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Carbs v Fats

  • 13-08-2012 1:04am
    #1
    paky
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,138 ✭✭✭


    Just wondering what your opinions are on this. If the body stores more fat than glycogen, should peoples main source of energy in the form of food come from fats rather than carbs?


Comments

  • #2
    Inspector Coptoor
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,818 ✭✭✭Inspector Coptoor


    paky wrote: »
    Just wondering what your opinions are on this. If the body stores more fat than glycogen, should peoples main source of energy in the form of food come from fats rather than carbs?

    It depends on what kind of person/athlete you are talking about.

    For example, for an endurance athlete, no. The diet should be predominantly carbs as they needs as much liver & muscle glycogen as possible, which the reason for carb loading.

    The main reason the body stores more fat than carbs is due to space saving.
    1g of carbs stores 4 kcals, it's 9 kcals for a 1g of fat.

    I don't have the exact kcal measurements for 1cm3 carb vs 1cm3 far but if we take the difference to be 2.25 x the amount, then a person who weighed 100kg with 20% bodyfat (ie 20kg of fat being carried in body comp) would have to carry 45kg if all this stored energy was stored as carbs and give the person a weight of 125kg with the same lbm.


    This is a very simplistic explantation.


  • #3
    Hanley
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 21,981 ✭✭✭✭Hanley


    You can't produce energy glycolytically without glycogen. If you're a repeated effort (think soccer or rugby)/endurance athlete, you NEED carbs. If you hit the gym 3x per week to lift some weights, not so much.

    At a given calorie level, and assuming protein intake is sufficient (0.75g-1g/lb bodyweight), it doesn't really matter whether your calories come from fat or carbs.

    What DOES matter is that eating more fat than carbs will stabilise blood sugar levels, lead to less ups and downs energy wise, and will ensure you ACTUALLY eat the correct amount of calories and don't just binge when hungry.

    A protein and fat based diet is better from an adherence standpoint. Metabolically, it really doesn't matter too much. From a general "health" perspective, protein and fat is again a better source (obviously some carbs will be consumed, but it should be focused on protein and healthy fat sources).


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