The Impact Of Carbs And Sugars On Weight Loss And Diabetes – By Author Brenda Davis

Intro

so essential ingredient number two is a restoration of healthy body weight and and you know it’s so interesting if you look at the research here sufficient weight loss often reverses diabetes no matter how it’s achieved

Research

the more the way the more weight is lost the greater the remission rate and this is the direct trial people that lost up to 11 pounds of had a remission rate of 7 11 to 22 pounds 34 remission 22 to 33 pounds 57 remission over 33 pounds 86 percent went into remission this is really amazing and even moderate weight loss improves insulin sensitivity so a weight loss of even just five to ten percent of initial body weight can dramatically improve insulin sensitivity and so how do we

Fasting

achieve this well now we’re thinking a lot about um you know these these new approaches that involve some degree of fasting or modified fasting so time restricted feeding might be not eating for 12 hours a day so after dinner you stop eating so say it’s six o’clock or seven o’clock you go 12 hours and you don’t eat before seven o’clock the next morning so you’re not doing that nighttime eating you may do a 14 day or i’m sorry 14 hour or a 16 hour or you might do intermittent fasting where you’re fasting we call it six to one or five to two so you might fast one day a week on the six to one six days of eating one day of fasting or five to two five days of eating two days of fasting and then there’s periodic fasts or like these fasting mimicking diets where you’re you’re doing a fast or a modified fast for maybe three or five days uh once every three months so there are lots of ways of of doing this and then of course the other way is continuous energy restriction which is pretty easy to do on a whole food plant-based diet the practical pointers here we need to achieve negative energy balance so fewer calories in more calories out we need to exercise more and eat fewer calories it doesn’t mean we need to eat a smaller volume of food we can if we eat the right foods we can still eat a large volume and have fewer calories and that’s one of the beauties of plant-based diets because if you look at the sort of calories per gram in foods there there’s 8.8 calories per gram of oil four in cheddar cheese four in doughnuts three point one in spam or fried chicken three compare that to you know beans and barley just over the one bananas not quite one and other you know non-starchy vegetables are so low that it allows you to eat quite a volume of food one of the key things i think for people with diabetes is to drink water not sugar and not artificially sweetened beverages either which i’ll mention a little bit more about later but but people need to be drinking water

Portion control

they need to practice portion control we learned this in the marshall islands we started out giving them unlimited just letting them fill their plates we would put the brown rice or the barley out and let them fill their plates and we didn’t get the results we were looking for in terms of their evening blood sugars and so we had to start portioning it out and it just made all the difference in the world so for some of these more concentrated carbohydrate foods especially when you have insulin resistance it helps to to control portions of the you know of the of the really high starchy greens and and vegetables and of the concentrated fat sources like like nuts and seeds and avocados and

Weighing yourself

olives and coconut and so forth i would suggest not snacking at all at least four to six hours between meals and drinking water or herbal tea between the meals and and if snacks are absolutely you just have to have a snack stick to raw vegetables or fresh fruit uh rather than anything else and one of the things that that that we used to think as dietitians is people shouldn’t be weighing themselves too often because it can be discouraging and all of these these reasons but we’ve learned in the last 10 years that this is a mistake people who weigh themselves at the same time every day in the moment say in the morning just after you wake up it actually leads to improve long-term weight maintenance and so i think of i have two friends that i know that have been weighing themselves every day for probably 50 years and both of them are still at the same weight they were in high school and i’m not kidding you one of them is my mother who’s 82 years old and she was 126 pounds when she got married she’s five foot six and she still varies between 125 and 130 pounds it’s just she’s done that all her life and if she gains a few pounds she doesn’t eat desserts she just cuts back her portions she’s just always done that and so it for a lot of people it’s a really good idea to be weighing on a daily basis and then of course increasing physical activity at least 150 minutes of structured exercise per week including aerobic and resistant exercise essential ingredient number three is whole food carbohydrates you know when you look at

Whole food carbohydrates

how much carbohydrates people eat in diabetes risk the percent of calories from carbohydrates has little influence on diabetes risk the lowest rates of diabetes in the world are found in populations eating the highest carbohydrate diets it’s the quality of the carbohydrates that determines health outcomes carbohydrates from whole foods are consistently protective against diabetes carbohydrates from refined foods are consistently risky not just diabetes for every disease you can think of refined carbohydrates are associated with overeating and obesity insulin resistance non-alcoholic fatty liver disease inflammation and high triglycerides not good so what are refined

What are refined carbohydrates

carbohydrates well they’re just high carbohydrate foods that have been stripped of almost everything of value to human health before we eat them you know so there are simple refined carbohydrates like sugars and sweet beverages and there are complex refined carbohydrates like starches like white flour and white rice

Refining a grain

so when we refine a grain we remove so say we go from wheat to white flour we remove the bran and the germ well the bran is the outer husk of the kernel where a lot of the fiber and minerals are stored the germ is the most nutrient dense part of the grain it’s where the vitamin e is it’s where the protein is it’s where a lot of the vitamins like the b vitamins all of these things the phytochemicals are are really concentrated there and when we make white flour we remove the bran and the germ and all we’re left with with is something called endosperm which is pretty much pure starch a little bit of protein a little bit of vitamins and minerals but typically we lose 80 to 90 percent of the fiber seventy to eighty percent of the vitamins and minerals and ninety five percent of the protective phytochemicals

White flour

and then of course nobody eats a bowl of white flour right before you eat the flour you add fat and sugar and salt and additives and then you eat the white flour and therein lies the problem not only have we removed what is of value to human health we’ve added a bunch of things we know are pathogenic that contribute to disease risk and our body has to deal with this stuff it’s impossible impossible to ever achieve optimal health on a diet of refined carbohydrates replacing meat and potatoes with with you know bagels and and and all of these refined carbohydrate foods will not improve your health outcomes we know that

Added sugars

so what is a safe level of added sugars well the world health organization suggests not more than 10 of calories or 12 teaspoons of sugar in a day you might say who eats 12 teaspoons of sugar in a day yeah that’d be disgusting but you’ll see a lot of people they also add that for for greater health benefits people would be better off keeping it under five percent or under six teaspoons of sugar per day well the average intake in the united states is 17 teaspoons a day for adults and for teens it’s 28 teaspoons a day because of the sodas and sweet drinks they

How much is in food

consume so how much is in food well you know that 12 teaspoon upper limit at the very upper limit uh you get in a in a 12-ounce soda or a large flavored coffee can provide as many as 18 teaspoons of sugar one of the things i do in the marshall islands is i i take a 20 ounce bottle of of orange soda and and i take a a narrow glass and i measure out the 20 plus teaspoons of sugar into the glass and i say to the children when you’re drinking this you’re drinking this it has quite the impact on them they’re shocked so these these foods even a cinnamon bun 12 teaspoons of sugar but even things that we don’t think of as being so concentrated in sugar like an energy bar may have five teaspoons a quarter cup of barbecue sauce four teaspoons of sugar so these numbers can get to that six teaspoon

Sources of added sugar

uh limit very very uh quickly and if we look at the sources of added sugar in the us diet 47 percent from liquid beverages it’s shocking what

Sugar and fruit

about the sugar and fruit well whole food fruits are consistently protective to health why because they’re rich in fiber and antioxidants and phytochemicals and vitamins and minerals especially potassium and vitamin c and folate so all of the studies looking at diabetes risk and fruit intake tend to be favorable for fruit intake rather than

Fructose

the other way around but the body is well equipped to process the amount of fructose naturally present in fruits but when we add concentrated fructose to beverages the liver’s capacity to handle fructose very quickly becomes overwhelmed and that drives lipotoxicity so daily average fructose intakes average about 37 percent of total sugars and 9 of daily calories that’s just shocking to me so carbohydrate common sense we want our carbohydrates from whole plant foods we want to avoid added sugars especially in beverage and beverages and minimize all refined carbohydrates both starches and sugars