A diet without hunger

Carbs get a bad rap in the diet world. Case in point when I was reading something last week a person was being described as “so slim they’d obviously never eaten a carb in their life”. So by implication if you eat carbs you won’t be slim. Ok, does that mean I’m the exception that proved the rule? No, I’m not as I know other whole carb eaters who are just as lean as I am.

I actually eat a lot of carbs every day. I estimate that I have brown rice with about 10 meals a week. On top of that my breakfast every day starts out with ½ cup of whole rolled oats and ¼ of quinoa. Many meals also include beans, nuts, seeds, and starchy vegetables. So if carbs were going to make you fat and give you diabetes, I would be fat and diabetic, right? However my current BMI is 19 and I am not diabetic. So what gives?

Every time you read or hear that you need to “avoid carbs” you must interpret this as avoid processed carbs”. Such things as: anything made with white flour such as breads, crackers and cookies; white rice; foods with added sugar. Processed carbs are bad for you because they are so quickly converted to glucose in excess to your needs. The body has to poor insulin into your bloodstream and the excess glucose is quickly converted to fat stored in cells starting with those around your belly. Eat processed carbs long enough and you will be overweight and stressing your pancreas where insulin is made. Eventually your pancreas reaches a point of exhaustion and cannot make enough insulin to all the glucose in your bloodstream resulting in Type 2 Diabetes.

Whole carbs such as brown rice, whole oats and flour, legumes such as beans and lentils with their outer coatings of bran fiber or high "resistant starch" content can only be digested slowly or not at all by the body resulting in a measured release of sugar into the bloodstream. "Resistant starch" (RS) is a form of starch found in legumes which is almost indigestible by the body and so passes through the gut with only a few of the calories becoming available.

Carbs get a bad rap in the diet world. Case in point when I was reading something last week a person was being described as “so slim they’d obviously never eaten a carb in their life”. So by implication if you eat carbs you won’t be slim. Ok, does that mean I’m the exception that proved the rule? No, I’m not as I know other whole carb eaters who are just as lean as I am.

I actually eat a lot of carbs every day. I estimate that I have brown rice with about 10 meals a week. On top of that my breakfast every day starts out with ½ cup of whole rolled oats and ¼ of quinoa. Many meals also include beans, nuts, seeds, and starchy vegetables. So if carbs per se were going to make you fat and give you diabetes, I would be fat and diabetic. However my current BMI is 19 and I am not diabetic.

Every time you hear statements like “carbs are bad for you”, “avoid carbs”, etc. you must in your head add “processed” in front of carbs to form “processed carbs”. Yes, processed carbs are bad for you; they are readily converted to glucose and require your pancreas to flood your body with insulin. The body’s natural response to excess glucose is to convert and store it as fat so you end up overweight. And the demand placed on the pancreas to make a lot of insulin a lot of the time in response to processed carbs ultimately exhausts the pancreas and you end up with type-2 diabetes.

Food	Glycemic Load (High = 20 and above; Low = 1-10)
White potato (1 medium baked)	29
White rice (1 cup cooked)	26
White bread (1 bagel, 3.5 in. diameter)	24
White pasta (1 cup cooked)	21
Chocolate cake (1/10 box cake mix + 2T frosting)	20
Black rice (1 cup cooked)	14
Butternut squash (1 cup cooked)	8
Green peas (1 cup cooked)	8
Lentils (1 cup cooked)	8
Black beans (1 cup cooked)5	6

http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/whiterice_diabetes.aspx