CaRbO CoNsCiOuS ArE We?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by schwooly boy, Jul 14, 2004.

  1. what is the deal with the carb counting today. every thing is carb free now. is it cause of the fact that like one in 3 kids are overwieght? can someone elaborate please?
     
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  3. Nebula Occasionally Frequent Registered Senior Member

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    wrong forum, but...

    Sans carbs is the latesy fad diet. It's based on a book called the Atkins Diet which was originally released in the 80s but is making a huge comeback because, amazingly, people are still getting fatter. Imagine that.

    I'm writing my own diet book called "The Why Don't You Stop Counting Carbs and Put Down The Fried Chicken, Dumbass Diet." I expect to make millions.
     
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  5. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    http://www.mercola.com/2002/aug/24/atkins.htm

    basiclly it will make your skinnier, but may also be unhealthy at the same time, look good, die soon... isn't life a bitch?

    mod note: by the way I move this to Biology from Politics
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2004
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  7. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    Well, it depends. If you're obese then the health benefits of losing a significant amount of weight could easily outweigh the risks associated with increased saturated fat intake.

    Although the only really effective way to lose weight is to combine diet and exercise. If you just start eating a lot less without also increasing your exercise, you really aren't doing yourself any favors. Yeah, you'll lose fat – but you'll also lose muscle, so your BMR will be lower and you will be likely to quickly regain the weight. Exercise, people, exercise...
     
  8. chunkylover58 Make it a ... CHEEEESEburger Registered Senior Member

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    The first time I heard about the Atkins thing, the guy was telling me how he can still eat the steak dinner, just not the baked potato or the fries or drink a soda or a beer with it. "Gee, smart guy. You just cut out half your meal. Of course you'll lose weight." In addition to that, aside from simple sugars in candy and sodas, people rarley eat JUST carbs. How many people do you know eat a plain baked potato with their dinner? Most people eat the potato loaded with butter, sour cream, cheese and bacon bits. There are more calories in the toppings on a loaded baked potato than are in the potato. Same with the oils in fries and chips. Same with the creamy or meaty sauces poured all over pasta. Butter or oil on the bread, etc. So, if people cut out carbs the way they normally eat carbs (fried or smothered in some sort of fatty sauce or butter) they are also cutting out a lot of associated fat and a ton of calories from a given meal.

    What low carb diets are basically saying is, "My car doesn't get good gas mileage like it used to, so in order to remedy that I'll stop driving so much and so far. That way, I'll spend just as much on gas in a given time." An intelligent person with good reasoning and understanding would think, "Perhaps I should get a tune up ... new spark plugs, fuel filter, air filter, etc. and make my car run more efficiently, like it should."
    Exercise is the only way to healthfully lose fat and it is also the only way to make your body more efficient at metabolizing fat.

    But, to answer your question, remember back in the 80s when everything was "Low Cholesterol" and in the 90s when everything was "Low Fat"? Same deal. Marketing. Buzz words. Catch phrases. There are people out there who have no clue what it means to be on a low carb diet, but they have heard that it's good (Granted, if you're diabetic or otherwise have insulin issues, it's pretty much your only hope. Otherwise, the rest of us don't need to do to our bodies what low carb does to our bodies), so marketers can take a 3/4lb slab of ground beef with 38 grams of fat and throw out the bun, wrap it in lettuce, and call it "Low Carb" and people will think it's GOOD for them!

    As for the health benefits of losing weight outweighing the risks of increased intake of fats- I've seen studies indicating that if you are overweight, you'd be better off staying that way than you would be if you were to lose significant amounts of weight quickly on a fad diet with little or no exercise. Most importantly because of the abovementioned factor of gaining the weight back after going off the diet. Way too much stress on the heart. Slow, moderate exercise-type activity, sustained over a long period of time is the best way. Severely obese people sometimes are started on programs where they just sit in a chair listening to classical music and pretending to conduct the orchestra with a baton. For them, just moving their arms like that for several minutes is just the level of activity needed to raise their heart rates to an aerobic zone without putting too much stress on their bodies.

    And Nebula, I guess we'll have to race to the book publisher, because I'm writing, "Eat Less and Exercize More, You Fat Bastard!"

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  9. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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  10. John Connellan Valued Senior Member

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    It quite clearly implied that he himself did not follow his diet because he loved pasta and bread too much. Doesn't mean the diet is BS.
     
  11. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Nor to a beleive the validity of the link I provided. (its a joke news, I doubt its real)
     
  12. John Connellan Valued Senior Member

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    No apparently he did die obese (or at least fat) didn't he? I heard that ages ago!
     
  13. chunkylover58 Make it a ... CHEEEESEburger Registered Senior Member

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    3 tests to see if a diet is BS.

    1. Commone sense - Fail: the Atkins diet is calorie restrictive. See above re: cutting carbs typically equals cutting fat. Basic law of physics. More input than output = surplus. More output than input = deficit. Eat fewer calories than you need, lose weight. That simple.

    2. Science - Fail: for people with normal reactions to insulin (not diabetic, hypoglycemic, etc.... the majority of us) this is not a healthy diet. It leads to a loss of important fat-burning muscle mass, puts stress on the liver and kidneys, puts the body in the state of consuming itself (ketosis), increases the levels of toxins such as urea into the system, causing dehydration (water loss from the cells to help expel these toxins in the urine), limits intake of ever so important fiber and fruit, and so on and so on.

    3. Cynicism - Fail: Any diet that says, "DON'T eat ...." (one particular food, one whole category of foods, etc) and then says, "By the way, since you're not eating ...., then you're not getting certain nutrients your body needs. To that end, you should take these supplements for the rest of your life, which by the way, we happen to sell."

    Losing weight and getting fit is the easiest thing in the world. Our bodies crave to be fit. Eating right (low fat, high fiber, lots of fruits and vegetables, plenty of water and juices) and regular aerobic exercise (20-30 minutes a day, 4-6 days a week at 65-80% maximum heart rate sustained over the exercise period [maximum heart rate is 220-your age]). No magic. No special diet or pills. It takes time and patience. You cannot physically lose more than 2 lbs of body fat in a week. Any diet that promises more than 2-3 lbs of weight loss a week is causing you to lose water and muscle mass. Bad.

    So, if you have 50lbs to lose, in a matter of 6 months it can alll be gone, you'll be fit, trim, healthy and strong. "Six Months!" That's FOREVER!" you might say. Six months to get fit in the proper way, which tunes your body to stay fit and keep burning calories even when you're not exercising, is a lot better than losing 50lbs in 6 weeks, being unhealthy, unfit, and have the potential to gain it all back once the fad diet has ended. bEsides, whether you make an effort to get fit or not, those 6 months will pass regardless. Better to look back after that time and say, "Gee...look at me. I look so good and my clothes are just falling off of mee and I feel and look better than I ever did," than to look back and say, "Damn...I'm still fat. I wish I could do something about that."
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2004
  14. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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  15. candy Valued Senior Member

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    The Atkins' diet dates from the 60's and Atkins was not obese when admitted to the hospital after falling on the ice and hitting his head. The weight increase was the result of swelling from the efforts made to save his life. He was never really skinny either though he had been obese when he did the research for his diet plan.
     
  16. John Connellan Valued Senior Member

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    No, eating the same amount of calories comprosong of protein and fat leads to less fat storage (apparently).

    It actually leads to an increased potential for muscle mass!

    Its highly doubtful now that there is a significant stress on the kidneys from a high protein diet.

    Dehydration is a problem alright but did u know that urea is an antioxidant?! It helped sharks survive all these millions of years!

    I'm sure, like all diets, it provides certain nutrients in alternative ways.

    Your definitely right here. Exercise is still the best form of weight loss

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  17. chunkylover58 Make it a ... CHEEEESEburger Registered Senior Member

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    Get a biochemistry textbook, a biology textbook and a human physiology textbook and read read read......

    I say that because just about all of your comments above are qualified with "apparently" or "it seems" or the like. This is your body and the only one you have. Would be a good idea to get a real picture as to how it works.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2004
  18. John Connellan Valued Senior Member

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    Are u talking to me? If u are then I am pretty sure I know a lot more about the human body than u do by the look of your last post and all the corrections i had to make to it.

    Also, only point 5 I was a bit unsure of because I am not an avid fan of the diet so even that reply is wrong.
     
  19. chunkylover58 Make it a ... CHEEEESEburger Registered Senior Member

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    Your brain utilize nearly 2/3 of the glucose your body metabolizes from the food you eat when you're at rest. Glucose is very quickly and easily metabolized from carbohydrates. Your body uses protein to build muscle mass and to produce enzymes. Your muscles can do without glucose for a given period of time, but your brain cannot. When you deprive your body and brain of easily accessible glucose from carbohydrates, it shifts its focus on metabolizing protein to glucose, which it can do, but at a cost in overall efficiency along with the production of toxic waste products. For extended periods of time, your body then becomes a machine that uses protein for energy instead of carbohydrates. This leads to the inability of the body to rebuild muscle mass that is used and broken down on a daily basis, not to mention the muscle mass that was depleted when your body needed to pull extra protein to make the extra glucose. This becomes a very vicious cycle. Over time, this leads to overall loss of muscle mass. Your muscles are your biggest fat burners when you move. Have low muscle mass, have low ability to burn fat. Yet another vicious cycle.

    As for urea being good for sharks. So what? Chocolate can kill a dog and cows can digest insoluble fiber. You can't compare species to species when it comes to the physiology of metabolism
     
  20. chunkylover58 Make it a ... CHEEEESEburger Registered Senior Member

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  21. candy Valued Senior Member

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    Atkins is not the only diet that recommends low carb. The Zone and Pellicione also favor limiting carbs.
     
  22. chunkylover58 Make it a ... CHEEEESEburger Registered Senior Member

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    Yep. There are tons of them out there.

    One thing, I'm not saying that the notion of "low carb" is entirely bad. I try to avoid refined carbs like white flour, white rice, refined white sugar, etc. I eat tons of whole wheat pasta, whole wheat bread, brown rice, beans, and so forth. I get 60-65% of my daily caloric intake from carbs, but just in their whole, natural form. (The other 35-40% is split evenly between protein and fat).

    When I first started to get on a fitness kick, my first step was to cut out sodas. At 6 or 7 12oz. cans a day, I was basically taking in an extra 1000 calories of nonnutrition. That's the main reason for cutting back on this particular categoty of carbs. They're empty calories. (I lost 25lbs in one month doing nothing but cutting out sodas.) With whole grains you get a source of carbohydrates that take longer to digest because they are more complex, leading to a much longer sense of fullness. They also provide fiber, which is a form of carbohydrate that is extremely important to a person's diet and most people get little if any during the day, and people going low carb often get even less.

    So, I guess, ultimately, my big beef with these diets is that "carb" is not defined well enough to most people. I understand that the Atkins diet and others have adjusted their systems to include information about "net carbs" and have allowed more complex carbs here and there because of the aforemtioned deficiency of fiber in these diets. But, as I said, when Hardee's is taking a big slab of fatty meat, wrapping a piece of lettuce around it in lieu of a bun, and calling it "Low Carb," as if it's suddenly good for you, well, that's just asinine. But people who don't know any better are falling for it and are putting way too much saturated fat and cholesterol into their bodies, thinking that somehow the fact that there are no carbs going along for the ride that it all somehow evens out.

    The thing is, when you lose weight by diet alone, you basically become just a smaller version of your dumpy, flabby old self. When you exercise, you not only change the way your body looks, but the way your body metabolizes food and burns fat as well. It becomes more efficient because you have the muscle mass to burn fat 24/7.
     
  23. candy Valued Senior Member

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    Having read a couple of these diet books I know that they also advocate exercise.
    Fast food marketing is not the best souce of diet information.
     

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