Carbohydrates...Demystiied

MODULE #1 - Lesson 3

Why We Need CarbohydratesModule 1 - Lesson 3

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In this lesson I hope to demystify carbohydrates. Just like many other topics in nutrition, there are varying and conflicting opinions by experts on this subject.

My standpoint is what I consider a healthful approach to carbohydrate consumption. There may be some bias in my approach but I have tried to objectify the information as much as possible.

In this lesson we will cover different types of carbohydrates and how they’re metabolized. We will clarify the importance of carbs for your health and how many grams you should eat per day. We will discuss fiber’s role and also briefly touch on glycoproteins.

Why we need carbohydrates? Basically they’re an essential form of energy. We use carbohydrates as a fuel source, either directly or indirectly, through the animals we eat or through the plants directly that we consume. We use this energy for movement and other basic functions.

Our brain relies heavily glucose, for its performance. Think back to a time when you studied for a few hours straight, after you were done you may have felt drained. Part of this is because your brain had consumed much of the glucose that you need to refuel.

Carbohydrates provide four calories per gram. So if you eat 100 grams of carbohydrates you are looking at 400 calories.

Carbohydrates are also used in cellular communication, a new area that’s blowing science away, it’s amazing.

Carbohydrates are important for intestinal health, especially when it comes to fiber. Although this is the case some consider them nonessential because our body breaks them down into sugar. When in starvation, your body can break down muscle glycogen, which is stored carbohydrates, for fuel. Some see

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carbs as a nonessential nutrient because of that fact. I disagree. We need it. If we don’t have carbs, then we are not going to last for very long.

Types of CarbohydratesThere are 3 main classes of carbohydrates, monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. A monosaccharide is a single molecule of sugar, such as glucose. Everything is broken down into glucose, because we need it in the blood and get stored in our muscles. Other examples of monosaccharides are fructose, mannose, galactose, disaccharides, dextrose, and zylotes.

Fructose is one of the sugars in fruit. Galactose is the sugar found in milk or dairy, and disaccharides are a combination of two monosaccharide. The image at the bottom of this chart shows you two, which would be a disaccharide. For instance, sucrose is a combination of one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule. Lactose is a combination of one glucose molecule and one galactose molecule. Maltose is a combination of two glucose molecules.

Polysaccharides are chains of monosaccharides put together like a beaded necklace. Each bead is a monosaccharide, like a glucose molecule for instance. An amylase, which is a polysaccharide, made of up several glucose molecules. Celluloses, a type of fiber, are another combination of monosaccharides. The difference between a starch and cellulose is that we can’t digest them.

Celluloses are one type, hemicelluloses would be a pectin. Those would be generally the soluble fibers and are the other type of polysaccharides.

Looking at carbohydrate chemistry, we have one molecule of glucose, C6H1206. So, 6 atoms of carbon, 12 of hydrogen, and 6 oxygen, gives you 1 glucose.

If we made sucrose, which is table sugar, we’re looking at glucose plus fructose, and if we look at a starch like amylase, we’re looking at several glucose molecules together.

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What Goes Where?

Glucose goes right to the blood, it transcends the epithelial cells and goes right into your bloodstream and from there throughout your body and brain. Disaccharides and polysaccharides, excluding celluloses, are broken down in the digestive track into glucose and other types of monosaccharides.

Everything that goes into the digestive track gets filtered and absorbed, through the portal vein into the liver. The liver is kind of like the factory that detoxifies and organizes things into what goes where. For instance, different monosaccharides go through a breakdown process in the liver. It is then filtered and sent to the blood for distribution across the body.

Glucose is stored in the muscles and in the liver as glycogen. Everything we eat is ultimately broken down into glucose. The glucose is distributed around the body and the muscle and liver cells uptake the glucose and create polysaccharide. It’s like thinking about a bushel of grapes. The bushel of grapes would be your glycogen, and each individual grape would be your molecule of glucose. So our muscle cells want to store the bushel of grapes, but our blood can only use individual grapes to flow throughout.

For example a starch like sweet potato is broken down into glucose through the small intestine. It gets absorbed into the hepatic portal vein, which then takes it to the liver. It is then filtered and sent to the blood where it either remains, is stored as muscle or liver glycogen, or is sent into the fat cells for fat storage.

If your muscle and liver glycogen stores are full, the remaining glucose will be stored as fat. Fruit is usually digested and broken down into fructose plus glucose which gets

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sent to the liver after going through the small intestine. It ultimately gets turned into glucose, which again, circulates in the blood or stored in the liver and muscle glycogen, or becomes triglycerides, which can circulate in the blood.

Normal fasting levels of blood sugar, is approximately 64.8 to 104.4 milligrams per deciliter. Normal fasting levels are taken when you first wake up and are in a fasted state.

After we have eaten, our scores are a little bit higher. We’ve raised our blood sugar. It should be up to about 140 milligrams per deciliter, or a bit more in non-diabetics.

The American Diabetes Association recommends a post-meal glucose level of less than 180 milligrams per deciliter. If it’s higher, as the graph here shows, it’s an indication that you’re either pre-diabetic or diabetic. This graph shows a normal peak, just a little bit higher than fasting levels. In a diabetic person, blood sugar skyrockets because the cells cannot take up the blood sugar. This is a very dangerous condition.

Blood Sugar and InsulinJust to give you an example, an average blood glucose level of 5.5 millimoles per liter in a 75 kilogram male, which is about 200 pounds, with five liters of blood in their body, would equal five grams of sugar which is the equivalent of two packets of sugar. If you think about how big your body is, it’s not a lot sugar. If our body needs more we either eat or our body breaks down glycogen.

Insulin is an anabolic storage hormone. This means when insulin is in the blood, it takes glucose and stores it in the fat cells, in your muscle cells, in your liver cells.

That top pink line represents your blood glucose. When you have a carbohydrate-based meal, that food is broken down, digested, goes to the liver, and then the liver secretes it into the blood. So we get a shoot up in blood glucose.

There’s a little bit of a time delay before blood insulin starts to increase. Notice how the blue line is just slightly shifted to the right. It doesn’t peak as high, and that’s what happens when sugar is present in the blood beyond the normal kind of resting, fasted levels, insulin is secreted by the pancreas. It then takes

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the excess glucose out of the blood, and stores it in your muscle cells, liver cells. Once those are full it will store them in your fat cells.

There are specific receptors on your muscle, liver, and fat cells, which respond to insulin. These receptors are like bouncers at clubs that say, “Hey, sorry, glucose. You can’t come in. You’re not cool enough”.

Insulin is like your cool friend who says, “Hey, don’t worry. This guy’s with me”. In this case the bouncer is a GLUT-4 receptor or a GLUT-4 transporter and will then open up a channel to allow the glucose to come into the cell and out of the blood. This is happening all the time, every time we eat, this is happening all day.

This diagram shows this process. If we look at the left side of the diagram where it says “increase in blood glucose”, we’ve just eaten a meal. It stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin which causes the uptake of glucose by the cells. So the cells open up and they receive that glucose. Then we get a decrease in blood glucose, because now the glucose is taken out of the blood and back to resting levels.

If it goes to a level, which is too low, or if it’s just below fasting levels, we get a secretion of glucagon, which is the breakdown hormone produced by the pancreas. It has the exact opposite effect of insulin. When we have fasting levels or low levels of blood sugar, glucagons is secreted, is circulated to the liver; and sometimes the muscles, to break down glycogen, that bushel of grapes, into individual grapes to release these grapes, or glucose, into the blood allowing us to maintain homeostasis.

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Now let’s just go back up to the top right of this. When we have an uptake of glucose by the cells, glucose plus oxygen is a requirement for that energy pathway to occur. It’s used for metabolic energy, fat storage or fat synthesis, and glycogen synthesis. Those are the three big uses of glucose in our body.

Minimize Sugar IntakeRefined sugar from white bread and non-refined sugar from fruit are very different. If you minimize refined sugar intake, it will help regulate blood sugar levels because you won’t have spikes in blood sugar followed by drops.

Now, what I failed to mention in that graph was that when you eat something very sweet, like a pastry or a candy bar you get high levels of blood sugar, followed by a large release of insulin, which is followed by a large drop or crash. This crash can lead you to seek out more kinds of quick fix sugars, and this whole cycle repeats itself.

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That’s a dangerous game to play and one many are playing. It’s a first step, to developing hypoglycemia, which is a precursor to becoming pre-diabetic and then diabetic.

You want to limit your sugar intake, specifically processed sugar, because of the stimulation to your adrenal glands. Sugar is a stimulant, and it will stimulate your adrenal glands to produce adrenalin. When adrenalin is secreted, it goes into the blood, and muscle cells and liver cells. It tells the cells, “Hey, we need to break down your glycogen,” because the adrenal glands are a fight-or-flight type gland.

They respond to fight-or-flight type of stress. So sugar is, in essence, puts stress on our body, by sending a signal to the adrenal glands to produce epinephrine. A sugar rush isn’t only due to the sugar but also the epinephrine. This will increase your heart rate; breaks down glycogen, which will increase your insulin levels. Insulin will then remove all the sugar blood causing that crash once again.

You should minimize your intake of refined, man-made sugars. I don’t even recommend using agave nector because source of high fructose corn syrup, which is not good at all.

For a healthier alternative try Zylitol, a monosaccharide zylos, a great, low calorie sweetener, that can actually improve your teeth. Everything else like maple syrup and honey you should reduce in your diet.

Glycemic Index and LoadThe glycemic index basically refers to how quickly a specific food spikes your blood sugar after it is consumed.

Glycemic load measures the number of grams of carbohydrates in a food divided by 100. This makes it a bit more accurate because everything across a whole meal is taken into account. For instance if you eat a steak, potatoes, and greens, glycemic load will measure the entire meal rather than each individual component.

The goal is to eat more, lower glycemic index foods that won’t spike your blood sugar levels. High glycemic foods will spike your blood sugar, and thus your insulin levels, much higher than lower glycemic index foods.

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Glycemic Index Of Foods

Low (<55) Medium (55-80) High (>80)Mango (50) Raisins (95) White Bread (95)Yams (50) Honey (75) Baked Potatoes (95)Grapes (50) Watermelon (70) Instant Rice (90)Pears (45) Pineapple (65) Cooked Carrots (85)Apples (40) Ripe Bananas (60) Plain Bagel (80)Yoghurt (15)

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Enjoy Minimize

Lower glycemic foods are natural, unprocessed, whole, high fiber foods. Anything under a score of 55 on the GI scale such as mangoes, yams, grapes, pears, apples, yogurt, these are all under 50 is considered low GI. You might be thinking “Mango, it’s a sweet fruit. It’s going to shoot up my blood sugar.” But it is actually a low glycemic index food.

Conversely, pineapple is in the medium side of the glycemic index. So this is something you don’t want to eat too frequently throughout the day. Bananas are great but again, you should eat them sparingly throughout the day.

On the high side we’re looking at things like white bread, baked potatoes, instant rice, cooked carrots, and plain bagels. These will spike your blood sugar and insulin very quickly, leading to a crash, and then that whole cycle continues.

You want to minimize the high glycemic index foods in the graph and eat more of the low glycemic index foods in the graph. Low GI foods are a good source of carbohydrates that have a moderate impact on blood sugar.

The only caveat to this is after a workout. This is the only time should eat a high glycemic index food. After a workout we want to store nutrients back into our muscles so we actually want to spike our insulin. Don’t go for white breads, baked potatoes, or instant rice. The medium GI column is great for post-workout carbohydrates.

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Sugar, Insulin and Weight GainIf you look at this graph, it shows that since 1955 the percentage of dietary calories as fat has decreased by about 10%, from 33% down to 23%, yet the number of overweight people in North America has increased dramatically. If people are eating less fat, why is obesity on the rise? They must be eating more sugar right?

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Interestingly, if we look at this other graph we see is a dramatic rise in sugar or carbohydrate intake between 1963 and 1993.

There is an exponential increase in cereals, followed by sugarcane. Those aren’t the type of carbohydrates you want to be eating.

So when people have this big fix about low carb diets where carbs are bad, it’s because they’re thinking about grains, like cereals, breads and pastas.

If you look at the bottom of the graph there is a minute increase in fruit and vegetable intake. It’s almost parallel and that’s a problem.

The more sugar you eat, and the more insulin you circulate in the blood, the fatter you get. Refined starches, like white bread or white pastas are broken down very quickly leading to a big surge in blood sugar, and thus insulin. If our carbohydrate stores are full insulin is forced to store in the fat cells.

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I hope this makes sense to you, the relationship between sugar, insulin, and weight gain, and when I talk about sugar and carbohydrates, I’m not referring to the good kinds, which are found in fruits and vegetables. I’m talking about the kinds that are manmade, processed, and derived from grains.

Carbohydrate ConfusionAs we’ve just seen high carb diets lead to diabetes and obesity. If we eat more cereals and more grains, then we’re going to get fat. Well, again, it comes down to, which types of carbs are being consumed. It is very important to understand this.

The graph on the top shows overweight and obesity rates from 1976 to 2004. If you look at the difference between the red line, the top line, and the one underneath it, the numbers skyrocketed. Overweight but not obese has kind of stayed the same, and then below that obese, skyrocketed again. We see this upward trend in obesity as a result of eating garbage carbohydrates, like cereals, sugarcane, and high fructose corn syrup.

Carbohydrate quality matters Donuts, French fries, and white bread are all predominately carbohydrates, but so are fruits and vegetables. That is why in Eating for Energy, our food spectrum, I separate these out.

We have our green foods at the top, our rainbow colors underneath, and now it encompasses right there, fruit and vegetables. I don’t even consider bagels, French fries, and bread to be part of a food group. They would be a leisure food, a treat to be eaten only every once in a while. It is very important to understand the difference. If you want to go low carb, you better be talking about going low on donuts and low on French fries. Do not neglect the fruits and veggies.

Carbohydrates and HealthNow, this is where your eyes are going to start to open, I’m going to compare statistics from the US, Japan and Okinawa. Okinawa’s a small island just south of Japan, which is known for having the most people live to 100 years

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old or older. They’re called one of the Blue Zones.

Carbohydrates and Health

USA Japan Okinawa

CHO 42% 55% 84%

Fat 42% 30% 6%

Protein 16% 15% 9%

Obesity 31% 3.2% n/a

Life Expectancy 70.1 82.6 86

If we take a look at the carbohydrate intake, the USA, 42%; Japan, 55%; and Okinawa, 84%. Look at the fat percentage, USA, 42%; Japan, 30%; Okinawa, 6%. Protein is USA, 16%; Japan, 15%; Okinawa 9%. People talk about these high protein diets, like 30% and above. Look at the average intake of protein across these countries, its, about 15% and less.

The big issue is with the limitation, in terms of carbohydrate consumption and the quality of those carbs, and the increasing amount of fats that are being consumed in the US. If we look at obesity rates, it’s pretty straight forward. Obesity is almost 31%. It’s climbing day by day. Japan obesity rate is only 3.2% and the life expectancy in the US, 78.1. 82.6 In Japan and 86 years old in Okinawa.

In general, populations that consume the highest amounts of carbohydrates live longer and have less disease. Again it comes down to the quality of carbohydrates. They’re not eating the processed garbage that’s going on in the States, at least not yet. They’re focusing on a lot of plant-based foods, natural whole foods that they’re getting their carbohydrates from.

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How Many Carbs Should You Eat Per Day?

Now we are going to get a bit more scientific. Dr. Doug Graham, who’s a fruitarian, believes that 80% of your diet should come from fruit, 10% from fat, and 10% from protein. I believe there is a lot of merit to this approach.

Mark Sisson, who is paleo, is almost the complete opposite. About 20% of caloric intake comes from carbohydrates, which is about 50 to 100 grams per day, which, again, is only about 400 calories from carbohydrates, not a lot. Dr. promotes his extreme low carb diet with 35 grams per 1621 calorie diet. Again, that’s less than 20% of your total caloric intake from carbohydrates.

We have so many different experts saying that their way is the way to go, but frankly, it’s a bit nonsensical to think there is a single approach that will work for everyone. You have to find what’s going to work for you, but also understanding what’s happening inside the body so you can make a better decision.

Foods are more than just carbs, right? White bread is more than just carbs. It actually has five grams of protein in it, too. Focus on eating whole foods, mainly plant-based, and you’ll get everything you need. I guarantee that.

Consuming very low quantities of carbohydrates isn’t sustainable. Today’s assignment is based on getting to know how many calories you have coming in and how your body’s responding, but counting calories becomes very tedious.

Remember, everybody’s different. So do what works for you. Use the knowledge that I’m sharing with you to make a better, informed decision. Here’s an example from my day, this is not every day, but I want to give you an example, because people often ask me, “How many calories and carbs and protein are you getting?”

I had a green smoothie in the morning, I had about three pears and two apples in and around lunchtime, throughout the day, and then for dinner I had salmon, steamed greens, roasted yams and beets. I used Fitday.com to breakdown my food into carbs, protein, and fat. Fitday.com is a website that I highly recommend you use and is the site you’ll use for today’s assignments.

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So at the end of the day, I brought in a total of 330 grams of carbs, which is on the high side, 31 grams of fat, and 65 grams of protein, for a total of 1721 calories, which is very low for me. A typical day for me might be above 2500 calories, especially if I’m working out.

So this is on the low side, but again, none of this stuff matters because this is one day. We need to average things out over several days or several weeks to get a really good representation of the overall diet.

Based on These Numbers…..So 77% of my calories came from carbs. This would actually be very similar to Doug Graham’s 80/10/10 approach, 16% from fat and 15% from protein.

Research shows that between 70 and 120 grams of protein is all we need no matter how much you train. I was at 65 grams of protein on this particular day, just by eating one piece of salmon, fruit, and steamed greens. So I don’t need extra protein power, and believe me, I’m not losing muscle. I’m stronger than I ever have been.

But None of This Really Matters, Unless…..You average out all the meals you eat over an extended period of time, because some days will have lower carbs than others, higher protein, higher fats, whatever it is. You need to average things out over a longer period of

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time. It’s like a study that’s done with one individual versus 10,000. You want a bigger sample size to get an accurate result.

Let’s Get Scientific HereA lot of you want to know exactly how many grams of carbohydrates to eat. Again, I’m not a huge fan of counting calories and grams, but it is helpful to understand this.

For very low carb, ketogenic diets, you’re looking at 0.5 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight. I weigh about 165 pounds, which would give me about 73 grams of carbohydrates, compare that to the 330 grams of carbohydrates I ate yesterday and you can see it is very different. A moderate carb diet would be 1 gram of carbohydrates per pound, and again, this is a good kind of area for people looking to lose fat. So if you weigh 170 pounds, this would be 170 grams of carbohydrates.

A typical high carbohydrate diet would be two to three grams of carbohydrates per pound, or more. I would fall into this latter category. Remember, the more plant foods you eat, the more carbohydrates you’re going to take in. This isn’t a bad thing. Remember longevity, overall health, as a direct correlation to how many carbohydrates you have coming in. If you’re eating quality carbohydrates in high amounts, you are going to benefit tremendously.

Endurance athletes, marathon runners, tri-athletes, are in the three to four grams of carbohydrates per pound range, and carb loading before an event is really kind of at the upper limit of how many carbs your body can take in at the five to eight grams of carbohydrates per pound. So, again, three to four grams of carbohydrates per pound is a lot, and you really have to force that stuff down.

But How Many Carbs Can You Store? Research shows that about 400 to 600 grams of carbohydrates are stored in the liver and muscle as glycogen. Assuming that those glycogen stores are already depleted, which they aren’t, unless you’ve just fasted for an entire day and did some high intensity exercise.

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This amounts to 1600 to 2400 calories, but only about 400 to 500 of those calories are actually directly available to be used for maintaining blood glucose levels. So a very small percentage of the calories you’re eating are actually being used for blood glucose. Muscle cells are very stingy about sharing their glycogen. They really hold onto it because they know that if times are tough, they’ll need to tap into muscle glycogen a little bit later on.

You can’t store more than about 600 grams of carbohydrates I ate 330 grams. What’s going to happen with those if I didn’t exercise today? Well, before we talk about the impact of exercise, we talked about how carbohydrates are stored in muscle/liver glycogen. If those are tapped out already, what’s going to happen with the excess carbohydrate? Well, it’s going to be stored as fat, and that’s where the impact of exercise is very important.

The Impact Of ExerciseLionel McDonald says that for every two work sets that have a length of about 30 to 45 seconds, you’ll need five grams of carbohydrates to replenish the glycogen used. Strength workouts don’t actually use a lot of glycogen, because they’re very short periods of time. You don’t use a lot of glycogen during short duration activity.

If your workout contains 24 sets, this would be like doing eight exercises for three sets, you’d need about 60 extra grams of carbohydrates to replace the glycogen that you used in that workout. So this is 60 extra grams in addition to the kind of baseline carbohydrate intake that you’re taking in on a daily basis.

For fat loss, 1 gram of carbohydrate per pound per day is advisable. If you’re looking to build muscle and strength, two to three grams of carbohydrates per pound per day is what you’d be after, and that’s kind of the category that I fall into. High intensity cardio is a little bit different. For instance, a sprinter does not use glycogen, because if you’re sprinting, you’re sprinting for let’s say 10 to 20 seconds, which is not in the glycogen using energy system. It’s using the ATPPC system, which is something else. You’re not tapping into those glycogen reserves.

Long distance runners, tri-athletes, longer term athletes working near their lactate threshold, tap into their energy stores for extended periods of time.

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This can actually deplete their glycogen in about one to two hours at that intensity, or two to six hours at lower intensity. Again, we’re looking at about 300 to 400 grams of carbohydrates being totally depleted in that amount of time. So if you do this type of extended activity then your carbohydrate intake needs to be higher to meet those demands.

The differences in colors here represent the low, medium, and high glycemic index foods. So the green here at the top, I would recommend you eat more of. The ones in the middle are the medium glycemic index foods, and the ones at the bottom are the high glycemic index foods, which we do not want to eat.

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At the top we have an apple, 16 grams, banana 24 grams, kidney beans, half a cup, 25 grams, one carrot, and 6 grams. Then we move into oatmeal, 25 grams, brown rice, ¾ of a cup is 48 grams of carbs, one bagel, 35 grams, one slice of bread, doesn’t matter if it’s whole wheat or white, 15 grams of carbohydrates, and that’s obviously a high glycemic food.. It would take 20 bananas to reach a 2,000 calorie per day diet. There is a guy out there who only eats bananas, about 30 per day. He consumes about 3,000 calories a day, just to give you an idea of what you would need to eat if you wanted to be a 100% fruitarian. Again, if you ate 30 bananas a day, or 20 bananas a day, you would actually get pretty much everything you need in terms of carbohydrates, maybe proteins, not fats but again, I don’t recommend eating the same thing in those quantities day in and day out.

CHO RecommendationIf your diet is on the high side, if you’re eating a lot of fruits and vegetables like I am, be sure to exercise regularly, four to six times per week at moderate to high intensity, because if you don’t, what’s going to happen to all those carbohydrates? They will be stored as fat.

Get your carbs from fruits and vegetables and avoid most grains and processed foods. Carbohydrates are essential for your health and longevity but where they come from is equally as important. I don’t know many raw foodists who are obese, or vegans that are eating a healthy fruit and vegetable based vegan diet that are obese.

Please let the low carb notion go. I do not believe low carb is a healthy way to go.

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What About Fiber?

Fiber is a type of polysaccharide. Cellulose is insoluble fiber, like the skin of an apple while hemicellulose is a soluble fiber, like the inside of an apple. Generally fiber cannot be digested by the human digestive tract. We need an enzyme called thelulase, which we do not have, but nonetheless fiber’s very important for a number of reasons. It lowers the risk of colorectal cancer, cardiovascular disease, and helps prevent and manage diabetes.

While the American Dietetic Association will not say this, I believe 15 to 20 grams of fiber is not enough. From a healthy perspective, you should have about 35 grams per day. You’ll get all of this and more if you eat you’re recommended five to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables.

The modern diet currently contains about 11 grams of fiber per day. Some studies have shown that hunter-gatherers ate about 100 to 150 grams of fiber per day.

Insoluble FiberInsoluble fiber acts as a broom sweeping food and waste through your colon and digestive track. For example the peel the apple is a little bit harsher than the inside so it acts as a broom to sweep things through your digestive track. Insoluble fiber also adds bulk to the stool and alleviates constipation. Examples would be the edible skin of fruit, leafy greens, and those types of things.

One of the reasons that some people get bloated and gassy on a raw food diet is because they’re eating more fiber, and because some fiber is fermented in the intestinal tract causing gas. They’re so important for our health, but sometimes it’s actually better to juice them and put them in a smoothie because your digestive system can digest the fiber more easily.

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Soluble FiberSoluble fiber attracts water. It’s more of a gelatinous type of substance that forms a viscous gel during digestion. This slows the emptying of stomach and intestinal transit, helping to regulate the glycemic load of a meal. If you want to reduce the impact a particular meal has on your blood sugar, make sure you eat fiber with it. That’s why fruit will not spike your blood sugar; it has the fiber, which will slow the emptying from the stomach into the blood stream.

Conversely, if you have grape juice, about 30 grams of sugar goes right into the blood. That’s like a direct injection of sugar with nothing to buffer it.

Soluble fiber also shields carbohydrates from enzymes in the stomach slowing their digestion which also delays the absorption of glucose. This is great for diabetics and people with blood sugar issues. Eating more plant foods makes you feel full, because the fiber expands in your stomach. If you put chia seeds in water they become gelatinous.

Soluble fiber lowers cholesterol, it regulates blood sugar, it balances Ph, and stimulates intestinal production of short chain fatty acids.

Some websites say if you eat certain vegetables, they are negative calorie foods because they burn more calories than they provide, this is not necessarily true. What happens the soluble fiber that is fermented in your colon produces short chain fatty acids, which, in turn, are reabsorbed into your blood. Fiber, can yield about two calories per gram consumed which is not going to make a huge difference in how much weight you gain. It will help you lose weight, but don’t be fooled by information saying celery burns fat, it’s just not true.

Fiber can impair the absorption of calcium, magnesium, and potassium. This is not really problematic, unless your diet is way off. This is one of the reasons why eating whole foods is really important.

Our ancestors ate about 100 to 150 grams of fiber per day and they had no detectable mineral absorption problems because they ate so many nutrient dense foods.

Conversely, if you eat garbage foods and take fiber supplements to stay regular, you won’t get all the nutrients you need. The best rule of thumb is eat more fruits and vegetables to get all the fiber you need.

22Super Nutrition Academy – MODULE 1 - Lesson 3

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GlycoproteinsI want to briefly touch on glycoproteins which are sugar molecules on cell membranes that allow cells to communicate. This is a new branch of science called glycobiology, Almost without exception, whenever two or more living cells interact in a specific way, cell surface carbohydrates are involved. This just goes to show you the importance of carbohydrates. There are eight specific sugars that form these glycoprotein’s that we will talk about.

Before I get to the first assignments, I want to add in this chia seed assignment, take a tablespoon of chia seeds add them to a glass of water. Watch what happens after about 10 minutes. That is a great example of soluble fiber in action. This is why they fill you up, plus, they’re very high on Omega-3 fatty acids, which is another bonus.

23Super Nutrition Academy – MODULE 1 - Lesson 3

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Today’s Assignment

Keep a food journal on fitday.com for at least five days and notice the macro nutrient breakdown. Macronutrients are carbs, proteins, and fats of your diet. Enter everything you eat as individual components. How does your body feel and perform at this level? So if you’re eating, let’s say, 20% carbohydrates, how do you feel? Or if you’re eating 80% carbohydrates?

This is not about counting calories and counting grams, it’s about awareness. I want you to understand how your body feels. Look at the numbers and the foods you’re eating, and then what happens when you make adjustments. Play around with your diet and see how you feel, see how you react, and see how your workouts are affected and write everything down. When you have this information it is power.