What happens if you don't eat carbs?
Guys, good morning we're back with it, should you eat carbs or shouldn't you? But the question really is what happens when you don't eat carbs or you go low carb? Well I got the information for you backed by research, what really happens? Let's take a look for you people who are scared of carbs. If you don't eat carbs guys you're gonna lack nutrients as simple as B vitamins, vitamin C, you know think of fruits, veggies, fibrous carbs, lot of these good stuff we need on diet, we don't have that coming in problems happen yeah.
Speaker 1:Going low or low carb can cause constipation and irregular digestion of course if we're not eating the fibrous carbs it's not good for our belly issues, can have pain and cramps. So make sure you are getting your fibre in yeah. You also don't feel as satisfied for long after a meal if you're not eating enough carbs and fibre so we want to make sure that our hunger our hunger regulation systems working properly, want to make it as easy as possible not to be always thinking about food all day. And obviously fibre does slow down digestion as well. So if we cut carbs and cut fibre we're in a bit of a pickle.
Speaker 1:And a 2011 study found that those who consumed more fibre actually had smaller appetites and ate fewer high calorie foods. Another thing low carb or no carb can do is it causes low energy and difficulty in concentration. So the brain uses carbs as energy guys, the main thing it needs glucose, the brain runs on sugar basically. And you know, you can convert glucose in your muscles and stuff and you know, you can go into ketosis which takes time and it's even harder to maintain, but the brain just wants the juicy glucose yeah. And if we don't give it to it, hard focus, we get brain fog and stuff like that, headaches and dizziness and I think a lot of people who do go you know on a deficit and low calorie experience you go to a workout and you feel like kind of faint and dizzy after it and stuff like that, could be that you're really low on carbs, low in sugar and you just need a bit of carbs in your diet.
Speaker 1:So you know, don't be scaredy carbs. And if you go too low carb or low carb, they can spike cortisol which is a stress hormone and cause dehydration. So in women specifically as well high cortisol can contribute to irregular cycles or missed periods as well. And just remember I said yesterday as well carbs, one gram of carb will bring in three grams of water into your cells, that's awesome because it hydrates the muscles and tissues, you can do a good strength workout, contractions are good. But when you go too low, dehydrated, tired, you feel like a bit stringy we call it, your training's not as good, cramps and GI issues is not good, so you can have that happening.
Speaker 1:On a low carb or carb diet can lead to muscle loss as well, so there was a study in The Netherlands that looked at three diets high carb, moderate carb and low carb and they found the only group that saw, an increase in urine nitrogen which means protein breakdown was the low carb, meaning muscle was getting lost or broken down. So we don't want to lose all muscle gains. So when we're in a deficit we've to think, there's always the moderation approach is the best, yeah, with moderate carb approach is the best with a moderate deficit on high protein, that's giving you the best chance possible of not losing muscle and hopefully gaining muscle but I think a lot of people look at calves and think that it's evil, it's the devil, like sugar and there's books out there by like Doctor. This, Doctor. Da, like Doctor.
Speaker 1:Fung, what's his name, Doctor. Jason Fung or whatever his name is, that are all just trying to sell Unaghari tubes or whatever they've all been debunked but they've got really really compelling arguments like you know sugar's the devil and like yeah sugar must be bad and all this and like you know realizing like that broken down carbs, glucose, sugar, it's just a breakdown like fruit or sugar albeit natural sugar. And I think it's easy to demonize a singular thing and use that like it's exact because it's exactly what political parties back in the day were doing. It's what people do all the time. You demonize one group of people or one thing.
Speaker 1:It's easy to rally the troops and be like, yeah, you're the blame. Immigrants are to blame. Hitler's like the Jews are to blame. You know what I mean? Russia's like capitalism's to blame and then America's like communism's to blame.
Speaker 1:Like as long as you have a singular force of attack, it's easy to persuade people. You gotta watch out for this. It's an easy manipulation of the brain. You know, that's why centrist parties don't work in politics because they're in the middle going, why don't we do a
Speaker 2:bit of left and a bit
Speaker 1:of right? Why don't we have a look at both? No, no wants that. No one wants nuance when it comes to it. And the same as this.
Speaker 1:So look at carbs as either good or bad in people's mind, but of course it's not good or bad. Too many carbs are needed, no. Is it need to have loads carbs? No. Is it good to have carbs enough to have energy and all its benefits?
Speaker 1:Of course it is. Does everyone have the same tolerance for carb highlights? No. Example, Emma Dean or turnover turtle members like, know, she wanted to lose a bit of fat and her carbs on the app were moderate, as we try and do moderate, but some for some people that moderate might be a bit too high. And I suggest they would drop the carbs a bit just see what happens and boom straight away water retention dropped and she felt not only that, that's not the main thing she felt better.
Speaker 1:Okay, she felt better. Maybe there was a bit too much fibre in the diet and that can cause problems as well. It's a too much or too little of things, we've got to find the right balance. Running away from carbs just because you think it causes fat gain, it doesn't happen. Your water retention goes up but more water than the muscle is a good thing.
Speaker 1:Okay, it is a good thing. But here's another stat and again I'll actually explain what I think this means in a sense but a study found that those who consumed the least amount of carbs were thirty two percent more likely to die prematurely of any cause. This was in a comparison of participants who ate the most carbs. In addition, low carb consumers were fifty one percent more likely to die from coronary heart disease, fifty percent more likely to die from, cerebral vascular disease, and thirty five percent more likely to die of cancer. These results were replicated in a meta analysis of the research which found that the overall risk of death from any cause was fifty percent higher in people who consumed the least amount of carbs and the risk of cardiovascular death was thirty percent higher.
Speaker 1:Now, correlation, causation, all this stuff, you know, these studies probably need to be more looking into. But what I think happening here is the people who tend to go low carb tend to be quite extreme in their methods of eating, they tend to go extreme in activities, sometimes they try and like it's a kind of punishment mechanism and that's a high stress environment and they're really low calorie as well and it's all kind of bad news for the body. So you got to watch out for this mindset it's hard to get over to start with. But if you can just accept that sometimes your water weight is going to go up and down and your weight is going to fluctuate, and you deal with it and it's not the end of the world and you eat carbs and you can eat good fats and good proteins, that's where we want to be. The moderation place, that's the key place we want to be.
Speaker 1:I think too many people are scared of carbs. So another solution I looked at, so like when we look at how to stick to a deficit or stick to a certain way of eating, the studies are very, very clear on this. You have to eat a macro split that suits your food, dietary preferences. That's why we built the macro preferences tool. If you eat more fat from your diet because you're vegan, slide up the fat on your macro preferences and lower your carb.
Speaker 1:If you eat more carb because of your way of living you prefer to eat lots of fruits and your carb intake is higher and you're going over, slide up the carb to give them your carbs. This really you think it's such a small change. It's one of the biggest things you can do is to be in line with your food preferences with your macros. As long as protein obviously is where it needs to be for the benefits of eating a high protein diet, your fat and carb ratio needs to be with the foods you like. I love fruit.
Speaker 1:I love fruit, right? Every day I have to have fruit, I have to have fruit, fruit, fruit. High in carbs and the end of the day it is. I get a bit of mango, of watermelon, get this and there are like you know some days I'll have 8,900 grams of my carbs come from fruit. I love it.
Speaker 1:So I might have battle my love of fruit and reduce my carb intake and then not be able to eat fruit, and then not even anything else on top like I love a piece of toast as well, I love a bagel. So for me, I need a moderate carb intake minimum. I'm not really a carb monster as they call it like I can't consume too many carbs, get I do get lethargic and stuff so I know my limits in terms of my carb intake. But I definitely need to be 100 fifty-two hundred grams of carbs a day, so I need this sneak carbs. Yeah, the foods I love got carbs in them.
Speaker 1:What can I say? I don't know what to say, but the same for you, like think about it. What foods do you love? Have a look at the breakdown, but they're higher in carb, they are higher in fat. Like where is your split preference?
Speaker 1:Let me know and then let's work on making sure your split preference is there. And then another thing there was a study in 02/2005 that showed that over fifty percent of participants who had unrealistic expectations of their goals dropped out within a year to start in any diet or health program. So the higher the expectations, higher attrition. Unrealistic weight goals should be tackled at the very beginning of any fitness journey. So if you, you know, this five week challenge realistically what can you get out of it?
Speaker 1:A lot of mental health stuff 100% you can get out of a huge amount. You're to get stronger, you're going to drop body fat, no doubt. But we're not going to be unrealistic and then huge, huge mega changes, but it's the start of things or the reconfirmation of things in your lifestyle. So it's important that we look at these things and I think the expectations comes as well from if it's in line with your food preferences, all we're doing is reducing total volume, that's much easier to do than completely change proof of food preferences from someone who loves cabs, then you need to know cabs. Right?
Speaker 1:That doesn't work. Doesn't work. And then you need to look at your environment, your environment will change you. So manipulate it. Use your brain, manipulate your environment to work better for you.
Speaker 1:Like, if some of you have seen the live workers I'm in, I got a massive portrait of Steve Jobs and Napoleon on the kitchen wall and a memento mori in between. Why have I got that there you might be thinking is he a weird man? Well maybe I am weird, but what the reason I'm doing is manipulating my environment every time I go in for a coffee in the morning, I see two men that achieved more in their lifetimes than other people combined in their generations. It just reminds me that so much can be done with a human life and in the middle is mori, remember you will die, remember death, things come to an end. Am I going to waste my days in my morning dragging my feet going, my god, I'm
Speaker 2:so tired. Or am I going
Speaker 1:to look at them and go, it's possible to achieve crazy stuff in this planet in a time where you're not saying ambition is everything, trying to achieve these huge things is your only goal but it just gives me that kick up the ass every morning when I get my coffee and I've planned my environment to give me that kick in the ass. Maybe in a year's time I'll switch them over to someone else. But for now, he's doing his job. Maybe I should put a bottle of water or like I should have water ready on the table so every time I walk in the kitchen I see water, the sea water is the key why I drink a bit of water, get my water in in the morning. I mean, when you wake up and my clothes are ready there for me to go put on and go for a walk, straight away I got a beanie there, clothes, trainers, socks, coat, scarf, whatever I need to go out in the cold in the morning, that should be there, wake up, put her on, walk out.
Speaker 1:Make it easy, make it easy. Read Atomic Habits because it's the best book on this but really think about those types of things not just like you know throw out junk food you know maybe that doesn't work for you because you just go and order from a shop anyway and if you live in London you get anything delivered in ten minutes horrible. But really like the motivational stuff or like the realization, reconfirmation of your values is a good one, is a good thing to remind yourself every day. Sometimes we don't see them too much, we get sucked into this world online media, get, we don't remind ourselves of the values you wanna live by. I think like you know men, boys in general tend to have these on from younger age because you got some more sports heroes and it's changing now and it's great to see more women's sports getting bigger and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:More attention so more younger people, younger girls will have more, not like a bigger range of, female heroes which is definitely gonna help people. And I think for you as well, look at who you you know, Purim is a prominent place where you spend a lot of your time, it just works, just works. And then, you know, another thing to make sure that you are sticking to things, know it's week two, you might be hitting the valley of despair by week three, but tracking is just, you know, still the best hack you can do, tracking your weight, tracking your progress, tracking your macros, keeping a training log like you're doing, all these things have a huge impact on results. In 2015, there was a study that showed overweight women who use pedometers lost six times more weight than women who didn't. So you know, this doesn't mean that I can go and buy a pedometer and sit down with it, It just means that knowing where we're at, we improve what we can measure.
Speaker 1:But if the measure becomes the goal, that's the problem, there's a problem there. But we track things to know where we're going. And I think a lot of people posting in the Facebook group now with, you know, the volume from week one to week two is nearly double, sometimes a third up, sometimes over double, amazing. Now you start seeing, I get it, I get it. Yes, we started week one a bit lower, bit easier, but week two, we've really upped our volume.
Speaker 1:And some of us have upped our weights. Week three, that's up our weights, up our reps and you start seeing total volume going up and then it starts clicking. Oh this is what it means to train properly, strength train properly, it's the progression that matters, not just going all out, all like just crazy workers day in day out with no direction. Do you know what I mean? So this is the same for everything, same for your macros, like can you this week get a bit closer to your macro goal from last week?
Speaker 1:That's all it is. And then the next week, can you do the same? And can you increase your steps a bit? Then the week after, can you do that increase your steps and do all the workouts this time instead of just one? And it's just about these small progressions every week.
Speaker 1:That's all we need to make huge changes over time. Really is really is that that's that's that is the trick. So, and it's good news, brilliant news, if anything, that we don't have to be doing all these crazy, huge changes. All of a sudden, and we got to be completely different people, like right now, that's not what we're asking. And that's not even what works properly.
Speaker 1:What works properly is the slow progression. But hopefully that was helpful. Please do start thinking about your food preferences and what kind of breakdown of macros they are and start working your macros around them and making sure you use the macro preferences tool to adjust and you'll pretty much be on track for a massively successful five weeks. But yeah, that's it. I hope you enjoyed the session with David as well.
Speaker 1:Like please watch them back if you're not watching them. I think they're important to, really important actually to listen to you. There's so much information in them that's awesome. It really breaks down what happens in strength training, muscle breakdown and stuff like that. But I'll be back tomorrow with a few more studies.
Speaker 1:And if you've got any questions for us, let us know. Another workout today in the morning with Doctor. P and the evening with me. And then tomorrow we got the stoicism session as well with Casey. Again, we've got a big week.
Speaker 1:Guys, I'm off. I hope you walk in by the way, I hope you're enjoying your walk, but I am off. And I hope you have a great day. And remember, you one big thing, another way to phrase you one big thing is what can I do today that's gonna give me the biggest relief that it's been that it's done? You might be in the back of your head I asked that I haven't tracked, like if you tracked with how much relief would I give you for finally getting it done.
Speaker 1:Think about that, what's the one big thing today is gonna give you the biggest relief and go and do it now. Stop messing about. Good luck.
