How to Lose Weight (Analysis of Carbs) | Jason Fung

today we're going to talk about carbohydrates in detail do you have to cut out all carbs to lose weight the answer is a little more more complicated than that and we're going to get right into it [Music] carbohydrates are chains of glucose and low carb diets have become very popular including diets such as the keto diet which has been very successful for people to lose weight however many traditional societies throughout the ages have eaten carbohydrates and there hasn't been a lot of obesity until relatively recently so what's the difference what's the truth we had populations that ate a lot of rice we had populations that eat lots of potatoes and there was not much obesity until the 70s but there's actually many different types of carbohydrates and not all of them are really all that fattening so i break them down into four categories there's refined carbohydrates there's unrefined carbohydrates which are starchy and there's unrefined carbohydrates that are more fibrous and then i use a separate category for fruit and i'm going to discuss each of these in turn first refine carbohydrates so these are processed that is they're not found in this form in nature the classic would be white flower for example or even whole wheat flour you don't find flower trees but you do grow wheat berries and from that wheat you have to process that in order to get flour so it's not really just the type of food but what you're doing to that food that makes it more fattening than other foods what you do when you take wheat berries in turn it into flour is that you have to extract a lot of the proteins out you have to take out a lot of the fiber you take out all of the fat and then you grind it into a very fine dust and that's how you get white flour because it's been so highly refined the body absorbs extremely quickly especially grinding it into that fine dust we get the very quick rush of glucose because carbohydrates are made of chains of glucose therefore insulin ice also spikes up very quickly and it can sometimes fall just as quickly which can lead to this crash that happens perhaps an hour hour and a half after eating high carbohydrate-containing meals and these refined carbohydrates are the main things that people suggest that you cut out in low carbohydrate diets some examples of these refined carbohydrates is flour so white flour but also whole wheat flour even though it contains a little bit more fiber it's also still ground up very fine which leads to this very quick absorption you see this in things like the glycemic index where whole wheat bread is almost converted to glucose as quickly as white bread so it's maybe marginally better but it's still not great other things like rice flours and corn flours are also highly processed so all the things that are predominantly made out of these flowers should be avoided if you want to avoid this very high rising glucose high spike in insulin which may lead to weight gain some examples would be things like bread pasta cereals breakfast cereals beer muffins donuts that kind of thing and most people acknowledge that they're not particularly slimming foods the other group that's particularly problematic is refined simple sugars sugar like table sugar is composed of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose as opposed to starches which are mostly chains of glucose and it's this fructose which is particularly problematic for weight gain it's in the way that the fructose is metabolized it goes straight to the liver and often becomes converted into fat which can lead to a lot of insulin resistance which leads to high insulin levels the problem with sugar is not only that it's very easy to turn into fat but it's also very rewarding it's very easy to eat sugar it's very easy to overeat sugar and this is a problem when you have added sugars so there's lots of natural foods that contain sugar but there's usually a limit to how much sugar they contain processed foods are particularly bad because they add a lot of sugar because it's a way to make food taste very good at a very very low cost so avoiding these sugars and other things with a lot of fructose like high fructose corn syrup for example is critical for weight loss so that includes white sugar brown sugar they think have things like fructose high fructose corn syrup maple syrup fruit juice concentrates that type of thing there's lots of different names because they often want to hide how much sugar is contained in ingredient lists you really have to go digging another area to look out for are refined grains while these are not as refined as flour which have been grind very fine they are still refined so things like white rice instant rice polished rice instant oatmeal because again it's ground very fine so that it cooks very quickly that is much more processed than steel cut oats for example which have to be cooked for a long time corn starch potato starch modified food starch tapioca starch you want to avoid all of those things so in summary those are flowers refined grains and starches and simple sugars the next group of carbohydrates are the unrefined carbohydrates which means that these occur fairly close to what they look like in nature but these are the unrefined carbohydrates that are starchy usually you'll find them in roots that are growing underground because the plants are trying to store away these carbohydrates for later use this includes grains like rye barley buckwheat spelt basmati rice black rice certain noodles like shirataki noodles are made of yam and root vegetables like potatoes sweet potatoes parsnips taro artichoke for example those are all starchy carbohydrates but because they're unrefined they do contain things such as fiber which helps slow down the digestion so you don't get that very quick rise in glucose that you see with the refined carbohydrates in indices such as the glycemic index what you see is that the glycemic index is much much lower than those of fine carbohydrates and therefore you can take these foods in moderation they're not necessarily bad for you it depends on how you make them and also how much you take and how often you eat them but they're often a much better choice than the refined carbohydrates the third group of carbohydrates that you should be cautious of but not necessarily completely cut out is fruit fruit is very controversial because it is a natural food however some fruits have a lot of fructose and chemically there's no difference between the fructose that is contained in fruit and the fructose that you would get in high fructose corn syrup so the difference with fruit is that it comes packaged with a lot of other things when you eat an apple there's a lot of fiber there's a lot of the pulp there's other nutrients in it and it's often very hard due to the bulk of the fruit to overeat these fruits as opposed to overeating things like the fruit juice for example where all of that has been removed so certain fruits are going to be much better than others berries strawberries raspberries blackberries are often going to be much better than other very sweet fruits the other thing to keep in mind is that many of the fruits that we eat today are different than the fruits that we ate 30 40 years ago they're much sweeter they've been genetically altered they've been bred together a lot of things like the white peaches the golden pineapples have been bred to be much sweeter than previous generations would have eaten that's why it's not so hard to get people to eat fruit these days because it really is nature's candy so if you are going to take fruit while it's not the worst thing you can take it can be one of the factors that's impeding your weight loss that takes us to the last category of carbohydrates which is really what should make up the bulk of the carbohydrates in your diet and these are unrefined carbohydrates but non-starchy and more fibrous these are usually the vegetables that grow above ground as opposed to the starchy ones that grow below ground these are occur naturally but because of the amount of fiber in them they're very bulky they tend to make you feel full and they're very slowly absorbed so you feel this very slow rise in blood glucose and insulin and therefore it may make it easier to keep that weight off legumes and lentils are a great example of carbohydrates that really don't have much of an effect on insulin they contain a lot of protein so they're very good vegetable sources of protein they sometimes can be added with natural fats and there's a ton of fiber in these which means that it's going to slow the rise of glucose because absorption is much slower the other big category that you'll see here are the non-root vegetables so things like asparagus and peppers and broccoli and cauliflower and brussels sprouts eggplants leafy greens all of those things while they are carbohydrates nobody really gets fat eating broccoli it's just very difficult to do if you're eating a lot of these above ground vegetables it's going to provide a lot of nutrients but it's also going to fill you up because of their bulk and as long as you're not eating frequently then it's going to do a good job for weight loss the general consensus is that these vegetables are not particularly fattening and this doesn't matter if you're listening to the low-fat diet or the keto diet or the paleo diet or any standard diet most people acknowledge that these leafy greens and beans and so on are great parts of your weight loss diet so carbohydrates are not one category but really all different categories and some carbohydrates can be part of a great weight loss strategy remember refined carbohydrates maybe you should hold off i give it a red light for starchy carbohydrates the root vegetables and also for fruit i'd say yellow light be cautious of these you might be able to tolerate it but you might not be tolerating it and the green light for virtually all diets are the unrefined non-starchy carbohydrates things such as legumes lentils and leafy greens vegetables that grow above ground and that's it for this week thanks for watching i hope you learned something if you did maybe share it with a friend you might help them too and if you could do me a favor hit that like button and also the subscribe button so that you keep up to date on all my latest videos i'll see you next week

Channel: Jason Fung

Views: 758,800

Keywords: how to lose weight, weight loss, weight loss tips, keto diet, jason fung, dr fung, low carb, lose weight, dr jason fung

Id: lwAksfOjf2w

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Sun May 16 2021