Weights and Plates Podcast - #12 - Sugar: A Dietary Evil, or Just Misunderstood?

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

Sugar has gotten a bad rap the over the last decade and counting, and it's still common to hear diet gurus excoriate the evils of sugar, particularly refined sugars found in processed food in the Western world. As Robert and Trent discuss, the role that sugar, and carbohydrates in general, play in the diet is often misunderstood. While it's common sense that one shouldn't drink a bunch of Cokes every day, many people laser focus on eliminating sugar from their diet, at the expense of missing the bigger macronutrient picture and the very important role that carbs play in athletic performance.   Further reading: https://startingstrength.com/article/carbohydrates-and-barbell-training   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream https://www.marmaladecream.com

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am your host Robert Santana along with my co-host Trent Jones. Good evening. Well morning? Evening? It's evening for us. It's evening for me. 4 p.m. is that evening yet, or is that still afternoon? Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. And Chicago starts to get dark. It's weird Pacific time. Yeah.

Well, I'm Arizona time. We don't believe in daylight savings here. Oh, okay, Arizona time. Yeah, it says Pacific time on my calendar here, but Arizona time. I'll take that. It'll be mountain next month. Okay. Fall forward, spring backwards, right? I basically never, whenever, so, you know, we, we schedule these podcasts,

you know, every other week and we usually have a day that we record on, but you know, sometimes we have travel schedules and stuff. So our schedule gets off and I basically never know what time it is where you are. We get every, like, we've been doing this for what, 12 episodes now. And it's like it's still every time i'm just like wait what is how many hours behind is he and it's going to change next month so i'm going to fuck it up then too what are you 12 are you two hours ahead what are you central well no eastern so i'm three hours ahead right now it's seven it's seven o'clock right now well it's going to go to two hours next month because then, you know, everybody else changes and we don't.

Yeah, so today we're going to talk about sugar, I guess. Sugar. Sugar, you know. Since probably around the time I graduated high school when Atkins Revolution was big. Oh, I remember that. Yeah, the Atkins diet. Yeah, I'm dating myself here, but, you know, something like 20 years ago, around 2002, when I first started going to supplement stores and GNC and places like that, you know, everybody would kind of go off about

sugar. And I remember this one guy, I believe he still owns the shop up in northwest Chicago, I remember this one guy, I believe he still owns the shop up in northwest Chicago. He had a supplement store. And when I first met him, he was working at somebody else's supplement store. Then he opened his own, which is pretty cool. I met him right before that. And then we would just go buy from him, drive about an hour just because we liked talking to him. And he was one of these old school guys that went to the gym in the 70s, did a, did a lot more compounds, you know, and knew some stuff.

And he mainly was a salesman for Optimum. And then he, like I said, he helped out his buddy at the one supplement store, then he opened his own. So he knew a lot about the products that he was selling. And I think we were talking about building muscle. And, you know, he was kind of like rip when it came to nutrition in the sense that he was all about whole eggs whole milk and you know growing up in the 90s you know i'm a 80s baby mid-80s baby you know the late 80s the you know low fat thing got big so all throughout the

90s is this also like the food pyramid that's what i was uh handed when i was a swimmer and we had to talk about nutrition that's the only time nutrition ever came up when i was uh handed when i was a swimmer and we had to talk about nutrition that's the only time nutrition ever came up when i was in school yeah i remember the i remember that being all through schools far back as i remember yeah through grade school was the food pyramid and that was like a bunch of it's basically a bunch of bread at the at the bottom and the big biggest part and then yeah the fat was like the smallest part of the pyramid you know it's i have some thoughts on that, but it's interesting, you know, now that I have worked with a lot of people and have learned a few things, seen some patterns, you know. But I think I saw it on cereal boxes when I was a kid. And then in swimming, he wanted to talk to us about food.

And again, he was another guy. He was kind of like Rip, you know, probably in that age group, my swim coach. And he told us, you need to eat four or 5,000 calories, which was accurate for a swimmer because we were putting in some mileage, you know? Sure. Yeah. But they all, it seems like these old timers like the 5,000 calories for athletes, you know? Right. And there's probably truth to that, but the thing is, yeah, go ahead. Well, they know, I just, sorry to interrupt, but they know that if they say 5,000, the athlete's going to get 3,000. Of course, yeah. So that's part of it.

They know they're going to under-eat, so it's like, let's make a ridiculous number so they'll get a somewhat reasonable number. Yeah. It has been my experience that weight room trainees do pretty, males do pretty well in 3,000. I've had to go up to four, you know, I don't really, I haven't had to really go up past four unless I'm dealing with someone who's like six, five, you know? Right. Yeah. But, you know, I'll, I'll say that, you know, there are cases where 5,000 makes sense, especially if somebody is very underweight, you know, it's like fat gain is the least of their worries. They're skinny, you know?

Sure. Yeah. A swimmer, competitive swimmer, you know know i was going in six in the morning in the pool out by eight ish so like you know hour and a half two hour swim workout and then uh back in around 3 30 and then out around six another two and a half hours that's five hours of continued you know more or less continuous swimming i mean we're doing intervals but the breaks were very short you know yeah i wasn't a lot of work you know, I think we put in four 500s, 2,000. So it was like 10,000 yards a day we put in the water. Each lap is 25 yards, so you can kind of do the math. I'm getting exhausted just talking about this. That sounds about right, because a 500 is 20 laps, and that might be one set.

So the number was probably at about 10 000 yards a day during season and it'd be a little bit less on the pre-season and even less in the off season depending on how committed you were so we're talking like several miles of yeah miles about 1600 yards 1600 meters you know but yards meters are very close you know pretty close yeah yeah you know it's just a lot yeah it's like about eight miles or something of swimming, you know. And, yeah, I know you're burning through a lot. So, anyways, you know, we had to talk about nutrition once, and he had us do underwater weighing on this, you know, one of those old-school actual scales that you sat in underwater. There was no, like, computer or, like, tank or anything.

You just went in the pool on the chair, and it would weigh you, you know. And they would, you know, calculate body density and determine the body composition compartments. Anyways, we got talked to about diet. So he always said 5,000 calories, but then like at one point he got specific and decided to give us the food pyramid. And I just remember looking at it and I'm like, well, okay, how does this work? You know, how much, how do I use this? You know, like as a teenager, I couldn't figure out how to use that. I'm like, how does this make sense for me? And I'm like, okay, I see a bunch of bread at the bottom. I eat cereal, you know.

Anyways, 5,000 calories, I would just get high-calorie food, which was typically high fat, you know, high fat, maybe high protein, you know. Yep. And in my senior year, supplements got big because this was right, this was during the steroid era of baseball. This was during the steroid era of baseball. So before McGuire, well, actually, he didn't admit it until recently, like the last five years. But when him and Sosa were hitting those home runs, this was probably the year before that, two years before that, you know, there was a lot of, he got a lot of media attention because he was a great, he was a great ball player. But he was also on drugs, which made him an even more exceptional ball player. So I think he got questioned about androstenedione, and I think it was legal back then.

You can buy it. Yeah, I remember the andro thing. Yeah, that happened first before the, yeah. Yeah, they asked him about andro, and this was before the home run year. This was years before that. And then I think he said he took creatine or something. I think that's where the popularity, at least where I was going to school, because I was in Chicago.

St. Louis was one state over. You know, everybody was talking about creatine, you know. Everybody wanted to take creatine to get big. And as a swimmer, it doesn't make sense for a swimmer to take it, unless you're a sprinter, I suppose, you know. Yeah, it makes sense for a sprinter. I did everything. But somebody suggested taking protein powder, which was a complete waste of money. I took it briefly, and then I just stopped.

It tastes like shit. It was 2001, so it was terrible. Not the stuff they have now. They didn't have the sweeteners they have now. Right. And I heard that in the 80s, it was even worse than what I took. So it's come a long way. I used to come in a can, apparently.

I've never seen that. But I took it, and I didn't see any benefit from it. The biggest problem that I had was I was probably not eating enough carbs. We'll kind of come back to that. But when I talked to the guy, his name was John. He owns a supplement store up in Chicago, which I recommend. It's called Plaza Health. I don't know if it's still there. I'll give him a shameless plug because I still love the guy. I had great conversations with him. He actually turned out to be right in a lot of things. I'm a young 18-year-old at the time. I think I just finished. My friend was still in high school. I was at the community college when I met him.

Our one friend was very thin, more of an ectomorph type figure, very lean, very skinny, like six foot, 155 pounds. I was like skinny fat. I was 165, probably 18% body fat. And we're talking to this guy and we're talking about building muscle. And I'd been big into the men's fitness, men health magazines. That's what my stepbrother was into at the time. And I said, oh, I said something about nonfat milk. And he's like, no, drink whole milk and whole eggs, you know? Then I'm like, what? But what about saturated fat, nonfat milk. And he's like, no, drink whole milk and whole eggs, you know? Then I'm like, what? But what about saturated fat, you know? This is why I was so, this explains why Rip never got any pushback from me on this, because I'd heard this before, about, what, 11 years before

I met Rip, I heard this. And he's like, no, eat whole milk and whole eggs, you know? And I'm like, what? I'm like, but heart disease. And he's like, Eskimos aren't dying of heart disease, and they eat nothing but whale blubber. That's nothing but saturated fat, you know, and I'm like, what? I'm like, but heart disease. And he's like, Eskimos aren't dying of heart disease, and they eat nothing but whale blubber. That's nothing but saturated fat, you know, which later on I fact-checked, and I, you know, pulled up the literature on it, and, you know, it's pretty true. They don't have a high prevalence of cardiovascular disease, despite the fact that they tend to be overweight and obese, and they live off whale blubber, you know. So, it could be some epigenetic modification there because the fat probably keeps them warm, you know. Yeah, right.

There's also a lot of omega-3s in fish fat as well, you know. But it's also high in saturated fat, you know, they're eating blubber, you know. Sure, yeah. So, you know, he told me that and then he's like, look it up. And I think I did look it up briefly. I didn't know how to research back then, but I looked it up and, you know, I saw what he was saying on the internet on, you know, what was it, the AOL search engine? I forgot what search engine they used back then.

They used Yahoo, AOL. Netscape. Excite. Excite. Netscape Navigator. Anyways, then later on as a college student, you know, that thought kept popping up because I started hearing it from other guys that were like into that old school type gym stuff. And I looked it up again. I think if you look it up today, you'll see the same kind of thing.

But then he proceeded to say, it's all the sugar that's causing heart disease. It was the first time I heard this. This was 2001. And it kind of lines up because that's when the Atkins revolution was big. My mom did Atkins at one point. Her sister-in- when the Atkins revolution was big. My mom did Atkins at one point. Her sister-in-law did Atkins, you know, and that's where this kind of anti-sugar, the sugar zealots kind of originated, I would say. Okay, interesting. Yeah, and so remind me, so Atkins, I remember my first memory

of Atkins was like, I remember a lot of the parents of my friends were doing it, and I remember the thing that I remember about it was they were throwing away the buns. So they'd order the burger with the cheese or whatever, but they'd take off the bun. As a kid, I was just like, so weird. Like that's the, it's like half the best part of the burger. Yeah. They were eating weird. And later on, I guess it developed the name protein style. Okay. So, but it was a, it was a low carb diet. It was low-carb. I have to read Atkins over again. I never followed Atkins. I followed a low-carb diet. I think it was, or I didn't even, I didn't, YNDTP, I didn't do the program, but I found Lyle McDonald's Ultimate Diet 2.0 in 2004.

Okay. And that was the low-carb diet that I followed. And I did it wrong. You know, I tried to get the carbs according to the food labels to zero, but zero is impossible, obviously. So I tried to get to zero, you know. And I think I was probably eating too much protein, but I believe that Atkins was supposed to be mostly fat, you know, and then like moderate protein and low-carb, like 20, it's basic keto.

So 20 grams of carbs or less. If I remember correctly, I mean, you can pull it up if you want. I could be butchering this, but my understanding was you needed 20 grams of carbs or less, which is 80 calories from carbs. Most of your calories come from fat and then some from protein. So you can hold on to muscle. And then people were just eating bacon and T-bones and all sorts of stuff. But I think the reason that where I messed up was I think when I did UD2, Ultimate Diet 2.0,

I probably ate too much protein because, you know, you have glucogenic amino acids, so you can convert that into, you know, to glucose. And that's why you have to keep an eye on the protein as well. But, you know, I remember I was peeing on the sticks, so I don't think I actually ate too much protein because I was peeing on the sticks and they were turning the color I needed. But where I messed up was on the UD2, you were supposed to cycle on and off. So it was two weeks straight of keto. And then you do a whole week, Monday through Friday. Then Saturday and Sunday, you flip it and you go 70% carb, 30% or 20% fat, 10% protein or something like that. But then I just did a fucking cheat day where I just ate as much as I possibly could.

I go to a freaking old country buffet up in Chicago and we're in the Chicago suburbs and we just get like big breakfast that was high fat, high carb, high protein. We did it wrong. Then we get back into ketosis within a couple of days, but we were just eating too many calories. I wasn't paying attention to the calories. But my point is that Atkins shift was preceded by Ornish, which was very low fat. And that's where they reported that they saw changes in the size of the arterial lumen, meaning that the plaques that were deposited in those arteries, some of it had disappeared, you know? And the theory was that if you restrict fat extremely low, 10% of calories or less, so, you know, that's probably 20 grams of fat or less for most people, right? Which is impossible to

follow. And they did this in a lab setting, you know, it was an inpatient feeding study, I believe there are several of them, you know, and Pritikin, he did something similar. He had like a home in LA where they did a similar type diet. And he was selling this as a diet that reverses heart disease, right? The problem was it was very, very, very difficult to follow. And this was around 90s. In the 90s, it got big. I think he started publishing stuff in the early 90s. the books came out eat what is it eat more weigh less was his book and uh you know there was a lot of runners got into it i know a lady who you know stopped having her period because she did it and was freaking out about a couple grams of fat in a yogurt container you know like this this was like a big thing in the 90s well then the 2000s it was oh eat bacon and hamburgers but you know leave the bun and

you know stuff like that and then but then yeah when I talked to that guy, he said, yeah, sugar is the bad one. And I still hear guys, you know, say that stuff, and I don't disagree, you know. I don't think that eating concentrated sweets is, you know, a very healthy diet by any means. You know, if you're drinking a case of Coke a day or, you know, even having like half a case of Coke a day, that's a lot of sugar, you know. So I'm not saying sugar is a saint, but, you know, it's not as bad as, you know, it's just as bad as French fries at frickin' Burger King three times a day, you know? Sure, yeah. I'm glad you said that. So I also remember this. I remember the Atkins diet

a little bit, but also when CrossFit became popular. That was paleo. The paleo diet, right? And that, again, was very high on, it really wasn't all that different than the Whole30 thing that's popular today. But basically, eat more whole foods, avoid a lot of traditional carb sources in American food, which would be potatoes and certainly any processed grains. Well, I think even grains in general, you're not supposed to eat on, on paleo, right? Yeah, they hate grains. Oats and quinoa, you know, all that stuff.

But, but they like beans, I believe, paleo. Okay. So, so lentils and beans are okay. Yeah, I'm familiar. But, you know, that, that I also remember that was also like a big thing about sugar and i remember the british there was some british guy that was a chef and you know he did the whole like he did a whole ted talk this is when ted talks first got started too and he like walks out on stage with a wheelbarrow and he like delivers this excoriation of sugar and he dumps the wheelbarrow out on stage he's, this is how much sugar every kid eats in school every year. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely a problem.

And so, yeah. But yeah, I do remember there's a lot of theater around sugar being evil at the time. And I think that still persists. I think maybe people have kind of relaxed about that a little bit. But I wanted to talk about sugar because, yeah, there's still a persistent belief that sugar of any kind is bad and it's categorically worse for you than other carb sources. And I think, like anything, there's a nugget of truth to it, right? Like you said, processed sugars don't offer us a lot of nutrition for the calories that we eat but at the same time it's one of those things that can can make you miss the forest for the trees you know if you're skipping the coke but you're but you're pounding

the fries you know yeah and uh there's a couple there's a lot to unpack here. So number one, some of this is market-derived, much like hypertrophy training. And I'm all for markets doing what they do. So I don't want the government to come in here and tell us what to eat. That's not what I'm about to suggest. We just need to educate ourselves better. But the problem with low fat is you can't do it when you eat out, number one. And people, especially people with disposable income, tend to go out to restaurants. And when you go out to a restaurant, there is an undisclosed amount of fat in the food.

And fat adds more calories in terms of caloric density than carbs. You know, a gram of carbohydrate has like almost half the calories as a gram of fat. One gram of carbohydrate has four calories. One gram of fat has nine. So a little bit goes a long way. Ever wonder why those, I don't know if people still shop at Fannie Mae, those Fannie Mae candy, those turtles, they have like 400 calories in this thing that probably fits in the palm of your hand, you know? Right, those little chocolate turtles. Yeah, that's not the sugar. If it was all sugar, the thing would be like five times the size probably, or four times, you know, double the size,

you know? Right, right, right. But it has so much butter and fat in it, and then there's natural fat in the chocolate, you know, that packs in a whole lot of calories into a very small morsel of food. So that's my favorite example to use. When you look at fine chocolates, you're getting several hundred calories for something that's the size of a quarter at best. Right. So back to my statement that this is market-derived, low-fat, you're going to fail that pretty quick, more likely than low-carb. You're going to fail that too, but for different reasons. You can go and order a steak at a

restaurant and probably stay within your targets if you're on a low-carb diet. You can probably safely estimate it to be close to what you think it is because you don't get as much volume of food when you're doing low-carb carb versus low fat. When you're eating a low fat diet, which is thus high carb, you're getting a larger volume of food for the reason I just explained. But the problem is you can't really get that kind of volume when you're at a restaurant because they're, you know, preparing the food in fat and you can't really measure the fat. So. Yeah. Yeah. I always like to say it's like, you know, you go and you order the steamed broccoli, and it has six tablespoons of butter in it.

Yeah, exactly. So I think that that's, yeah, some of the worst, like I remember when I was in a class, my PhD program, my previous advisor was talking about how, oh, you know, fast food kills. Remember that slogan? No. He's like, actually, restaurant foods have oh, you know, fast food kills. Remember that slogan? He's like, actually, restaurant foods have a lot more calories than fast food. One of the most unhealthy foods at a restaurant is actually the salad at California Pizza Kitchen, I believe. What's the other place?

What's that other place? Cheesecake Factory. Sorry, wrong restaurant. I always mix those two up. Oh, Cheesecake Factory. Yeah, because we used to have them. They built one right next to each other in my hometown. So I always kind of mix them up.

But Cheesecake Factory, they have a salad that's 1,100 calories because it's like it's not just veggies, you know, oh, I just had a salad. No, no, no, there's nuts in there, there's cheese in there, there's dressing that's usually high fat, you know, et cetera. So that's what I mean, you know, I think low-carb has stood the test of time as a fad diet. You know, low-fat lasted about a decade. Low-carb, we're going into its third decade. You know what I mean? Before the 2000, I think that bodybuilders did it, you know, because they'd load up on a bunch of steroids.

They'd go low-carb, and they'd keep training, and then they'd keep all their muscle and lose all the fat they need to lose. And they'd also weigh less because they were retaining less water, and they wanted to look dried out, you know. So that's why bodybuilders of the 70s, 80s, and, you know, 90s, and then all the way till now, it's pretty much stayed the standard in that sport since its inception, ironically enough, you know. You had exceptions, you know, Franco Colombo has been reported to have eaten pizza in the back room, you know. So there's guys that have, you know, done it differently. But typically, low-carb has been a staple in bodybuilding, you know, for the last 50 or 60 years.

Now there's probably a little bit more diversity because there's a lot more science out there. And, you know, there's people that approach it differently. But, you know, it hit the mainstream in around 2000, late 90s, early 2000s. And it hasn't seemed to die. It has reinvented itself. So it was, you know, Atkins. It early 2000s, and it hasn't seemed to die. It's reinvented itself. So it was, you know, Atkins, it was Paleo, Keto now, you know, then there's, you know, so many different names for it, but it's all, you know, let's pull back sugar, let's pull back bread, and then some of them, you know, will say fruit is bad because if it's sweet, therefore it's sugar,

and therefore it's bad. So let's, you know, kind of unpack that now. So that's number one. Yeah. Well, so before you get there though, I kind of want to lay this out. I'm going to lay a little bit of groundwork out for that. So when we say sugar, let's be really clear about what we're talking about. So we have three macro nutrients, as you just mentioned, protein, fat, carbohydrates, right? Yep. Maybe you could throw fiber in there too, as kind of a fourth macro. Sort of, but we don't extract any energy from that. Yeah, right. There's no calorie.

Yeah, our gut bacteria does. But that's where our calories are coming from. Protein, fat, carb. Okay, so sugar, we know it has calories in it. It has to clearly come from one of those three macros. And it's a carbohydrate, right? So let's talk about what sugar is, what we mean when we say sugar. Because, you know, if it's a carbohydrate, well, there's lots of different carbohydrates.

And I think most people recognize that a bunch of table sugar is different from eating a sweet potato. Yes. But let's kind of unpack that a little bit. So if you want a condensed biochemistry lesson on this and have the patience, I wrote a carbohydrate article. It's on my website. It's on the Starting Strength website. It's just carbohydrates and barbell training, and I go into the biochemistry, although much more briefly than a textbook, you know, but it's, you know, basically that stuff, you know, condensed down a little bit. Basically, you have, you know, all carbohydrates are quote-unquote

sugars, right? You have your monosaccharides. Mono means one. Saccharide is sugar. And then you have your disaccharide. That's two, two sugar molecules. And then you have your oligosaccharides, which I believe is greater than three, but less than 15 or nine. I can't always mix that one up because there's not so many in the diet. And then you have your polysaccharides. That's the most common. Next, it's your mono and your poly, your most frequently encountered sugars. And I'll explain that. So polysaccharide, lots of sugar molecules.

Poly means lots, right? And the way you want to think of it is like, so monosaccharides are simple sugar. This is something that was not very well explained to me as a kid. They talk about simple versus complex carbs when I first started going to supplement stores. Because, you know, there were guys who would say, you need to eat a lot of carbs, you need a lot of pasta, and this and that. You know, you need complex carbs. I'm like, well, what the hell does that mean? You know, what's a complex versus simple?

Yeah, right. Complex sounds better than simple, right? Yeah. I want all complex, right? Well, you know, fruit's a simple carb, and then so is Coke. You know, Coke. So let's talk about that. So your monosaccharides are your fructose. That means fructose is just one sugar molecule, fructose. Glucose is another one, and that's what circulates in your blood, you know? And I'll explain how that comes from the diet in a moment. It's not very common in the diet by itself. You can get it from honey, I believe, as far as a naturally occurring food, or you can buy dextrose

powder, which is another word for glucose, dextrose, glucose, same thing. And then you have galactose, which isn't really existent in the diet by itself. So that's when we move into our disaccharides. So our disaccharides, we have lactose, which is galactose and glucose. So you're getting glucose and you're getting galactose. That's lactose, right? That's in milk. That's in dairy products, right? Then you have sucrose, which is your quote-unquote sugar, your table sugar. When you get a sugar packet that says sugar on it, you're getting sucrose. So sucrose is fructose, which is naturally occurring in fruit, and glucose, which is pretty much, as you

can see the theme here, it's in everything, right? Yeah. So sucrose is table sugar, and it's, you know, typically found in anything sweet, you know, and it has glucose and fructose. And then you have maltose, which is malt sugar, less commonly found, but, you know, if you get malt beverages, it's in there. That's glucose and glucose. It was a double glucose molecule, right? So as you can see, all these disaccharides have one thing in common. They have glucose and another one of the monosaccharides bound together, or in the case of maltose, it's bound to itself, right? Yeah.

So that's how you get glucose from the diet. You get it from your disaccharides, either from table sugar, from dairy, from malts. Unless you're eating honey, you're probably getting some free glucose there. But basically from your disaccharides, your dairy products, so your lactose, your pretty much anything sweet, you know, that has a sugar in it, it's going to have probably sucrose in it. So you're getting, you know, a little bit of glucose, a little bit of fructose there, 50-50. That's relevant because I'm about to bring up something else. Okay. And then your maltose, if you're drinking malt beverages, right? You're going to have a double glucose. Before I'm about to bring up something else. Okay. And then your maltose, if you're drinking malt beverages, right?

You're going to have a double glucose. Before I go on to polysaccharides, I want to mention there's another quote-unquote sugar that shows up in the ingredient list called high fructose corn syrup because, you know, people are afraid of fructose. Fructose is a monosaccharide, by the way, that also digests low and also is metabolized differently than glucose, by the way. Fructose gets metabolized in the liver primarily, and you don't really, you don't store that as fat necessarily, which is the common belief because this high fructose corn syrup product, you know,

has gotten such a bad rap. Well, high fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose and 45% glucose versus sucrose, which is 50-50. So it's really not that much different than table sugar in terms of proportion. And I bring this up because there were some studies and, you know, how I feel about research studies or, you know, you can take what you can from them, And you know how I feel about research studies. You can take what you can from them, but there were some studies that looked at fructose overconsumption and tried to trace it to see how much of it was getting converted into body fat. And it was like fractions of a fraction of a pound, like 0.00 something grams. It was very minimal.

Your liver typically metabolizes that. So yeah, those are your disaccharides. And fructose tends to digest slow and like, again, it gets metabolized in the liver and you primarily get it from fruit. Remember, when you're drinking a Coke or having a cereal that has high fructose corn syrup in it, it's, you know, 5% difference in fructose content, you know? Right.

And the glucose is what's really spiking your blood sugar more so than the fructose. Fructose doesn't have such a great effect on blood sugar. Again, I know some diabetics are going to hop on here and say, oh, but mine does, you know, mine goes up when I eat a watermelon or an apple. Well, you know, okay, you know, there's exceptions and, you know, there's also some naturally occurring sucrose in there as well. It's not all 100% fructose. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So then you got your polysaccharides. Now we're getting into complex carbs. So polysaccharide, you want to think of this as like, okay, so you have your monosaccharide, that might be a leaf, right?

Your polysaccharides are the entire tree branch full of leaves, right? That's the way I kind of like to explain it. So you have maybe hundreds of glucose linkages that are put together, right? And they branch off. So there's this term called branching that you'll see in biochemistry textbooks. So it literally looks like a tree branch full of a bunch of leaves, and all those leaves can represent individual glucose molecules. So when you eat a starch, for instance, like, and that's where

you find your polysaccharides, primarily in starch, right? Or unless you're getting maltodextrin, same concept. So when you're eating a starch, like a potato or a piece of bread, you have all these glucose molecules linked together. So, you know, you're going to have to do a little bit more work to digest that versus, you know, slamming a shot of honey, you know, or, you know, you're going to have to do a little bit more work to digest that versus, you know, slamming a shot of honey, you know, or, you know, taking some table sugar, right? Right. And that's typically what was recommended that you eat if you're an athlete, you know, eat a lot of pasta and potatoes and breads and things like that. And I still recommend that stuff. But what you got to also keep in mind here is there's also fiber in carbohydrate sources as well. The portion of those total carbohydrates

is fiber and fiber. Basically, we don't digest it. Our gut bacteria extracts energy from it. And it actually slows down digestion. So like an apple may be mostly fructose, but then it also has fiber from the skin. So basically, if it has skin, you're getting some fiber from it. So same concept with a potato, right? If you eat a white potato or a sweet potato, okay, I think a sweet potato might be higher in fiber, so you're going to digest it slower. So if you're digesting it slower, you're extracting the glucose from it slower, and you're getting a lower blood glucose response, theoretically, right that's that goes into the whole low gi carbs versus high gi carbs so the whole theory there is like white bread has the highest glycemic index so

what that means in lay terms is it's going to have the highest effect on your blood sugar meaning it's going to make it go up the most right yeah and then there's like a whole hierarchy so like if you look on those glycemic index charts you'll see that like things that are high in fructose, like natural fructose, like apples and stuff like that. And, you know, fruits and vegetables that have skin, they're going to be in the way bottom. And then so is lactose. So, you know, milk sugar also digests very slow. So it tends to be in the bottom. On the top is where you're going to see your white flour and your sweets, you know, your sugars and things like that. The problem with glycemic index is it assumes that you're just eating the carbohydrate source by itself. We typically eat mixed meals, you know, so if you add in protein or if you're

eating a fibrous variant of that carb, so whole grain bread versus white bread, I mean, they do account for that in those scales. You know, you tend to see a lower glycemic response, but now you're putting meat in there. Protein slows the digestion down, right? So it's kind of an oversimplification, but in general, the way that I'd like to kind of coach on that is in general, and we don't know, all humans are different, but there's some data out there that I kind of happens to check out. There's a diurnal variation in glucose. We're the most insulin sensitive in the morning. So our glucose tolerance is the best when we wake up. And then we become more insulin resistant as we get closer to the wee morning hours,

like midnight, 1 a.m. So we tend to have a more pronounced glycemic response in the evenings. This is where the whole no carbs at night thing kind of originates from, right? Now, again, that also doesn't account for, okay, how active are you and when are you active, you know? Right, right. So let's talk about how we use this now. So we've explained all the different carbohydrate sources, right? So when you consume it, you use it as energy, first of all. So carbohydrates are used as energy, fats are used as energy, protein can be, but it's not ideal. And, you know, that goes into a whole other thing

because, you know, the question of, can I turn fat into carbs? Can I turn protein into carbs? We'll get to that, but let's just talk about the basics here. You use carbs as energy. It's an energy source. The more active you are, the more preferred that energy source it is. Also, the more carbs you eat, the more preferred that energy source will be, right? So, if you eat more carbs, you tend to burn off more carbs. You know, this is the whole keto argument. Oh, you're a better fat burner if you go on low carb. Well, of course, that's true because you're eating mostly fat and not carb. However, if you eat a lot of carbs, then you start eating a lot of fat, you don't actually become a better fat burner. You just end up storing more fat, you know? Yeah. So that's

just a quick little side note from the literature, but that tends to be true. I mean, if you ask anybody who's gotten real heavy, you know, Twinkies, donuts, McDonald's burgers, high carb, high fat, you know, easiest way to get fat. Oreos, that's my girlfriend's favorite example. Oreo is, you know, high carb, high fat, you know, all these foods that tend to be quote unquote junk foods tend to be high in both. So the idea that one is worse than the other, I mean, they both kind of come hand in hand when you're talking about like being very fat, you know? So, you know, use it as energy and the more active you are, the more of it you use that as energy. Okay. Then you can also store it. So you can also store glucose in the human body,

primarily in your muscles. Your muscles store about 80% of it. Your liver stores about just under 20% of it. Then your kidneys and fat cells have a little bit in there, much smaller, because your liver regulates your blood glucose. So it's number two. It's this little tiny organ that takes about, I think, 75 grams of glucose that it stores, and then it kind of regulates your blood glucose. So it's number two. It's this little tiny organ that takes about, you know, I think 75 grams of glucose that it stores. And then it kind of regulates how much is getting released to your bloodstream. Your muscle is much more selfish. It does not release glucose into the bloodstream.

It basically hoards it and feeds itself with it. And then when it runs out, it won't let you lift very heavy. That's essentially how it goes. Yeah, yeah. And so that, yeah, I wanted to draw that line there. So we've talked about it already in previous episodes, but when you go in the gym and you lift heavy weights,

you are burning glucose essentially, right? So it gets stored, basically glucose molecules get kind of globbed together into glycogen and then glycogen sits there in storage in the muscle. And when you are recovering from you know a heavy set of five let's say then you're breaking down glycogen in the muscle to create more atp which is going to fuel the next set and so you know so let's just draw that line right there that's how you go from eating a potato to actually doing work in the gym. Now, just so we can satisfy these ACSM guys that I'm

sure may be listening now or may be listening years from now, lifting weights is not a glycogen depleting activity, but you do break down some with each set. I have several different theories on this because I noticed that my carb intake is tied to my performance, not necessarily at lighter weights per se, but as the intensity of the effort gets higher, i.e. I'm lifting heavier weights closer to 1RM, I noticed that my carb intake tends to be tied to how well I can move that weight. And I've seen, I've seen it as recently as the last month, you know, I hit my best set of five squats is 410 for a set of five, and I've done it within the last calendar year. I think it was in the spring, I hit it the last time. And I've been working back up, and I'm more consistent than I've been in the last two years. You know, I've been at the gym three, three days a week, same three days every week since July. And usually it's like off the move

days because of my schedule, you know. So things have been good in terms of training, but, you know, I was trying to take off some fluff. I scaled back the carbs. I'm still heavier than I was when I squatted 410, but one day I had to do 385. I barely eked out three and then I just wrecked it. I'm like, and I watched the video. I'm like, no, I wrecked it right. There was not a fourth, you know? Right. Yeah. Tried it again two weeks later, same thing. And then this week I'm like, and I watched the video. I'm like, no, I racked it right. There was not a fourth, you know? Right. Yeah, I tried it again two weeks later, same thing. And then this week I tried it, but, you know, I bought those Trader Joe's coffee ice cream sandwiches that have like 140 calories in it. Yeah, I ate like a box of them one day, you know, and I carved up this week, and let's

just put it that way. Yeah. Yeah, when I carve up, it's stuff like that, not freaking donuts, you know? But anyways, I go into the gym, my belt, not frigging donuts, you know, but anyways, I go into the gym, my belt's a little bit tighter, you know, cause I bloated up a little bit. Yeah. I hit 395 for five and kept clipping the damn safety pin. As I was telling you before we hit record and you know, I went for a second set because the last rep was high and I was pissed about it. And I got four clean ones, you know, no problem. But then I was doing, my, my legs were done because, you know, I'm 15 pounds away from my five RM. So I'm

not doing that for two sets, you know? Yeah. But, you know, I got nine reps in for that. So I'll try it again two weeks and set the safeties correctly and I'll definitely get it. Then I'll go up another 10. But the point, the point I'm making here in the context of the carbs topic is that 395 was easier than those two attempts at 385. And, you know, I weigh the same. Protein intake's probably the same. I'm sleeping better, or I was sleeping good the whole time, you know? Right. But I ate more, I ate a bunch of sugar this weekend, you know? So, you know, it's not a glycogen depleting activity, but let's talk about what else carbs are used for. The carbs are your brain's primary fuel.

You know, your brain and your central nervous system like to use glucose for energy. So, you know, it's logical to assume that if you're performing a very high CNS-dependent activity, like, you know, lifting 85%, 90% of your 1RM, you know, I'd even maybe go as far as 80 when you're strong enough, you know, if you're squatting. Yeah. You know, if you're squatting an absolutely heavy load, RM, you know, I'd even maybe go as far as 80 when you're strong enough, you know, if you're squatting, you know, if you're squatting an absolutely heavy load, like, you know, I'm close to 400 pounds and I'm about 190, you know, yeah, you're going to, you know, there's a lot more central nervous system involvement in that than doing 60% of your one RM for 10 reps. You know, there's, you know, an endurance component to that. So I can't help but to think that is one of the mechanisms

by which high carbohydrate intake helps you perform better at high intensities, you know? Yeah, and I've seen recently, I don't have any commentary on this. I haven't really, you know, dug into their methods and stuff, but I've seen recently Stronger by Science had an article about even just a modest amount of glycogen depletion going into a workout. And again, I don't remember how they define that, but even just, you know, sort of not being carved up to put it in lay terms, right? If you aren't carved up, it doesn't

actually take that much of a deficit, let's say, in carbs going into a workout that's a high-intensity workout like we do when we train causes a noticeable decline in performance. I notice it more than protein. Yeah. And I've noticed the exact same thing. It's very common we do, going into a lifting meet, it's very common for us if you're not trying to make weight and, you know, depending on when the weigh-ins and stuff are, to basically load up on a high carb meal the night before. High salt too, you know, so you get a little bit of bloat effect. So you feel nice and tight in your belt like you're talking about. But also, you know, we just happen to know that like just kind of loading up on carbs the night before seems to help with these high expressions of force,

like doing a 1RM at a meet. You know, there's the water retention aspect of that too. Every time you store glycogen, you're storing it at a three to one ratio of water to glycogen. Yeah, yeah. So you retain a lot of water. Your muscles are 70% water.

So a lot of it's going there. So you retain a lot of water, your muscles are 70% water. So a lot of it's going there. So that's why I know at one point, I know it makes no difference now, but they were thinking, oh, you should, you know, take a bunch of carbs with your creatine, but creatine takes longer to saturate. But at the same time, you do want to be on a high carb diet while you're taking creatine so that you can maximize all that water retention, which translates into, you translates into heavier lifts. Creatine is actually the first line of fuel that you use when you're doing a heavy set. You're going to blow through your creatine, ATP, phosphocreatine.

So the creatine allows you to maybe eke out a few more reps at a higher intensity, right? That's kind of the mechanism by which that works. But then every set you do, you're breaking down a little more glycogen, a little more glycogen, a little more glycogen. And on top of it, if you're demanding a lot from your nerves, they're using up a lot of carbs too. So now we, you know, we've kind of hit on why they're important for training. So let's go back, you know, sugar's the devil, sugar's the devil, sugar's the devil. Well, okay. We just talked about some ways that, you know, it's beneficial for a trainee, you know, especially a high intensity trainee. And this, the same thing can go for a trainee, especially a high-intensity trainee.

And the same thing can go for a sprinter, a shot putter, any other sport that requires you to max out, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. Well, the general consensus is that intensity and carbohydrate need are positively related. The higher the intensity, the more you need carbs. The lower intensity, the more you can rely on fat. Unless you're on a mixed diet. If you're on a mixed diet, you're probably doing about 50-50, right? So if you're a guy who's a couch potato, and you want to go on keto, or you went on keto and lost all this weight and had great results from it, you know, that's been felt great. I believe that because you were

a couch potato, you were doing light activity, you know, or let's say you're getting your 10,000 steps a day. And, you know, let's say you're lightly active, but you don't do anything hard. You know, you're not running hard. You're not lifting hard. Sure. You know, low carb diet can work. Maybe not even keto, you know, maybe just in general, I'm going to recommend lower carbs for somebody who's not training hard. I get people that do circuit training or light cardio, you know, or bike rides or hikes, you know, stuff like that. I don't carve them up, you know, I don't put them on keto, but I don't carve them up like a lifter, you know, or an athlete. You know, I might give, you know, a guy who's, you know, training for powerlifting or strengthlifting or doing a, you know, bodybuilding style workout, I might say, hey, you need 350, 400, 500 carbs,

depending on the size of the guy, right? And he's eating all day, right? You know, for a woman, it might be 150, 200, 250. You know, I don't typically, I've had a few girls that have really fast metabolisms that have to go over 300 on. I think of a friend of mine when she was 23 at the time, she was doing about 375 carbs a day and having to drink Kool-Aid during her workout. But I can count one female that I had to do that with. That's the funny part. Right, right. But then if I get somebody who's just exercising, you know, and they're, you know, doing some circuit training, not really pushing heavy, you know, or doing a lot of cardio, not a lot of lifting, but they're not an endurance athlete. You know, they're just going for jogs or bike rides or hikes. You know, I might tell the guy, hey, man, you know, 200 carbs is probably just fine.

250 is probably just fine, you know. probably won't go much higher than that. And then, you know, girl, I might say 130, 150, you know, 150 or less, you know, and that's fine. Because we're talking about like light to moderate activity versus high intensity or moderate to high intensity. Now you start to need more, right? So that's where it gets lost because, you know, you get people that are very heavy and they want to lose weight. And like I said, the low-carb diet is popular because you can eat out on it and still lose weight for the most part. The problem is you're cutting out entire food groups. You still want bread. You know, you still want fruit for some people. Carl won't eat fruit.

If he's listening, he needs to eat his fucking fruit. But, you know, they still want fruit for some people. Carl won't eat fruit if he's listening and he needs to eat his fucking fruit. But they still want candy bars. They still want chocolate. They still want sweets. They want wine. So eventually they go off the low-carb diet. But you'll see people more – if I had to guess, I don't know if we have data on this, but if you were just to do a casual study, not a controlled study, you know, where you're telling them they have to follow this, if you just observe, do an observational study on this and

just watch people that are following a low carb versus people that are following a low fat, my guess is you'll have the low carb people last longer than the low fat people. I'm not even talking about keto. I'm just talking about, I'm going to pull all the rice out. I'm going to pull all the bread out, you know, they're probably eating like, you know, like a zone, probably 40, 30, 30, something like that, or 33, 33, 33, something like that. Okay. Percentage. You're probably going to see more loss because they're going to go out to eat and they're just going to say, okay, I'm just going to eat the steak and I'm not going to eat the potatoes, you know, and I'll have the vegetables with it. Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. It's more environmentally friendly,

I should say. Yeah, right. In that sense of the word. So this is, and this is a confounding variable we're going to talk about over and over because it is such a big factor. People listening to this podcast, we live in a first world country and we have an abundance of restaurants out there that we can eat at. And we all eat out a lot. Relative to other countries, relative to human behavior in the past, we eat out a lot. Even the people that don't eat out that much, we do. If you eat out once a week, you eat out a lot. But a lot of people much more than that. And so you have to, you have to account for when you're talking about

actually doing this stuff in practice, the theory is kind of isn't as great and all, but when you're actually doing this practice, like you have to account for the fact of what you're going to be doing day to day. And that means if you're going to be eating out, then you have to, you have to account for the fact that restaurant food is what it is, loaded with fat. That's right. And it's easy to push the rice aside. It's easy to bypass the potato, but you can't just say, oh, we need to siphon the oil out of this steak, you know, or the butter. Right. Yeah. Or the butter out of these green beans, you know? Like a lot of the time they bulk cook that stuff,

they won't do it. So you're stuck with the fat nine out of 10 times when you go to a restaurant, unless you order something boring that's a waste of money that you could have made at home, you know? Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. And everybody hates that when the dietician says,

oh, you just order a dry salad, you know? Yeah. Just order a dry salad. I mean, that's depressing. You're at a fine dining establishment. You know, you want something good. Exactly, exactly. All right, So you've kind of laid out, but you know, when we talk about sugar, you know, quote unquote, scare quotes sugar,

I think what a lot of people are saying is like this, they're talking about this processed sugar that you find in sweets, that you find sometimes in fast food, that you find in processed food that you buy off the shelf in a brightly colored package in general. But, you know, we have to remember, like, it's, you know, it's just a combination of sugars, just like every carb, right? It's a combination of glucose and fructose, if we're talking about sucrose, like a table sugar. And so it actually does have a use for your fitness and your training. But I wanted to ask, you know, are there some other considerations, right? So I think generally people understand that eating some fruit is better for you than eating a bunch of processed food. We already named one

big reason. That's because a lot of that processed food has a ton of fat in it. Okay. That's one reason. What about from an inflammation or inflammatory standpoint? Like, is there a benefit to eating whole foods over processed sugars, leaving the fat part aside when it comes to inflammation or other effects on the body? You know, it's hard to say because I've said this many times. With diet research, we're not measuring actual intake, so that's a big, giant confounder right there. But what I will say is if you're just eating straight sugar, probably going to be more inflammatory if you just kind of just look at it at face value, like, okay, what does that mean? You're eating, you're just eating, if you're just drinking Cokes

all day, that means that you're making your pancreas work harder to release more insulin to lower your blood sugar. I mean, that's, that's obvious stuff, right? Like glycemic index has its utility. You know, some things are more glycemic than others. Nobody's going to argue that. Some foods are going to raise blood sugar more than other foods. And if your blood sugar goes up higher, that means you have to release more insulin. That means your organs are working harder. And over time, you might have to release more and more and more insulin, which is insulin resistance, essentially, right? You're pumping out a bunch of insulin to keep your fasting blood glucose normal. But then when you eat a meal,

you get these big spikes. That's what eventually happens. It happens to a lot of overweight, obese people. Then they lose weight, and they, quote, unquote, when they say they cured their diabetes with weight loss, what they really did is they became more insulin sensitive. They never quite got to diabetes, you know? Yeah, yeah. They were hyperglycemic because they were insulin resistant, and then they got their sensitivity back by losing body fat. So, yeah, no, I'm not going to advocate for drinking a bunch of Cokes.

I'd rather you get your sugar or your carbohydrates from complex forms, like we've been saying for the last 30 years. I don't think that advice is bad today, and it wasn't bad then. Try to limit the simple sugars in the sense of simple sugars from things like soda, know, soda, you know, non-fibrous simple sugars, I should say, is probably a good way to put it. I'm not against, you know, things like white bread or white rice. You know, it's just not very filling, you know, you can keep eating it is one of the problems. So flour gets a bad rep, you know, everybody hates bread. When somebody needs to lose weight, nine out of 10 times, they're like, oh, I gotta stop eating so much bread. I gotta reduce my carbs.

You know, I hear bread all the time is the first thing that comes to mind for people. Well, bread's not filling. So fiber, not all fiber is created equal either. You have fermentable fiber, you have non-fermentable fiber, you have, you know, it's been classified as soluble, insoluble.

Bottom line is what you really want from fiber, all fiber is good for you, first of all. Let's just make that point clear. But what you want from fiber, all fiber is good for you, first of all. Let's just make that point clear. But what you want from fiber is that gel-forming ability. That's what lowers your risk for cardiovascular disease. It's what helps lower your cholesterol. That's what helps get rid of cholesterol that you eat. It forms a gel.

It soaks up water, forms a gel, and that is the mechanism by which it helps eliminate things like cholesterol. When you eat, the problem with flour is because flour is ground, it may be high in fiber, but you're not going to get as much gel formation. And because you're not getting as much gel formation, you tend to not be full. So let's contextualize this. Can you just eat a bowl of cereal and be satisfied even if it's a high fiber cereal? If you've ever done it, you know, no. Are you full if you eat a loaf of bread? You know, just think about it. I wouldn't want to say problem. I'd say that's the criticism that I have of grain is that grain tends to not be very filling. And that's the reason why, because it's made out of flour.

Flour is ground, and the fiber in the grain doesn't form as big of a gel. So you don't get that fullness that you get from, let's say you eat a bag of grapes. You know, if I eat 400 calories from grapes, which is like a pound or two of grapes, me and my brother did this before, long story. That's for another topic, actually. And, you know, if you try to eat a pound or two of grapes in one sitting, you're going to feel freaking full, man, for hours, for hours, because it's a lot of water content and a lot of fiber from the skin. And that's just going to form a big gel in your stomach. Then you tend to get full, right? Yeah. But if you eat like, I don't

know, half a loaf of bread, that might give you 600 calories. So we're getting close, maybe close, maybe a third of a loaf of bread. You're going to want more food. Almost always. Right. You know, half a loaf of bread, that might give you 600 calories, so we're getting close, maybe close, you know, maybe a third of a loaf of bread, you're going to want more food almost always. You know, it's the same kind of deal with, you know, concentrated sweets, like, you know, a damn Trader Joe's brownie ice cream sandwich that I buy, you know, once a month. I don't buy, I can't buy things like that because, you know, I'll eat the whole damn box, you know. Yeah, well, that's the thing, Yeah, once you pop it open, man.

So that is the problem with simple sugars and grain is it's not very filling. You don't get that gel-forming property of the fiber that's in it, or you don't get any fiber at all. Then you can just keep eating, you know, just kind of like Cokes and, you know, ice cream and things like that. So, yeah, that's the problem there. So, you know, you want to, you know, I sound like a broken record dietician. You know, ideally you want a diet that has a lot of fruits and vegetables in it. And, you know, whole grain is good. Throw it in there for sure.

You know, I'd mix it in. I think if I went in my kitchen now, I think I get most of my carbs from fruit. And then I eat grain because I like grain. I grew up on it. You know, Cuban household, we had bread and butter growing up. I can't have loaves of bread in my household. I'll finish those. So single-serve bread I can do better with.

So I have these little crumpets I've been getting at Trader Joe's. So I've been eating a lot of those now. I'm going through a phase with that. But I've done oats before. I went through a phase where I was eating a lot of oats, you know. Yeah. I go through phases where I eat. That's a staple for me.

Yep, yep. I do white rice sometimes. Sometimes I do brown rice. It makes no difference. We're talking about a gram of two a fiber difference and uh at one point christy was making me protein grits for a while that was pretty cool but i think she put like uh pasteurized egg whites in uh in the grits and oh okay yeah and then she cooked them and they tasted really good man i mean i like that's a good idea i hadn't thought about that i mean because you know i'm a southern yeah i'm a southern guy so try it

grits is like a staple for us too okay she cooks it with egg whites it gives a little more mouth feel you know and then it adds protein to it so that was good we did kodiak cakes for a while those are really filling surprisingly but yeah you know you want to prioritize high fiber carbohydrates because number one you know it's want to prioritize high-fiber carbohydrates because, number one, you know, it's good for your health, for your gut health, for your cardiovascular health. You know, I think I can't believe I didn't mention this, but it also increases fecal bulk, so you tend to, you know, poop better. But remember, you have to—and it slows down gastric transit. It slows down the absorption of glucose, So that's how it lowers your blood sugar because, remember, it expands.

It creates fecal bulk because there's different fibers that do more of one versus the other. But the bottom line there is that it helps lower blood sugar through that mechanism. Protein aids in that as well. So, yeah, the idea that sugar is this bad thing. All carbs are sugar. We already established that. And not that sugar is this bad thing, all carbs are sugar. We already established that. And not all sugar is bad. And too much of any sugar could be bad.

Too little of any sugar could be bad. But the thing is, and you touched on this, Trent. This is at the heart of the issue here. We have a first world problem here. We have a lot of food available. We have homeless people that are overweight and obese. Right. So, you know, I think that's a great thing from, you know, the standpoint of, you know, how we've evolved as a society. We've solved a very important problem that has existed

for centuries or millennia, possibly, you know, thousands upon thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, maybe. Like, food was always a scarce resource that people killed each other over. Now it's not, you know, anybody can get food in America. So we are tasked now with basically, you know, if you're the type of person who tends to gain weight easily, you know, you're going to have to pay attention to that. Whereas before you might've just been hungry all the time because you can only afford so much food.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't something you really had to spend a lot of energy thinking about. My, uh, my girlfriend has a dog. She's a French bulldog, Boston mix. And the damn thing is always, always wants to eat. You know, she's like, you know, dogs generally want like food, they're food motivated animals, you know, but this one, it's like a standard deviation or two to the right of the bell curve. You know, she's like, you know, she'll eat her food, then she'll try to like lick the other dog's bowls, and she's like sniffing around the floor, and you can tell she's just still hungry, right? And one time, Christy did gravity feeding on her dogs. At the time, she had three, and the oldest one, he was a chubby, he was a chihuahua-corgi mix. He was a

tiny dog, but then he would get chubby sometimes. And she'd be like, how is he fat? He's part Chihuahua, you know, she'd make fun of him. So when she did gravity feeding, because she started staying at my place and wanted to make sure they got fed, you know, she predicted he would get fat. Well, he didn't get fat, and neither did her Boston, but the French Bulldog-Boston mix got fat and had a neck roll. And at that point, she wasn't running around the house trying to find food. So I'm like, Christy, this is like one of our clients who's like, you know, heavy, but is artificially staying lean, you know? That's like the joke we have. And I mean,

that's what it looks like. And then like, when I think about people like that, that I've worked with, that I interact with that, you know, tend to lean towards heavier, when they're lean, they're thinking about food a lot, you know? Yeah, right, right. And, you know, that could be a whole other topic. But the point is, the other day we were sitting in the kitchen, I asked her, I'm like, the hell was it like 100 years ago when we didn't have all this food? I'm like, these people must have just been hungry, you know? And just, I guess that was normal because you couldn't go get bags of chips and shit, you know?

Like pre-Depression era. Well, and I think about, you know, without going too far down the rabbit hole, you know, like pre-depression era? Well, and I think about, you know, without going too far down the rabbit hole, you know, there is, in a lot of major world religions, you know, fasting is a part of the, it's part of the culture, you know, it's part of the religious practice. And I think there's probably

like a practical element to that too. Yeah. You know, there's going to be times of scarcity and you need to be like mentally prepared for that. So, you know, you can kind of wrap it into, you know, the religious practice as well. But yeah, that's a great point. I think we need to talk about that in a future episode of like the differences in, gosh, I mean, what is that? Is that a difference in psyche? Is it a difference in genetics? I've noticed with my, we've got two dogs. One of them is a, uh, he's half Yorkie and half Australian shepherd. Um, that's an interesting

story about how he happened, but his, his mom was the Australian shepherd. I'll just leave it at that. But, but anyway, so, you know, he's, he's, he's a small compact dog, but he also weighs, you know, 23 pounds, 22 pounds. And he's stacked cause his mom a small compact dog yeah but he also weighs you know 23 pounds 22 pounds he's stacked because his mom was 50 pounds his dad was like you know 11 and uh but but he i've noticed he tends to gain weight very quickly he also loses weight pretty quickly it's interesting you know our other dog she's much more steady and i'm talking about like all we need to feed him is maybe like if we overfeed him by like 10 for for a week, you know, like just the cup is just a little bit more full than it normally is. He'll get noticeably fatter very quickly and then he'll drop it in a week. But

anyway, I think we should talk about that in the future, but I wanted to kind of like put a bow around this topic we've been talking about. So I think what I'm taking away from this discussion is that it's too simplistic to sit around and think to yourself like, oh man, I just got to cut out sugar. That's the problem with my diet is sugar. Because like we just said, sugar means a lot of different things, right? All carbs are sugars in some form. Sugar means a lot of different things, right? All carbs are sugars in some form. So we need to be a little bit more sophisticated in our thinking about that.

And the other thing that's a huge factor is that, you know, we don't eat sugar and carbs. We don't eat carbs in a vacuum. You know, we eat them with other things, right? We combine foods. That's a natural part of our diet. So we should be thinking about the holistic strategy of what we're eating. Are we eating the right balance of macros for our training goals? And then are we eating in the right strategy, which is more about what kinds of places are we choosing to eat at?

What kinds of foods are we choosing to eat so that we kinds of foods are we choosing to eat? So that we're getting that right balance of macros. So if you know that you're, you know, I don't know if anybody's traveling a lot for business these days, but if you travel a lot for business and you're eating out a lot, right, you're going to have to pick a strategy for how you're going to eat out at those restaurants that fits your macro profile, knowing that you're going to have a hard time with eating too much fat. If you're preparing most of your meals at home, right, you know that you can choose carb sources that are higher in fiber for more satiations, more satiety so that you're not, you know, you can actually fill yourself up and you're not tempted to keep reaching for more and

more and more. So I think we're going to talk about that a lot in terms of like setting strategies for our habits in the future. But this is a good kind of intro to that. Yeah. Yeah, no, the idea that, you know, the whole paleo thing was, you know, that's how the cavemen used to eat or whatever, right? Yeah. My first question, which cavemen? Yeah, exactly.

Who are you talking about? talking about first of all because as far as i know throughout our throughout our history it animals were scarce during periods of time where you couldn't get them and required more effort to get them have you ever tried to hunt a freaking elk or something like that you know oh yeah just talking to christy's dad about that he's like we're gonna need like a team of six if we do that you know yeah and then like getting it out of the woods and we have cars now and it's a pain in the ass we have cars now and and it's a pain in the ass. We have cars now, and these big, giant animals are difficult to take home. So back then when they didn't have cars, the idea that we're just sitting around eating a bunch of protein like it's completely abundant is just absurd. There's a reason our teeth are shaped the way they are, but it's a whole other topic.

My point is that we're not keto, but that we're also not vegging either. You want to basically, like you said, stay balanced. And one of the things that I do recommend beyond your fruits and vegetables is an easy way to start is like, I think, you know, I kind of deviated earlier, but I was talking about how we don't want to go to a fine dining establishment and order a dry salad. You know, that's like the worst advice I can give somebody. But I do tell people to order that before their meal. It helps regulate appetite, in my opinion. And it just teaches you to eat vegetables. I don't really say, eat vegetables because it makes you healthier and you're a better person and it's going to do this and that and the phytochemicals. I don't do

any of that crap. What I do say is try to include vegetables in as many meals as possible and start with them because, you know, they're not directly going to cause you to lose weight or anything like that, but they're also not, they're unlikely to cause weight gain because the amount of sugar in them is very marginal. I'm separating sugar from fiber there. I mean, carbs, you know, but like there's a lot, they're mostly fiber and water, but they do contain some trace carbs. So it's just one of those good habits that helps regulate your appetite. It's giving you a bunch of high quality nutrients and it's just a good lifelong habit to have. So like every time I have a meal, I try to make

vegetables first, you know, or try to eat them first. If I go to a restaurant, I do get a salad every time. In addition to the steak or the burger or whatever, you know, the pizza, you know, I always try to get a salad to kind of get my stomach going, you know. And I don't like to start on a tasty meal hungry because I know I'm going to eat too much. You know what I mean? Especially when you're dealing with stuff that's very, you know, now things are much more concentrated than they were 100 years ago. You know, you have a lot of salt, a lot of fat, and a lot of sugar.

And you can say what you want about that. We all like it. Even the guy sitting there saying, all that stuff is bad. All that processed food is bad. You know, it's like, yeah, well, you know, you ate some in the last month, you know, I mean, you get some guys, you get some guys that swear off that stuff forever. And, you know, I commend them. I wish I could do that. But most of the people listening, most people that have access to food that live in this country and other developed nations, they're eating that stuff, you know, because it's good. It's there. It's there now. We've got to learn to live with it. You know, saying we're going to get rid of it is like

saying we're going to go back to horse and carriage. It's just not, you know, it's not going to happen, you know? Right, right. There's a practical matter here. So you just have to learn how to navigate through this, you know, first world problem that we have, you know? We have a lot of food, so now it's our responsibility, our personal responsibility to navigate through this, you know, first world problem that we have, you know, you have a lot of food. So now it's our responsibility, our personal responsibility to navigate through it. Yeah. I like that eating vegetables before the meal. Cause I was just thinking about, we had pizza recently and you know, this is true of any, you know, high, high density fast food that it's so easy to eat past the point of satiation before you realize that you're satiated, right? Yep. When you combine sugar and salt,

you get what's called disinhibition and then you can just keep eating. It's like a survival mechanism. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you eat something salty and you're like, Ooh, I want something sweet and you eat something sweet and you're like, Ooh, I need something salty now. Yeah. You just keep going and going and going. Well, yeah. I mean, I've had the, I had the sensation where it's like, okay, there's a big pizza in front of me and I'm going to eat like three slices of this thing. And I could totally eat the fourth. If I just go, if I just blast right through, if I start and I'm starving, I ate that first piece, second piece goes down easy. Third piece goes down. It's like starting to get, I'm starting to feel a little bit full, but not, not yet. And I, and if I go for that fourth piece, then, you know, like 20 minutes later, I'm just like dying because I'm

so full and I just want to lay on the ground. But you know, but if, if I, if I take a moment to like slow down, then that fourth piece, I'm probably not going to eat, or maybe I'll choose a smaller piece or something. Right. I'm not going to eat as much as I would if I would have blasted right through the meal. And yeah, I like that strategy. If you eat vegetables first, right, they have their own benefits, but also it just slows you down so you feel those satiety signals, right? You feel those hunger signals, you know, or the fullness signals. Yeah. I do take that approach of that. And I tell my clients, I'm like, when you want the chocolate, I know it's going to be hard, but if you could force yourself to take a bite out of an apple and then keep finishing it, you're going to care less about the chocolate afterwards. It doesn't make sense now, but it'll make sense after you eat that.

I can't tell you how many times that has worked for me when I'm like, yeah, I got a sweet tooth, and I really don't want to eat this right now. So I'm like, let me eat an apple and see how I feel afterwards. And more often than not, I just, I lose interest in the, in the very sweet thing, you know? So. Right. Yeah. You, you notice, yeah. And that's funny, right? Because sometimes the craving for the sweet thing is legitimate and, and you eat the apple and you're like, yep, I still want it. Yeah. But a lot of times it's like, is it really a craving or is it more of a compulsion? And that's not a technical or scientific term, but this is what I'm going to call it, right? Like a true craving versus something that's just a compulsion. Like I just

eat it because I need some stimulus right now that I'm not getting. And I think that food's going to do it for me. So yeah, that's a man, that's a lot to unpack there, but I think that food's going to do it for me. So yeah, that's a, man, that's a lot to unpack there, but I think that's a good story. Cool. So sugar, it's not all bad. It's not all good either, but it's not all bad. And I think we need to really think about everything else that's in the things we're eating, not just the sugar content. Excellent.

I think that's a good stopping point. I think we left our listeners with quite a bit. I hope they enjoy this and it's not too much me rambling. That's what we want to hear, man. We want to hear you ramble. That's what we tune in for. Well, I appreciate that. I hope that's actually true. All right. Well, let's close out here. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in to the Weights and Plates podcast. thank you everybody for tuning in to the weights and plates podcast you can find me at instagram at the underscore robert underscore santana or weights double underscore and double underscore plates for the gym or you can just go to weights and plates.com yeah you know people uh one of our friends just got canceled on instagram uh carl shoots

instagram account just got deleted out of the blue. Out of the blue. And this guy, like, you know, it's not like... All his videos are gone? Yeah, everything's gone. No! And, you know, it's not like he was posting, like, a bunch of political stuff. He posted, like, mostly lifting videos of him, like, squatting and pressing and benching.

And then he would post, like, you know, like, quotes of, like, books he was reading. Like, just like he would, like, you know, like quotes of like books he was reading. Like, just like he would like take a picture of the book. So it's like, yeah. So, you know, who knows, man? I don't know if Instagram, how much longer Instagram is going to be a thing. It's because he doesn't eat fruit. Maybe I'm next. Yeah. Yeah. It's because he eats. Yeah. He doesn't eat the right sugar. But until then, you can find me at marmalade underscore cream. I've had quite a few people, actually, that listen to this podcast, reach out to me with questions and just or just to say hi. And I appreciate that. So, you know, keep sending me those questions. As long as I'm still on

Instagram, I will keep answering them. And you can also find me on my website, www.marmaladecream.com. That is my audio production website. But you can always get in touch with me there and see all the other things that I do besides coaching. Excellent. All right. We'll talk to you in a couple of weeks. you