Is High Carb Low Fat Diet Right For You?
The high carb low fat diet is still considered a staple of good health, athletic performance and weight loss.
However, this dietary approach is more and more criticized, and some even blame carbohydrates for being the main cause for today's obesity crisis - which is partially true but mostly fallacious. So should you exclude any starches from your diet, and stick with veggies?
As usual, the answer is not black or white, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It fact, most competitive bodybuilders followed some form of high carb low fat diet, so having such a simplistic perspective is just silly.
Also, there is a lot of data showing that many people lost and maintained weight with such a dietary approach (see National Weight Control Registry).
On the other hand, it is also true that some people report mediocre results with a high carb low fat diet, and this fact was speculated by paleolithic aficionados such as Mark Sisson who would tell you to forget about grains and starches altogether.
However, instead of labeling these dietary approaches as good or bad (this seems very childish to me), you would better find out what differentiate the two groups, and which one you actually belong to. Does it make sense?
It's worth mentioning that the controlled groups that you see in NWCR, or successful bodybuilders, consume mostly unrefined, high fiber foods, and researchers usually assume that your average dieter follows the same regime, which is simply not the case.
Instead, most folks interpret this dietary approach as a liberty to binge on bread, pasta and other calorie dense foods, which is a losing strategy because they usually underestimate their consumption (most dieters don't bother to count calories). So the end result is no result.
However, most research shows that as long as the amount of carbohydrate (and overall calories) is kept constant, their glycemic index (GI) doesn't really matter, so you shouldn't freak out thinking that you just had some chocolate cake.
It's interesting to note that most short term (up to six months) controlled trials showed indeed that high-carb diets may be less effective for weight loss, and this fact greatly fueled the carbophobia that we see today.
As expected, these papers are endlessly given as en example, and low-carb proponents generally hide under the table the long term studies (at least one year), which doesn't show any significant difference in weight loss.
The most important variable that influences how many carbohydrates can be handled is insulin sensitivity, and hence there is no wonder that the above results were so different. Generally, the subjects used for these studies are obese, and insulin sensitivity is closely correlated with body fat.
However, as weight was lost, their insulin sensitivity improved considerably, and probably for this reason the differences between the two groups netted out.
It's important to mention that at the same level of leanness, different people may have a different insulin base level, which means that their dietary approach should not be quite the same.
Even so, it would be safe to say that, in this case, the genetic distribution has a small standard deviation, meaning that the majority fall within a median range. (Maybe for this reason, the aforementioned long term trials didn't show any significant difference.)
If you are among the unlucky ones who are just different, high intensity exercise can temporarily overcome insulin resistance by depleting your glycogen stores. So if you crave badly some yummy foods, this is your window opportunity to enjoy decadence.
As a conclusion, if you are a fat ass, maybe you should take it easy with your carbohydrate intake, and leave bread and cookies aside. Conversely, if you are fairly lean and train hard, a high carb low fat diet may be exactly what you need.
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