There are so many speakers, YouTubers, podcasters, writers, salesmen (and women) clamouring to get a piece of that industry and the confusion that ensues is truly breathtaking.
From full on vegan, raw food, diets, to carnivorous ones, and everything in between, you can get any advise you want. And there's no consensus on what the truth, if there is a truth, is.
While our most trusted experts, the doctors, who are supposed to know this stuff intimately, are also arguing amongst themselves. They understand the biochemistry and so are placed in the best possible position to tell us the effects of overindulgence in one thing or another.
Oh, there is some consensus. Over sugar for sure. Everyone says it's bad for you, only some say stay away from it, as you would from cyanide, and others say, it's OK just to have a little bit. So what is it? None or a little?
We need to be clear.
The various biochemical processes that take place in the body are well known. They've been studied up the wazoo and it's clear what happens to your blood sugar (blood glucose) when you eat certain foods. Our lab researchers have done all of this on mice and told us that this food will make you fat, and this one, well this one seems to make mice fat, so you may also get fat if you eat it.
There are vegan doctors just as there are carnivorous doctors. There are medical vegan doctors as well as holistic vegan doctors. And these vegan doctors tell you never, ever, ever to touch meat. It's a carcinogen, it's got all kinds of hormones and you can find better alternatives for the good stuff meat has in plants.
And there are also medically trained carnivorous doctors as well as holistically trained carnivorous doctors. They'll tell you the bad side of plants. All about the lectins, alkaloids and phytotoxins. And that plant proteins are not wholly usable for the human body.
So then, who do you listen to?
I've almost tried them all, and the final one was the Keto diet, a relative of Atkins. Low carb and restrictive. I think they have the right idea, especially in this day and age of sedentary lifestyles. I was a vegetarian for a couple of years. I found that I simply didn't have enough energy for the amount of training that I was doing. Maybe I was doing something wrong that I couldn't find enough energy even though I consumed carbs without caution. And I wasn't fat.
Keto asks you to limit the sugar (which are essentially carbs) that you're eating. And the Keto advocates are nice enough to give you a number. Some say 20 grams, some say up to 50 grams. But you get the idea. Stay under 20 grams of carbs, and you're OK.
The only problem with this is now you have to start counting carbs. And it's mentally excruciating. Reading all the labels to see how many carbs, or checking carb values online for fresh foods. Then trying to remember how many you've consumed so far, so that you can check out your carb balance for the day. Like a bank account that limits you to spending twenty dollars a day without a rollover plan.
So I decided to dive into the biochemistry, learn what my body's doing with all that food. When I eat glucose chains (otherwise known as starches), what is the chemistry that goes on. And when I eat proteins, what happens.
It's not a surprise that eating carbohydrates initiates insulin which ensures that the sugar in your blood stays within a certain concentration. Excess glucose, if not consumed by cells, gets shuffled away as glycogen, or as fat. Your body's smart enough not to chuck it away. To keep it for when there's no food. Because when there's no food, your body can burn that glycogen first for energy, and when the glycogen's finished, burn the fat.
But in real life what happens is that when the glucose from the starch is all gone, your body asks for more food - it intentionally makes you hungry. So that you can eat more food. It doesn't want to consume the glycogen or fat that it saved up. Why oh why?
It's left up to you to determine that the hunger is not real, and then fast. And when you fast, your body then reaches out for those stores.
But fasting is tough, requires will power. And while you may be willing, in today's world, where food is cheap and full of glucose, its rather easier to grab a burger than try to coax your body into burning this morning's breakfast.
So I figured that the carnivores may have landed on a solution for this. If we want the body to burn fat, then give it fat, not carbs. It so happens that your body cannot distinguish between the fat in the cells in your body and the fat that you ingest.
So a couple of things happen. Your body switches from carb burning to fat burning. And all of a sudden, you're burning body fat. The reverse process of the fat storage takes place. Instead of storing glucose as fat, fat is converted to glucose. And miraculously, without eating carbs, you get the glucose your blood needs for sustaining you.
I can attest to the fact that it works, though I'm not sure it's a solution for everyone. I'm certainly not going to join the millions of health and diet wannabe experts and tell you this is a safe choice, and I wouldn't even advocate for veggies either. It's a complex subject and everyone needs to explore it on their own.
For myself, I'm sticking very close to the carnivorous side of life, with small exceptions in the vegetable world, very, very small.
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