Carbs And Fat

I’ve read Berardi’s and CT’s articles, and I understand the carb cycling concept, carbs in morning, after workout, etc. but I don’t understand why carbs and fat should not be mixed in the same meal.

From what I understand, the carbs will be used up as a primary source of energy and the fat will be stored, if the ratio between the 2 is too high.

The whole concept of not combining carbohydrates and fats isn’t really scientific, it’s just a trick to get you to eat less. The body can metabolize carbs and fats just fine together.
If you split all yours meals into P+F and P+C meals you’ll end up eating less than if you were to combine them into one meal. It just makes you pay more attention to what meals you make and what you’re eating.

[quote]GT625 wrote:
The whole concept of not combining carbohydrates and fats isn’t really scientific, it’s just a trick to get you to eat less. The body can metabolize carbs and fats just fine together.
If you split all yours meals into P+F and P+C meals you’ll end up eating less than if you were to combine them into one meal. It just makes you pay more attention to what meals you make and what you’re eating.[/quote]

That’s actually not true. Higher GI carbs cause an insulin release. Insulin is a storage hormone. It’s not best to eat a fat-heavy meal with a lot of insulin-secreting carbs. More likely that it’ll be stored. Nevertheless, fat and carb separation are most appropriate when bulking. And even then, it’s only one method of limiting fat gain. It’s much less important when hypocaloric.

[quote]Black Flag wrote:
I’ve read Berardi’s and CT’s articles, and I understand the carb cycling concept, carbs in morning, after workout, etc. but I don’t understand why carbs and fat should not be mixed in the same meal. [/quote]

I don’t know if it’s accurate to think that more fat kcals will get stored if they’re consumed alongside carbs.

I do know that getting comfortable with P + F meals provides useful experience for future periods of carb restriction.

[quote]GT625 wrote:
The whole concept of not combining carbohydrates and fats isn’t really scientific, it’s just a trick to get you to eat less. The body can metabolize carbs and fats just fine together.
If you split all yours meals into P+F and P+C meals you’ll end up eating less than if you were to combine them into one meal. It just makes you pay more attention to what meals you make and what you’re eating.[/quote]

I couldn’t possibly agree more.

I would bet every penny I own that, if you compared two protocols:

1 serving protein
1 serving fat OR carbohydrate

to

1 serving protein
1/2 serving fat, 1/2 serving carbohydrate

And matched kcals, meals per day, and totals for protein, carbs, and fat, that results would be identical between groups.

Insulin may be a storage hormone, as another individual stated, but:

  1. protein itself stimulates insulin, and it doesn’t take much to have it exert an effect in this capacity

  2. you can store fat in the absence of insulin anyways (because we have redundant fat storage mechanisms, including ASP).

  3. Even if you were to store more “now,” you might well use more later. Looking at fat dynamics within the narrow window of a meal may be a forest/trees thing.

While it is true that fat won’t be converted into energy if there is glucose present, this may not be as complicated when in a calorie deficit as previously thought. This is where the whole theory came from.

Plenty of Malonyl -CoA exists in the presence of fuel. Carnitine acyltransferase is then inhibited, which prevents acyl-CoA from crossing into the cell’s mitochondria. After NADH inhibits, Thiolase is inhibited by the presence of Acetyl-COA.

If you’re dieting and you spike your insulin a few times while in the presence of a high fat meal, it could possibly be stored as fat.

However, if you’re already dieting it wouldn’t matter too much since your body will just burn it off at the end of the day anyway because your body will notice it is in a calorie deficit. There is just a difference between “now” and “then”.

It is true that if we drink too much whey protein Gluconeogenesis will occur and this will also spike our insulin because amino acids can be converted into sugar, since our muscles will not use all of what was consumed at once.

This doesn’t mean we won’t absorb everything we ate. It just means that the “unused” amino acids will be converted into sugar. If our goal is not weight loss, then it wouldn’t make sense to be too anal about this since not having any insulin spikes isn’t the goal when bulking either.

[quote]jsbrook wrote:
GT625 wrote:
The whole concept of not combining carbohydrates and fats isn’t really scientific, it’s just a trick to get you to eat less. The body can metabolize carbs and fats just fine together.
If you split all yours meals into P+F and P+C meals you’ll end up eating less than if you were to combine them into one meal. It just makes you pay more attention to what meals you make and what you’re eating.

That’s actually not true. Higher GI carbs cause an insulin release. Insulin is a storage hormone. It’s not best to eat a fat-heavy meal with a lot of insulin-secreting carbs. More likely that it’ll be stored. Nevertheless, fat and carb separation are most appropriate when bulking. And even then, it’s only one method of limiting fat gain. It’s much less important when hypocaloric.[/quote]

How about when in a caloric surplus though? When bulking…then is it bad?

And ProfX…what you mention about too much whey and glucogenesis…I tend to get up, drink 30 g, whey (I’m 110 lbs and FEMALE so don’t shout at me to just EAT…), eat a bit of fruit, and then go workout. Is this protein just being used as fuel? And is there any problem with this? Why is it bad to use protein as fuel as long as you eat enough of it. It’s my favorite food…I’d rather eat a bunch of protein instead of carbs…