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Are Carbs Actually Stored as Fat?
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Transcript
Debunking Carb-to-Fat Myth
00:00:13
Speaker
So if you ask any sort of keto low carb person, they'll tell you that carbs get stored as fat. That's why carbs are the devil. That's why we have to eat fat and fat does not get stored as fat because God knows, right? Because ketosis. So actually it's a big myth. Very, very little carbs actually gets stored as fat in a relatively normal scenario, normal human being that doesn't have too many metabolic derangements.
Understanding De Novo Lipogenesis
00:00:45
Speaker
Let's kind of examine this in a little bit more depth. So we have a ah concept known as de novo lipogenesis. This is a minor pathway for fat accumulation in most humans.
00:00:55
Speaker
Denovo lipogenesis talks about the process of creating new lipids or new the new fatty acids that can then be packaged into triglycerides. so de novo meaning, you know, on you. So this this is a process that can happen in the liver and in the fatty tissue. And theoretically, excess carbohydrate intake could lead to fat gain through this pathway. But in most humans, de novo lipogenesis, making new fat from carbohydrates, is only contributing to a minor small a small fraction to the actual stored fat that a person accumulates. So
00:01:42
Speaker
The reason for this is is because it's ah it's an inefficient pathway, right? Turning one thing into another he is an inefficient process. So if you have that other thing already, why would you turn this one thing into the other? So you what ah to illustrate, if you have glucose Although protein can be turned into glucose, the body is much less likely to turn, to break down protein, to turn it into glucose if there's glucose already. So carbohydrates spare protein, right? So you actually don't need to eat as much protein if you eat plenty of carbs in your diet. Similarly, if you already have dietary fat coming in, what is the point to waste energy, nutrients and enzyme activity and whatever else?
00:02:34
Speaker
to turn carbohydrates into fatty acids. It's an inefficient pathway and the body does not do inefficient things unless
Carbs vs. Dietary Fat: Storage Processes
00:02:43
Speaker
it's forced to do them. right so
00:02:48
Speaker
you have car you eat carbohydrates, you digest them, they get into your bloodstream, you your blood glucose goes up, the cells uptake that glucose, and then you have basically the process of glycolysis where you break down, ah you you you um you split the glucose, you get pyruvate, pyruvate can become acetyl-CoA,
00:03:11
Speaker
Acetyl-CoA can become malonyl-CoA and then malonyl-CoA through the enzyme fatty acid synthase can then be turned turning to fatty acids and those fatty acids have to be packaged into triglycerides, so you need to find the glycerol backbone, you need enzymes that kind of do this, you know, like glycerol-3-phosphate. So each step requires ATP, which, you know, the mitocho and the energy molecule that the mitochondria have to produce, right?
00:03:44
Speaker
and NADPH and it requires it requires basically energy and nutrients and it's a far less efficient process than simply storing dietary fat directly. So if the body wants to store fat, if there's a relative energy abundance or excess, it's much easier if you're going to store fat just to store the fat that's already there preformed because When you eat fat, you sure, you break down that fat and into fatty acids and they get they get transported across the the gut barrier.
Energy Efficiency in Fat Storage
00:04:19
Speaker
Then they get repackaged into triglycerides again. Then they get packaged into the chylomicrons. And then those chylomicrons, along with you know fat soluble vitamins and whatever else, they are sent into the lymphatic system. And at that point, you know eventually,
00:04:39
Speaker
yeah that would reach reach the bloodstream eventually to reach adipose tissue and all the adipose fatty tissue has to do is just uptake those triglycerides from the chiral micron and job is good. You know, you you've done the job of so storing the triglycerides.
00:04:57
Speaker
So, that process costs 3-5% of the calories ingested. Now, contrast that, if you want to convert carbs into fat via de novo lipogenesis, that requires an estimated 25-30% of the energy from the carbohydrate intake, so it's a much less efficient ah process for fat storage so the body's not going to do it. It's like if you're eating protein, if you're forcing the body to eat, to to make glucose from the protein because you're really eating low carb, you're going to spend something like six molecules of glucose in gluconeogenesis to make two molecules of glucose energy at the end of the day. um So it's a very inefficient process. The body will not do, I mean, the body's always doing some gluconeogenesis
00:05:48
Speaker
like it's always doing a little bit of the novel hypogenesis and whatever else. Everything is always running at a small or large degree, depending on ah factors in the body, but it's not going to go out of its way to do these inefficient processes beyond like some kind of baseline. And the novel lipogenesis is just one of those things, right? So um in studies,
00:06:14
Speaker
In humans, they show that you know when when the carbohydrate content of the diet is about 40 to 60% carbs, the novel lipogenesis is basically responsible for less than one to 2% of the total fat synthesis in a day.
Overfeeding and Fat Sources
00:06:31
Speaker
And then when they do overfeeding studies in humans, something like 500 to 700 grams of carbohydrate intake a day for multiple days,
00:06:42
Speaker
de novo lipogenesis still only accounts for 10 to 20% of the fat stored. And in contrast to that, when they do overfeeding studies in humans with fat, 90 to 95% of the fat that they overate, that they were overfed gets stored as body fat. So point being is that You eat a lot of fat, it's very easy to store a lot of fat, okay?
00:07:19
Speaker
um And this means basically that most excess carbs are not actually going to be directly converted to fat via the novel lipogenesis.
Indirect Effects of Excessive Carbs
00:07:28
Speaker
However, that doesn't exonerate us for eating like a crap load of carbs, especially if they're the shitty carbs that I don't recommend, as you may know already. I mean, you you must know by now if you're this far along in the in the program,
00:07:42
Speaker
um But um excess carbs can still contribute to fat gain in indirect ways. So we it doesn't exonerate us from monitoring our overall calories, our macros, just kind of keeping tabs on it. We don't have to get super meticulous unless we have specific weight loss goals for the next three, four, six months.
00:08:08
Speaker
but we still kind of have to know roughly how much we're getting in a day because we don't want to under-eat protein, we don't want to over-eat the fats, and we for sure don't want to under-eat carbs right because we're leaving a lot of metabolic function from working on the table if we under read the carbs. you know um So let's look at some ways where excess carbohydrates can promote fat gain indirectly, right? So if you over consume carbohydrates, that will actually suppress fat oxidation, okay?
00:08:46
Speaker
So when you eat more carbs, insulin will rise and the body will then prioritize burning glucose for energy instead of fat. Now you're still going to burn some fat, but if you have a gross sort of skewing of, let's say very little carbs and a lot of fat like keto or something like that, or very low fat, very high carbs,
00:09:09
Speaker
you are then in in in both cases, you're either prioritizing and sort of pushing down the fat oxidation pathway in the case of keto, which is really not good. But then on on the other hand, it was a super high carbon, you know, low, loaf even if it's a low, relatively ah low fat intake, if you're still over consuming total calories, you're going to be reducing fat oxidation. But then you're going to you know, you're going to be favoring burning glucose more. um What that would then allow to happen is that because you're suppressing fat oxidation, more dietary fat is likely to be stored rather than than burned. So you can definitely overdo it with the carbs for sure, especially if you're over eating total calories consistently.
00:09:59
Speaker
Now, there is definitely a place for having some high carb days though, no matter if you're trying to lose weight or whatever. like We can discuss that ah in a separate video, of course.
00:10:14
Speaker
um Now another thing is carbs can increase liver triglyceride production but again this happens mostly from dietary fat right so excess carbs increase liver fat synthesis leading to elevated VLDL or very low density lipoproteins and triglycerides but most of these triglycerides in the VLDL are from dietary fat not the novel hypogenesis produced fat okay and in extreme overfeeding
00:10:44
Speaker
the the noble hypogenesis can become more significant but these again are extreme prolonged cases of carbohydrate overfeeding right so like we mentioned already it takes several days in the human studies of consuming 500 to 700 grams of carbs daily for the noble hypogenesis to significantly contribute to fat storage And that still is only 10 to 20%, right? So a fifth, a tenth. um Even in those extreme moral feeding cases, most of the stored fat still comes from the dietary fat, not from the carbs that the people were overeating.
00:11:27
Speaker
So what was happening in those cases is that their base probably their basal metabolic rate, their body temperature were were actually rising um to you know because you have more substrate to burn. It's kind of normal that the body, if it's not going to store most of it as fat, is going to utilize it in some way, whether that's to top up liver glycogen ah or you know create ATP, things like that.
00:11:52
Speaker
So so in in certain cases, certain people can experience more de novo lipogenesis. For example, obese individuals, they might have slightly higher de novo lipogenesis due to chronic insulin resistance. People with metabolic syndrome or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, this de novo lipogenesis can contribute to liver fat accumulation. And in extreme high carb diets, something like 70, 80,
00:12:20
Speaker
ah ah percent carbs, the novel hypogenesis becomes more relevant but again it still contributes less than dietary fat to total body fat. right So you if you overeat on a high carb diet it's still very likely that but most of the fat gain, much of the the majority of the fat gain is coming from the dietary fat in your diet right so if you look at this table here the fate of excess carbohydrates in most people so you have glycogen storage so we can store glucose in the form of glycogen in the muscles in the liver and you know a human can have three four five maybe see even 600 grams of muscle glycogen depending on size and um how trained they are
00:13:14
Speaker
So thirty to forty if if the glycogen stores are not already full, 30% to 40% of excess carbs can be used to ah replenish liver and muscle glycogen, which kind of tells you if you've had a day where you've been doing you know sport, exercise, ah lifting, stuff like that, calisthenics, on those days where you're actually using some of your muscle glycogen,
00:13:44
Speaker
you have a great opportunity to dispose of of excess carbohydrates in a way that is actually beneficial to your body, especially if your exercise performance ah goals it is ah one of your priorities, right?
Glycogen Replenishment and Energy Use
00:14:05
Speaker
um then 40 to 50% of that excess carbohydrate will be oxidized for energy or ATP production, right? And then one, this is again, normal conditions. Only one to 2% of all of that excess carbohydrate is likely to be converted to fat via the novel lipogenesis. And again, it takes extreme overfeeding multiple days, 500, 700 grams of carbohydrates per day for the the the novo lipogenesis to start approaching 10 to 20 percent, right? And then some, of course, some of this carbohydrate can be converted to lactate, recycled in the liver, back to glucose via the corey cycle. But that's that's variable. That's variable on whether you know you have cofactors, vitamins, um depending on activity levels, things like that.
00:14:59
Speaker
So the key takeaways is the novel hypogenesis, making fat from carbs is an overblown sort of thing.
Dietary Fats vs. Carbs in Weight Gain
00:15:09
Speaker
It's a myth. The problem for a lot of people out there that are gaining a lot of weight or have gained a lot of weight is that they are eating probably a lot of polyunsaturated fats and they're eating a lot of carbs so and and usually crappy carbs. So, yeah, sure. If you eat a lot of fat, polyunsaturated fat, a lot of processed food with, you know, um ah wheat and and grains and and added sugars and just without having any sort of discrimination around or sort of
00:15:44
Speaker
giving any thought to overall all intake ah macros macro ratios yeah sure those people are of course going to be storing fat and getting fatter and more obese and stuff like that but again whilst the carbohydrates can contribute to overall caloric excess the The primary source of the stored fat that those folks are accumulating is the dietary fat. And as we've talked about in other modules,
00:16:21
Speaker
ah lot If a lot of persons fat intake, if a lot of that is polyunsaturated fat, which many, we know many Westerners, especially in the US, many people are easily, easily getting 50, 60 grams of polyunsaturated fats per day. We know, as as I discussed in that video, the module on how proofers slow down your metabolism. There's multiple mechanisms.
00:16:47
Speaker
how not only are they getting plenty of extra calories as as fat that will easily be stored as fat, whilst that's happening, they're getting inflammation, they're getting slowdown metabolism, they're getting ah oxidative stress because of peroxidation reactions and that's aging their tissues, that's making them more, ah that's sort of hampering the metabolism causing metabolic damage and so on and so forth.
00:17:11
Speaker
so it's it's not necessarily the carbohydrates that are to be blamed specifically right now a lot of people are eating the crappy carbs so again that's not to say just go go out and eat any old crappy carbs and you'll be fine of course that you know that's not what i'm about but this is just to illustrate that the The whole keto movement is that carbs made us fat so far is ludicrous. It's ridiculous. Right. We know that.
00:17:47
Speaker
It's the fat is fat. It just doesn't it doesn't it make sort of intuitive sense that fat when you eat it will get stored as fat. ah We're now forced to sort of do these weird mental gymnastics where the fructose becomes fat because science, right? So it's kind of crazy. It's kind of crazy where we' where we've come ah in in nutrition the overall in the health and fitness industry.
00:18:19
Speaker
um So again, carbs can promote fat storage, right, by reducing fat oxidation, increasing insulin levels. If you're, told let's say your total, callog let's say your caloric maintenance is 2500 calories, but you eat 3,000 calories every single day on average or or on average over the course of a week, a month, a year. You're eating 500 calories on top of that um base ah maintenance requirement.
00:18:50
Speaker
for sure you're going to be storing fat, right? You're going to be getting gaining accumulating fat. That is absolutely sure. ah As sure as, you know, ah like they used to say in Ireland, I had a ah boss, he'll say, as sure as jaysus. As sure as jaysus you're gonna gain fat stores. You're going to accumulate fat. okay But that fat wasn't through carbohydrates turning into fat. That was because dietary fat was not oxidized as much and a lot more of it got stored.
00:19:32
Speaker
that is kind of um the the the major takeaway. So in a caloric surplus, excess dietary fat is stored directly as body fat, whereas excess carbs are first used for glycogen replenishment and energy production, and then some of it will get stored as fat via the novo denovo lipogenesis. So the the the key takeaway is that Fat intake rather than carb intake is the dominant factor in fat accumulation in most people. And future videos in this section are going to expand more on how we're going to lab leverage this, what we know now, in terms of losing fat in a healthy manner, in a sustainable manner.