Slimming Down - Fast!

It is now well understood that our bodies have designed to handle and digest carbohydrates, proteins and fat.

But have you ever wondered about the part that each of those three kinds of food play in your meal?

Food has at least four distinct roles to play in keeping us alive.

1.Food should be nutritious - to sustain us
2.It should satisfy our hunger and help is to know when we’ve eaten enough.
3.It should regulate our bodies – sugar levels etc
4.It should satisfy our energy requirements

But how does this relate to carbohydrates, proteins and fats?

- White carbs (bread, pasta, sugar, potatoes, cakes, etc) provide more immediate energy than proteins.

- Protein (meat, fish, eggs, etc) , among other things (like forming amino acids that helps form muscle), takes longer to get broken down by the body to glucose (as is carbs) but in a longer time than say potato mash.

- Fats (oils, butter, fatty foods, etc) take even longer to break down. The effort required by the body to break down the different kinds of foods varies according to the particular foods.

If your meal consisted of solely carbs, the digestive process would be relatively short and you would be hungry again soon afterwards. The length of time it would take to become hungry would decrease by introducing proteins – protein helps you to know when you should stop eating. The effort in breaking down a steak, for example, would be greater than just eating mashed potato.

However, fat takes even longer to break down. And as it takes even more effort, than protein it helps to curb your cravings and despite what the supermarkets say with their low fat foods – this has morphed into a huge industry - you do need fat for the reason that it is energy that takes greatest effort to break down and takes the longest time to be converted to glucose.

The more effort to break down results in you expending more calories. Eat a small packet of pork scratchings (the kind you get in pubs) and notice that you’ll not be hungry for quite some time.

So what can be said about the three foods? I’d say that white carbs help with immediate energy but does little to satisfy you. Proteins help to satisfy your hunger but do little for your immediate energy needs but take longer to become energy. Fat helps with your longer term energy needs and help with keeping you full longer and stops your cravings.

What does this all mean? That the perfect each meal should contain carbs, proteins and fats in varying amounts based on factors like 1) the time of day, 2) your kind of lifestyle and 3) what your plans and hopes for your body are.

So maybe have less white high carbs/starch (white bread, rice, mash, sugar, potatoes) in the evening more so than in the morning. (Note that vegetables are carbs too but they deserve their own post and I’ve pretty much ignored them so far focussing mostly on white high carbs). Indeed, a good meal (in my humble opinion) should contain about 50-60% of low carb vegetables.

Note, also, that not all carbs are the same. They can be considered as simple or complex and play an important part in our diet. They affect the rate at which sugar enters the bloodstream and can therefore be categorised by their gylcemic index and their insulin index (the amount of insulin that gets released by each food) – Simple carbs (sugar) have almost immediate release capabilities while complex carbs release their energy over a longer period (pasta, brown bread) - this is what you're aiming for.

So, to ensure that each meal plays its part to the maximum you should aim to include all three kinds of foods in each meal that deal with immediate energy, satiety and cravings – i.e. the perfect meal - make sure to control the quantities.

As I alluded to in an earlier post Ian Marber the author of a great easy-to-read book named How Not To Get Fat is far more qualified than I to explain here in our Amazon convenience store 
 
To your greater weight loss
 
Dominic


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