It seems we all have this carb-phobia where we try to limit our carb intake to burn fat. Unfortunately, this only leaves us with dissatisfaction and regret as we put ourselves in extreme hunger and not witness any noticeable change in our physique.
Our bodies are extremely efficient at using the energy we give. It doesn’t care about what we put in our body as long as it can be converted to compounds that can be further broken down and used as energy.
To put it simply, our body uses three sources of energy: carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Carbohydrates are converted into glucose. Fats are converted into fatty acids and proteins are converted into amino acids.
Our bodies readily use glucose as a source of energy and store them in our liver and muscle in a form known as glycogen. Our brains and central nervous system use this source as their primary fuel. Fats and protein are used only as a source when the glycogen stores are depleted.
There are various steps in which our bodies produce energy.
Glucose and fats are individually broken down into different compounds through various cycles that combine to form carbon dioxide and water (glycolysis and Krebs cycle). These cycles both liberate the chemical energy stored in food and produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is like your body’s chemical “money” it needs to “pay” for different chemical and physiological “transactions” (i.e., muscle contraction, cellular reactions, etc).
To clearly understand this with our food restriction, let us set the stage by discussing two metabolic conditions:
- Normal, well-fed conditions.
Under normal circumstances, when you’re eating plenty of carbohydrates and fats, your body produces lots of the simple compounds from glucose and fatty acids to produce energy, water, and carbon dioxide.
The cycles are undisturbed and there is peace on earth.
But things go haywire when you deprive yourself of these nutrients.
2. Starvation conditions:
Let’s say you try to go for a high protein high-fat mayonnaise diet and your daily calorie intake is disturbingly low (less than 1500 calories).
First, your body uses up its stored carbohydrate (glycogen) in your liver and muscles. Glycogen holds a bit of water too so, as you deplete your glycogen, water will go with it. You’ll experience a bit of quick weight loss on the bathroom scale.
Now, it’s time to rob the glycogen from your body. Yeah, it’s exactly as it sounds. Recall that our brains and central nervous system need glucose as the source of energy. To meet the demands, our bodies will produce glucose from non-glucose sources like amino acids.
Since you don’t have the simple compounds from glucose to combine with the compounds produced from the fat, you are sort of boxing yourself in from both ends and creating a “metabolic traffic jam” i.e., you lose the ability to produce the required energy for your body.It also causes accumulation of fats, which may further convert into complex fats that are usually not good for our body..!!
Hence, it is with this understanding that fats burn in a carbohydrate flame.
