Carb conscious

Just be Carb Conscious

🌾Carbs are Arguably the macro with the most influence over our metabolism. In terms of appetite regulation and metabolic flexibility.

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Angus Are you saying fat calories and protein calories don’t count?

✅I like to think in terms of solutions and strategy, let’s start… protein, most people can’t eat enough.

⚡️Fat and carbs are the true energy source for the human body.

A quick analogy: Carbs are like kindling and fat is like logs. Protein is the fireplace.

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Some days you need a raging fire, so you put a lot of kindling to get the fire going. For others, you just need some steady heat. So a little kindling and lots of logs. 🪵

Logs we have plenty of (body fat)

🔥 similar analogy and this blog post.

https://anguslogan.co.uk/blog/page/cabin-in-the-woods

It’s hard to overeat fat when carbs aren’t in the picture. Most things we think of as ‘bad carbs’ are 40-60% fat like crisps, chocolate bars, and cakes.

⚠️🧁When we limit carbs we also limit these. Yes of course you can drink a glass of oil and blow your calories for the week, do you wanna go first? 🤮 didn’t think so.

Carbs and fat in the same food tend to be the foods most people Like me have a problem overeating when I’m not consciously thinking.

The secret to not overeating them is to eat them.

Let me explain…

🤔I believed I was an abstainer with an addictive personality, however, this false belief was the reason I would purge and binge. Then feel guilty about eating bad food. (Why language is important in this blog post https://anguslogan.co.uk/blog/page/language-is-important )

🌾I would restrict wheat and sugar, however, this would cause me to just constantly think about eating them In their various forms. In psychology, this is called cognitive bias. If I say, don’t think about a black cat. Your brain automatically pictures a black cat.

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“What you think about, you bring about.”

Basing a diet around what you can’t have causes you to constantly think about it.

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The secret is to have them, enjoy them and be Conscious of how much of them you’re having. You can just have one cookie, and tomorrow you can have another. Knowing you can have one, alleviates the pressure. 🍪

What I’m suggesting is you can have as much fat, protein and above-ground vegetables as you want. For most, it’s damn near impossible to overeat.

🥗🫒🥒🍅🍒🥬🥦🌽🫑🍓🫐🍖🍗🥩🧀🧈🍑🍒🍆🥬🥦🥩🍖🍗🥗🫘🌰🥜

This Helps regulate blood sugar levels, and control, appetite. Moreover, it keeps your vitality on an even keel.

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🍯 Straight carbs are not addictive. Have you ever tried to eat a jar of honey or a bag of sugar? With this said I can easily eat a whole cake.

🥔 Could you eat a kilo of potatoes with out butter and salt, it’s hard work. It’s the combination of fat and carbs that CAN cause us to overeat.

Furthermore, your body doesn’t say this glucose is from a clean source and this is from a bad source. Glucose is just glucose. The quantity matters, the most. Having a carb limit solves so many problems.

🤔 You may think ‘well low-carb it is then.’ or avoid carbs… even keto…

However, it’s not about low carb it’s about being carb conscious. We all have different carb tolerance. This means the number of carbs YOUR body can handle.

🚴🏽 A professional cyclist needs way more carbohydrates than a sedentary office worker.

💥 Carbs are the fuel for action!

Blog post all about carbs https://anguslogan.co.uk/blog/page/all-about-carbs

Furthermore, to make things more complicated, this carb tolerance can change throughout the day. You’re more card tolerant in the morning, and more carb tolerant around your workout window particularly after.

📍If you’re very sedentary you probably have a low carb tolerance. If you suffer from insulin resistance it’s a clear sign of carb intolerance. Stress & exercise also plays a role here.

More about insulin resistance in this blog post https://anguslogan.co.uk/blog/page/insulin-resistance-or-just-a-full-cupboard

Furthermore, if you reduce carbohydrates, you deplete carbs stores over the coming days your tolerance will increase. But your metabolism can down-regulate if you’re too low carb for too long.

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It’s hugely beneficial to restock these stores. Doing this ‘boosts’ the metabolism, reducing hunger, and speeding up RMR, and NEAT.

Having a high-carb day, after some low-carb days doesn’t cause you to store fat or push fat to a fat store, the carbs will be absorbed and stored as glycogen while you burn fat for use another time. You can see an increase in HRV post-high carb day. Here is a blog post on HRV and fat loss https://anguslogan.co.uk/blog/page/hrv-nd-fat-loss

🔑The key is metabolic flexibility, which is the ability to use the right fuel for the right job.

📺 Here is a quick video on What is metabolic flexibility | learn series ep7

https://youtu.be/w1Upg-0kmbc

Metabolic flexibility is the human body’s natural state. However, over recent years, we’ve lost this ability.

😦The problem is Most of the time we are simply overeating carbs, which comes with excess fat. If carb stores are full, the fat will store as body fat and the carbs burn first, then we eat again and never get a chance to burn the fat. Overriding our bodies, natural settings and we gain fat. It can take a little while to recorrect this.

This is not how the human body is meant to work. We overate carbs and got sedentary jobs. Then the overcorrection was to start high-intensity exercise on a low-carb diet. This is also the wrong approach.

We need to be carb, conscious, and use the right amount of carbs for the right activity.

🥁 Drum roll, please.

The solution is planning your caloric intake around total carbs specifically designed for your carb tolerance, you are unlikely to overeat the other macros. Which can lead you to create a calorie deficit without much effort. For many, this could be a wonderful solution for fat loss.

This is where Lumen comes in, you can track all your macros or switch it to carbs only. Which is a lot easier than tracking all your macros.

Read about tracking, just carbs here

https://anguslogan.co.uk/blog/page/tracking-just-carbs

For those that don’t know what Lumen is or don’t have one, Lumen will work-out your recommend carbs depending on what you ate and what you did the day before by measuring your CO2 concentration, the higher the number, the more carbs your body is currently burning.

If you do this measurement in the morning, Lumen will give you your personal carb recommendations depending on these results. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, he was a collection of all the lumen videos I’ve made https://anguslogan.co.uk/blog/page/lumen-videos-pbvo

A low day for me now is 105g without a workout. A boost day is 250-300g so hardly low carb, just carb conscious.

Layer this in with some awareness, weight lifting, Zone 2, mindfulness, mindset training, glucose hacks, and a sprinkle of accountability and we’ll hack our metabolisms to finally, work for us!

For more information like this Join my Metabolism Hackers group.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1271375490307572/?ref=share

If you are not the proud owner of a Lumen here is my discount code LOGAN and save yourself a chunk.

http://lumen.me?aff=276

Angus Logan

Personal Trainer

Metabolic Coach

Health Coach

Thank you for reading, If you want more info like this check out my Facebook group ‘metabolism hackers.’ Articles, interviews, Q&As on all things metabolism hacking.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1271375490307572/?ref=share

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