The feedback I gave him might be useful for everyone else on the mentor group so here goes with the article first:
Is Your Refined Diet Making You Fat?
With obesity rates in
There is lots of confusion when it comes to carbohydrates and diet.
Different experts, books and TV programmes recommend; low carb, high carb, no carb, complex carbs, good carbs, net carbs……. and the list goes on.
Carbohydrates are one of the most difficult food types to fully understand because so many foods- some very good for you, and some not - fall under the same umbrella. They include fruits, vegetables, grains, a can of fizzy drink, a donut, or a bowl of corn flakes, for example.
When it comes to staying lean and healthy are carbohydrates ally or enemy?
A study by the American Journal of Epidemiology on ‘How Carbohydrates & Obesity are Linked’ found it is the kind of carbohydrates you eat -not the amount - that determines your risk of obesity.
What researchers need to do is start differentiating between "good" and "bad" carbs. Some researchers are already doing that, but many still fail to consider the difference.
Carbohydrates can be classified in the following groups: complex, simple, starch, fibre, sugars, refined, and unrefined.
So for example:
Vegetables would be in groups; complex, fibre, and unrefined.
White pasta would be in complex, starch and refined.
Brown rice would be in complex, starch and unrefined.
Fizzy cola would be in groups simple, sugar and refined.
Confusing huh?
It is actually not that difficult to know what carbohydrates you should and shouldn’t be eating.
The best classification to go by is the two groups, “good” unrefined and “bad” refined carbohydrates.
Never before have most of us eaten so many refined carbohydrates.
A refined carbohydrate refers to foods where machinery has been used to remove the high fibre bits (the bran and the germ) from the grain. White rice, white bread, pasta and noodles made from white flour, all processed foods (cakes, biscuits etc), sugary cereals, drinks and sugar are all examples of refined carbohydrates.
What have been "refined" out of these processed carbohydrates are all the beneficial nutrients that nature originally put into them. The bran, the fibre, and most of the vitamins and minerals have been stripped away, leaving a bland, white, longer-lasting and shelf-stable product. For example white flour has only 20 percent of the vitamins and minerals and 25 percent of the fibre of the original whole wheat kernel.
You just can’t seem to get away from refined carbohydrates.
At a restaurant-
‘Bread sir/madam?’ Nearly always white and so hard to resist when you’re hungry before the meal arrives.
At a dinner party-
‘Oooh I've made a lovely (white) pasta dish AND garlic (white) bread’ you’ve been invited for dinner; it would be rude not to eat it!
At the hotel breakfast bar-
Emmm? Shall I have special K (yes special K is refined!), cheerios, coco pops or corn flakes this morning? You’ve got to eat something your meeting starts in half an hour and could last till lunch.
Even at the gym-
‘Try one of our high energy (High refined sugar!) drinks to give you a POWER workout!’ Must be good if it makes my workout powerful!
Why are refined carbohydrates so bad for you?
Consuming excess refined grain and sugar carbohydrates is one of the main reasons why so many people suffer from:
Excess weight
Fatigue and frequent sleepiness
Depression
Brain fogginess
Bloating
Dr. David Ludwig, who treats childhood obesity at Boston Children's Hospital, says that highly processed refined carbohydrates and refined sugars are causing hormonal changes that "drive hunger, cause overeating, and increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease.”
Any meal or snack high in refined carbohydrates causes a rapid rise in blood glucose. So to compensate for this your pancreas secretes the hormone insulin into your bloodstream, which lowers your blood sugar. Insulin is essentially a storage hormone that helps you store the excess calories from carbohydrates in the form of fat in case of famine.
Not exercising AND eating a diet in high in refined carbohydrates is a ticket straight to fatsville!
High insulin levels that develop as a result of not exercising and eating refined carbohydrates suppress your fat-burning hormone called hormone-sensitive lipase. This hormone is responsible for releasing fat into your bloodstream to be utilized as fuel.
Once this important hormone is inhibited, your body is unable to burn fat and will then begin using energy from your muscle and carbohydrates.
What makes it worse is this will cause you to become abnormally hungry, which further feeds this vicious cycle!
Keeping insulin levels low and achieving your ideal weight is much simpler than you think. Trouble is we are bombarded with diet and weight loss info and products that confuse the hell out of us.
By avoiding processed foods and refined carbohydrates and getting the right type of regular exercise you can keep your insulin levels low and maintain a healthy weight.
So what carbohydrates should you eat?
Think natural!
It’s the unrefined natural carbohydrates that should replace the processed, refined and sugar carbohydrates. We get all of our clients to switch to unrefined carbohydrates as part of our L.E.A.N fat loss system nutrition plan. The L.E.A.N Fat loss system is our fastest fat loss system yet and comes from over four years of experience in training clients for fat loss.
Our client’s carbohydrates come from foods such as, fresh organic fruit, vegetables and salads, organic brown rice, Quinoa, Amaranth, millet, buckwheat, oats and rye bread.
We recommended 4-6 small meals a day and include;
- A portion of natural organic protein; beans, lentils, poultry, lean meats and fish with every meal.
- Good fats in the form of nuts, seeds, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado and fresh butter.
The moods and weight of our clients improves with the diet change alone, add in our L.E.A.N Fat Loss exercise program and the results are outstanding.
We use big movement multi-joint weight training exercises and high intensity cardiovascular intervals to create a 24 hour fat burning metabolism.
Our most recent success, Alan, a 55 year old retired business man needed to lose a lot of body fat!
Over the years those business lunches, cocktail parties and long days sitting at the laptop had taken their toll.
Knowing his health was at stake he challenged his friend to a three month charity weight loss competition.
In 3 months on the L.E.A.N program Alan lost 3 stone of body fat, raised a load of money for charity and won the competition. Now that’s what I call an achievement!
At our training facility I’ m lucky enough to see results like Alan’s all the time; the commitment and dedication shown by our clients is inspirational.
You will see that by making the change to unrefined carbohydrates you will see dramatic improvements in your weight and moods.
Add in the right type of regular exercise, we recommend weight training 3x a week mixed with high intensity cardio intervals 2-4x week, and you will get AMAZING results!
Mark Lawrence is an experienced fitness professional specialising in fat loss. He runs his own Personal Training Business in
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