Carbs vs. Protein: Which Macronutrient Is Actually More Dangerous to Overconsume?

0:00The biggest mistakes that people over 40 make when it comes to body composition. Are you ready? Americans, right out the gate, have a calorie problem. We are over-consuming total calories. The average American consumes about 300 grams of carbs daily. This will distort metabolism. 75 % of Americans are either overweight or obese. We are exposed and have access to cheap, processed carbohydrates that we haven't had before. How do we structure a meal plan and really understand our bodies and the environment that we're in will allow us to succeed. 95 % of Americans are over consuming refined grains and 80 to 90 % of Americans are under consuming fruits and vegetables.

0:53Understanding your carbohydrate tolerance is probably one of the most important things that you can do to empower your own nutrition plan. A lot of the information out there is very clear on protein. Carbohydrates, there are things that we are beginning to learn that can reframe how we orient ourselves to carbohydrates. Where can you consume the minimum amount of calories to get the maximum amount of protein? Are you ready? I'm taking notes. Okay.

1:26Based on metabolic science, which one is actually more dangerous for the average person to over consume? Carbs or protein? Sounds like a trick question. It's not. It's carbohydrates. And let's talk about why. Let's base this answer in reality versus a theoretical construct. Nick, I think this is very important. First of all, Americans right out the gate have a calorie problem. We are over consuming total calories and 75 % of Americans are either overweight or obese, which is staggering. 12%, almost 12 % have type 2 diabetes. This is according to the CDC. obesity is definitely a problem and it's a problem of excess calories.

2:12Thinking about what kind of calories are causing this problem, I would argue it's a dysregulation of carbohydrates. And let's just look at what Americans are eating. So the primary source of calories in the U.S. is carbohydrates and they provide about 50 % of daily calories. And of course, we know that it's not fruits and vegetables. Do you know the number one food ingested? Chlorohydrate food? Yeah. I'm going to go with chips. Okay. So I've got some numbers here and this is based on data set and Hanes. The top food categories for dietary energy are the following. Cookies, cakes, pastries. And this is about, This says here 7.2 % of daily calories.

3:02I can see that. Yeast breads, 7.1%. Sugar-added soft drinks. People are still drinking this. 5.4 % and 40 % from high fructose corn syrup goods like the following. Crackers, pretzels, and chips. So chips were down the list. Cookies beat chips. The categories of high carbohydrate foods provide nearly 30 % of our daily calories, with the majority coming from refined grains. And your original question is, which is more detrimental? Is it carbohydrates or protein and why? Now, you and I right out the gate, we're talking about carbohydrate disposal. Yes. And I made a statement saying that Anything above 40 grams of carbohydrates.

3:56And to be clear, I'm not talking about fruits and vegetables. I'm talking about those highly, exactly, these highly processed, highly calorically dense foods. The average American consumes about 300 grams of carbs daily. If we were to break that down into a meal, that would be three oral glucose tolerance tests a day. Yuck. Carbicide. That is fully carbicide. If we were to think about the average American eating 100 grams of carbohydrates per meal, this will distort metabolism. And here's why I did not make up this number. Despite what you see on social media, because there was some situations out there, we have to understand it's being very taken out of context.

4:41But glucose is an important fuel for most cells in the body. It's an obligatory fuel for brain, red blood cells, and the kidney cortex. We can agree upon that. Yes. However, the three tissues combined use approximately, are you ready for this? I mean, you probably know this, 80 to 100 grams of glucose daily, which translates into approximately four grams per hour. That's not a lot. No. And if you have a small brain, if four grams per hour with the brain accounting for the majority of the use, we're in trouble. When you consume more than 40 milligrams and you are sedentary, then you begin to rely on other mechanisms like insulin, which should be not used, meaning we shouldn't rely on insulin for every meal because from my perspective, it's more of a fail safe mechanism, but it is not what we should be doing.

5:36Yeah. I haven't thought about that for every meal. I would think we'd have an insulin response for a meal. It's just if it was chronically throughout the day. And high. And high, right. And high. So if we really think about what the body uses at rest, you can push your body to use whichever fuel over time, right? I mean, flexible. It is flexible. But I have some numbers here, which I think are really important. So at rest, healthy muscle derives most of its energy from fatty acids. But during intense maximal exertion exercise, muscle will then shift to nearly 100 % glucose. If most of us are not training intensely, then skeletal muscle at rest is burning primarily fatty acids.

6:28And this is important to understand because this is going to be very surprising for people, but the glucose used by skeletal muscle can be as low as two grams per hour. In a resting state, the energy used by skeletal muscle is low. 13 calories per kg per day. Your total weight is 80 kg. You don't have 80 kgs of muscle. I mean, listen, we can all dream. That was a little hurtful, but okay, go on. But skeletal muscle makes up about 40 % of your body weight. Yeah. Leaving, let's say 30 to 35 kgs of skeletal muscle and assuming 35 kgs of muscle the resting energy metabolism or energy expenditure from muscle in just doing that thing is about 450 calories it's nothing no it's not 150 calories if that was i mean it's 450 calories yeah um that's 113 grams of carbs for a dude your size that is about that 30 to 40 grams per meal right yeah if you're sedentary and if we think about resting energy expenditure let's say the maximum would be 20 grams per hour and this is assuming that only glucose is being used that allows for oh this hurts my heart so bad that allows for muscle to dispose of five grams per hour which is less than the estimates in obviously fasted individuals after an oral glucose tolerance test.

7:58So let's reframe this. Skeletal muscle, which makes up 40 % of your body weight, is not very metabolically active and it does not readily use glucose as its primary substrate. If you are having more than 100 grams of or more than 40 grams of glucose per meal, where does that go? What ends up happening? And for the average person, they are not going through long periods of fasting. No. I think that this is really important to flush out because we talk all about protein and protein by itself is, I don't want to say thermogenic, but there are so many uses for these amino acids you know if you need to you can make glucose so so it can cover the car the carbohydrate but then also again to frame this we're not talking about um endurance athletes we're talking about the average sedentary person who needs to lose weight or to control their body composition and the benefit of protein is it promotes satiety right that you don't get from carbohydrates and we've all had that incident or maybe you've never had it but where you know you you start eating chips and then all of a sudden they're gone it never happened to you but um so it's happened versus i've never had a moment where like i'm eating a steak uncontrollably and i keep going right i'm i'm full after that steak i think that's important to to note there's a lot of confusion about protein what kind how much and when this episode is brought to you by body health and we're going to talk about what the science shows total daily protein intake is the foundation for building and maintaining muscle but factors like amino acid profile and how quickly those amino acids are delivered can influence how efficiently your body uses that protein.

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10:41And where we are is simply this. The average American consumes around 300 grams of carbohydrates a day. They're eating multiple meals. Therefore, if you just simply go through the math and look at how much can the body dispose of, which is what you and I have been talking about, it's not very much at rest. It's not. And for example, after an oral glucose meal, which is 75 grams, you know, women that are pregnant, we do these glucose tolerance tests, skeletal muscle takes up approximately, now keep in mind, this is fasted. Right. 26 % of the dose. What happens when someone gets that challenge? Roughly fat oxidation gets inhibited.

11:24Yes. And under these conditions with an acute oral dose of, say, a monosaccharide after an overnight fast, muscle stored 35 % is glycogen, 50 % is oxidized, and then 15 % goes into this other pathway. And during a five-hour period after a 75 oral glucose tolerance test, then obviously we start to see more oxidized. And I think that a lot of the data out there, and I used to do this when I was in WashU. Obviously, there's a whole team of us. But a euglycemic clamp is this. It is this technique. You're sitting in a dark room. Have you seen the clamp work? No, no. Okay. So it's not fun. And it is done in a metabolic ward.

12:15It is tightly controlled. There's no scary movies. Everything is dim. You're not moving at all. and it is an ideal condition in which the scientist controls everything. That does not happen in real life. And so what this does is it allows for that first meal to look like the majority of that is being disposed of. But it's not just about that first meal. What happens subsequently when you've been sitting at your desk all day and you have your second 100 gram of carbohydrate meal, It creates challenges with metabolism, meaning the following. If someone is sedentary and you are not exercising, laying around on your computer, and you give yourself another 100 grams in, say, what, three hours?

13:09Yeah. Your muscle glycogen is still full. Your liver glycogen, it's not really having to regulate blood glucose as much because you haven't given it enough time to be fasted. And this becomes a problem. So when we focus on figuring out how much protein that we need total, you know, because that's the most important macronutrient, and then we begin to dose carbohydrates in a way that doesn't increase insulin levels to a more robust amount. I mean, there's some insulin release, which is necessary, but we don't need to rely on a phase two high insulin release every time that we're eating a meal. So if we are overeating carbohydrates, then we are pushing our body to use carbohydrates as fuel.

14:01Preferentially a sedentary muscle, a resting muscle is not going to prioritize glucose utilization. And how that comes down to is if you decide to have a bagel and muffins for breakfast, you've not given it the protein that it needs to help regulate satiety. And you are then going to have an increase in insulin and then a drop in blood sugar. And you're chasing the cycle all day long. Yeah. Which a lot of people are. Okay. So what would be the take home message for people? I don't recommend going below a hundred grams of carbohydrates. Someone could definitely do a very low carbohydrate diet. It's, I mean, I think that there's pretty good data to support that.

14:45But again, a great way and something that we use in the book is we start with 100 grams of carbohydrates a day. You can titrate up or you can titrate down. The RDA is around 130 grams of carbohydrates a day. And how you get that and how you dose it becomes really important. And when I think about a plate, we think about one third of that plate coming from protein, one third coming from fruits and vegetables, and then one third coming from those starchy carbs. I think that's fair and i like how you you structure it and it's important again to to state when you talk about fruits and vegetables those are not included in the carbohydrates we're talking about right so you're talking about more of the the starchy sources i am and right now um americans are eating a six to one ratio of carbs to protein but if we can reduce that to closer to a one to one ratio we start to see changes in body composition that are the following we see better glucose regulation, better insulin regulation.

15:44We're not seeing these huge spikes in insulin. We're also seeing lower triglycerides. That would make sense. Yeah. These have clear metabolic outcomes for long-term health overall and choices for carb. I don't know. What are your favorite carbs? What are my favorite carbs? I enjoy fruits and vegetables. I enjoy a banana. I enjoy berries. I I enjoy, I love sweet potatoes. I do love me some sweet potatoes. Quinoa, rice, as you know, my wife's half Korean. We make rice. Oh, sourdough. Oh yeah, you guys are big on the sourdough. We do enjoy some sourdough. Yeah, we eat a variety of carbohydrates. But I also realize at my seasoned age that I have to earn that sourdough, right?

16:32I gotta - Yeah, it's very triggering for people. That's what the team is giving me feedback, saying that it's very triggering because now we're putting a level of emotion into the carbohydrate conversation. I don't think it should be. We are in this space of highly palatable food. I cannot go to the Home Depot without being accosted by the gummy bears. Right? It's just there. I didn't even know Home Depot had gummy bears. Well, I mean, I can go to the library and on the way into the library, there is a vending machine. We are exposed and have access to cheap processed carbohydrates that we haven't had before.

17:10It becomes very easy. And so this idea of how do we structure a meal plan and really understand our bodies and the environment that we're in will allow us to succeed. For example, let's say you don't want to eat a protein forward diet. I would say you're crazy, but I would also say, okay, fine. You do as you please. and perhaps you, I don't know, you make up the diet, you pick it. But if you understand these principles of how we design meal distribution, protein intake, and carbohydrate tolerance, then you can plug that into any diet that you wish. I will also say that the body doesn't have a need for carbohydrates that we generate it through gluconeogenesis, the liver.

17:56But carbohydrates, they do have an important role. the minimum carbohydrate need is 80 grams. The RDA adds a 50 gram buffer as a safety measure and that sets the recommendation at 130 grams. Beyond that, your muscles determine your carbohydrate tolerance. I love it. So if you want that sourdough bread, get out and exercise. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, I love it. If you are running a marathon, which by the way, Shane is doing a 50 miler this coming weekend. The rattler. You want to do it with him? He would love that dude i'm training for a ruck i've got i've got my own you're training for a rock uh that is hilarious but he might need 400 to 500 grams to do that and that is no issue and this is by understanding how the body disposes of glucose we can then begin to think about this one to one ratio rule and i will say one more thing that if we look at the current dietary intakes So this is the USDA Healthy Eating Index, illustrates that 95 % of Americans are over-consuming refined grains and 80 to 90 % of Americans are under-consuming fruits and vegetables.

19:03No surprise. No surprise. I love sweet potatoes. I love rice. I also like regular potatoes. Yeah, regular potatoes. I do not discriminate at all. And this also comes from, I think, that your performance background. We always try to place carbohydrates around activity. Meet Peak, a luxury brand transforming wellness with the absolute best, rare, and precious plant. It has cutting-edge ingredients and formulations rooted in traditional wisdom. They have botanicals, minerals, and vitamins, all that support sustained energy and radiant skin. Peak is proud to introduce Sun Goddess Matcha, an organic, ceremonial superfood blend that adds some beauty to your daily ritual.

19:44It is crafted from the purest tea leaves. It provides a smooth, sustained energy for calm mind and beautiful skin. They have the purest cup. The ceremonial grade matcha is 100 % organic and grown in a pristine valley, ensuring that you get the cleanest, purest cup ever. And 20 % off, lifelong, with a complimentary gift, peaklife.com slash drlion for 20 % off. Try it. It tastes amazing. And I'm telling you, I think you're going to glow. The other challenge for some of the folks who are listening who are parents with the carbohydrate thing, you know, you talk about the vending machines being accosted is like all the kids snacks, right?

20:25It's hard to find a kid snack that's not just carbohydrates. Yeah, it is a challenge. I'm going to tell you how we've solved it in our household. And it's it's tough. But what we do is we make beef sticks accessible. we boil hard-boiled eggs and we leave them for the kids yogurt those small yogurts and i know that there's challenges with it's in plastic and i tried to make it myself and then put it in this bpa-free situation that's very difficult have you tried to do that i've tried to do that i have not tried to do that i'm just i'm accepting the plastic on this one but even squeeze yeah i did it it was just i don't recommend anyone doing that you know i actually was trying to make the food and then putting it in their own containers unfortunately i found that all over everywhere as you can imagine but it's good you're saying this because that's reality like like you know because i feel like there are some folks some figures some influencers maybe who like talk this this perfect world and i listen to them and i'm like clearly you don't have kids like you're right because because the time component the chaos that introduces but i like the i like the eggs we need to do more we're doing more eggs and these are solutions because if you you know it's interesting you will see that children will have a proclivity towards one or the other my daughter you know aries she will definitely eat protein and she loves it my son who is on the smaller end leonitis i it is a real struggle and if you for example halloween we have the candy cat do you have you ever heard of the candy cat i have not heard of the candy why didn't you share this okay the candy cat comes and takes all Halloween candy.

22:00And on the weekend, if the candy cat remembers, it may or may not leave one or two candy from Halloween. Does the candy cat leave anything in return? That's it. It just takes it? Oh no, it takes it all. And then the candy cat on a Friday night might leave a Reese's pieces. I don't know. We had some sort of something that came and deposited money, but maybe that's a That's the two things. No, no, but for the candy, you'll have to ask. You'll have to ask Catherine. But anyway, the candy cat. I'm writing this down. Candy cat. But again, there is the wish and hopes and dreams, which I think a lot of the data, again, why do we have data from euglycemic clams?

22:44Because it is a highly controlled environment. The scientists control everything. They control the movements. They can measure how much glycogen and gluconeogenesis, glycogen in the liver, glycogen in the muscle, where these carbohydrates are being disposed of. And it's a highly controlled environment. That is not reality. Most people are going to bed full. They are waking up. Maybe liver glycogen has utilized some, you know, you've used some glucose. But the reality is most people are not going through long periods of fasting. It's just not reality. And when Halloween comes along, that's a lot of carbs.

23:21That's a lot of candy and it's predictable. And then there's Thanksgiving and then there's Christmas and then there is New Year's, all times in which people come together and celebrate. And they oftentimes celebrate with food. Keeping all of that in mind, how do we design our life for ease? And that would be having your protein prepped and made and making the starchy foods inaccessible to the kids. Sorry, guys. I like it. Now moving along to protein. Now, I have changed my mind, kind of. Oh. on one of the protein aspects. And the biggest thing is plant versus animal protein. Now, from an amino acid perspective, all things equal.

24:04If you get enough amino acids from your plant protein to your animal protein, I'm happy. That's great. But that's only protein. What about the micronutrients? And I was listening to Ty Beal, who is an expert in this area. And according to him if you are eating less than 30 percent of your protein from an animal-based source you will not hit your micronutrient needs i mean as a dietician that's why we're trained so many times with a like a vegan typically to have them supplement b vitamins you know iron i mean is an insurance policy which you don't get that as an omnivore yeah and um also that is probably when I think about when it is, when is it useful to use essential amino acids?

24:53If someone continues to choose plant protein over animal protein, just because the volume of consumption, right? If someone, someone is going to really struggle eating, I don't know. I mean, I guess you can eat a lot of tofu, but what are whole sources, whole food sources of plant protein? What would you even put in there? Rice and beans, quinoa. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be complementary proteins, tofu. Yeah, depending. I mean, vegetarian is the easier solution because you have eggs, but the vegan is where it really gets challenging again. And let's talk about, as we're talking about protein, so we're talking about this debate on protein timing, which I didn't know it was still a debate.

25:35But I do want to touch on protein. Again, the one area where I really have changed my mind is I had been convinced for a long period of time that you cannot build as much muscle on plant protein as you can from animal protein. But again, if all we're talking about is protein, which we don't just eat protein, we eat foods, then it still is inferior from a whole health perspective. Iron, zinc, selenium. Right. from from like nutrient um density yeah yeah micronutrient density yeah yeah i mean well and again let's let's talk about reality most americans as we said with the statistics depending on the show are having weight issues so where can you consume the minimum amount of calories to get the maximum amount of protein and what about all the micronutrients i think iron deficiency anemia is rampant for women, especially women of childbearing age.

26:35Again, we know issues with B12. What I tell individuals I'm coaching or in my classes is like, you know, religious purposes, ethical purposes, I got it. But if you're trying, if you're vegan because you think you're going to be more healthy, I would say that's a fallacy that the literature supports being an omnivore instead. But again, religious, I respect that. Ethical, if that's your concern, although a lot of animals are killed and growing plants that you might not realize, but it's another And also I will say, really, again, thinking about the micronutrients. So I was just looking up here, iron deficiency is the most widespread affecting over one third of the global population.

27:18we are privileged to be able to choose what we eat whether it's high quality protein again it doesn't have to be grass-fed grass-finished meat no and if you look at how much meat we're eating we're eating only about 1.6 to 1.8 ounces a day and I just want to kind of close the loop here essential amino acids can be used for a number of things when an individual is trying to lose weight and let's say they want to keep their overall calorie intake low. They could have two or three ounces of fish, which is very low calorie, say white fish, plus some essential amino acids. And then cumulatively, we're now looking at a meal that would sense to the body, it's about 30 grams of protein, something like that, because two to three ounces of fish plus essential amino acids will signal to the body that it's getting a more robust protein meal.

28:14Another way to think about essential amino acids is, I would say, during times of weight loss, which we covered, also older individuals. I was thinking about my mom. Tell me. Tell me more. She had a leg injury, right? She's recovering from. Broke her leg. Oh, that's right. You guys were traveling. And trying to preserve muscle mass. I've got her on creatine, and I should have her on essential amino acids, which I will change after this podcast. Actually, I have some for you. Yeah, because she's trying to get in enough protein, but she just doesn't have the appetite. So essential amino acids is a great solution.

28:48Yes, yes. And the evidence, this debate as to protein timing, does it matter or does it not? Do you have to eat protein within this, quote, anabolic window? And I would say there's overwhelming evidence to support that you don't, that it's the primary, it's the overall amount of protein first, and then how you distribute it second. Have you seen anything different? No, that's exactly what I've seen. I follow a lot of the research out of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, which we both have colleagues in, and I think they do great work. Oh, oh, sorry. It's time to record an ad for the show.

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30:38Lion and use the code Dr. Lion to get 20 % off. I recommend trying their starter pack with all three different formats and of course their gummies which are incredible. I'm not that popular with vegans but let's see if I can make amends. Ready? Here are a handful of suggestions and when I was vegan this is what I did. You were vegan? Yeah in college. Oh my gosh. And then my My teeth started getting loose. My hair started falling out. It was, I cried when I ate chicken the first time. So let's talk about this. Here's how I did it. I went right to chicken, which by the way, I don't necessarily recommend, but someone could start with cheese, yogurt, or eggs.

31:22And oftentimes when people start to feel better, it's not because the protein is changing, but I really do think that it's the micronutrient profile. Yeah. People feel terrible when they have iron deficiency. Oh, yeah. Less oxygen carrying capacity, that'll do it. And I would say, should we define a low protein diet as, say, 60 grams a day or the RDA, which is a minimum, 0.8 grams per kg? So someone is listening to this. We do not recommend anything less than 100 grams of protein per day. 60 grams from my perspective regardless of who you are as an adult yes would be considered a low protein diet can we agree on that i i agree with you the next step i would say if we are going to transition to a higher protein diet is it fair to say adding two to three ounces of fish or chicken every few days is reasonable i think it's very reasonable i guess it'll just be for the for listener to decide.

32:23And then adding a week or two later, they can have a red meat. Protein timing. We should get back to protein timing. And we said that it doesn't matter. No, just more total. Let's talk about when protein timing could matter. If someone was overall eating a lower protein diet, my rationale is the muscle is primed. So post-exercise. Yeah. You've now increased blood flow. You could have them have a lower protein meal which might help respond. Their tissue might respond more like a younger person. Let me lay this out. For example, if you look at resistance exercise, that helps with the anabolic response to protein.

33:12It somewhat lowers anabolic resistance. So the combination between dietary protein and resistance training is thought to be superior. From a timing perspective, if someone was eating a higher protein diet and training, it doesn't matter. But think about your mom. Yes. And think about my mom. If they are training, and let's say they're training three to four days a week, and maybe they're doing Pilates, I personally would like to see a protein bolus post-training, zero to two hours after. because I can make an argument as to why that would be helpful. That makes sense, especially in an individual you're really worried about.