Carbs will eventually find you
One of my justifications for doing keto was that, of the three macros — carbs, fats and protein, carbs was the only one that our bodies didn’t categorically need to survive.
Fats include essential fatty acids, which, if you never ingest will lead to death. And of course we need protein which, if we never eat, will also lead to death.
Carbs are the only macro which can be created from protein in a process known as gluconeogenesis. So, you can live without carbs. But can you really?
Well, I finally went back to carbs. Not because my body needed them but because my mind craved them.
White rice, pasta, noodles, sugar in coffee or a croissant. Ah man — so hard to live without once you start down that road.
It is a scientific fact that carbs — more than other macros — release large amounts of the feel-good-hormone serotonin into the brain.
Now that I’m firmly back on the path of carbs, enjoying noodles for dinner and the occasional — at least as far as I can control — pastry during the day, I can honestly say that “no — you can’t live without carbs”, at least you can’t do it indefinitely — not in our modern society. The combination of refined flour, saturated fats and sugar the make up a majority of junk and processed foods are just irresistible to our primitive monkey brains.
Having lived for hundreds of thousands of years with the spectre of imminent starvation just around the corner, show almost anyone a collections of carbs in the form of pasta or rice and they’ll consume with relish.
As my girlfriend so accurately pointed out the other night, “carbs will eventually find you.”
