Cavewomen Don't Get Fat (8 page)

Here's what gives: we have become utterly confused—and misled—about how and why carbohydrates are a must-have in our diets.

Let's start with the basics. Carbohydrates provide the nutrients we need to fuel our bodies. We need the energy locked up in carbs (which the body converts to glucose) to build muscle, keep our nervous systems in fine form, build and maintain our cells, and balance our hormones. There are three basic types of carbs. Because of—yet again—the marketing muscle of food manufacturers—we get all
tied up in knots when we try to make sense of which carbs are good for us and which are bad. I'm going to make understanding all of this as easy as pie.

1. Simple Carbohydrates.
These are carbs that are, literally, made up only of sugars (usually just one or two), and these are the carbs that we need to avoid. Ingesting simple carbs is like mainlining glucose: so much is swept into our bloodstreams that our insulin levels spike. These “foods” (if you can call them that) are the ones that cause that “sugar rush” feeling. You know, you haven't eaten for hours, so you have a slice of cake at the office birthday party or stop for a doughnut. Shortly after eating said cake or doughnut, you get a sudden surge of energy—and then, within an hour or two, you come crashing down. This kind of fast delivery of glucose shocks our systems—and so our metabolisms—and makes us fat.

Culprits include pasta, bread, and baked goods made with white flour; anything with table sugar, fruit juice, corn syrup, and jam; and packaged cereals. (This is why you
have
to read those nutrition and ingredient labels!)

So when it comes to carbs, avoid the simple ones. Because what they will do to your metabolism is anything but.

2. Complex Carbohydrates.
Our bodies (and minds) love complex carbs. Yes, they contain sugars, but they also have fiber, which means that it take much longer and is much harder—more complex—for the body to break down and absorb. Since complex carbs take longer to digest and absorb, they provide a slow, steady stream of energy. Our insulin levels remain consistent, and we stay satisfied and sharp. And this is a beautiful thing.

For Paleo Chic purposes, you'll find complex carbs in dark leafy greens, fruits, cruciferous vegetables, and other nutritious foods.

But here's the rub with complex carbs. Before the industrial revolution (pre-1900), Americans ate a ton of complex carbs but were not, as a society, obese, which just goes to show what creating food
in a factory, as opposed to on a farm, does in terms of wrecking the health benefits of that food. The fattening-food industrial complex has taken our Paleo carbs and mixed them with refined sugars and all sorts of other chemicals, boxed them up, and has the cojones to sell these Frankenfoods to us as healthy carbs. This is where we need to put on our big-girl Paleo panties and say “Enough is enough!”

3. Indigestible Carbohydrates.
These carbohydrates, also known as dietary fiber, are so dense and indigestible that they don't offer any significant energy to our bodies. They do, however, provide the necessary roughage to keep our digestive wheels turning so that when the next healthy carb comes through, our bodies can take what they need and eliminate the rest. Do your body justice with nuts, ground flaxseeds, and fresh fruits and vegetables such as apples and broccoli. Keep things fresh and enjoy them raw, cooked, and juiced.

When we go all crazy and cut out too many carbs, we run the risk of starving our bodies of necessary energy in ways that cause a domino effect of maladaptive metabolic processes. Without sufficient amounts of the right kind of sugar for fuel, our bodies have to work to convert other nutrients, such as protein, into energy. This is like stealing from Peter in order to pay Paul: if protein is hijacked for fuel, then it's not available to make new cells or regulate our hormones. If we're starved of most carbs, our bodies can't metabolize fat properly (fats need components of carbs to break down, ladies), and we generate ketones, a by-product of out-of-whack fat conversion. We get fooled when our bodies go into this “shock” state, because ketosis tamps down our appetites. When we're in a severely low-carb state, we run the risk of becoming dehydrated, our brains
go all mushy, and our muscles (which are now being broken down for fuel) weaken. So, yes, we may drop a few pounds temporarily, but with them goes our ability to think and move well.

So what's a cavewoman to do? The easiest way to figure out how to manage the three kinds of carbs (simple, complex, and indigestible) is to follow these three rules:

1. Eat lots and lots of naturally occurring complex carbs. These include all fresh fruits and vegetables, sweet potatoes, winter squash, jicamas, taros, and Jerusalem artichokes.

2. Scale back your intake of fruit juices, as well as refined and highly processed flour products. That's just about anything you can buy in a box or a bag: cookies, chips, crackers, breads, premixed convenience foods, and so forth.

3. Banish sugars (refined and unrefined), syrups, jams, jellies, and any item that has simple sugars added to it.

Since our bodies basically run on sugars—metabolically converted sugars—why is eating sugar so bad for us?

Because sugar is corrosive in the extreme. And we're literally choking ourselves on this stuff. In 2012 the US Department of Agriculture estimated that Americans consume roughly forty-seven pounds of sugar and thirty-five pounds of high-fructose corn syrup every year. That's more than eighty pounds
per person
per year of raw, fattening fuel! This statistic alone ought to be enough to scare you straight about sugar, but if not, I'll keep going.

Over the past thirty years, Americans have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and cancers at accelerated rates never seen before. And our overconsumption of sugars can play a role in all of these diseases.

Who knew that your local grocery store is really a cover for a very sinister, postmodern version of Studio 54? Every time you pull a box of some sugar-drenched product off the shelf, you might as well be back in the glory days of disco, hunched over in a dark corner, snorting lines of the white stuff. This may sound like a preposterous analogy, but it's not, because sugar is as addictive as crack cocaine. (It trips the same dopamine receptors in the pleasure parts of our brains.) Our bodies and brains aren't naturally hard-wired to need this form of sugar, but once we get it, we just can't get enough. Once we flip that switch, we slide down a sweet, slippery slope, and there's just no “off” setting. When it comes to pleasure and our brains, we want more and more sugar!

So stay away from the white stuff and watch out for refined sugar's evil twin, high-fructose corn syrup, which the food industry has managed to put into just about everything. Fructose is the worst of the worst. And HFCS is even more harmful. Food giants in agribusiness are now actually trying to promote refined sugar as “good.” They're slapping the words “Contains No High-Fructose Corn Syrup” on their products to make us think that their products are healthy. In an effort to increase the bottom line, these companies substitute one destructive type of unhealthy sugar for another. Who would've ever thought that white sugar would rise up to be the “good” girl? It's all relative, isn't it!

Fructose is not—I repeat, not—glucose. And it's not your body's friend. Let me break it down a bit: refined white sugar (sucrose) contains a 50–50 mixture of glucose and fructose. HFCS contains 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Only the liver metabolizes the fructose component of sugar and HFCS, but every cell in the body metabolizes the glucose from sugar and starches. Fructose puts a huge metabolic burden on your liver, but glucose requires only 20 percent participation from that organ. When too much fructose enters the liver, the body cannot process it quickly enough.

Fructose ravages your metabolic system and wreaks havoc on your endocrine system, liver, and vascular system. Drinking sodas or high-fructose drinks (sports drinks are the worst) is like shooting up poison: your liver pretty much goes into shock with every can of the stuff you knock back.

Here's what else fructose does to you:

• For every 120 calories of fructose that you consume, your body stores 40 of those as fat. Compare this with eating 120 calories of glucose: your body hangs on to less than 1 calorie of fat.

• When your liver goes into fructose shock, it overproduces uric acid, which, in turn, leads to high blood pressure and inflammation. (The severe joint pain known as gout, caused by excess uric acid in the blood, is common in those who overdose on fructose.)

• Eating fructose triggers insulin resistance, which means that fat droplets get dispersed into your muscles, your liver, and your other vital organs. Insulin resistance is early-stage type 2 diabetes, the gateway disease to all kinds of health woes.

• Your body needs glucose. When it gets fructose instead, it goes into fat-producing mode rather than fat-burning mode.

• Research shows that ingesting fructose hampers brain functioning and dulls synaptic signaling. This, in turn, warps our ability to learn and muddles our memory. Perhaps this is one explanation for the rise in diagnoses of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other brain-related conditions in our kids. Research also indicates that fructose overload may contribute to Alzheimer's disease.

• Fructose causes systemic inflammation, which can lead to autoimmune diseases, including arthritis, heart disease, and, of course, obesity.

Probably the greatest challenge on the Paleo Chic plan is eliminating sugar from your diet. I will not sugarcoat how hard it is stop eating sugar: our dependence on sugar is a physiological addiction. Quitting cold turkey rarely works. Your goal is to simultaneously taper off sugar while eating more protein and fat, so your body can quickly experience how energized, clean, and lean it feels when it's not being polluted with all that unhealthy sweet stuff.

When we overindulge in carbs and sugars, we don't allow our bodies to metabolize (and burn) fats the way they want to. The plain truth is, our bodies can process only so many carbs, and they have very limited ways, other than producing fat, to store excesses of this nutrient. That's why, as we age, we tend to develop a muffin top around our middle—this is the body's way of telling us that we're eating too many carbs.

Sugar also does a serious number on our blood sugar levels. When our blood is saturated with too much sugar, all kinds of things go wrong. Most alarmingly, our insulin levels are called upon to be too high, too much of the time, and this, in turn, teaches our bodies not to respond to the hormone (the phenomenon known as insulin resistance). Here's what happens when there's too much insulin coursing through our systems:

• Elevated insulin levels suppress production of the hormones glucagon and GH. Glucagon takes stored fat and breaks it down into sugar, while growth hormone is needed to create lean muscle mass.

• High insulin levels mess with your appetite. Ever indulge in a huge bowl of pasta at a late dinner and then wake up the next morning to find your stomach growling with hunger? This occurs because that high-carb meal gave you a spike of sugars rather than a steady delivery of fuel.

• Too much insulin compromises the body's ability to dismantle fat. It doesn't matter how much time you spend on that treadmill. If you're eating too much sugar, your body is going to fight and hold on to any unwanted fat for dear life.

That's why you have to eliminate all of the unhealthy carbs from your diet and make a point of loading up on healthy carbs. It's that simple—and that challenging.

To become a bad-carbs private dick, you have to read every label before you put any food in your grocery cart.