Day 12: The Different Types of Carbohydrates

Day 12: The Different Types of Carbohydrates

Over the course of our 28 Day Weight Loss Challenge our Daily Recap videos  will be where I post the notes I have written for the talks I do in the FaceBook Group each night.  Hopefully this will make what we are talking about easier to follow for everyone that wants to join us in the challenge.  You can see each of the 28 Day Challenge recap posts here.  Please subscribe to the YouTube channel to never miss an video.

There are lots of different diets out there that work.  Some are low-carb, some are low fat but the one thing that every successful diet has in common is that they restrict sugar in some way.  Food companies add sugar to almost every processed food to make it taste better and when you add sugar, you add fructose.

 

Sugar is sucrose which is half glucose and half fructose and it’s the fructose that is causing all the metabolic issues.  When you eat sugar, the glucose and fructose are separated by the body and the liver processes each half differently.  The glucose is processed like a carb and turned into glycogen which causes insulin to store it as fat.  The fructose is processed like a fat which overloads your liver by accessing both metabolic pathways in the liver.

 

Americans consume sugar at a rate of about 6.5 ounces a day or 130 lbs a year and our fructose consumption has more than doubled in the last 30 years.  50% of Americans have at least one soda a day with 5% having more than 4 a day.  20-25% of the calories we eat and drink each day is from sugar and for some adolescents, that number is as high as 40%.  And when we say sugar, we don’t just mean the white stuff in the sugar bowl.  This includes white sugar, cane sugar, beet sugar, Sugar in the Raw, fruit sugar, brown sugar, molasses, HFCS, Agave, honey and maple syrup.  Anything that contains both glucose and fructose or fructose by itself.

 

There are 3 main types of carbohydrates.  The first is glucose which causes your body to secrete insulin which drives weight gain.  Glucose doesn’t harm you directly, most of the harm from glucose comes from the gradual weight gain over time.

The second type is ethanol from alcohol.  Ethanol bypasses the liver and is converted to lipids directly by the mitochondria in the cells.  The unused lipids can then be transported back to the liver where they can build up over time damaging the liver and causing cirrhosis.

 

And finally fructose.  It causes a host of issues with your body, let’s start by looking at the Maillard reaction.  This is what turns the hemoglobin in your blood to hemoglobin A1c which is what doctors use to measure your blood sugar level over time.  The reaction product is brown which is what causes bananas to brown as they age and meat to brown when you cook it under a layer of BBQ sauce.  You can brown your meat at 375° for an hour or at 98.6° for 75 years.  Fructose drives the Maillard reaction 7 times faster than glucose causing every cell in your body to age faster which increases your chances of cancer, dementia or cognitive decline and other maladies associated with aging.

 

Fructose also causes ATP depletion in the liver which increases the amount of uric acid in the blood which can lead to gout and increased blood pressure.  It gets metabolized as fat which increases your chance of heart disease.  It promotes inflammation and insulin resistance.  I drives an increase in visceral fat.  It also can cause leaky gut by breaking down intestinal barriers and can cause cognitive decline.  In short, it’s a powerful but slow acting poison.

 

Fructose also drives you to eat more.  It doesn’t stimulate an insulin response so leptin, the satiety hormone, isn’t triggered either.  If you ever want to test this, eat a Big Mac with fries and a Coke on one day, then the next day eat that same Big Mac and fries but this time have a big glass of full fat milk.  There is no way you will be able to drink the same amount of milk as you did Coke.  Why?  The milk triggered leptin and told you that you were full a lot faster.

All notes taken from information found in Fat Chance by Dr Lustig, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, The Angriest Trainer Podcast and Jimmy Moore’s Podcasts.

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