Anyone hoping to maximize muscle mass while minimizing body fat needs to understand the difference between a carbohydrate food that digests almost as soon as it hits the gut and others that break down considerably slower.
1) Slow Digesting Carbs Are Natural And Slow Is Generally Better.
Where do yams, wild rice, beans, red potatoes and oats come from? They’re certainly not manufactured in a food processing plant. No, they’re natural carbs and natural carbs, in general, break down slowly into glucose, the basic fuel source muscles require for energy and growth. As we will see, there are advantages to slow-digesting carbs.
2) Fast Digesting Carbs are “Man-Made”
The more processing involved to ‘make’ a carb, the faster it digests. Bagels, dinner rolls, white bread/ rice, mashed potatoes, fat-free muffins, cold cereals, and rice cakes require some degree of processing which creates a carbohydrate that hits the bloodstream far quicker than slow-digesting carbs.
When you eat carbs, your body responds by releasing the hormone insulin. Insulin helps energize your training by pushing glucose, the basic energy unit found in carbs, into your muscle. Insulin also helps push protein into muscles, leading to growth. The downside of insulin is that in bodybuilders/ persons who have a tough time staying lean, elevated insulin levels along with eating too many calories, can facilitate the storage of body fat. The solution is to stick with natural (slow-digesting) carbs. Gram for gram, they release less insulin than fast-digesting carbs and controlling insulin is a major factor in controlling body fat.
What about fat-free and low-fat baked goods such as cookies and muffins? Low-fat pop tarts, white bread and cold cereal? These are off limits to dieters. Refined foods (fast digesting carbs see #2) exert a greater insulin surge than natural foods (slow digesting carbs see #1) and also help elevate the appetite. For hard gainers, keeping the appetite stimulated is one of keys to adding bodyweight. but not for someone who want to shed weight / body fat. Do yourself a favour and avoid the refined carbs listed in #2 By rapidly burning, they can short-circuit your energy by causing a surge & ultimately a drop in blood sugar levels, making you feel weak.
Reducing carbs promotes fat loss by limiting calories and insulin. Since the amount of insulin you secrete is tied to your total carb intake, cutting back on your carbs automatically controls insulin. The second way to control insulin is to rely on slow-digesting carbs; oats, cream of rye, oat bran cereal, yams, beans, rye bread, and peaches. Slow-digesting/natural carbs produce a milder release of insulin. For example 40 grams of carbs from oats yields the same calories as 40 grams from a fat-free cookie. The catch is that the concentration of insulin released is smaller with the slow digesting carb. Controlling insulin when dieting contributes to a leaner physique.
9) Fiber, Fat and Protein
Although carbs can be classified as slow, medium and fast digesting; other nutrition factors influence how fast the carbs you eat will race into the blood stream. Fiber found in veggies, fruit, beans, oats, and in the skin of yams and potatoes slow the delivery of carbs into glucose, the muscle’s main source of fuel. For example, combining white rice, a medium to fast digesting carb, with a cup of broccoli will slow the digestion of the rice. A side of black beans added to mashed potatoes will dramatically slow the speed at which the potatoes are digested. Dietary fat also influences the speed. Combining any protein food that contains fat – chicken, meat and whole eggs, along with any carb will skew the rate of digestion to a lower number. Of course, if you’re trying to get lean, you would benefit from relying on fat-free sources of protein such as egg whites, turkey breast and fish.
10) Controlled Insulin = Controlled Appetite
Hungry and trying to shed some body fat? Choose slow digesting carbs for all meals Slow digesting carbs help to control the appetite better than fast digesting ones. Adding lots of low-calorie veggies can bump up your fiber intake which will make even slow digesting carbs digest even slower. This will help to control the appetite and make you feel full and satisfied, even when eating a lower calorie diet.