption or carbon dioxide exhaled.
Instead, average rates of caloric expenditure are applied per minute or hour of each type of activity. Even if you wear an accelerometer, there is a margin of error in estimating expended calories that may be significant. And of course, people lie about how active they are and how much they eat, so unless there are actual measurements, then the validity of the conclusion may be seriously compromised.
Forgotten History Conventional wisdom did not always favor the energy-imbalance hypothesis that prevails today. Until World War II, the leading authorities on obesity and most medical disciplines worked in Europe and had concluded that obesity was, like any other growth disorder, caused by a hormonal and regulatory defect. Something was amiss, they believed, with the hormones and enzymes that influence the storage of fat in fat cells. Gustav von Bergmann, a German internist, developed the original hypothesis more than a century ago.
The lipophilia concept vanished after World War II with the replacement of German with English as the scientific lingua franca. Meanwhile the technologies needed to understand the regulation of fat accumulation in fat cells and thus the biological basis of obesity—specifically, techniques to accurately measure fatty acids and hormone levels in the blood—were not invented until the late s.
By the mids it was clear that insulin was the primary hormone regulating fat accumulation, but by then obesity was effectively considered an eating disorder to be treated by inducing or coercing obese subjects to eat fewer calories. Once studies linked the amount of cholesterol in the blood to the risk of heart disease and nutritionists targeted saturated fat as the primary dietary evil, authorities began recommending low-fat, high -carbohydrate diets. The idea that carbohydrates could cause obesity or diabetes or heart disease was swept aside.
Because the most influential experts believed that people got fat to begin with precisely because they ate as much as they wanted, these diet books were perceived as con jobs.
The most famous of these authors, Robert C. Atkins, did not help the cause by contending that saturated fat could be eaten to the heart's delight—lobster Newburg, double cheeseburgers—so long as carbohydrates were avoided—a suggestion that many considered tantamount to medical malpractice.
Rigorous Experiments In the past 20 years significant evidence has accumulated to suggest that these diet doctors may have been right, that the hormone hypothesis is a viable explanation for why we get fat and that insulin resistance, driven perhaps by the sugars in the diet, is a fundamental defect not just in type 2 diabetes but in heart disease and even cancer. This makes rigorous testing of the roles of carbohydrates and insulin critically important.
Because the ultimate goal is to identify the environmental triggers of obesity, experiments should, ideally, be directed at elucidating the processes that lead to the accumulation of excess fat. But obesity can take decades to develop, so any month-to-month fat gains may be too small to detect. Thus, the first step that NuSI-funded researchers will take is to test the competing hypotheses on weight loss, which can happen relatively quickly.
These first results will then help determine what future experiments are needed to further clarify the mechanisms at work and which of these hypotheses is correct. In this pilot study, 16 overweight and obese participants will be housed throughout the experiment in research facilities to ensure accurate assessments of calorie consumption and energy expenditure.
In stage one, the participants will be fed a diet similar to that of the average American—50 percent carbohydrates 15 percent sugar , 35 percent fat and 15 percent protein. Researchers will carefully manipulate the calories consumed until it is clear the participants are neither gaining nor losing fat. In other words, the calories they take in will match the calories they expend, as measured in a device called a metabolic chamber. For stage two, the subjects will be fed a diet of precisely the same number of calories they had been consuming—distributed over the same number of meals and snacks—but the composition will change dramatically.
The total carbohydrate content of the new diet will be exceedingly low—on the order of 5 percent, which translates to only the carbohydrates that occur naturally in meat, fish, fowl, eggs, cheese, animal fat and vegetable oil, along with servings of green leafy vegetables. The protein content of this diet will match that of the diet the subjects ate initially—15 percent of calories.
The remainder—80 percent of calories—will consist of fat from these real food sources. The idea is not to test whether this diet is healthy or sustainable for a lifetime but to use it to lower insulin levels by the greatest amount in the shortest time.
Meaningful scientific experiments ideally set up a situation in which competing hypotheses make different predictions about what will happen. Many varieties of breakfast cereal are high in calories and added sugar.
Certain types are also highly refined, which could contribute to weight gain. Instead, opt for low sugar, whole grain varieties.
Dark chocolate has been linked to numerous health benefits , including improved heart health and brain function 33 , 34 , 35 , Still, it can be high in calories and fat.
Plus, most commercially produced milk and white chocolate is high in added sugar. Overall, this means that chocolate, regardless of the type, can contribute to weight gain if you eat large quantities of it too often. If you struggle with moderation, keep in mind that dark chocolate may be easier to enjoy in moderation. It has been shown to increase feelings of fullness and reduce food intake later in the day, compared with milk chocolate or white chocolate 37 , Dark, milk, and white varieties of chocolate are high in fat and calories.
The latter two types are typically also higher in added sugar. As such, chocolate could cause weight gain if eaten in large amounts too often. Although fruit juice is often seen as a healthy drink, most commercial brands contain just as much sugar as soda. Drinking excessive amounts of fruit juice has been linked to an increased risk of obesity, especially in children 40 , 41 , 42 , As such, you should instead aim to quench your thirst with water.
You can still enjoy the juicy, sweet flavor of fruit by enjoying them whole. This way, you also reap the benefits of their fiber and other nutrients.
Fruit juice is high in sugar and low in fiber. Drinking excessive amounts has been linked to an increased risk of obesity. Instead, quench your thirst in water, and enjoy fruits whole rather than juiced. Increased consumption of convenience food may be partially to blame for increased rates of obesity in many areas around the globe 45 , 46 , While not all processed foods are unhealthy, many are high in calories, added sugar, fat, and sodium.
Furthermore, some studies have found that eating more processed foods could be linked to weight gain and decreased diet quality 48 , 49 , In addition to the other foods listed in this article, other foods to keep an eye on include 48 , 49 , 50 :.
Reducing your intake of processed foods could also improve your diet quality and make it much easier to maintain a moderate weight. Eating fewer processed foods high in added fat, sugar, and salt can improve your diet quality and help prevent weight gain.
However, most fast food items are highly processed and loaded with calories, fat, sodium, and added sugar. For this reason, many studies have reported that eating fast food more frequently could be tied to an increased risk of obesity, along with other health problems like heart disease and type 2 diabetes 51 , 52 ,
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