Is a vegan diet mostly carbs?

[Lou]

I think he meant complex carbs - simple foods... whole foods.

Emma JC

But ... aren't complex carbs the best fuel?

 

[Emma JC]

But ... aren't complex carbs the best fuel?

yes, he agrees with you just in a double negative = positive sort of way

he said "I don't think anyone here would argue that simple carbs aren't the best fuel for intense exercise. "

Emma JC

 

[Lou]

yes, he agrees with you just in a double negative = positive sort of way

he said "I don't think anyone here would argue that simple carbs aren't the best fuel for intense exercise. "

Emma JC

OH!!. Thanks.

 

[David3]

Are we not contrary in our disagreement ??

 

[Sax]

Okay I obviously wasn't clear. Simple carbs/sugars digest really easily and provide immediate energy. That gives them a major advantage over complex carbs/whole foods if you're fueling up shortly before or during intense exercise, or if you need to recover quickly.

 

[Nekodaiden]

(snip)

It's incredible how I'm losing fat by eating low fat, high carbohydrate (plenty of fruit, white rice, pasta and cane sugar) and lower protein (~120g per day), while exercising less than I was.

Yep, you can certainly lose fat that way and even be healthy in the short term. The dangers lie longer term, not short. Depending on too many refined carbs, the body will pull on it's reserves of vitamins and particularly certain minerals to metabolize them. The refined products provide a macro (energy) with little to none of the micros (particularly vitamins and minerals), and a deficit can easily result over time if continued. An extreme deficit (all refined energy) has actually been tested, and led to death of the test subjects within about a month:

"Considering energy foods as adequate nutrition was first scientifically demonstrated to be false by François Magendie by experiments on dogs and described in his Précis élémentaire de Physiologie. He showed that eating only sugar, olive oil, or butter, each led to the death of his test animals in 30 to 40 days.[3]"

Magendie, F. (1816) "Sur les propriétés nutritives des substances qui ne contiennent pas d’ azote", Annales de Chimie (ser. 2) 3:66-77, 408–410.


I think the point I'm trying to make here is that our bodies are designed to take some nutritional abuse, but there's a limit both in intensity of the abuse and it's duration over time. There may come a point, even months down the line where it catches up to you. I can speak from experience as someone recovering (gradually) from alcohol abuse - the nutrient thievery is much quicker and replenishment needs greater. But during the time (and even the day after), I can have lots of energy.