Today's topic is about a common question I get from a lot of people. So people think naturally whenever you cut carbs from a diet, replace those carbs with fats. I mean it kind of makes sense in some capacity. You lower your carbs, low insulin, add in some fats to make up for the energy balance. Here's the thing though, whenever you cut carbs, you're cutting them obviously to dip into body fat stores and to accelerate the fat burning process. So what a lot of people will do is replace the carbs for fats but the thing is if you know anything about fats, it's double the calories per gram and at the end of the day it's about calories in, calories out. So it's very easy to replace the carbs that you deducted with the extra fats and actually be at the same calories or above without even really putting much mind into it.
So whenever I personally have people cut carbs from a diet and let's say someone's behind or someone needs to expedite the process, I'm going to cut their carbs, I'm going to add even more vegetables. And 9 times out of 10 if I add fats, it's going to be controlled and I'm going to do my math and make sure that it's still under a calorie deficit of what I need it to be for the total week deduction. And it'll probably be in the form of an MCT oil, whether it's MCT oil or coconut oil, which has MCTs inside of it, the constituents of it and I'll just use it sparingly, maybe pre-workout, maybe in the morning to get them going in their coffee, whatever but it's not going to be an abundance of it, it's not going to be anything crazy. So a lot of people are like, "Oh, well I'm going low carbs or whatever for somebody to jack up the almond butter, peanut butter, olive oil or whatever," that sometimes doesn't always work out in your favor.
Like I said, you might actually slow the process down or not get anywhere, even though you reduce the carbohydrates. So what I would recommend is people to even add more green vegetables. So what I'll have people do personally, this is what I do. I'll have them have a green salad but I'll have cucumbers in it. I'll have them have asparagus, celery stocks, things that are detoxification products for your body, so those naturally detox your body to help your kidneys. They're natural diuretics and I'll combine all three of those, usually cucumbers, asparagus and celery complimented to the already set in stone protein amount, which you don't really need to change that at all. If anything you might need to increase it whenever you put your carbs because here's the thing, you add extra protein that actually is a metabolically demanding process to even convert protein into body fat whereas dietary fat is readily stored into triglycerides into the fat cells.
So protein, if you Jack that up, whenever you cut your carbs you're still better off doing that because then it's also the thermic effect of food. You're getting a metabolic boost just from increasing the protein. You aren't getting a thermic effect from the fat. So thermic effect from fat is minimal. It's like 2 to 3% of that. Carbohydrates, protein actually increase the body temperature a little bit more, so that's your best bet.
So the take home message here is whenever you go low carb or cut your carbs you don't always need to replace the lost calories with fat calories, especially if you're trying to expedite the process. So protein and vegetables suffer a little bit, speed up the process, get caught up in your fat loss program or get you results faster. And of course introduce refeeds or cheats if you have a prolonged period of low carbs because carbs activate thyroid T4 into T3. You will have a reduced thyroid production if you prolong the period of low carbs. That's another topic I guess with cheat meals strategically implemented. There you have it.
But how do you add the carbs back in? Well, don't film me so close. How do you add the carbs back in without slowing down the process?
Excellent question, wife. How do you reintroduce carbohydrates after the prolonged period or the mini blast of carb deprivation? Good question. Whenever you go through whatever this is, it could be five days, three days, a week of zero carbs or whatever you're doing to expedite the process, whatever you're based at. So let's say you went from 250 grams or 200 grams or even 150 straight to zero, protein and vegetables, you would go back to that base if not even higher because your body's going to be so efficient, insulin sensitive and it's going to be really responsive that a lot of times I've had it happen where let's say the guy went from 200 grams of carbs and we did a zero week and he got even leaner, actually put them back up at 300 or 250 and he actually further kept speeding up and he had a new set point, where he really did pick up as his metabolic rate.
But a lot of times Rachel, you will just put the people right back on their base. So if they're at 150 before the carb depletion, they'll put them back on 150 see how that goes. Yeah, so that's pretty much what you do. And there's multiple ways to do it. Some people will stay low carb or zero carb and just implement refeeds every fourth day or cheat meal twice a week and that kind of keeps things from stagnation and that's what you would do.
