Don’t have a ton of time to browse my blogs and do the research to understand why on Earth someone would want to embark on a low-carbohydrate/ketogenic way of eating? Worried about all the mis-information on the topic? No problem! Here are a collection of some of my favorite videos explaining key concepts of low-carbohydrate living in an approachable and fun way in less than five minutes.
For those of you who may criticize supporters of the low-carbohydrate/ketogenic way of eating to use “biased” sources, let’s start with some basic biochemistry from a Ted Talk, which is in no way associated with low-carbohydrate/ketogenic living.
Key concepts:
- Sugar is a kind of carbohydrate.
- Sugars come in all sorts of forms: Glucose, sucrose, maltose, lactose (yes, like in dairy products!), dextrose, starches, fruit juices, corn syrup, and honey.
- Sugar is added to nearly every packaged product (e.g. ketchup, crackers).
- Just like with sex and drugs, your brain’s reward system (e.g. dopamine) is activated when you eat (or even think about) sugar.
- Just like any other addiction, repeated activation of this reward system creates thing like cravings, loss of control, and an increased tolerance (to receive the same pleasure).
- The more sugar we consume, the more insulin our body has to make.
- Because whole foods like broccoli don’t have the same pleasure-chemical triggering affects as carbohydrate-rich foods, that’s why it can be less common to crave or deeply enjoy such foods.
- Based on how sugar affects the brain, the more you eat, the more you crave.
- Sugar is sugar is sugar (yes – the “natural” honey you consume can trigger addiction in the same way that high fructose corn syrup does).
Think “that’s all fine and dandy but ‘low fat’ foods were created for a reason? Here is another source, Adam Ruins Everything, that uses humor to explain the common misconceptions that are barriers to people trying a low-carbohydrate/ketogenic way of eating for themselves. In addition to humor being a nice relief from the contentious debate that topics like nutrition can bring, this video also does a good job of explaining how politics, marketing, and food industry profits have driven our erroneous beliefs about food.
Key concepts:
- The only reason you think “low fat” foods are good for you and higher fat foods are bad for you is due to flawed science and food marketing.
- We have been eating fat (with good health) since the dawn of time given that it is one of our most-foundational nutrients.
- The sugar industry lobbied hard (and paid generously) for fat to become the nutritional villain, as was demonstrated with Ansel Key’s “cherry-picked” study condemning fat as the cause of heart disease/obesity.
- A scientist who had an alternative viewpoint warning about sugar, John Yudkin, who was silenced at the time, has been proven right – sugar is linked to heart disease and weight gain.
- The sugar industry padded Capital Hill with sugar-supporting politicians, culminating in the 1980’s nutritional recommendations that vilified fat.
- If fat does cause fat, after the dietary guidelines were released (and followed), obesity should have dropped. It didn’t. It skyrocketed.
- If the sugar industry is going to make a profit, when fats were removed from products (after they were warned against), they had to add sugar to their products to me it actually taste good. Given that sugar has been shown to be more addictive that cocaine, what better way to keep us dependent than by keeping our sugar consumption high (and our fat consumption low). That’s just good business!
Expanding more on why all grain and carbs are actually just sugar, here is a clip that is shortest of them all: only two and a half minutes long! There’s no excuse to not watch it now, huh?
Key concepts:
- There is no evidence to support that “fat makes you fat.”
- When we told people to reduce fats (based on the food pyramid), they ended up eating more sugars and grains.
- After the governmental dietary recommendations to eat less fat and more grains, this correlated with a spike in rates of diabetes and obesity.
- All grains, even if “heart healthy” or whole grains that aren’t naturally sweet, are really just sugar given that they break down into simple sugars in the body.
- The nutritional guidelines were just wrong due to being based on flawed science that was founded on a kind of food and simply turns to sugar in the body.
- “Eat vintage: Basic, whole, real, food; like your great grandmother served.”… the stuff that doesn’t come in packages.
Let’s find out what those who aren’t in the nutritional field say, like this physical therapy clinic… and in only two minutes!
Key concepts:
- Processed sugars cause: 1) an insulin increase, which pushes blood sugar into visceral fat cells, causing fat storage around the waist and a release of inflammatory chemicals; 2) AGEs (Advanced Glycation Endproducts) to be released, creating oxidative stress, which breaks down cartilage; 3) C-Reactive Protein (a measure of inflammation in the body)
- It takes your body around 12 hours to fully process through sugar consumed.
- Sugar depletes our Magnesium (a healthy nutrient and natural muscle relaxer) given that it takes your body around 28 molecules of Magnesium to break down only one molecule of sugar.
- Potassium also tends to be depleted along with Magnesium.
Although this video is over an hour long, it is a great explanation of why even endurance athletes thrive on a low-carbohydrate, high fat ketogenic way of eating. And, if it is good for such intense athletes, who are meticulous about their bodies, why wouldn’t it be good for us?
Want more information from ACCURATE, RELIABLE sources? The Diet Doctor website (your best source for low-carb/ketogenic information!) has a whole series of introductory videos to educate you and get you started on the right path on your low-carbohydrate/ketogenic journey.
