I used to believe the old saw that the only thing that matters for weight issues is to watch calories in (food) and calories out (exercise). Up to a point, that's even true. This is The Physics Diet, and it works if you're strict. I'll cut to the end game: clearly the source of the calories matters, at least in some cases. Don't believe me? Diabetes. Check mate in one word!
To work on the "calories in" side, I developed all sorts of low-fat cooking techniques years ago. I'm pretty good at it now. The reason why I learned low-fat is that you get 9 calories from a gram of fat, while just 4 calories from a gram of protein or a gram of carbohydrate. Obviously knocking out fat is a bigger calorie drop than protein or carbs. [The building blocks of protein are amino acids; the building blocks of carbohydrates are sugars.]
Too bad I'm sensitive to refined sugar! Not that it's bad to be a low-fat cook, but it's not all I need to watch. What I've learned from observing myself is that eating refined sugar (certain types more so than others; haven't figured out what those have in common yet though) triggers munchies. I'm sure I'm still hungry. I mean, I feel quite hungry. I can tell it's a hungry feeling, and not boredom or any of those other wrong reasons to eat. Luckily, I've learned the "reset" button for the refined sugar munchies, and that's to fight back with unrefined sugar. The sweetness of fruit is appealing, and it (generally) turns off my desire to eat more. Apples are great! So it's not that the calories in sugar are bad, but my reaction to them (wanting to eat more) is. Complex carbohydrates are good (especially the ones high in fiber), but refined carbs and especially refined sugars are not good for how I respond to them.
I've still got more to learn here, but I'll start by acknowledging that not all calories are equal; some calorie sources have undesirable consequences.
No comments:
Post a Comment