Carbs and exercise

Carbs can be somewhat useful in fueling moderately active lifestyles such as construction work, physical education, personal training, or other work that requires you stand on your feet all day. Carbs are mostly useful, however, in fueling higher intensity exercise that lasts for longer periods of time. High-intensity exercise like sprinting or a CrossFit style workout that lasts more than five minutes relies on carbohydrates to fuel your body, but this doesn’t mean you need to “carb-load” for a five-minute or even thirty-minute workout. Regular, moderate carb intake will provide you with sufficient fuel for these activities. If you regularly perform sixty minutes of high-intensity exercise, you may need to eat more carbs on those days.

Know this: You should eat carbohydrates according to your average activity and stress levels to avoid storing extra body fat, keep triglyceride levels in a healthy place, and to prevent visceral fat development around your organs.

SUFFICIENT CARBOHYDRATE INTAKE (FROM GOOD CARBS!)

GENERAL LIFESTYLE FACTORS:
ACTIVITY & STRESS LEVELS

very low carb*:
0-30g/day

An inactive person or insulin-resistant person seeking to make drastic changes to their sugar metabolism; someone interested in a ketogenic diet approach (see here); not recommended or necessary for most people seeking general, optimal health.

low carb:
30-75g/day

Not very active or participating in intense cardiovascular activity that lasts fewer than twenty minutes; also suitable for most weight lifting and strength-training individuals; someone interested in a ketogenic diet approach
(up to ~50g of carbs) (see here); this is a healthy range for many people.

moderate carb:
75-150g/day

Moderately active or completing intense cardiovascular activity that lasts between twenty and sixty minutes per day; a generally active job or lifestyle; a moderately stressful lifestyle; this is a healthy range for many people.

higher carb:
150g+/day
(up to around 300g)

Intense cardiovascular activity that lasts more than sixty minutes per day; a very active job with consistent movement; a very stressful lifestyle that is mentally and physically demanding; this is a healthy range for people who are very active or have very stressful lives.

* A prolonged very low carb approach is not recommended for most people, as we may miss out on some of the beneficial micronutrients available in carbohydrate-rich foods. While nose-to-tail animal food consumption including all organ meats would circumvent this issue, most people are not eating animals in this fashion today. Good carbs are also important for proper digestive function, as carbohydrates aid in balancing healthy gut flora (bacterial balance).

carb here often?

If you don’t need to eat lots of carbs to fuel your daily life, what do you need to eat? That’s easy—fat.

Fat serves as a perfect, long-lasting fuel source for your body, but here’s the catch: Your body can’t efficiently burn fat for fuel (from your food or from your fanny) if you are constantly eating a steady stream of carbohydrates.

In order to become what is called “fat-adapted,” meaning your body knows how to effectively use fat for fuel, you have to stop giving it sugar (carbs) all day, every day. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s just how it works. Actually, this should be great news because it means you don’t have to eat every couple of hours to “fuel your metabolism.” Quite the contrary! When you stop feeding yourself so many carbs and stop fearing natural, healthy fats (see here because this may not mean what you think), your body relearns how to make it through the day. It burns not only the fat you eat, but the extra food you have stored as body fat—the same fat you’ve been trying to burn off by cranking away on the elliptical machine for years.

I know what you’re thinking: “But how does that work? I thought I was supposed to eat lots of healthy whole grains and plenty of fruit to keep myself in shape?” Well, the answer is all about hormones and how they respond to the food you eat.

insulin is like your mom: it wants to constantly put stuff away

As I mentioned in the digestion section, insulin is a storage hormone, and your pancreas releases it primarily in response to dietary carbohydrates. It is insulin’s job to take nutrients from your bloodstream (where they land after you digest your food) and deliver them into your cells for energy. So, just like your mom picks up the stuff lying around the house and puts it in its rightful place, insulin finds nutrients in your bloodstream and tries to put them in their rightful place—your cells.

Insulin does its job over a period of one to two hours after you eat a meal, so it “cleans up the mess” pretty quickly. Bad carbs make a bigger mess that sends your mom (insulin) into overdrive, putting it all away quickly.

Since high blood sugar is toxic, your body needs to respond to any amount of carbohydrate you eat by secreting insulin. This is necessary to bring your blood sugar levels back to normal, and normal is about four grams, which is equivalent to just one teaspoon of sugar. Even a little bit of sugar in your bloodstream causes insulin to respond. Within an hour or two, if insulin has been able to do its proper job, your blood sugar levels should return to this normal level.

Without insulin, you cannot get the nutrients from your food into your cells. This is why I mentioned the “wasting” phenomenon that people with Type 1 Diabetes experience. They would literally waste away without insulin injections because they do not have enough of the hormone to get nutrients to their cells.

So if insulin does such a great job as mom, what’s the problem? When your hormones are out of balance, insulin can run the show entirely and constantly put stuff away without allowing your body to use enough of the stored nutrients. In other words, it’s too much of a good thing.

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Дата добавления: 2015-11-14