Great post - having dabbled in the "body building" scene and always being an avid workout enthusiast (?) I can say I paid attention to the "GI" of things. That made me spiral WAY downwards, especially all the small meals. After a while it became insane the amount of work I had to put in. The irony? After I dropped the oatmeal (which I wasn't eating much of anyhow), skim milk (I preferred full-fat raw from Jersey cows anyhow. Tastes like icecream), and low-fat nonsense; I started feeling better. By that I mean, even though I got down to ~3-4% bodyfat it was rough on me, my body, and my mind.

Low-fat (and especially with moderate-carb to low-carb) REALLY does affect you. I never felt full, I lost all my libido [who thought a twenty-something could lose THAT?], and I always felt tired and hungry. I won't be making that mistake again. I'm pretty sure that I'm still recovering from it, but lesson learned. Plus, I forgot how good animal fat tastes. Try eating broccoli, steamed, without butter or coconut oil for a while. You'll learn quickly how DAMN GOOD it tastes.

Thanks again JS!

About this study. It tested meals with different Glycemic loads, and different ratios of protein, carb and fat.

It shows that a high carbohydrate meal made of oats is high GL, and has a bad response. A meal of starchy tubers may also show the same result, if the same GL was picked. That does not prove that grains are a problem, it proves that a high GL, high carb meal is a problem. To show grains are the culprit, you would have to compare a similar high starch paleo meal to the grain meal.

You would also have to compare a balanced 40:30:30 protein carb fat meal - one using grains as carbs, the other paleo carbs to compare paleo and grain carbs to see if there is a different impact. This would be another study.

What we can say from this study is that a high carb, high GL meal is much worse than a higher protein, higher fat,low GL meal.

I wish I'd found this study a few weeks ago when I was writing a similar post! I'm emailing this to family members though. It seems like common sense to those of us who already eat this way, but hopefully as more research like this comes out, this info will be more mainstream.

New to your site, here via TWIP. Nice post. As you say, "eat like a predator, not like prey". I'm afraid this study, though, will not be front page news. Now, are all yor posts this interesting?

I got to your blog from MDA and I gotta say, you are great. Witty and to the point. That was one heckuva interesting study - but not at all surprising.

I found it interesting that the high GI meal caused the highest spike in serum growth hormone. I am implying that that a low GI meal might be better for fat loss, while a high GI meal might be better for muscle growth. Then again, muscle growth is probably best for fat loss... 😉

All other graphs except growth hormone and epinephrine is about the same after the 4 - 5 hour mark. I wonder if it would be beneficial to eat a low fat, low protein, high GI meal 4 - 5 hours before a workout and then eat a protein rich and medium GI meal after lunch to allow an insulin spike to shuffle nutrients into the cells, and utilize the high GH levels.

It certainly rhymes with the leangains approach ( 16 hour fast / 8 hour fed state with fasted workouts ), which I am loosely following.

I'm only a n=1 experiment, but after eating primal for about 600+ days and working out I added about 150 grams of carbs per day into my diet, and dialed back about the same amount of calories in fat and I am now another notch in on the belt, while the weight stays the same.

Thoughts? 🙂

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