When you are in a caloric deficit, there are different things that you can eat that can have a more negative impact. But it's more so about combinations of certain things. Now, first and foremost, we have to be clear that the most important thing is that you remain in that deficit.
Or, in the case of low-carb, that you're keeping certain macronutrients where you want them. Okay, I mean, that's the most important thing. But, something happens when you combine. high amounts of fats and high amounts of carbohydrates in one sitting, specifically in a deficit.
When you're in a caloric deficit, you're likely going to be more sensitive to whatever fuel you're taking in. And there are certain things that might turn off the fat burning, so to speak. Now, if you ask some people, they'll say any consumption of carbohydrates are going to increase insulin and that's going to turn off fat burning.
And in some ways, that's kind of true because insulin does impede the actions of certain fat burning enzymes. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about what happens when we get down at the actual mitochondrial level.
The journal Cell describes what happens when we consume high amounts of fats and high amounts of carbohydrates together very, very well. So let's hear what they have to say. Now, after today's video, I put a link down below for Seed Daily Symbiotic. When you are in a caloric deficit.
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So the way the journal Cell described it. is they explain that the cell or the mitochondria can really only use fats or carbs at one specific time. They are what are known as reciprocally regulated, which means when one is used, the other is not, and vice versa, right?
Now, more specifically, the enzymes that break down the substrates are reciprocally regulated. So what breaks down a fat or what breaks down a carb? is reciprocally regulated. So you kind of have two systems working. You have like what's coming into the cell, but also what's breaking down the substrates in the first place.
When you are in a state of feeding, you shift away from fat oxidation and you shift more towards carboxidation, right? Especially if you consume glucose, the body's going to say, okay, let's back away from fat burning and let's consume these carbohydrates. Ordinarily, that's totally fine because what happens is the carbohydrates are utilized, that goes through that thing.
It's relatively quick and then you're right back to a balance of fat oxidation and carboxidation depending on your intensity of what you're doing. Where things get complicated is in two situations. One, where you have a lot of food coming in at one time or if someone is metabolically broken, which is the case of a lot of people that are overweight.
So what happens is when you have these high amounts of fats and carbohydrates at the same time, you end up with somewhat of a traffic jam called metabolic gridlock. Okay, so essentially this traffic jam causes an issue with the signaling. So it says, hey, do we use fat right now or do we use carbs right now? We don't know. There's just too much of both.
So what this leads to is an increase in what is called reactive oxygen species. So an increase in oxidative stress at the cellular level, changing what's called membrane potential. When this happens, you actually have potential cellular damage that occurs.
So then... everything kind of shuts down. There's even some evidence to suggest that this could be a cause of insulin resistance, but also insulin resistance may make this situation worse, because you're already dealing with a cell that is resistant to certain fuels, and then you're adding more fuel to the fire of confusion, if that makes sense. As a matter of fact, the Mayo Clinic Proceedings had published a paper that found that basically increased levels of oxidative stress led to this cell membrane injury. that made it harder to utilize fuel.
And this is a quote from that study. Insulin resistance may also play a role in this deleterious effect. What they mean by that is...
The whole combination of fats and carbs being problematic in high amounts together, that can be compounded if there's insulin resistance. I'm not saying that if you go and have some chicken breasts with some almonds and some honey, that the combination of fats and carbs are going to be the worst thing that you eat in a caloric deficit. What I am suggesting is that if you consume a large amount of fats and a large amount of carbs, A, your body's not going to know how to deal with it.
too much at that point in time, B, you run the risk of this increase of oxidative stress that can impair insulin signaling even more and make fat accumulation easier, or at least make fat burning harder. Now, what happens is that the more unhealthy or metabolically unhealthy that you are, essentially the less ability you have to partition or reciprocally regulate those nutrients or those fuels. A very, very, very healthy person with sheer just great mitochondria, they can probably handle a significant amount of fats and carbs together because their mitochondria can deal with that. Now, as you get more and more and more and more unhealthy, the smaller that number becomes, right? And again, I don't think it comes down to like eating a ribeye steak and honey being a problem, right?
But for someone that is metabolically very disturbed, That could prove harder at a mitochondrial level. And we're starting to look at this now as a potential cause of insulin resistance in the first place, which would make sense because if you look at hyperpalatable foods, what do you know? What are they usually?
Mega combinations of fats and carbs together. But you might have clipped off this video because you learned already what's going on, but there's more to it that we have to look at. There's two really important things.
We're going to talk about the specific kinds of fats in a second, but first I want to address another piece. There's the whole reward system too. There's evidence to suggest that when we combine fats and carbs together, the brain lights up like a Christmas tree.
So we have that. That's hugely problematic if you're in a caloric deficit. There was a study that looked at like auction type systems with foods where they gave people sort of money and they said, hey, how much money would you pay for this food, for this food, for this food?
And people would pay significantly more for a food that was a fat and a carbohydrate combined, whether it was unhealthy or healthy fats and carbs combined. That did something to the brain, probably because from a biological standpoint or a foraging standpoint, we probably wouldn't get fats and carbs in nature together very often. So it seems like almost a super physiological, supernatural thing to get, right?
So that aside though, because I don't want to get too woo-woo or too neurological, that's not my world. I want to give you some good news before I give you more bad news. The really, really good news is that by replacing the carbohydrates with protein, it can have a huge impact.
Check this out. This was a study published in the journal Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism. So what they had them do is they had them consume a regular breakfast, and then they had them consume either 0.2 grams of carbohydrates per kilogram, or up to two grams of carbohydrates per kilogram with lunch.
And then they also swapped it with protein, right? What they ultimately found is... Oh, and then there was a fasted group too.
The fasted group burned the most fat. The carbohydrate group burned the least fat. And the protein group actually burned a significant amount of fat, just not quite as much as the fasting group. So even when calories were matched, the level of fat oxidation in the protein group was significantly higher after lunch, indicating that, well, adding protein into the mix instead of carbohydrates actually increases fat oxidation for the rest of the day, particularly when they were exercising too. So when they put them into an exercise situation, the amount of fuel they used from fat was significantly more, whereas the carb group basically burn through the carbs.
Kind of interesting. So it tells us, okay, well, if we are in a caloric deficit, if we just replace our carbohydrates with protein, calorie for calorie, we're probably going to end up in a better spot. So that's like the good news here.
Now we need to talk about the specific fat. This is interesting because this comes from a new study in 2024. Now this was published in Biological Chemistry. Wasn't rodent model study, but still very interesting. They took a look at nine trans-octadecanoic acid, which is a trans fat.
compared to oleic acid, compared to stearic acid, which is a saturated fat, and how it impacted the mitochondria, how it like broke down. Now, there is an enzyme that is the first step in fat oxidation, beta-oxidation, fat burning. It is called long-chain acetyl-coenzyme A dehydrogenase, LCAD. Now, what they found is that the trans fat was significantly less efficiently broken down by this enzyme, by this LCAD.
So much so that fragments of the trans fat were left within the cell. A, it wasn't even fully broken down. B, it left fragments in the cell, which led to an increase in oxidative stress within the cell.
So the trans fats hung around. Components of the trans fats stayed in the cell, whereas the CIS bonds and the no double bond in the saturated fat group were just digested, broken down, assimilated. The trans fats actually hung around, and A, contributed to metabolic gridlock because they weren't broken down, but B, ended up... stuck in the cell causing this stress to begin with. When this accumulation happens, it leads to more metabolic gridlock.
Because A, you've got trans fats that are jamming things up, but then B, they've stuck around and accumulated, crowding the exit for the freeway anyway. So, double whammy. They're not getting broken down, and they're also blocking other things, right?
What's interesting about this is that this entire process, this entire action could lead to impaired signaling. So trans fats alone could lead to impaired signaling, but when you combine high amounts of trans fats with high amounts of carbs, you've got metabolic gridlock happening, surface level with just carbs and fats to begin with, but you add the additional layer of it being a trans fats, you're talking about major potential signaling impairment. So less insulin signaling leading to more insulin resistance. And there was a study published in PNAS.
I'm going to read you an interesting quote from it because this is where research should be going and is starting to go. The correlations between intramyocellular lipids, decreased fatty acid oxidation, and insulin resistance have led to the hypothesis that impaired fatty acid oxidation causes the accumulation of lipotoxic intermediates that inhibit muscle insulin signaling. The lack of being able to oxidize fats, i.e., in this case, trans fats, or in the case of too much fats and carbs combined, could lead to insulin resistance. And this is a current hypothesis that is now being challenged, and we are seeing it. And I have a strong hunch that it's going to come back exactly what's suspected.
Trans fats are problematic. Trans fats plus hyperpalatable carbohydrates, extremely problematic. So when you're in a caloric deficit, the quickest way to stop your fat burning is by eating trans fats and high carbohydrate foods. This is the problem that I do have when we say flexible dieting is the way, like just eat what you like, just eat less of it.
Because I do think that no matter where you are on a caloric deficit scale, when you eat lots of these cruddy foods, it's not good for the cell. Nutrient density matters, but I'm not here to just say this is all about a naturalistic fallacy. I'm here to say, like, let's look at the data, say that maybe we should be giving our body real food. So it doesn't mean...
don't have a treat now and then, but it means there are foods that we could say turn off fat burning a little bit more than others. As always, keep it locked in here on my channel. See you tomorrow.