softy wrote:Okay,
After watching that vid on "where does the fat go" been doing a wee bit of research, cross referencing a number of sites. Now carbs (the badies at the moment) provides our body with most of its energy, if we have to much it is turned to glycogen. Then if we still have to much it is turned to fat. Now although it can be turned to fat, the body prefers to use it as it is hard to store, tending to store fat and protein and use the carbs.
Therefore eating lots of carbs is not as likely to make you fat as other sources of food eg: fat protein.
Now as cyclists we are chasing energy, therefore eating more carbs is going to meet our energy needs. The standard recommendation is to eat 45 to 65% carbs so we want more due to our high activity levels! Push this up another 10 -20% and we get up to around 80% of carbs.
There is a guy from South Oz, which we all know pushing these ratios. Now we all have chooses to do whatever we like and conduct our own research, but the more i look into this the more what he says in general, makes sense.
Some may not like his style, but i do believe he is not to far off the mark with the high carb diet. The evidence i have found supports his suggestions. He also has been saying fat is breathed out for some time now.
Vegan or not, i do believe aligning yourself with his suggestions of High Carb, is somewhat on the money, even if you do want to include some animal products, but maintain the ratios.
Of course just my view and findings.....
Weight loss is more an issue of psychology, than physiology.
It takes the body about 20 minutes to digest simple carbs, 2 hours to digest complex carbs, 5 hours to digest fat, and 7 hours to digest protein. (I'm grossly oversimplifying here, but it will serve for the purposes of discussion.) A higher proportion of fat and protein will keep you feeling fuller for longer.
If you ran a strict scientific experiment, where researchers closely controlled what their subjects (and the control group) could eat, you may well find that the efficiency loss in converting carbs to fat resulted in a lower weight gain.
But in real life, people get to choose what they eat, and those decisions often reflect emotions rather than strictly rational choices. Feeling fuller longer will likely lead to less overeating.
The other thing with the South Oz guy and the ratios you refer to, 80/10/10, is that he is eating 3000 calories a day to support an extremely high level of physical activity, and his ratios represent around 300 calories of fats, and 300 calories of protein. If you scale things back to more typically recommended intake of 2000 calories/day, then the same ratios would give only 200 calories of fat and 200 of protein - and it is more difficult to get the full range of essential fats and amino acids the body needs at these intake levels. I'm not saying he is necessarily wrong, just that ratios is probably too narrow a way to look at things without also considering absolute intake levels.