People tend to consider the category of “carbohydrates” as a single entity. You hear people say, “I’m a carboholic,” or “I’m trying out this new, low-carb diet,” as if all carbohydrates are the same, which they are not.
One person who strongly influenced the way people think about carbohydrates was Dr. Robert Atkins, who was famous for having invented the Atkins Diet. Dr. Atkins was on the right track, but he had a few of the details wrong. He thought that all carbohydrates were the same, and that they were all bad for you. He didn’t differentiate between the various kinds of carbohydrates. He just said not to eat them.
People had no trouble losing weight, impressive amounts of weight, on the Atkins diet. They ran into trouble only when they go to the maintenance phase of the diet. Here, Dr. Atkins recommended that carbohydrates be reintroduced slowly. But he provided no guidance. He didn’t know that a slice of white bread is entirely different than an artichoke. So that’s where people got into trouble. Now their weight ballooned, and they deemed the entire experiment a failure. It’s probably the main reason that people were unable to sustain their weight loss on the Atkins diet.
So how should we be thinking about carbohydrates? In terms of the amount of insulin they require. If you’d like to reacquaint yourself with how insulin works, take a minute to go back and read my post on “Eating Toast and Jelly for Breakfast Wastes Your Insulin.” Remember that foods which are broken down into sugar and absorbed quickly require a large bolus of insulin to catch them. The faster they are broken down, the more insulin they need.
The four categories of carbohydrate-rich foods, in order of increasing insulin requirement, are vegetables, beans, fruit, and grains. Vegetables, especially green vegetables, require the least insulin. Veggies are usually permissible in unlimited amounts on most diets. I’m sure you have noticed that vegetables, as a rule, do not seem to cause people to put on pounds. Now you know why.
Beans are a very special food. They are pretty much the only food on Earth that is rich in both fiber and protein at the same time. The research shows that they decrease the risk of developing diabetes. That makes sense. They use comparatively little insulin. Remember to categorize green peas, green beans, and peanuts (also known as goober peas!) as beans, not vegetables.
There are zillions of different types of beans, and they all have their own very special flavors, colors, sizes, and other properties. Adzukis, a tiny, dark red/purple bean from Japan, are one of my favorites. I like chickpeas, too, which are also known as garbanzo beans. Last summer I forgot about a jar of chickpeas that I’d set out to sprout. I found the smelly mess a few days later, tossed it on an empty patch of dirt outside and forgot about it. Until, that is, I found several plants hanging full with fresh chick peas. They were so great! I am looking forward to repeating the experiment again this year.
Fruit is a gift. The variety of profoundly complex flavors, coupled with their sweetness, provides so much joy and satisfaction. I remember, as a child, watching my mom methodically peel a beautiful, red pomegranate, and share its tart, jewel-like seeds among my brother, sister, and me. Another time, there was a silky, smooth-textured, jelly-soft, orange persimmon. Melon, kiwis, dates, gala apples and navel oranges. They certainly contain a significant amount of sugar. But fruit yields up its sugar molecules only reluctantly, as they are slowly released from the fiber matrix within which they lie. So they do not overburden our insulin production.
By far, grains require the most insulin of each of the four categories. But grains (whole grains that is), like all the other sources of carbohydrate listed here, carry a significant amount of fiber, and that slows the absorption of the sugar within. That’s one reason why whole grains are so much more nutritious than “refined” flour. Speaking of which, what exactly is refined flour? To “refine” is to purify, to remove coarse or extraneous impurities. So what makes flour “refined”? The fact that it’s been stripped of fiber and germ, its so-called coarse impurities.
Flour made from whole, intact grains is darker than flour made from grains that have been stripped of their bran layer. Also, the germ is rich in polyunsaturated oils, which are highly reactive. So whole-grain flour becomes rancid much more quickly than white flour. That’s why white flour has such a long shelf life. Decades ago, it was easy for manufacturers and advertisers to convince people that flour stripped of the bran and germ was more pure. It looked cleaner and lasted longer. It could be stored for months without refrigeration, transported far distances, and still smell fresh when it reached its destination. The coarse impurities had been removed. It was new and improved. It was “refined” flour.
If we recall that fiber, fat and protein slow food absorption, then we can conclude that removing the bran (fiber) and the germ (fat) will significantly increase the rate of absorption, and will result in the need for a great deal more insulin. So not only do we use more insulin to eat grains, we use even more when we eat the refined white flour of the standard American diet. Not good. We aren’t meant to eat a diet that is high in refined flour. We are meant to eat a diet that is high in vegetables, beans, fruits and whole grains.
A special note about potatoes and corn. Although these plants are usually considered vegetables, they function more like grains. In fact, corn meal and potato flour can be used to make baked goods or to thicken gravies, in other words, to use as one would use wheat flour. So treat them like grains, and don’t eat them in unlimited quantities.
Therefore, to summarize, if you think that you may be using too much insulin, the first thing I would recommend is to decrease the amount of white flour (and sugar) that you eat on a daily basis. Give it a couple of weeks, and see if you notice that your pants fit better. If not, then the next step would be to decrease the amount of all the grains you eat, both whole and stripped (refined). It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You don’t have to remove all the grains. You could start with fifty percent, and see if that does the trick. Now wait a couple of weeks again, and see whether your pants are looser. I would be very surprised if there was still no improvement. Finally, in the unlikely event that you are still seeing no change, you could cut down on fruit, maybe just the sweeter, tropical fruits like banana and mango. And that should definitely do it.