Your Diet: Carbs vs. Fats. Round 1!

Your Diet: Carbs vs. Fats – Round 1!

Recently at a friend’s bachelors party brunch, a discussion about diet came up, leading into what is really the best diet for lay people and athletes. I sat and listened, as much of what I was hearing was actually correct, and I thought it would be great to share with you all, with some added details of course. Here we will talk about carb loading vs. using fat for fuel!

The problem with carb loading:

• We have all heard of carb loading before a marathon or sports event. This has been done for many years and thought to be the best way to keep your performance going during a sports event.
• When carb loading, you are storing carbs as glycogen in your liver and fat cells, increasing your glycogen stores, which your body uses for fuel. Once this fuel is used up, your performance suffers.
•  Once glycogen is burned out, you “bonk out” and must replenish it by eating more sugars during the event.. the problem with relying on sugars for energy.
• Sugars cause more digestive problems.
• Although carb loading may temporarily improve performance, it can be negated by the amount of water gain, required to store sugars!
• Cancer loves carbs

FAT for fuel:

• Using fat for fuel is the key to performance.
• Once glycogen stores are depleted, your body will move to using fat for fuel.
• Fat can help stem cell regeneration and better tissue repair, as well as reducing inflammation and increasing insulin sensitivity.
• Carb loading inhibits fat burning and the other metabolic benefits of fat burning.
• High fat diets lead to the use of ketone bodies, or ketosis.
• Cancer cells cannot convert their metabolism to using ketone bodies for energy and are stuck in using glycogen or sugars.
• High fat diets can help kill cancer.
• High fat diets can help you BURN fat! The average American diet is chalk full of carbs.. this makes your liver down regulate the entire fat burning process, because it hasn’t needed to.
• When you burn fats, your body doesn’t run out of energy!
• Fat is required to help with supplying your cell walls with the lipids it needs to keep your cells strong, as well as your cardiovascular system.
• FAT TASTES GOOD (high-quality fat of course).

To sum it all up.. research shows that when you reach your ideal body weight, there are great benefits to a diet consisting of low net-carbs, moderate protein intake and high amounts of quality fats. This can help slow the aging process (hooray!) as well as prevent many chronic degenerative diseases! Keep in mind always eat non-processed foods, i.e. read your ingredient labels.. if you can’t pronounce it don’t eat it!

What’s the most effective thing you have done to maximize your exercise performance? Please comment below, or on our facebook and twitter!