The importance of fat for carb sensitive people
Today, a few things I've observed are leading me to suspect that dietary fat is a lot more important than even some of us LCers realize.
I propose, when it comes to controlling this carb sensitivity, making sure your metabolism is burning enough fat (via caloric restriction and/or diet) is just as significant as not eating too many carbohydrates.
Let me give my personal anecdotal experience.
My metabolism (blood sugar/insulin) is really, really screwy. The only sure fire way I know to keep it stable and feel "normal" is to eat almost no carb, high fat diet or to eat very little food. Unfortunately, these options also leave me bereft of energy. As a result I tend to waver in between eating more (but feeling unstable sugar often), and under eating (but feeling cold/tired/weak).
Today I did something I don't normally do.
I ate almost nothing all day. The day before I ate well enough food that my body can easily "keep running" without a pick-me-up.
For dinner, I had a large calorie meal that was extremely high fat, and not too-high carb. After eating this meal, I noticed I felt extremely warm and alive. I was sweating and my fingers were warm! Even more interesting was that this meal did not trigger any hyperinsulinemic symptoms. Normally after meals, especially large ones, I just get hungrier, and I feel colder (at least at first)... signs that my energy is actually being messed up not increased. It is just flowing through me in a way that hasn't in such a long time. Granted I did eat a lot yesterday which surely helped give my hormones a "shot in the arm" to make energy. But, the majority of this feeling came after eating the very fatty meal; before it I felt my usual cold & lethargic self when not eating.
This meal was different from my usual meals in that it contained a huge amount of fat. It had full fat blue cheese dressing, and deep fried chicken wing segments. The only carbs were a salad of romaine lettuce which had a lot of the blue cheese dressing.
Now, a normal dinner for me is more like a few ounces of leaner protein (lots of protein), with a ton of veggies that have very little fat. Calories are slightly less, but fat content is much lower and protein much higher. Carb content is about similar.
I've also known (suspected) that the more lean protein I eat, the WORSE my metabolism seems to be. It's like this slow build to the point where it feels like I'm on carbs. On occasion I even felt vivid hypo symptoms a few hrs after eating lots and lots of leaner protein.
*anyway* this has got me thinking...
1) High protein and low carb seem to be synonyms to the public. Is this justified? Maybe for controlling this thing, eating fat primarily, and not protein is just as important as making sure as not to eat too many carbs? I've suspected for a good while now that my body just doesn't jive to high protein the way it does to high fat. Today is just such a crystaline example of that. I've never felt this way after a high protein meal, and in fact, the more I eat of such high protein meals the worse (carb sensitivity wise) I feel.
2) Perhaps a metabolism that is not burning enough fat (because of over eating proteins and ignoring fats) is a reason our metabolisms might not work as well and stalls happen? I mean there is such misinformation that LC = High Protein. If you are unaware of what protein does (if we assume there is any credit to my theory)... then wouldn't that be like eating too many carbs, running your metaboilsm into the ground?
3) On calorie counting...
It's well known some of us need to count, some don't. All this time I kinda looked at fat as just an energy source, non-essential, better reduced for calorie purposes. But now I'm thinking maybe it is more significant because it has some kind of antagonistic effect on my body's dependence on its (rather crappy) sugar metabolism? Maybe it is possible to improve metabolism to the point where one wouldn't have to worry so much about calories? Maybe the difference between those of us who count and those who don't is, at least in part, that the non-counters have a much better ability to burn fats? Perhaps eating fat (and not protein) is one of the ways the already low carb population can improve their metabolisms?
How do other low carbers view fat vs protein? Do you find it makes no difference to your metabolism, or, do you find that fat helps much more than protein? Does anyone find that protein improves metabolism more than fat?
Last edited by ItsTheWooo : Fri, Feb-17-06 at 21:41.
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