5 ms·

In the western world the default is a high-carb diet. Moving away from that i probably beneficial to most people. My personal journey has been from a rather nor

by acje 4y ago

In the western world the default is a high-carb diet. Moving away from that i probably beneficial to most people. My personal journey has been from a rather normal western diet towards more vegetarian, but i still don't mind a little bit of bacon on top. The effect was OK, but not spectacular. Now in my mid-40 (25ish BMI) I started walking 2-3 times weekly about two years ago and have advanced to running about as often. Now a few weeks ago started running interval 1-2 times a week. The weight loss is really good with interval training. It doesn't take long to do the exercise, and the body keeps burning fat for hours afterwards. Or so it appears on my bathroom weight and on my garmin watch (forrunner 745, nice and not too expensive). So I save a lot of time doing interval vs walking for hours. That said walking alone in the forest is magic for solving problems, and prepares the untrained body for harder workouts. Also I realized I had a lot of time. I spent 15 years not maintaining this body properly, I can spend 5 years getting back to where I want to be. There is no rush, there is just life.

triyambakam 4y ago
Carb is too broad of a term. Though it generally seems to mean "processed wheat with added refined sugar and oils". Yeah, processed foods aren't healthy. But fruits and vegetables are, and they have carbs (mostly simple, i.e. sugars)
- kif 4y ago
  Eating fruits is actually good for preventing type 2 diabetes [1]. In my personal experience, I've found that following a keto-ish approach for my diet by decreasing processed carbs, as well as increasing fruit intake, has had a positive impact on my weight/fasting blood sugar. [1]: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/eating-whole-fruits-linked-to-lower-risk-of-type-2-diabetes/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/eating-whol...
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Just so long as you are getting whole fruit, not juice...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Fruit (except grapes!) has enough fiber to delay the sugar absorption for long enough that your gut biome gets first crack at it. "Metabolic disorder", aka "fatty liver disease", "processed-food disease", is a product of stripping the fiber out of almost everything. Of course juice has had its fiber stripped out. The illnesses that are killing people are products of excess uric acid that the liver emits after processing fructose.
  - bregma 4y ago
    Uric acid is a metabolite of protein. All the N's in it is the giveaway since the liver is incapable of alchemical transformation. Uric acid is a byproduct of any cell metabolizing protein. Fructose, or "fruit sugar", is the main carbohydrate in fruits and vegetables. If you are on a low-carb "keto" diet (keto is <5% carbs, most low-carb diets are no where near ketogenic) you probably get more carbs from fructose than any other source. High-fructose corn syrup added to things is associated with fatty liver but there's a very long way between guzzling gallons of soda pop and blaming a normal natural ingredient our bodies are tuned to utilize for all problems.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      The liver is not an empty vat you dump things into that products bubble out of. It is a fact that the metabolic pathway in the liver that processes fructose does emit uric acid and fat, once the glycogen store is full. The purine component of the uric acid does not, in fact, come from protein, but from the ADP consumed in the process. Our bodies are not, in fact, tuned to "utilize" fructose, unlike for glucose. Fructose is processed only in the liver, like other toxins, most particularly alcohol, which is processed identically. The resulting fat is shipped off to fat cells after the liver is saturated. The uric acid is released into the bloodstream to be collected by the kidneys. The normal pathway by which fructose is processed, when it comes with adequate fiber, is through the gut biome, as I noted. Inventing a claim of "alchemical transformation" to discount facts you are wholly ignorant of is dishonest. Maybe look things up? You could learn something.
- acje 4y ago
  Yes, I more accurately moved form "normal diet" including beer, processed food and fast carbs to eating much more vegetables with oil and spices rather than sauce. I don't like the "looks like meat" vegetarian stuff. But the major effects for me seems to be coupled to activity rather than eating, although cutting animal fat and alcohol has been a good help on the way. My major findings: - reduce alcohol and animal fat - start soft, walk until you are fit to run, then interval - walking is great for problem solving - running uphill and walking downhill is great if the knees hurt - interval really is much more efficient than running long distances for pretty much any meaningful measure of progress for me (weight, VO2 max). I'm not trying to win at anything specific.
wil421 4y ago
You say Western diet but I think you’re forgetting about India. Most of the vegetarian dishes have huge amounts of carbs. I was kinda shocked at how much carbs and fried starchy foods it contains. The one thing I do like about the Indian vegetarian diet is they arent trying to recreate meat-like foods, ex. veggie burgers and fake meat.
weberer 4y ago
>In the western world the default is a high-carb diet. It's like this everywhere in the world. You know rice is mostly carbs, right?
- Dma54rhs 4y ago
  Ghana and many many other African countries are 80% carbs or more. The whole Western carb angle is just a cope for eating too damn much calories.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    Eating low-carb doesn't reduce weight directly, but indirectly. It reduces hunger because you don't get the sugar spike and subsequent crash which causes you to feel hungry 2 hours later. Instead, you get hungry 6 hours later. This helps reduce snacking between meals and total daily calories. Low-carb also helps because the carbs you eat are turned to sugar which your pancreas then has to produce insulin to tell your body to push that sugar into fat cells, increasing weight.
    - sn9 4y ago
      Or you could just eat as many carbs as you want, but from whole food sources with plenty of fiber like the rest of the world.
  - Der_Einzige 4y ago
    Correct - and I'm shocked at how many HN readers are so hilariously wrong about diet advice. I've seen people here say "you can't outrun your fork" as though one of the greatest impacts of exercise (appetite suppression and hormonal renormalization) doesn't happen. Also, the people trying so hard to disprove calories-in-calories-out here are even funnier. I can tell that the average HN user is overweight just from these comments.

by acje 4y ago

triyambakam 4y ago

Carb is too broad of a term. Though it generally seems to mean "processed wheat with added refined sugar and oils". Yeah, processed foods aren't healthy. But fruits and vegetables are, and they have carbs (mostly simple, i.e. sugars)

kif 4y ago
Eating fruits is actually good for preventing type 2 diabetes [1]. In my personal experience, I've found that following a keto-ish approach for my diet by decreasing processed carbs, as well as increasing fruit intake, has had a positive impact on my weight/fasting blood sugar. [1]: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/eating-whole-fruits-linked-to-lower-risk-of-type-2-diabetes/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/eating-whol...
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Just so long as you are getting whole fruit, not juice...
ncmncm 4y ago
Fruit (except grapes!) has enough fiber to delay the sugar absorption for long enough that your gut biome gets first crack at it. "Metabolic disorder", aka "fatty liver disease", "processed-food disease", is a product of stripping the fiber out of almost everything. Of course juice has had its fiber stripped out. The illnesses that are killing people are products of excess uric acid that the liver emits after processing fructose.
- bregma 4y ago
  Uric acid is a metabolite of protein. All the N's in it is the giveaway since the liver is incapable of alchemical transformation. Uric acid is a byproduct of any cell metabolizing protein. Fructose, or "fruit sugar", is the main carbohydrate in fruits and vegetables. If you are on a low-carb "keto" diet (keto is <5% carbs, most low-carb diets are no where near ketogenic) you probably get more carbs from fructose than any other source. High-fructose corn syrup added to things is associated with fatty liver but there's a very long way between guzzling gallons of soda pop and blaming a normal natural ingredient our bodies are tuned to utilize for all problems.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    The liver is not an empty vat you dump things into that products bubble out of. It is a fact that the metabolic pathway in the liver that processes fructose does emit uric acid and fat, once the glycogen store is full. The purine component of the uric acid does not, in fact, come from protein, but from the ADP consumed in the process. Our bodies are not, in fact, tuned to "utilize" fructose, unlike for glucose. Fructose is processed only in the liver, like other toxins, most particularly alcohol, which is processed identically. The resulting fat is shipped off to fat cells after the liver is saturated. The uric acid is released into the bloodstream to be collected by the kidneys. The normal pathway by which fructose is processed, when it comes with adequate fiber, is through the gut biome, as I noted. Inventing a claim of "alchemical transformation" to discount facts you are wholly ignorant of is dishonest. Maybe look things up? You could learn something.
acje 4y ago
Yes, I more accurately moved form "normal diet" including beer, processed food and fast carbs to eating much more vegetables with oil and spices rather than sauce. I don't like the "looks like meat" vegetarian stuff. But the major effects for me seems to be coupled to activity rather than eating, although cutting animal fat and alcohol has been a good help on the way. My major findings: - reduce alcohol and animal fat - start soft, walk until you are fit to run, then interval - walking is great for problem solving - running uphill and walking downhill is great if the knees hurt - interval really is much more efficient than running long distances for pretty much any meaningful measure of progress for me (weight, VO2 max). I'm not trying to win at anything specific.

wil421 4y ago

You say Western diet but I think you’re forgetting about India. Most of the vegetarian dishes have huge amounts of carbs. I was kinda shocked at how much carbs and fried starchy foods it contains. The one thing I do like about the Indian vegetarian diet is they arent trying to recreate meat-like foods, ex. veggie burgers and fake meat.

weberer 4y ago

>In the western world the default is a high-carb diet. It's like this everywhere in the world. You know rice is mostly carbs, right?

Dma54rhs 4y ago
Ghana and many many other African countries are 80% carbs or more. The whole Western carb angle is just a cope for eating too damn much calories.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Eating low-carb doesn't reduce weight directly, but indirectly. It reduces hunger because you don't get the sugar spike and subsequent crash which causes you to feel hungry 2 hours later. Instead, you get hungry 6 hours later. This helps reduce snacking between meals and total daily calories. Low-carb also helps because the carbs you eat are turned to sugar which your pancreas then has to produce insulin to tell your body to push that sugar into fat cells, increasing weight.
  - sn9 4y ago
    Or you could just eat as many carbs as you want, but from whole food sources with plenty of fiber like the rest of the world.
- Der_Einzige 4y ago
  Correct - and I'm shocked at how many HN readers are so hilariously wrong about diet advice. I've seen people here say "you can't outrun your fork" as though one of the greatest impacts of exercise (appetite suppression and hormonal renormalization) doesn't happen. Also, the people trying so hard to disprove calories-in-calories-out here are even funnier. I can tell that the average HN user is overweight just from these comments.