The Most Underrated Weight Loss Hack
– Eating carbs has become equal to obesity in our world today. – A large proportion of
the population with obesity or diabetes would benefit from
restricting carbohydrates. – Obese world population. Okay, so that's one in three people. That's a lot of us they're telling to not eat bread, pasta, and rice. But why? – What this diet does is it
is high in fat and protein, and that satiates your brain
and reduces your hunger. – Okay, more carbs, more
cravings, and hunger.
– Many people are actually unaware that they're carbohydrate intolerant. – The weight just fell off,
and I was enjoying my food. I felt fantastic. My exercise capacity increased, and I got to the end of that
and I just couldn't believe it. – And these benefits
have been so compelling that cutting out carbs has infiltrated every part of our daily life. Restaurants are offering it,
celebrities are preaching it. – You know, I do a high
protein, very low carb — – Athletes are touting it. – LeBron James and Carmelo
Anthony and Kobe Bryan are three of the biggest
stars in American basketball are now on low carb eating.
– We even have low carb versions of all the carby goodness we love. Nothing like having our
taco and eating it too, huh? (upbeat music) Okay, maybe not, but is this all true? Do we really need to say goodbye to 70% of the grocery store, ignore 90% of a restaurant menu,
and navigate family dinners and parties awkwardly
saying no to the burgers, pizzas and fries shoved
at us by our thin friends who unfairly can gorge
on all that deliciousness without second thought, or are we trapped in
a web of lazy science, money, and politics? To untangle this web, let's use the story of my co-coach, Lucy.
As a kid, Lucy was bigger than her sister, and her family frequently
reminded her of this fact with lighthearted teasing
at every opportunity. While it was said in jest
to Lucy, it felt shameful. She didn't feel like it was a joke, and she felt embarrassed about her size, a feeling that kept surfacing
when she couldn't keep up with friends on hikes. When she had to shop in the
bigger size clothing section than her friends, when she
was made fun of at school, even if it wasn't
directly about her weight, like most of us, she started with things that promised the fastest results, starvation diets, and tons of exercise. When those failed, she switched to something
that looked slower, but had tons of testimonials,
calorie counting. At first things were going well, she was watching pounds
drop week after week, she felt thrilled, she was over the Moon, she could almost taste the victory, but then after seven weeks, her adherence to calorie
counting started to wane.
She was sick of going to a restaurant, and trying to pick the
lowest calorie option, of spending hours, trying to
find swaps for beloved foods. As a result, sticking
to her calorie target became harder and harder, until her weight loss stalled. She felt confused,
disappointed, and frustrated. She felt calorie counting
wasn't working for her anymore. So she went back to Google
searching high and low until she hit upon an article saying a lot of people's
bodies can't process carbs, which causes them to cling to body fat. "This is my problem" she thought. Hello, hello. This is coach Richa,
interrupting storyteller Richa, to break down how this
is a key turning point toward Lucy or anyone starting the descent in the low carb web.
There are three very common
sequence of events happening. First, Lucy was aiming
for a 500-calorie-deficit, which for her size was
a 30% calorie deficit. This is huge. At first, her body was like,
whoa, are we in a famine, or is this a one-off? Maybe it's a one-off, and we have plenty of
fat reserves right now. So let's hold off on action for now. This is why when you first start any diet, no matter how extreme,
you don't feel much hunger or cravings, but then
after months went by, her body was like, it's official. We're in a famine. We've already lost so much
off of our fat reserves, and she's doing a
terrible job finding food. We're not gonna survive this, pump up the hunger hormones and cravings to motivate her to hunt for food now. If Lucy had set a milder deficit, she wouldn't be going through
intense bouts of cravings, and hungers in just seven weeks. But you know what? Even if she had set a milder deficit, she still would've failed, because her approach to
calorie counting was wrong.
She thought of her food choices as low calorie or high calorie, that's it. There was no in between. So of course, when it came to cooking, she'd spend hours trying
to replace every ingredient with the lowest calorie thing possible. She always bought the
lowest calorie popcorn, always ordered a sandwich
with no bread or cheese, and even RSVPd no to parties, because it'd be hard to say no to foods. Come on, who can live like that? No wonder she broke.
If Lucy had instead seen calories
more like budgeting money, then it would have allowed her
to eat some chocolate daily, if she wished. She could have bought that full fat yogurt that satisfies her so much more, she could actually partake
in some of the pizza her roommate had ordered as takeout. Isn't this so much easier to sustain? But since she didn't, it led to the very normal
frustration of feeling like she's doing so much, but seeing no progress on the scale.
The cycle of trying to stick
to the low calorie option, then failing at sticking to it, then the immediate
guilt and shame from it, and then not meeting her targets,
then her weight stalling, that's a lot. It caused her to feel awful about herself. Add to that feeling lost and helpless on how to change things to make it work, and you have the perfect
setup for believing a message like your body may carb inefficient, which is why you can't lose weight.
But remember, whenever Lucy
did meet her calorie target, and with much of it coming
from carbs, she lost weight. So her body wasn't carb
inefficient, it wasn't broken. What was broken were her systems to set sane targets and
effectively meet them. But nobody told her that. Continuing our story, Lucy dug into the science
of why carbs cause people to cling to body fat. She found that it has to
do with insulin resistance. Here's how it happens. One of the nutrients that
food gets broken down into is glucose, which your organs need for functioning.
Insulin is what shuttles the
glucose from your bloodstream into your organs. And there's a specific amount
or threshold of insulin that your organs need to
detect for them to open up and absorb glucose. Now, if you overeat a
higher amount of glucose floods your bloodstream, and thus a higher amount
of insulin is needed to shuttle it all into your organs. Over time, as overeating keeps happening, your organs start expecting
a higher threshold of insulin amount to be met before they will open
up to accept glucose. This is a problem, because you won't hit
that higher threshold every time you eat, which leaves too much
glucose in your bloodstream.
So your liver clears it all
up by converting it into fat, fat not only stores energy, but also makes hormones
and other substances that causes chronic inflammation, which in turn, can push the
insulin threshold even higher, making this whole cycle
worse and worse over time. This is insulin resistance. Now the reason people say to cut carbs to reverse insulin resistance
is because carbs break down mostly into glucose, and thus need more
insulin to be cleared up than proteins or fats. This is why carbs as a
whole tend to be higher on the glycemic index and
index that rates foods by how much glucose it
releases into the bloodstream. Furthermore, when the
high amount of glucose in your bloodstream from
eating carbs get cleared up, your body observes a
sudden crash in glucose, which you experience as
a sudden drop in energy. Sudden changes always
freak our bodies out. So it starts pumping
hunger and craving hormones to make you hunt for instant energy foods, and what gives us instant energy? Carbs. Lucy felt like she was
having a total breakthrough. She did have a history
of eating a lot of carbs, which must mean her body
had produced so much insulin over the decades that she
must be insulin resistant at this point, which meant her body
was prone to converting whatever she ate into fat
more than her thin friends, and eating carbs was what
was causing her to overeat because experience told
her she loved eating carbs.
Clearly all roads pointed
to awarding carbs. It all made sense. But does it though? The core premise in all of this is that when you eat more carbs, you produce more glucose and
then insulin to clear it up. But the glycemic index was
developed in a lab setting based on eating 50 gram carbs
alone, in a fasted state, on a daily basis, do you
eat your meals like that? I bet you normally don't only eat carbs, but mix it up with other food
groups like proteins and fats. And guess what? When you mix it up like that, the glucose spike is
smaller, and correspondingly, the insulin spike needed
to clear it up is smaller.
For example, potatoes are
high glycemic index food, but if you combine them
with salmon and broccoli, the glycemic index of this meal is lower than eating potatoes alone. Similarly, some of the low-carb proponents will tell you to cut out high
net carb fruits like orange, but oranges also contain a lot of fiber, which again creates a smaller
glucose and insulin spike. But guess what do we consume by itself without adding protein or fiber? All the refined foods, soda,
energy drinks, desserts, refined grains, and so on. This is the stuff we pound down
in large volumes in one go, especially because a lot of junk foods are combinations of high
carbs and high fats, which feel super palatable to our body.
So we find it hard to stop. In fact, in nature foods
that are both high carb and high fat are rare. Breast milk is one of a
small handful of examples. Our bodies don't know how to
deal with this modern invention of high carbs and high fat foods. Now, since junk and sweets
are all mainly sugar, they're categorized under carbs, which leads to the overly
simplified thinking of cut out all carbs. But as you can see the
problem isn't with all carbs, it's only the carbs we
eat in large volumes without mixing it with whole
foods that is junk and sweets. While that disproves
carbs causing overeating, let's discuss the second argument. There are research studies, which shall low carb causes improvement in insulin resistance. Note that in the studies where
low carb caused improvement in insulin resistance, the low carb group also
lost a lot of weight. So is it low carb that caused
improved insulin resistance or the weight loss? As Yale Diabetes Center
doctor Silvio Inzucch says in this Washington Post article, "Obesity leads to insulin resistance "with less evidence for a relationship "in the other direction." What will improve insulin
resistance, if you have it, is losing weight, no matter
if you lost that weight through low carb, calorie
counting, macro counting, intermittent fasting, whatever else.
The method doesn't matter. And finally, the keto argument
of switching to burning to fat for fuel instead of
stored carbs, AKA glycogen, every credible study shows
that people who lose fat while doing keto also have
to be in a calorie deficit. If they aren't, they don't lose
fat, even while in ketosis. There is no magic to low carb folks. Okay, at this point in the story, Lucy doesn't know any
of this and jumps into a less than a 100 grams
carbs per day plan. That first week, she felt
so much more energetic than ever before. And to put a cherry on
top of the low carb cake, she was losing weight those
first few weeks so much faster than she ever did with calorie counting.
This proved that all the low
carb science was correct. Carbs were what had been
stopping her weight loss and making her low energy. So that higher energy suddenly, what do you think happens
when you cut your cake, croissant, pasta, soda, and
chips consumption by a fourth? You guessed it. You no longer have as big a spikes, so you no longer have as low crashes, ergo, you are experiencing
more constant energy throughout the day. Do you have to do low carb to reduce junk and sweets consumption? Nope. You can do it on any old plan. Now for the rapid weight loss
drop in the first few weeks, that is indeed what happens,
but it's not fat loss. Here's why. When you eat more carbs than
your body needs immediately, your body stores it as glycogen. Why, a primary role of carbs is to provide you with immediate energy.
For example if you suddenly
broke into a run to catch a bus, your body switches to
burning mainly carbs, because carbs are more
quickly converted into energy, which your muscles then use
to enable your sudden run. Other fuel sources like fats and protein are inefficient sources of energy, which is why your body
doesn't prefer to rely on them for moderate to intense exercise, that is where there's a sudden
high demand for instant, constant supply of energy. For example, if it's ever happened to you that at the start of a
workout, you felt amazing, and then suddenly out
of nowhere, mid-workout, you started feeling sluggish? What happened was you
ran out of carbs to burn.
Among endurance athletes, this is called hitting
the wall or the bonk. So naturally when you eat more carbs than you need to burn immediately, your body stores carbs as glycogen. So that it's ready for whenever
you need to suddenly break into a run or climb stairs. But when it stores carbs as glycogen, each gram of glycogen has to be stored with 2.7 grams of water. All together, this adds
weight to your body, which is not fat, just
glycogen and water weight, but of course, when you see the scale, it just appears as weight. And when you start a low carb diet, your body is not getting enough carbs to fuel your activities.
So when you do a sudden jog
to the bus, or climb stairs, your body raids your glycogen stores, and if you're also in a calorie deficit, which naturally happens
when you implement anything or usual round of junks and sweets, you of course see a big
drop in your weight, because you're not only losing fat due to the calorie
deficit, but also losing a bunch of glycogen and
water weight alongside it. This probably makes you super happy, and your belief in low carb being key to weight loss is affirmed. And the opposite happens, if one day you decide to eat
out or have higher carb foods. When you suddenly have more carbs that you didn't have
on your low carb diet, even if you maintain your calorie deficit, your body goes, "Oh my God, "finally, some efficient
fuel, store it away." And so when you hop on a scale, you see your weight go up,
and that makes you unhappy, even if what you're seeing is just glycogen and water weight.
It can't be fat gain because you maintain your calorie deficit, but
your mind blames carbs. And this again, reaffirms your beliefs that carbs equal fat gain. When as you can see,
this is not true at all. Okay, so Lucy was loving her low car plan, until her weight loss stalled again. Since cutting carbs had helped her before, she figured that she
could cut even more carbs, this time she went all
in by starting keto. No, Lucy. This is just like playing
poker with just one card. How do you expect to win? If cutting carbs is your only card to play every time your weight
loss doesn't go right, there's only so much carb you can cut.
And as I mentioned earlier, studies have shown even people in ketosis don't lose weight if they
aren't in a calorie deficit. But now you're in ketosis. Having said goodbye to all carbs forever, and your weight loss gets stuck. Now what? Honestly, Lucy is all of us here. We fall into this tunnel vision, because of how normalized lazy
low carb science has become through mass politicing and marketing. Let me explain. It all started when George
McGovern, a South Dakota Senator visited the Pritikin
Health Clinic in the 1970s, where he was stunned to see
the dramatic health benefits of consuming a higher
whole plant based food diet than Americans typically ate. After consulting with researchers who conducted studies on the
effect of animal-based products on cardiovascular disease and cancer, he recommended to the
US Senate to cut back on animal-based foods like
meat, eggs, and dairy, and fill in the space left
with whole plant-based foods. This caused a big
backlash from politicians, and the electorate alike, as it would immediately
negatively affect dairy and livestock industry.
As a result, the recommendation was
scaled back to recommend reducing red meat, not white meat, a political decision,
not a scientific one. The main recommendation was to eat more whole plant based foods, but they still needed to put
some quantitative guideline on how much to reduce
animal-based food consumption without saying outright, "Folks, reduce meat, eggs, and dairy" because that would never
get approved in the Senate due to fear of losing
livestock farmer votes. Wrecking their brains, they realized that fat was a nutrient Americans mainly got
from animal-based foods, so they decided to use fats as a proxy to set a numerical guideline for reducing animal-based
food consumption. This was set at 30%. Their hope was the gap
would then be filled in with plant-based foods.
But instead how this got
communicated to the public was only about reducing fats. The more part of the guideline
to eat more whole plant-based foods got lost, and thus unsurprisingly, the gap got filled with
processed foods instead, like breakfast cereals, donuts, and a slew of sugary products. This of course led to
sugar cravings, overeating, and didn't stop the
growing obesity epidemic. On top of that, as the market got overwhelmed
with low fat foods, products, and programs, new weight loss businesses
struggled to stand out, and that's when the classic
marketing tactic happened. Shout something different. This leads to two layers
to any weight loss product, the science part actually
causing it to work, this can be applied sustainably and enjoyably to suit your lifestyle.
And then the marketing part, that's sold as science,
but is not science. If a diet is unsustainable,
it is this part that's the culprit. So for low carb, the science is simply a calorie deficit, and focus on whole fats and proteins instead of junk and sweets. To be clear, any diet that
causes fat loss relies on this. The marketing part is the
extreme reduction of carbs, which isn't necessary for fat loss, but makes for a great way to stand out in a crowded weight loss market. The low carb marketers have
been a boon to the dairy and livestock industry, who separately and together
with these marketers fund low carb science papers, and adds to promote the
healthiness of high fat diets. All of this mass marketing has resulted in mass normalization.
We hear celebrities are doing low carb. We watch our favorite
athletes talk about it. We walk into a restaurant and
the menu has low carb options. We have low carb versions of every naturally high carb product. With this barrage of low carb messaging, what are we, an unsuspecting person trying to go about our
day supposed to think? Of course we think this is what's healthy. And the irony is this
is the exact opposite of what the original
nutrition recommendation was, to eat more whole foods.
As in, we need all the nutrients,
don't target each nutrient as if one is better or
worse than the rest. The big picture has been lost. Let me ask you, what's the
point of your weight loss? Isn't it to live your dream life? Do you picture your dream
life struggling perpetually to feel better after having
an extra slice of cake? You wouldn't need to justify it, if you didn't feel bad
about what you're doing.
How is feeling guilt and
shame every time you reach for what you think are bad foods good for your mental health? Do you picture your dream
life with Thanksgiving dinners without the traditional mashed
potatoes, gravy and bread? Do you picture your dream
life involving travel through countries like
for example, Singapore, and then not eating most of their cuisine, because it's rice and noodles-based? Do you picture your dream life
involving birthday parties for your kids where you decline
your child's birthday cake? If you've become so focused on optimizing every tiny nutrition choice to the zenith, if you have lost sight of its effect on our dream of a life lived fully.
And this is exactly what Lucy realized, when keto started limiting her lifestyle. She couldn't eat any of
the food she enjoyed, she was spending so much time
meal prepping and planning to the point that had cut into
her time with her boyfriend. At first, she was angry. She thought others had
gotten unfairly lucky, where they could eat whatever, while she suffered with the restrictions and taxes on her time. But this wasn't a helpful belief. She had to face herself and ask, am I holding onto the belief
that my body is broken to feel better about never
being able to stick to plants? And it's when she honestly
answered this question that she started letting go of methods that she would never be able to sustain.
And instead focus her
energy into figuring out how to make sustainable plans for herself. So do what's enjoyable
and sustainable for you. If that means eating carbs, go for it. And this is totally possible if you use the full deck of
cards in the weight loss game. Marketing has convinced you
that you have only one card to play for your body,
but this is not true. That's just a marketing tactic. You have two options at this point, one, if you feel that you'd love my help in learning to play
your full deck of cards, then check out the free sneak peek into my Baddest Body Boss Program in the description and comments below.
Or if you want to DIY it, then you don't want to ignore this video, where I explain what I'd do
if I was losing weight again. You can avoid all of the mistakes, and jump to the hard earned lessons through years of trying to lose weight and coaching hundreds of weight
loss clients, right here. Check it out, and always
remember, you can do it..
