Carbs are grass, wheat, veggies, fruit, bread, and everything in between. Good Carbs vs. Bad Carbs... ugh. Not quite that easy. There are 3 types of sugar that carbs are broken into.
- Monosaccharides: The two that are most common are Glucose and Fructose. More on this later.
- Disaccharides: It litterally means two sugars. Glucose and Fructose meet and start a band.
- Polysaccharides: "Many Sugars" The main two types here are starch and fiber.
Much of this glycogen is stored in muscles, which can be used for energy. Great right? If you only ingest a small amount of carbs - that's it! It goes in your muscles and is used for energy. Awesome.
However. (come on, you knew that was coming.)
What if your glycogen stores are completely full? Excess carbs are converted to a little thing called palmitic acid. FAT. After it's formed it heads out to be used as energy or just hang out on our bellies. Super fun stuff.
"So Steve, we can have some carbs, just not more than we require to fill our glycogen stores right?"
Ummmmm..... sure.... good luck with that.
Palmitic Acid is ubber strong and doesn't play nice with our hormones. It decreases our sensitivity to Leptin. When we are leptin resistant, the satiety signal that is sensed from food in our belly is LOST. We stay hungry, even though our blood glucose levels are elevated already and thus OVEREAT. Damn.
Robb Wolf calls this the reason behind our "sweet tooth." We simply can't sense the signal that we're full, and keep shoving food in our mouths. Ever see a whole bag of Doritos disappear before your eyes? Ever notice that you keep eating or picking at food, even though maybe you're not hungry? Here you go.
Once our liver and muscle glycogen stores are full, the insulin sensitivity in our muscle tissue is lost and it can physically store no more glycogen. Our muscles are drowning in glycogen which in turn, drives blood sugar higher, which in turn drives insulin higher..... not a fun merry-go-round.
Here's where the bad stuff starts. (Yeah, the really bad stuff)
Once your body is totally full of glycogen, yet insulin resistant, inhibitory stystems in the liver are overwhelmed and blood glucose is convert to fats at such an incredible rate that fat can no longer escape into circulation and it begins to accumulate in the liver.
The liver is fully saturated with glucose, yet it is insulin resistant and some cells notice this perceived lack of insulin as low blood sugar. Man, this is crazy right? We're over flowing with sugar in our blood and body, yet, because of this insulin resistance, we don't feel that and real low blood sugar can kill us - that's bad, so our body, by misreading this signal, calls in the reserves.
Cortisol.
Once our body produces cortisol to save us from our "low blood sugar" which is actually crazy high, our body starts producing MORE GLUCOSE from our muscle and organs. UGH - so terrible! Muscle is so hard to build, and we're ripping it down in order to form more sugar - even though we are already filled to the brink with it. Guess what happens to the excess sugar? It's stored in the cells as fat. Crappy.
Fructose is not great for us. Now fruits have many good things in them, basically huge amounts of vitamins and minerals. Fructose will fill your liver glycogen and speed up the process in which the liver fills and leads down the road to cortisol production. Fructose up-regulates the glucose transport molecules in the liver, making the liver hungry for more sugar.
This leads directly to increased Palmitic Acid production, and later, leptin resistance. Remember this? (If not, scroll up and read it again - then come back and tell me how good fructose is for you.)
Lastly, if you have 90 minutes to kill (and want to save your life - I'm serious here) watch this lecture and lose weight.
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