Do Carbohydrates Turn Into Fat?

[lvysaur]

Are you saying you eat high fat and high sugar?

High coconut fat, yes. Moderate dairy fat, low everything else, moderate/high muscle meat.

If I eat true Peat style, I end up hungry. Sugar and cottage cheese don't satiate me.
In college I'd eat cottage cheese for breakfast, with lots of milk and sugar, after a sugary coffee. I needed to drink half a gallon of milk every day, in addition to the cheese, and whatever else I was eating.

 

[Richiebogie]

There seem to be 2 main types of digestion.

If you eat low fat and low protein you will burn carbs as per Westside Pufa's starch eaters and the 80 : 10 : 10 fruitarians. This is our ape ancestor diet from the tropical rainforests. This gives us sweet smelling armpits and faeces:



Alternatively, if you eat low carb you will burn your fat via ketosis. This is the desert and ice age emergency diet which makes us smell like obligate carnivores, eg. cats:



If we eat carbs, protein and fat together our bodies can get overwhelmed trying to digest via these two opposing ways simultaneously. Ray Peat suggests this is not an issue if we eat sugar and coconut fat, but is particularly a problem if you eat unsaturated fat + starch. It can lead to diabetes, obesity and cancer. See the 'before' stories from the above videos.

 

[Kray]

High coconut fat, yes. Moderate dairy fat, low everything else, moderate/high muscle meat.

If I eat true Peat style, I end up hungry. Sugar and cottage cheese don't satiate me.
In college I'd eat cottage cheese for breakfast, with lots of milk and sugar, after a sugary coffee. I needed to drink half a gallon of milk every day, in addition to the cheese, and whatever else I was eating.

What do you consider moderate dairy? Do you drink whole milk and eat other full-fat dairy (cottage cheese, cheese, etc)?

 

[lvysaur]

Ray Peat seems to suggest this is particularly a problem if you eat unsaturated fat + starch.

Yeah, I was losing fat even while eating a high sugar, high starch, high fat diet. The key was that it was low PUFA, antibacterial, and had regular taurine and glycine, and ADEK.

What do you consider moderate dairy? Do you drink whole milk and eat other full-fat dairy (cottage cheese, cheese, etc)?

Yes. I meant moderate dairy fat. I had plenty of dairy, via milk, but milk by itself doesn't have a significant amount of fat in it. Also had full fat cheese and some butter.

 

[Kray]

Yeah, I was losing fat even while eating a high sugar, high starch, high fat diet. The key was that it was low PUFA, antibacterial, and had regular taurine and glycine, and ADEK.



Yes. I meant moderate dairy fat. I had plenty of dairy, via milk, but milk by itself doesn't have a significant amount of fat in it. Also had full fat cheese and some butter.

Sounds about like me. How about alcohol in your diet? Wine, beer?

 

[lvysaur]

Sounds about like me. How about alcohol in your diet? Wine, beer?

I drank vodka and whiskey.

I find that beer gives me terrible GI symptoms (probably yeast/bacteria), and wine gives me strange headaches (probably the higher methanol content)

 

[Kray]

What about bubbly drinks-- prosecco, champagne? Would these be bad if diet is otherwise peaty?

 

[superhuman]

@Westside PUFAs have you approached it to yourself as a science project? In terms of your caloric intake eating HCLF vs regular fat or diet ? if so what did you notice in terms of maintenance calorie intake, loosing fat and calorie vs normal eating etc?

 

[Westside PUFAs]

@Westside PUFAs have you approached it to yourself as a science project? In terms of your caloric intake eating HCLF vs regular fat or diet ? if so what did you notice in terms of maintenance calorie intake, loosing fat and calorie vs normal eating etc?

I don't count calories or grams of anything though I plan to when I buy the right tools. For me belly fat was the last to go, all other fat on arms and thighs was the first but I also lost a lot of water too. I think people need to be specific about what they mean when they say they want to lose weight. They should say "I want to lose fat tissue and drain some water from my tissues too." We want to lose fat and water, which are useless when you have too much stored, and preserve our protein tissue or our protein weight. If I don't eat enough starch then I start to lose energy and muscle, like Peat said here. I think its best to focus on sugar and protein. Lean protein. I just don't see the value in ingesting large amounts of the storage organ of plants and animals in the form of fat aka fatty acids/lipids. For me the term "from my lips to my hips" is true when it comes to fat. The good thing is I know how to put on fat so easily now. All I have to do is drink a half gallon of whole milk daily, even 2% milk too. Notice I said put on fat. Putting on muscle is another thing.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I gained fat when I did low fat high carb

 

[Lee Simeon]

I gained fat when I did low fat high carb

You probably just ate to much

 

[Such_Saturation]

You probably just ate to much

Like 2300kcal average

 

[Lee Simeon]

Like 2300kcal average

Height and weight?

 

[Such_Saturation]

Height and weight?

180cm, 75kg before nofat, 80kg after

 

[Peater]

Could that just be from increased water retention due to the carbs?

 

[Such_Saturation]

Could that just be from increased water retention due to the carbs?

The fat is still here a year later... did lose a couple kilos though. But I do go up to 80kg any time I eat more than my appetite regardless of diet. Yes 2300kcal is more than my appetite.

 

[tyw]

Tendency for de novo lipogenesis (DNL) is context dependent, and also dependent on type of carbohydrate.

In general:

- The more insulin resistant, the more DNL. Since body composition affects insulin resistance, for a particular person, the fatter they are, the more DNL is likely
- The more sucrose and fructose, the more DNL
- The lower fat the diet is, the more DNL

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As a caveat, I will ignore the effects of carbohydrate re-feeding, since that isn't the norm. Re-feeding occurs when significant depletion of glycogen stores in either liver or skeletal muscle occurs, and carbohydrate is shunted into storage, and thus negating any chance for DNL.

In people consuming a non-ketogenic diet that isn't massively calorie restricted, liver stores are never too far from being full -- at most 50g off from being full, even after an overnight fast.

Also muscle glycogen stores are basically rarely impacted at all outside of heavy exercising populations, and those people won't generally be worried about DNL in the first place -- they are the ones who can most easily burn off any excess carbohydrate consumption, and usually have more lean tissue to store carbohydrates to begin with.

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I have already discussed the observation that the more fat mass you carry, the higher the likelihood of DNL under any context -- Drinking Coke Freely Quadruples Calorie Intake WITHOUT Weight Gain

That post also discussed sucrose consumption in young, lean men, to which the same conclusion can be made, that fructose increases likelihood of DNL.

However, net accumulation of fat in various tissues is going to depend on overall energetic consumption vs overall energetic expenditure.

Still, it is clear that regardless of body composition and insulin sensitivity, once you overload the liver with fructose, DNL starts to increase -- Hepatic de novo lipogenesis in normoinsulinemic and hyperinsulinemic subjects consuming high-fat, low-carbohydrate and low-fat, high-carbohydrate isoenergetic diets

Our low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet matched the proportions of fat and carbohydrate used previously by Parks et al (11); however, the ratio of simple to complex carbohydrates in the present study was 54:46, compared with 40:60 in the study by Parks et al. In the present study, this higher proportion of simple sugars (54%) led to elevated fractional hepatic DNL, whereas when only 40% of the carbohydrate consisted of simple sugars, hepatic DNL was minimal

Furthermore, our data clearly show that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet with a large proportion of simple sugars stimulates a lipogenic mode in the livers of insulin-sensitive subjects; this mode is comparable with the one observed in hyperinsulinemic subjects consuming a high-fat diet.​

Note again the interplay of insulin signalling and DNL, with the hyperinsulinemic (usually insulin resistant) condition causing more DNL to occur.

"Hyperinsulinemic" is the key word. In population studies, more fat mass is correlated with more insulin, but there are insulin sensitive fat people, and insulin resistant lean people. There is huge genetic variance here, and the "10x difference in insulin sensitivity" is often thrown around -- Genetics of insulin resistance. - PubMed - NCBI

Regardless of how big it is, this variance is observed to be true and significant, and would mean that people who are naturally more insulin resistant may be more predisposed to DNL in the face of higher carbohydrate intakes.

Also, regardless of a person's innate insulin sensitivity, it is likely that changing their body composition to have less fat and more lean tissue will improve insulin sensitivity. The general pattern still holds -- the more bodyfat one holds on to, the more feeding-induced DNL they will likely undergo compared to a leaner version of themselves.

Of course, eating less automatically decreases insulin secretion, hence reducing the likelihood of hyperinsulinemia. I will say again, net accumulation of fat in various tissues is going to depend on overall energetic consumption vs expenditure. If the liver somehow manages to use or export all the fat that is created through DNL there, then no accumulation can occur.

The problem with fructose / sucrose overconsumption remains that most of the fructose is going to be directed to the liver for metabolism. Here we can have localised overloading of one tissue, despite a systemic eucaloric feeding pattern. The likelihood of liver fat accumulation definitely increases with increasing fructose consumption, regardless of body composition.

The reader can lookup the problems with fat accumulation of any form (saturated fat accumulation in the liver is not benign). Remember to not conflate dietary saturated fat with accumulated liver fat -- The High-fat Hep C Diet: Is a Diet High in Saturated Fat Good for the Liver?


Regarding low fat diets, this is a study on a 10% fat diet, with 75% of the diet as "glucose polymers" (ie: no fructose) -- Human fatty acid synthesis is stimulated by a eucaloric low fat, high carbohydrate diet.

By day 10, VLDL triglyceride was markedly enriched in palmitate and deficient in linoleate in all subjects on the low fat diet. Newly synthesized fatty acids accounted for 44 +/- 10% of the VLDL triglyceride​

This is significant DNL, and basically its mostly SFA (and maybe some n-9 unsaturated fats). Again, whether or not this DNL leads to fat accumulation is contingent upon overall energetic factors.

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As usual, context matters. Each person should be examined for the factors listed above to determine their own risk of excessive DNL.

.....

 

[JoeKool]

@Richiebogie is right... but i wanted to add my 2 cents from my experience... apologies if this is already explained elsewhere

Our brains are addicted to sugars... as it's encoded as our source of energy... so when we have sugars, many times you'll see you want more... just like an addiction... as such, our bodies will store carbohydrates for energy reserves... however, since our brain tells us 'must get sugar' , we never reach those reserves and hence add weight...

Proteins, for example, no matter how much you ingest, are passed without storage...

This brings me to Ketosis... in order for the brain to 'switch' over to burning fat as a fuel source, you must starve it of sugars... that switch will take place in 72 hours... and yes, those 3 days are tough but if you avoid carbohydrates for those 3 days, you'll become ketogenic... it's not a coincidence that it takes a heroin addict 3 days to detox off of heroin and that's the same time we must go thru to come off of sugar... once 72 hours have passed, your brain will send out ketones to burn fat as fuel source... you'll actually begin to feel better and no longer have those cravings typically reserved for everyday life (I need a snickers bar! or can of soda!)... as your blood sugar levels will remain constant... and low... you can get more scientific by understanding insulin in this state too...

The weight will drop decently quick in this state... as the body needs X calories just to survive and if you're in a caloric deficit , you'll be burning fat just to walk and breath...

So if you can make the 72 hours, and then continue to avoid carbohydrates which becomes easier as your body won't call for them... you can lose weight somewhat quicker... I appear flatter in this state so I've only done it a few times and definitely not long... over a week but nothing special

 

[Ahanu]

Like 2300kcal average

That is not much, do you live a sedentary life?

 

[Such_Saturation]

That is not much, do you live a sedentary life?

Yes, and often I simply get too lazy to eat. The problem is that I can't really have big separated meals because of past issues with gastritis and reflux which have left me with a bit of a sensitive stomach.